Tusker’s lesson for the lion
Question: Do I need to be spiritual because right now my life is going well?
Answer: As long as you live within the limitations of your body and mind, you will suffer in some way. If suffering has not come to you yet, you will experience it one day. Every suffering in the world need not happen to you but you have to realise it by yourself.
You see so many people around you and just by looking at their experience you should know that anything could happen to you also. For example, Gautam Buddha was the son of King Suddhodana, but when he saw one sick person, an old person and a dead body, he forsook his kingdom and his family and set off on a pursuit to know what the truth is.
He realised that if this could happen to one person, it could happen to him as well. Buddha was an intelligent man. But in the present time, people move on with their lives as if nothing will ever happen to them. If you don’t wake up by yourself, life will, anyway, wake you up.
One morning, in the forest, a lion had a hearty breakfast and was feeling really good with a full stomach. So he caught hold of a rabbit that was passing by and asked him, “Hey rabbit, tell me, who is the king of the forest?” “Oh master you, of course you”.
The lion felt really good. Then he caught hold of a fox and the same thing happened. Similarly, he caught hold of a few little creatures and they all sang in the same tune. Now, while the lion was feeling really, really good and swaggering through the forest, he came across a huge tusker. He went to the tusker and said, “Hey tusker, tell me, who is the king of the jungle?” The tusker picked the lion up and smashed him to the ground, breaking the lion’s back. With a painful back, the lion limped around and said, “Why didn’t you just tell me”. The tusker replied, “I had to make my point”.
The moral of the story is: If you don’t get it by yourself, life will make the point in so many ways. Some people learn with a small knock; some learn only with huge knocks; some people never learn and get knocked around all the time.
If you are an intelligent person, you must wake up before you are knocked? You must see how to be beyond this by just looking at all the suffering that people go through and not after it gets you. So when should spirituality start in your life? It should be the very first thing in your life.
— Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, a prominent spiritual leader, is a visionary, humanitarian,
an author, poet and internationally-renowned speaker. He can be contacted at www.ishafoundation.org
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