During one of his visits to Bahota, the Great Master met a sadhu who wished to discuss spirituality with him. When the sadhu, expounding from the Vedas and other Hindu scriptures, finally exhausted his learned arguments, the Great Master asked, “Sir, how far does your spirit rise inside? Have you ever gone inside?”

“Inside what?” the sadhu asked in a puzzled tone.

A woman dreamt she walked into a fruit shop in a bazaar and, to her astonishment, found God behind the counter.

“What do you sell here?” she asked.

“Everything your heart desires,” said God.

Believing what she was hearing, the woman decided to ask for the finest things a human being could yearn for. “I want peace of mind, love, happiness, wisdom and freedom,” she said.

Then as an afterthought, she added, “Not just for me; for everyone in the world.”

God smiled and said, “I think you’ve got me wrong, my dear. We don’t sell fruits here. Only seeds!”

He called young people in the kingdom together one day. He said, “It is time for me to step down and choose the next emperor. I have decided to choose one of you.”

The kids were shocked! But the emperor continued. “I am going to give each one of you a seed today. One very special seed. I want you to plant the seed, water it and come back here after one year from today with what you have grown from this one seed. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next emperor!”

One boy named Ling was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly told his mother the story. She helped him get a pot and planting soil, and he planted the seed and watered it carefully. Every day he would water it and watch to see if it had grown.

After about three weeks, some of the other youths began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. Ling kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew. 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 5 weeks went by. Still nothing.

By now, others were talking about their plants but Ling didn’t have a plant, and he felt like a failure. Six months went by, still nothing in Ling’s pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing.

Ling didn’t say anything to his friends, however. He just kept waiting for his seed to grow. A year finally went by and all the youths of the kingdom brought their plants to the emperor for inspection. Ling told his mother that he wasn’t going to take an empty pot.

But honest about what happened, Ling felt sick to his stomach, but he knew his mother was right. He took his empty pot to the palace. When Ling arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other youths. They were beautiful in all shapes and sizes.

Ling put his empty pot on the floor and many of the other kinds laughed at him. A few felt sorry for him and just said, “Hey nice try.”

When the emperor arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted the young people. Ling just tried to hide in the back.

“What great plants, trees and flowers you have grown,” said the emperor. “Today, one of you will be appointed the next emperor!”

All of a sudden, the emperor spotted Ling at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered his guards to bring him to the front.

Ling was terrified. “The emperor knows I’m a failure! Maybe he will have me killed!”

When Ling got to the front, the Emperor asked his name. “My name is Ling,” he replied. All the kids were laughing and making fun of him.

The emperor asked everyone to quiet down. He looked at Ling, and then announced to the crowd, “Behold your new emperor! His name is Ling!” Ling couldn’t believe it. Ling couldn’t even grow his seed. How could he be the new emperor?

Then the emperor said, “One year ago today, I gave everyone here a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds, which would not grow.

All of you, except Ling, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Ling was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new emperor!”

If you plant honesty, you will reap trust.

If you plant goodness, you will reap friends.

If you plant humility, you will reap greatness.

If you plant perseverance, you will reap victory.

If you plant consideration, you will reap harmony. If you plant hard work, you will reap success.

If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation. If you plant openness, you will reap intimacy.

If you plant patience, you will reap improvements. If you plant faith, you will reap miracles.

But

If you plant dishonesty, you will reap distrust.

If you plant selfishness, you will reap loneliness.

If you plant pride, you will reap destruction.

If you plant envy, you will reap trouble.

If you plant laziness, you will reap stagnation.

If you plant bitterness, you will reap isolation.

If you plant greed, you will reap loss.

If you plant gossip, you will reap enemies.

If you plant worries, you will reap wrinkles.

If you plant sin, you will reap guilt.

So be careful what you plant now, it will determine what you will reap tomorrow.

A man prayed to God: “I Want Happiness” God said: First remove ” I ” that’s ego, then remove “Want” that’s desire, and see you are left with only “Happiness”?

Isn’t that the simple truth of the matter. Drop ego/I. Drop desire. And we have happiness! That’s how to be happy.

Thoughts?

On a decided day, the children brought their potatoes well addressed. Some had two, some had three and some had even five potatoes.

The teacher said they have to carry these potatoes with them everywhere they go for a week.

As the days passed the children started to complain about the spoiled smell that started coming from these potatoes. Also some students who had many potatoes complained that it was very heavy to carry them all around. The children got rid of this assignment after a week, when it got over.

The teacher asked, “How did you feel in this one week?”

The children discussed their problems about the smell and weight. Then the teacher said, “This situation is very similar to what you carry in your heart when you don’t like some people. This hatred makes your heart unhealthy and you carry that hatred in your heart everywhere you go. If you can’t bear the smell of spoiled potatoes for a week, imagine the impact on your heart of this hatred that you carry throughout your life.”

The pay was really good and so were the work conditions.

For that reason, the woodcutter was determined to do his best. His boss gave him an axe and showed him the area where he was supposed to work.

The first day, the woodcutter brought down 18 trees.

The Boss was very much impressed and said, “Congratulations Go on that
way!”

