Parables of Rama
by Swami Rama Tirtha | 102,836 words
Stories in English used by Swami Rama to illustrate the highest teaching of Vedanta. The most difficult and intricate problems of philosophy and abstract truths, which may very well tax the brains of the most intellectual, are thus made not only simple and easy to understand but also brought home to us in a concrete form in such an interesting and ...
Once came a man and said to Rama, "O sir, a great prince is coming to pay his respects to you." Now here is an important, a critical point, where people usually feel these flattering, puffing remarks of friends. Well the man, said, "Here is a very wealthy man coming to pay his respects to you." There was Rama looking at everything from the stand-point of Divinity, and these words escaped the lips of Rama "What is that to Rama?" The man said, "O sir, he is going to purchase such magnificent, beautiful costly things to bring to you." Rama said, "What is that to me? What is a prince to me? Let me have Reality only. Trifles and frivolities, these unreal phenomena, have no interest for me; my Truth, my Divinity, my joy, my Atman is enough to keep me busy. These vain talks, these frivolous, worldly things do not concern me. This prince or these wealthy people come to the body of Rama, and if Rama become interested in these bodies, he would become a veritable interrogation point; but when the point of view is changed and when the old songs have been set to new music, when the observation is taken from the highest stand-point, then what interest can a Lord or Mayor or an Emperor excite in me? None whatever,"
So let the stand-point be changed. When newspapers have no attraction for you, when they cease to interest you then that day you have risen above the body, and have come nearer to God. This gives you one way of applying this Truth in your practice. When that crucifixion is attained, then the True Life in you will manifest itself in ways like that.
MORAL:—No worldly objects attract one who looks at them from the highest stand-point, for they cease to interest him whose interests are all absorbed in the Divinity or Atman.