A certain king used to ask of all the wandering ascetics that came to his country, "Which is the greater man - he who gives up the world and becomes a mendicant or he who lives in the world and performs his duties as a householder?"
Some said that the mendicant was the greater. Then the king demanded that they should prove their assertion. When they could not, he ordered them to marry and become householders.
Then others came and said, "The householder who performs his duties is the greater man." The king demanded them too to settle down as householders.
At last there came a young mendicant who simply said, "Each may be great in his or her own place."
"Prove this to me," asked the king. "I will," say the mendicant, "but you must first come and live as I do for a few days, that I may be able to illustrate to you what I say."
The king agreed and followed the mendicant out of his own territory and passed through many other countries until they came to a great kingdom. In the capital of that kingdom a great ceremony was going on. The king and the mendicant heard the noise of drums and music. The people were assembled in the streets in gala dress, and a great proclamation was being made.
The king and the mendicant stood there to see what was going on. It turned out that the princess, daughter of the king of that country, was about to choose a husband from among those gathered before her. It was an old custom for princesses to choose husbands in this way.
All the princes of the neighborhood had put on their bravest attire and presented themselves before her. The princess was taken round on a throne and looked at and heard about them. If she was not pleased with what she saw and heard, she said to her bearers, "Move on," and no more notice was taken of the rejected suitors. If, however, the princess was pleased with any one of them, she threw a garland of flowers over him and he became her husband. Such was the custom.
The princess was beautiful, and her husband would be ruler of the kingdom after her father's death. The princess thought she would marry the most handsome among her suitors, but she did not seem to care for anyone among those gathered. Just then came a young man, a mendicant, and stood in one corner of the assembly, watching what was going on. The throne with the princess came near him, and as soon as she saw the beautiful mendicant, she stopped and threw the garland over him.
The young mendicant seized the garland and threw it off, exclaiming, "What is this?"
The king of that country thought that perhaps this man was poor and so dared not marry the princess, and said to him, "With my daughter goes half my kingdom now, and the whole kingdom after my death!" and put the garland again on the mendicant.
The young man threw it off once more, saying, "He that can live sparingly, need not be rich, and the man who loafs, is living at all times. I don't feel inclined to change my ways," and walked quickly away.
Now the princess had fallen so much in love with this young man that she said, "I must marry this man or perhaps die"; and she went after him to bring him back.
Then the mendicant who had brought the king there, said, "King, let us follow this pair." They walked after them, but at a good distance behind.
The young mendicant who had refused to marry the princess walked out into the country for several miles. When he came to a forest and entered into it, the princess followed him, and the other two followed them. Now this young mendicant was well acquainted with that forest and knew all the intricate paths in it. He suddenly passed into one of these and disappeared.
The princess could not discover him. After trying for a long time to find him she sat down under a tree and began to weep, for she did not know the way out. Then our king and the other mendicant came up to her and said,
"Do not weep; we will show you the way out of this forest, but it is too dark for us to find it now. Here is a big tree; let us rest under it, and in the morning we will go early and show you the road."
They passed the night without food, and in the morning the king and the mendicant showed the princess the way and she went back to her father.
Then the mendicant said to the king, "King, if you want to live in the world, lives like birds that go a long way to sacrifice themselves for their young. If you want to be a householder, hold your life a sacrifice for the welfare of dear ones. And if you choose the life of a mendicant, do not focus a lot on beauty and money and power and soap. The duty of the one is not the duty of all others."
Retold by Vivekananda
Source
THE GOLD SCALES
No comments:
Post a Comment