Very motivated by the words of the boss, the woodcutter tried harder the next day, but he only could bring down 15 trees.

The third day he tried even harder, but he only could bring down 10 trees.

Day after day he was bringing down less and less trees. “I must be losing my strength”, the woodcutter thought to himself.

He went to the boss and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on.

“When was the last time you sharpened your axe?” the boss asked. “Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen my axe.

I have been very busy trying to cut trees.

The moral of the story:

Our lives are like that. We sometimes get so busy that we don’t take time to sharpen the axe.

In today’s world, it seems that everyone is busier than ever, but less happy than ever. Why is that? Could it be that we have forgotten how to stay sharp? There’s nothing wrong with activity and hard work. But we should not get so busy that we neglect the truly important things in life, like our Spiritual life.

Where to hide their divinity was the question.

So Brahma called a council of the gods to help him decide. “Let’s bury it deep in the earth,” said the gods.

But Brahma answered, “No that will not do because humans will dig into the earth and find it.” Then the gods said, “Let’s sink it in the deepest ocean.”

But Brahma said, “No, not there, for they will learn to dive into the ocean and will find it.”

Then the gods said, “Let’s take it to the top of the highest mountain and hide it there.”

But once again Brahma replied, “No that will not do either, because they will eventually climb every mountain and once again take up their divinity.”

Then the gods gave up and said, “We do not know where to hide it, because it seems that there is no place on earth or in the sea that human beings will not eventually reach.”

Brahma thought for a long time and then said, “Here is what we will do. We will hide their divinity deep in the center of their own being, for humans will never think to look for it there.”

All the gods agreed that this was the perfect hiding place, and the deed was done. And since that time humans have been going up and down the earth, digging, diving, climbing, and exploring–searching for something already within themselves

“The deeper your prayers echo in your own consciousness, the more audible they are to God.”

Many people repeat prayers daily, or even several times a day, but without any depth in them. What use is that? Prayer can be powerful, or it can be empty. First, decide what to pray for, and then pray with depth, not with a hole in your spirit.

Here’s another quote, & beautiful story, along these lines:

“There is a story of a peasant girl who was passing through a farm while going to another village. There was a Muslim offering his prayers on his prayer-rug in the open. The law is that no one should cross the place where anyone is praying. When this girl returned from the village this man was still sitting there. He said, ‘O girl, now what terrible sin have you committed!’ ‘What did I do?’ asked she. ‘I was offering prayers here, and you passed over this place’. The girl asked, ‘What do you mean by offering prayers?’ ‘Thinking of God’, he replied. The girl said, ‘Yes? Were you thinking of God? I was thinking of my young man whom I was going to meet, and I did not see you. Then how did you see me while you were thinking of God?’”

And one more quote from Inayat Khan:

“Prayer from the depth and prayer from the surface are two prayers. One can utter what Christ has called ‘vain repetitions’, just repeating the prayer; one does not fix one’s mind on the meaning of the prayer. If the depth of one’s heart has heard the prayer, God has heard it.”

On Saturday 1/12/12, Baba Ji gave an English satsang for 15 minutes at Delhi Bhati Centre. There he emphasized upon religion and traditions. He said whatever traditions were followed in religions, that took a front seat, whereas the teachings nobody remembered. To illustrate his point, he gave an example of the story of a monk and a cat. Whenever the spiritual teacher (monk) and his disciples began their evening meditation, a cat who lived in the monastery made so much noise that it distracted them. One day, the teacher ordered that the cat be tied up during the evening practice. Years later, when the teacher died, the cat continued to be tied up during the meditation session. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, learned descendants of the spiritual teacher wrote scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation practice.

This story is a brilliant illustration of how false and meaningless traditions persist and perpetuate across generations. All religions are chock-full of such traditions/rituals which have been passed down for so many centuries and have become so intertwined with the religion itself that it is difficult to get to the bottom of it or clearly demarcate between the two. This leaves many believers confused about the religion itself and makes each ritual open to all sorts of interpretations.

Further, he said that many people complain that there is no progress in meditation — they feel disappointed at times — for which he gave an example of a shop which has to be opened daily irrespective of customers coming or not. If the shop remains open, the customers will return. Similarly, one needs to sit in bhajan and simran — you never know when he will turn up.

A water-bearer in India had two large pots, each hung on each end of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, and while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of  water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master’s house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pot full of water in his master’s house. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect to the end for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water-bearer one day by the stream. “I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you.”

“Why?” asked the bearer. “What are you ashamed of?”

“I  have been able, for these past two years, to deliver only half my load  because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to  your master’s house. Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don’t get full value from your efforts,” the pot said.

The water-bearer felt sorry for the old cracked pot, and in his compassion he said, “As we return to the master’s house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path.” Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming the beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and this cheered it some. But at the end of the  trail, it still felt bad because it had leaked out half its load, and so again it apologized to the bearer for its failure.

The bearer said to the  pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of
your  path, but not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back from the stream,  you’ve watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my master’s table. Without you being just  the way you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house.”

Each  of us has our own unique flaws. We’re all cracked pots. Don’t be afraid of your flaws. Acknowledge them and go out boldly, knowing that in our weakness we can find  strength.