BUSINESSMAN TO THE CORE – STORY
Once upon a time their lived a businessmen . He was very successful in his material life . What ever he touched turned into gold . He had all the attributes needed to to be a true successful businessman .
He was such a professional businessman that every opportunity he would think how I can do business with this idea, he never left any opportunity to slip through his fingers.
As a result of this, he amassed a lot of wealth and brought up his children very well . His children grew up and as their father was growing old they decided to ask their father to retire and they would take care of the flourishing business.
As a mark of respect for what their father had done they decided that they engage the best master who could inculcate the perfect values in life necessary to be totally complete .
On seeking the best talent, they managed to find a self realized person who could take the responsibility of in gaining the perfect values .
The plan was that the master would take their father wherever he wanted and train their father to face the challenges lying ahead of him in life which he needs to accomplish in life.
The children would send any money required to maintain their father and master with all the necessary comforts .
As the master was given a great challenge, every day the master would teach their father the true values of life – what the scriptures had to say about how humans have to conduct themselves. The master advised that old man about the progress of one’s life that is gradually evolving and giving up animalistic propensities which entails progressing in the varnashrama dharma, ie, to upgrade from shudra to vyshya to kshatriya to bhramana by doing your duties and evolving from bhramacharcya to grahasta to vanaprasta and ultimately sanyasi, the renounced order of life, when nothing in this duplicitous world would attract one.
This process of education kept going on and on.
One fine day the master took this old man – their father – to the graveyard (funeral ground), and told him: “See this the place where we all have to come, when we leave our bodies and how the body is burnt which is temporary and this disintegrates as earth, water, air, fire and ether.”
All of a sudden, this old man, on seeing so many bodies being burnt one after another started to weep.
He started weeping so severely that the master thought that this man has really understood what is the essence of life , as would not stop sobbing / crying / weeping.
The master called up their children and spoke to them saying “it appears my assignment is over. Your father is totally a self realized man. He is crying so profusely. Please speak to him and console him as he is enlightened in life now”.
And the master asks the sons to speak to their father thinking he had accomplished the assignment requested of him .
Then the father started speaking to his sons: “You know something I have really wasted so much of time in my life. So many years have already lapsed and I have really squandered the time available at my disposal. What a colossal waste of time which I can never get back.”
As the father was feeling so terrible and as the children felt he had got the true realization they told their father: “Now you are a complete man. You are self realized now. Please, stop crying. Even now, nothing is lost. We can always makeup for the lost time and endeavour to face true challenges awaiting us .Why don’t you stop crying and come back home?”
The father said: “I have decided to stay here only. There is so much need of timber/ firewood here continuously, if I don’t use this opportunity to trade in firewood, we would be losing a lifetime’s chance”
He said this and stopped crying.
MORAL:
(1) We have to get over the notion that earning money is the ultimate goal in life .
(2) Self realization is the ultimate goal of life
(3) On death we take nothing along with us but for the credits carried forward by us which are eternal .
(4) Self realization means – “I am not this body but pure spirit soul”.
(5) Nourishment to soul is devotional service rendered to god by way of prayers.
(6) Old saying says: “If wealth is lost nothing is lost. If health is lost, some thing is lost. If character is lost, everything is lost.”
But, the Present day people feel: “If character is lost, nothing is lost. If health is lost something is lost. If wealth is lost everything is lost”
(7) One needs a spiritual master who comes in an unbroken disciplic succession who is empowered by the previous acharyas to learn this science.