All World
Gayatri Pariwar

Today I had to walk along a very treacherous trail.  There was the Ganga flowing below and the mountain standing high above.  By the foot of the hill, there was a very narrow footpath.  It was hardly 3 ft. wide.  We had to go along this path.  Even a slight faltering step could result in hurtling down and getting lost in the roaring rapids of the Ganga hundreds of feet below.  If you thought of avoiding it and walk away safely, there stood the high mountain almost vertically rising hundreds of feet above refusing to budge an inch. On this narrow and difficult path, every step had to be taken with utmost caution - the distance between life and death was hardly a foot and a half long.

For the first time in life I experienced the fear of death.  Long time back, in my childhood, I had heard this epic story. Once sage Shukdev visited King Janak and asked the latter as to how he remained unperturbed like a Yogi while attending to his multifarious duties as a king.  To explain the point Janak handed to Shukdev a bowl filled with oil and asked him to make a round of the town and come back without spilling a drop of oil, the punishment for failure being severing of the head.  Out of fear of death Shukdev, made the round as ordered, concentrating all his attention on the oil-filled bowl, totally unaware of things and people that he came across during his round of the town. King Janak then explained to him that as he (Shukdev) had concentrated only on the oil and nothing else out of the fear of losing his life, he too always remembered death while going about his duties and this helped him in putting his best in the performance of his duties and daily routines - every moment of life with a totally focused mind.

The moral of this story was acutely experienced by me while negotiating that narrow path. There were a number of other pilgrims traveling with me.  All the way we had been talking and laughing when the path was smooth and safe, but no sooner did we reach this narrow footpath, than all the conversations ceased and everybody became pensively and attentively silent. Nobody thought of one’s home or of any other subject.  Mind and soul were fully concentrated on only one thing - keep the next step at the proper place.  With one hand we were trying to clutch at the mountain wall, though there was hardly anything to clutch at.  The only solace in doing so was that it might help maintain the body balance in case it tended to tilt towards precipice falling down to the bed of the Ganga.  This distance of about 1.5 miles was passed with great difficulty.  The heart was kept throbbing violently throughout.  We learnt a great practical lesson today.  How careful we have to be in order to protect our lives from getting sniffed out.

The tortuous and dangerous patch of the trail was at last over; but its memory brings forth a train of thoughts.  If we always remember that death could pounce upon us any moment, we may not indulge in chasing illusory pleasures.  The journey of life is like the just concluded journey of today, which called for the need of keeping every step consciously, cautiously and correctly.   If a single step was taken wrongly or carelessly, it might mean our straying away from the true aim of life and falling down to abysmal depths of inconscience.  If life is dear to us, in order to make it worthwhile, it is necessary that we are ever alert and conscious every step of the path.  Life is full of responsibilities like that of the travelers walking along the narrow path alongside the edge of the Ganga.  Only after negotiating it successfully, can we have hope of reaching our cherished goal of self-fulfillment.  The path of duty is narrow like the footpath described above.  Carelessness will make you slip and fall into a bottomless pit of darkness, thus depriving of the chance of achieving the true aim of life in this incarnation.  Clutching to the wall of righteousness will help maintain the balance and help minimize the fear of leaning toward the edge of the abysmal depths.  In difficult times this wall is our solace and support.  

Today I was put up in a room on the top floor of Sukki camp.  Right in front was seen the top of the snow-clad mountain.  The snow was melting slowly and was flowing down in a thread-like simmering stream. Some flowing pieces of snow were still half-melt.  The sight was heavenly and soothing to the eyes.

Some other pilgrims were staying in a room third from mine.  Among them there were two children – a girl and a boy, both of about 11 or 12 years of age.  Their parents were on the pilgrimage.  The children were brought on a device called ‘Kandri’ carried by porters.  They were sweet natured and precocious. Both were debating on what the shining mountain was made of.  They had heard that the mineral mines were situated in the mountains.  The boy logically concluded that the mountain in front of us was that of silver.  But the girl disagreed, reasoning that had it the silver been lying so open and unguarded, people would have plundered it long time back.  She, however, could not herself say what metal the mountain was made of nonetheless she continued stubbornly disagreeing with the boy. The debate interested me. I called them both to my side and explained that the mountain was made of stone, but being of high altitude, it is covered with snow.  During summer the snow melts and in winter the snow covers the mountain tops again.  It is the snow that shimmers in the sun and assumes a silvery appearance.  The children got their doubt cleared on this count, but went on asking me more questions related to it.  I readily and gladly provided them with lot of information about the mountains in order to enrich their knowledge.  

