1. The path to progress
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Many of us cannot accept that we are our greatest enemy.
Let us look into our life. There are so many 'heaps' or rituals that have entered our life. There are plenty of speed breakers. There are so many obstacles. How did they enter our life?
A small story:
One Pundit (scholar) went for a bath in the holy Ganga. The Pundit had a water jug (kamandalu) with him. He searched here and there for a safe place. He looked around at the people on the banks of Ganga to see if anyone looked trustworthy to be entrusted with its care. The pundit, saw no one. Then he had a brainwave, ‘why not bury the jug in the sand on the river bank?’ He made a small pit in the sand and buried his kamandalu under a heap of sand. Happy with his solution the Pundit went for his ritual bath.
A farmer happened to watch the Pundit from a distance. He thought, ‘oh! It looks like we need to take a sand heap before taking a bath,’ and proceeded to do just that. Another man witnessed the farmer make a sand heap before taking a bath. He too followed it.
By and by, all the people who visited the river for a bath did exactly the same thing. When pundit waded ashore, he was astonished to see hundreds of sand heaps all over Ganga bed! He had a problem now. Which heap was his kamandalu under? He started to search for it by pushing away the heaps.
The farmer, who watched this, came to the pundit and asked, ‘Why are you destroying our Sivalinga (Symbol of God Siva)? As a pundit, you should have more sense! Don’t you know that you are supposed to make Sivalinga before bathing in the holy river? And here you go about trampling and disturbing our Sivalinga! Don’t you have sense?’
A sand heap naturally looks like a Sivalinga. The pundit thought, ‘When did this ritual start? It is me who started the ritual. It is for sake of my kamandalu, I started.’ Finally, it became a big trouble for himself. Anyhow, he was not allowed to destroy the heaps. He had to move on without his kamandalu.
We start many rituals in our life for some reason. Today, they have no meaning or purpose.
Until we remove these 'heaps,' we will be unable to progress. We become trapped in habits. We sabotage our progress. We become our own villain.
Be aware and remove these self created obstacles.