The Worldly Riches.

" Once upon a time there lived a poor Brahman in the woods with his wife and three children. He was dedicated to his work and completely devoted to God. He earned very little to sustain his big family. But nevertheless he was an honest man. He worked hard,day and night to earn his living. He spent most of his time in the village temple and later in the evening he would go to the market and preach about life and God to the locals. He used to converse with God, tell him all his sorrows and happiness. He was satisfied and contempt with the little that he had.
Many days passed by, he grew older and was much weaker now. He was unable to travel around. His family was under deep debts. It was a hard time for the family.
One fine evening, SeetaRam ate his dinner and went to bed early. He was fast asleep, ignorant of the things happening around him. But just then, he had a vision in his sleep. It was no other dream. This was the Goddess herself, who appeared in his dream. She had fiery eyes and wore a golden red sari and a crown made of shimmering rubies and diamonds. She seemed magnificent in his dreams.  She began to speak with him," Oh, SeetaRam. You have been a very truthful devotee and for that the thousand Gods from heaven shower their blessings upon you. May you live long and prosper.Now listen to me carefully. I have three holy pots for you. You must choose any one of them. Each contains the potion of Wealth,Power and Fame. You are allowed to consume any one of the pots and the magical potion within it will be all yours." If SeetaRam had drank the first pot , he would become the wealthiest man in town. If he chose the second one, he would possess great power and strength on influencing people. The third pot would have made him famous all around the world and he could travel world wide to share his teachings. But let's see what he did.
" O Goddess of the heaven, my utmost respect to you. I bow down to seek your blessing for I am very humbled at your presence. Please don't mistake me, but I don't think I'll choose any one of those pots. But I am very thankful and blessed that you have made such an offer." This angered the Goddess, she growled and rose up in fury. " Human, explain yourself."
" Dear Goddess, you have offered me wealth, power and fame. These are materialistic worldly things which are bound to fade away someday. If at all I accept your generous offer I will become a slave in the hands of these materialistic things. Drunk on power and eating money. I don't wish to be a victim of such situation for I believe there is lot more to life than attaining power and wealth. There is happiness, love and devotion. None of these things are going to provide me that. I am very happy with my humble life and respectfully decline your offer ." Listening to what SeetaRam had to say, the Goddess was very impressed. SeetaRam's wise words restored her faith in humanity. This made her believe that the world isn't all greedy and selfish. She showered all her blessings upon him and gracefully left his dreams.
SeetaRam woke up next morning and shared this little story with his wife and children. None of them believed him, but only when they saw huge amount of people gathering outside their hut asking for SeetaRam. Mysteriously, overnight he had become famous and people around the city wanted to meet him and seek him blessings and listen to his teachings. Just like this he preached about the true purpose of living and transformed many people's lives.
It was a cold Monday morning and SeetaRam never saw the sunrise that day for he was fast asleep travelling to the kingdom of heaven.He died that day, peacefully in his sleep like a completely satisfied man for he didn't want anything more even in his last moments of being alive."

I am sure SeetaRam had a very pleasant welcome in Heaven. Seetaram's story might seem like a part from our mythology but the essence of it is surely relevant. If you ask any young person today precisely what their ambition in life would be. They might mostly end up stating any of those three things. Very few of us will truly want happiness in life and to be able to do what we really want to do.
I have been asking my friends to pick between- Power, Money and Fame? and tell me why they chose it. Most of them went with money for the simple reason that they could enjoy life with money and have whatever they want. The rest chose money because they could attain power and fame with it.I personally chose power because the concept of being able to influence others, leave your mark on this world and be ambitious has always got to me. I had heated debates with a couple of them regarding the issue. But in the end we found neutral grounds and decided to end the debate by agreeing that money, power and fame to an extent co exist but having all the money and power need not necessarily make us a happy being.  I learnt a lot of things through those discussions. The conclusions were very thought provoking though.
 You ask your grandpa or any old man what's their fondest memory of life or their biggest achievement. I am sure it will not involve power, money or gaining fame. Rather it would be a story weaved of love, happiness, satisfaction and great people. Life isn't about money or power, sure at some point it might seem like it is all about that but once you look beyond that you'll discover a place within yourself where people, love, happiness and contempt is all that matters and makes sense to you.
I hope that all of us find that place someday! Till then experiment with what you have and what you aspire for and you'll get along the right path someday.


Comments

  1. Dear Gayathri,
    We have come across many such stories, with similar themes..
    This is the best one soo far! I hope this story goes through many generations to follow... :)

    ReplyDelete

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