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 ...
There was once a crazy woman living in a small village. She had a cock with her. The people of the village used to tease her, and called her names and caused her much annoyance and trouble. She said to the people of the village living near her. "You tease me; you worry and bother me so much. Now, look here, I'll wreak vengeance on you." At first the people paid no heed to her. She cried, "Beware O villagers! Beware! I shall be very hard on you." They asked her what she was going to do, and she said, "I will not allow the sun to rise in this village." They asked her how she would do that, and she replied. "The sun rises when my cock crows. If you go on troubling me, I shall take my cock to another village and then the sun will not rise on this village."
It is true that, when the cock crew, the sun rose, but the crowing of the cock was not the cause of rising of the sun. O, no. Well, she left the village and went to another; she was very much troubled. The cock crew in the village where she went and the sun rose on that village; but it also rose on the village which had been forsaken by her.
Similarly, the crowing of the cock is the craving and yearning nature of your desires. Your desires are, like the crowing of the cock and the coming up of the objects of desires before you is like the rising of the sun. The cravings and yearnings for the objects of desires are brought about, governed, controlled, and ruled by the One Sun or the Infinite or the Self. It is the true Self, the governing Sun, which is bringing about morning or evening, day or night. All worldly affairs are governed and controlled by this true Self, Infinity. It penetrates the senses. The wire puller is controlled by the Sun of suns, that Light of lights. Remember that.
People usually attribute all this to the little, craving, hungering, selfish self. Do not make that mistake; please be free from it.
MORAL: To attribute the qualities of the Higher Self to the lower self is wrong reasoning.