The law college teacher looked unusually uptight when he entered the class. With his red face, he took a quick look all over and the entire class slipped into pin drop silence.
He then turned to a boy in the first row.
“What’s your name?” The teacher asked him, as if questioning a criminal.
“I’m Juan sir.” He replied.
“Take your bag and leave the class immediately. I don’t want to see your face again.” The teacher shouted.
The class was shocked to hear that. Juan was one of the smartest guys in the class. Juan also did not at all understand what was going on. His only choice was to obey. Everyone in the class was angry at the teacher but did not respond. After Juan left the class, the teacher began to talk on dignity. He asked the class,
“What do you mean by the rules of dignity?” Everybody agreed upon the fact that it means justice to all. Then came the next question.
“Do you ever think that it was right for me to send Juan out?”
“No!” the entire class replied in one voice.
“Then why didn’t you respond?” asked the teacher. After a small pause he continued,
“Without a proper will to establish justice, what use … all these rules? Somebody go and call Juan back.”
The teacher was demonstrating the uselessness of rules without a will to practise them.
I think that lack of necessary will could be the only one reason for all the crises the world faces. Official practice manuals are different from what we actually follow.
Here is a Buddhist story. It was winter and the night was freezing cool. One late evening, a monk traveller from a different order came to a Buddhist lamasery and prayed for a night’s stay there. The lama priest in charge was not so happy with him. He told the monk that it was not just a wayside inn but a holy lamasery. However, he allowed the monk to stay there for that night. The traveller monk went to one corner of the main hall and sat there. As the night grew, the lama priest heard some strange noises from the main hall. He rushed to the hall and saw the traveller sitting at the fireside there. To the lama’s astonishment, he found that it was the main wooden statue of Buddha that was burning in the fire.
“Are you mad?” shouted the lama priest.
“Do you know what you are burning? It is the Buddha himself!” The monk now began to search the fire with his stick.
“What are you searching for?” the lama priest asked him.
“Buddha’s bones!” He replied. The lama priest could not hold any more. He sent the monk out immediately and closed the hall.
Later, the priest explained to the lamasery chief there all that happened.
“What a poor, bad lama priest you are?” the lamasery chief responded with this question.
“Who in the world will consider a dead Buddha for a living human being?” He asked the lama priest.This is Kaliyuga – no doubt at all! Kaliyuga also has subcycles within it. It is the Satvik sub-cycle that is on the move now. It itself is enough to change the general attitude – more light charges individual consciousness. People have begun to ask questions… questions that religions find hard to answer. Not even States give its citizens the necessary freedom of being oneself. What that we see in caste-less religions could be casteism only.
