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 a man who was hungry, and in order that he might appease his hunger, he sat down at a certain place, closed his eyes and began to eat imaginary curry. After a while he was seen with his mouth open, endeavouring to cool his burnt tongue. Somebody asked him what the matter was. He said that in his food there was a very hot chilli. The name is cool, but the thing itself is very hot. Thereupon a by-stander remarked, "Oh, poor fellow, if you had to live on imaginary food, then why not select something far sweeter than hot chilli, pepper? As it was your own creation, your own doing, your own imagination, why did you not make a better choice? According to Vedanta, all your world being but your own creation, your own idea, why think yourself a low, miserable sinner? Why not think yourself into a fearless, self-reliant incarnation of Divinity?
MORAL: Right imagination is to think yourself not a low, miserable sinner but a fearless, self-reliant incarnation of Divinity.