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 in India who was practicing Mantram in order to win his lady love, but the sage who told him the Mantram that he was to repeat to himself, asked the man to beware of one thing. Now what was that? The sage told the man never to allow the idea or though t of a monkey to enter his mind when he was practicing this Mantram. Well, the man began to practice the Mantram and he was trying hard not to think of the monkey, but every time he practised the thought of the monkey, the monkey kept all the time before him. He could not for a single second repeat the Mantram without the thought of the monkey coming before him. He went to the sage and said. "Sir, sir, if you had not cautioned me not to think of the monkey, I would have been able to chant the Mantram, and would never have thought of the monkey, but when you want me to keep out the thought, then it haunts me, over-shadows me. Similarly, by the very attempt to shut out ignorance and weakness, you post weakness and ignorance there.
MORAL: The effect of prohibition is aggravation, as an attempt to shut out a thought does not remove it but aggravates it.