One fine day, an old wise man entered the palace and gave him a torn bit of paper which was folded many times. It was dirty and stained.
The poor old man said, “Here it is O King – here is something that is permanent. These are words of wisdom that I have gathered with my experience. I am sure everyone will benefit from it!”
The King respectfully and reverentially bowed down with humility as he took the piece of paper.
In it were written three words, “This too shall pass!”
Realization dawned on the king. With tears in his eyes he saluted this poor old man for his great wisdom!
Oh! Dear readers – this is the story that we all need to etch firmly in our minds and hearts. Fame, success, money, happiness, misery, problems, hurt, pain, crises..........nothing is permanent in this life.
We all face good/happy phases and equally bad/sad phases in our lives. Often as ordinary mortal human beings we are confused. We simply don’t know what to do. Happy times are easy to live through. It is the difficult times that are the most painful ones. But it is through these tough and challenging phases that we also learn the most. Our loved ones betray us, our friends become enemies, our children and/or our parents spurn us, our emotions....our thoughts are negative and we wonder where we are going wrong.
It is at such times that we seek solace and strength from the only one who never lets us down – GOD. We will open the holy books that we have with us and understand that this is the only treasure that will bail us out of any crises always.
We realize that we were so engrossed in leading our selfish lives, that we forgot that our ancestors too faced the same kinds of problems.
With total faith in God, we know that we always get the right answers to our problems at the right time. When we read epics like Ramayana, Mahabharata, and our holy books like Koran, Gita, Bible etc – we slowly realize that even kings faced similar problems like ours.
Only when King Yayati was cursed and criticized by his father in law he realized that:
- There was so much to be done for his kingdom and he had neglected his kingdom and failed in his primary duty as a king.
- He was not a very responsible king because he got carried away by physical passion and external beauty of women.
- Women are anchors of the family and we need to respect them.
- We must always take full advantage of our youth, work hard and progress at this stage.
- As parents we should never expect anything from our children and never curse them for not doing the things we expect of them. He felt very sad every time he cursed his own children.
- Love means accepting all the flaws and weaknesses of our parents, wife and children.
King Yayati was lucky that one of his sons took up his old age so that he could fulfil all his duties as a king. But sadly his son had to make a big sacrifice for his father’s happiness. But his son loved him – so he did this WILLINGLY.
Despite making such gross mistakes in his life, king Yayati just did his best to salvage the situation as best as he could. He had to suffer the consequences of his actions.
He could not reverse it – but he had to face the tough situation and find a proper solution so that the people of his kingdom did not suffer because of the mistake made by their king.
As mere mortals, we too have to make compromises and sacrifices for our loved ones. Sometimes, we too make big mistakes in our lives without realizing it. We deeply regret it in retrospect. We find a lot of solace when we read such beautiful experiences that our own ancestors faced. We gain such wonderful insights on how to lead our own lives despite making irreversible mistakes. We get the courage to deal and accept such situations from the experiences of our ancestors. We become better human beings in the process.
Bheeshma, the grand uncle of Kauravas and the Pandavas – is a standing example of a true leader.
As we bow down to this great leader, let us also learn that we are all leaders and kings of our own lives and families too. As a leader or a king, our lives are never going to be rosy always. Leaders and kings too are basically human beings like you and me – who simply took the right decisions at the right time but made quite a few mistakes too.
Bheeshma could:
- Never forgive himself for not supporting Draupadi when she was disrobed in the midst of a full court of ministers.
- Not reply when Draupadi questioned his ethics and morals in the court.
- Not stop the Pandavas from playing the game of dice though they were his grand nephews too.
- Not influence Duryodhana in any way nor stop him from his selfish deeds.
- Not stop the Mahabharata or fight for the Pandavas though he knew that they were right and fair in their demand.
Bheeshma experienced a sense of personal failure and faced a lot of criticism for these decisions. Yet, he faced such challenges and situations stoically, with a lot of dignity and humility. He was an educated man with all the riches of his kingdom at his disposal. He had no children of his own. Yet, he shouldered the responsibility of his nephews and their children and willingly too care of the kingdom when they were young.
What gave our ancestors this kind of strength and wisdom? How did they get the courage to lead their lives with responsibility and dignity despite making such mistakes? If we analyse such instances – we will observe the same pattern in their lives too. They too, like us – faced good and bad phases in their lives. They too had to face tough situations and dilemmas like us. How then did they emerge victorious through such challenges?
The answers were not easy and such questions haunted all those great kings too. The solutions to all our challenges continue to elude us too.
We, as ordinary human beings are often confused. We are at cross roads because we do not know how to deal with such unique situations and challenges.
And it is at such times – that we – like our ancestors - learn to simply give in to a higher power.
We believe this higher force will guide us.
We know this.
We dig into our innermost reserves of faith and call out to our own personal Gods by name. Rama, Krishna, Jesus, Allah, Nanak..........it does not matter.
We simply let go because we know that only this universal God will always take care of us.
We learn to have a lot of faith in ourselves.
We learn to have tons and tons of faith in this concept of God.
We seek refuge in HIM. We wonder if God is a He or a She. We wonder if God is an IT. We slowly realize that it does not matter at all.
As long as there is some form of God taking care of us all through our lives – we feel safe and secure.
This God gives us the strength to realize that – everything is fleeting in life – transient, impermanent and temporary.
This God gives us the strength to detach ourselves from our attachments to money, fame, name etc.
This God gives us the courage to withstand the pain and the trauma of criticism, of failure or extremely delicate and completely conflicting situations.
This God will then prove to us that - “This too shall pass!”
And like Bheeshma and Yayati – when it is time to leave our physical bodies and merge with this universal energy – we will depart as peaceful souls.
Our conscience is clear because we know that we did our best under all circumstances. We know that our thoughts, actions and deeds were noble in intention.
We know that we our karmic accounts are being balanced by God and we bow down to this Almighty force with only a single prayer on our lips:
God – I know that this too shall pass – please be my side, please reside within me because you are my only true companion.
When we bow down with such humility – HE blesses us and showers us with his grace so that we are able to see and experience the divinity that is residing in other human beings too.
Namaste!