This made me think of the innocently ignorant human intellect in childhood, which makes him to assume an ordinary thing like snow as valuable silver.  But when grown up, man thinks more deeply and gets down to the reality.  If the human intellect were properly educated and developed right from childhood, children, too, would get to know the reality of things while young.

But I realized that my musings were misplaced. How far are most of grown-ups free from follies and misconceptions? In the same manner as these children mistook snow for silver, the grown-ups too consider many worthless or cheap things like pieces of silver or copper, sexual excitements, worthless ego-displays and this mortal body to be of lasting value and stay attached to them, smugly forgetful of the true aim and purpose of life. 

We are more deeply and pitiably entangled in transitory and meaningless worldly pleasures and attractions than the small children are in playing with toys and paper boats.  The grown-ups admonish the children for their lack of foresight and for spending their valuable time in fun and frolic, instead of attending to studies.  But who will admonish the gown-ups who, like puppets, dance to the pull-strings of sensual pleasures, instead of upliftment of the soul?  The children could be convinced of snow not being silver.  But who will convince the grown-ups that the aim of life is not sensual pleasures or gratifications of desires but self-realization?

Today while we were silently passing through a dense forest we were suddenly attacked by a swarm of yellow flies that were buzzing over some trees.  Some of them stung us so deeply that it was hard to pull them off.  We tried to drive them away by hands or clothes and we even ran to get away from their range.  But they did not leave us for a long distance.  After over half a mile’s running, during which we stumbled and fell down too, the flies, at long last, left us.  Wherever they had stung, it had swelled up due to poisonous stings and was severely painful.

I began to ponder over the matter.  Why did the flies attack us?  Did they get anything by doing so? What did they intend to gain by hurting us?  Perhaps the flies might have been thinking that the forest territory was theirs; it was their dwelling place; and it had to remain safe and secure for them; no one should dare trespass that territory.  When they saw us passing through the forest they might have taken it as an act of arrogance, endangering their security and posing a challenge to their sovereignty.  So they might have deemed it necessary to teach us a lesson for our imprudent trespass.

If this be so, it is sheer folly of the flies.  The forest is made by God; not by them.  They must stay atop the trees and make their living.  Their greed to occupy and keep for themselves the entire territory is unreasonable; for they have no use of the whole territory.   They should also understand that this world is a co-operative venture, and it is only proper that it is equitably shared by all.  They should have had the forbearance to let us pass through it enjoying the beauty, the green cool shade of the trees and fragrance of the wild flowers.  Instead of showing magnanimity, they stung us, lost their stings; some of them were even mauled to death and others badly injured.  Had they not exhibited their mad anger in this way, they could have spared themselves from the unnecessary harm they suffered and the ill-will and bad impression that they created on us. From all angles their attack and greed of power did not exhibit wisdom. They proved themselves true to their name, “Yellow flies” implying “mean creatures”.

But why blame the poor flies alone? Why should they alone be call foolish? We, the human beings, are also behaving in a similarly avaricious way. The vast resources created by the Almighty to be equitably shared and used by all, are being rapaciously grabbed by a few of us for ourselves alone. We never pause to think that the needs of the body and even our family are limited and that our amassing the nature’s resources beyond our needs would deprive others of even their bare survival needs. The excess acquisition only helps feed the ego’s insatiable hunger of being the owner of vast resources; which one cannot keep with oneself for ever.

Man too, like the yellow flies, gets blinded by greed and selfishness.  He does not acknowledge the nature’s eternal law of mutual caring and sharing. He does not care two hoots for the suffering caused to others by his self-aggrandizement. The yellow flies went back after stinging and chasing us for half a mile.  But when I think of the horrific misdeeds perpetrated by man intoxicated by the craze for pelf, power, and self-indulgence, I feel shy of blaming the bees, who live by survival instinct of their species and are not endowed, like humans, with discriminative intelligence (which can distinguish between the good and the bad). How sad that so few of us consciously exercise this gift of the Creator!