Learn From the Donkey!

A village potter used to make pots and planters. He would go to a near by town to sell his wares. He had a donkey on whose back he would load the pots etc.

Diwali was fast approaching, so the potter decided to make some statues of Lord Ganesha and Goddess Lakshmi, to sell in town. He made some beautiful statues and painted them in bright colours. He then loaded them on to the back of his donkey and set off towards the city.
On the way, he crossed many people. They would invariably fold their hands and bow to the statues of Ganesha and Lakshmi. By the time they reached the city, many people had bowed their heads before the deities.

They reached the exhibition ground where the artisans could exhibit their things. Soon the potter was able to sell his statues for a good sum. He was pleased indeed!

The potter took his donkey by the muzzle and set off on the road leading back to the village. Every time they would cross anyone, the donkey would stop and preen himself prettily as if he were a model. But what was the matter! No one seemed to as much as glance at him! Why were people not bowing their heads before him anymore? Desperate to catch their attention, the donkey started to bray louder & louder...

He-haw, he-haw...... He went on. The passers-by started pelting stones at him in annoyance. The potter was bewildered too.

The poor donkey had thought that everyone was bowing to him, little realizing that their reverence was directed to the idols of God tied to his back and not to him!
Many of us make this mistake. A person occupying a seat of power, often finds people saluting him. If he thinks that the salutations are in his honour, he is living in a fool's paradise, like the donkey in the story!

The respect is given to the chair and not to the person occupying it. As soon as he steps down from the position, the people around him vanish.

Thinking about future too anxiously!

Once two villagers were sitting under a tree and watching the sunset. They were very close friends. After sitting quietly for some time, one asked the other, "What are you thinking?"

"I am planning to buy five acres of land, a garden." The other friend immediately said, "Don't buy the garden!"

The first one was surprised. He asked "why"? The second one replied, "I am planning to buy a buffalo. Then, my buffalo will enter your garden and we will fight, have misunderstandings and lose our friendship. I do not want to lose our friendship."

The first one said, "Then, you cancel your plan of buying a buffalo. I am going to buy my garden." The second one said, "No, no, no. I have already decided to buy a buffalo." Thefirst one said, "How will your buffalo enter my garden? I will fence it thoroughly."

The second one said, "No, you see it can just enter; a buffalo is a buffalo. Who can stop it? It can do anything."

They started fighting. The fight went to such an extent that they broke their limbs! Neither has bought buffalo nor any land.

Nothing has happened. Just the mind’s race and both of them broke their limbs over it!

Our fears are also like that. The future has not yet come. But you just sit there and think, "Oh! What will happen? This will happen. That will happen."

Many times our minds are filled with anxiety about the future! In this run, the mind gets into such a mess.

Don’t be over anxious about the future.

Difference Between Belief And Faith

There was a tightrope walker, who was so good that he could walk between two twenty stories building on a tight rope with a balancing pole.

Thousands of people would watch him perform his breathtaking feat. After he walked across the building he would have his assistant sit on his shoulder and he would proceed to walk across the building.

Everybody were amazed and gave him a thunderous applause. He asked them whether they believed that he could do it again. The crowd said, Yes, we believe that you can!

After a while he asked the crowd again, Now, who wants to volunteer to get on my shoulder? With that the crowd became silent.

There is a difference between Belief and Faith. We can believe what we see. In the above story, the crowd believed in the tightrope walker because they saw him perform the feat.

But when he asked them “Who wants to get on my shoulder?everyone was silent. You see, the crowd had Belief but they did not have Faith. This story clearly illustrates the difference between belief and having faith.

Why Go to Temple ?

A 'devotee' goer wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper and complained that it made no sense to go to the Temple.

'I've gone for 30 years now, he wrote, and in that time I have heard something like 3,000 mantras.
But for the life of me, I can't remember a single one of them. So, I think I'm wasting my time and the Gurus are wasting theirs by giving services at all.


This started a real controversy in the 'Letters to the Editor' column, much to the delight of the editor. It went on for weeks until someone wrote this clincher:


I've been married for 30 years now. In that time my
wife has cooked some 32,000 meals. But, for the life of me, I cannot recall the entire menu for a single one of those meals. But I do know this... They all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work.

If my wife had not given me these meals, I would be physically dead today.

Likewise, if I had not gone to the Temple for nourishment, I would be spiritually dead today!

When you are DOWN to nothing.... God is UP to something! Faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible and receives the impossible!

Thank God for our physical AND our spiritual nourishment!