THE MAN AND YAMARAJA – STORY
There is a popular story from India of one man who tried to cheat Yamaraja.
He consulted an astrologer, and he found out the exact day that he was going to die.
He was a sculptor, and he knew how to work with clay very nicely.
He made nine clay images of himself. He painted them and dressed them expertly.
If you weren’t an artist you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
They all looked exactly like him.
The moment came when he was supposed to die, so he lined them up and stood very still amongst them.
Yamaraja came, and he was very confused.
“Hey, wait a minute. This person is supposed to be leaving now, but which one is he?”
He was puzzled, and for a long time he was thinking, “This man is going to be the first person to cheat death.”
But Yamaraja is one of the twelve mahajanas, so he’s very intelligent.
So he said, “Actually, whoever has done this has made a really lousy job. It’s bad work. I’ve seen much better sculptures than this. It doesn’t look like the original artist at all.”
Suddenly the sculptor became very upset, and he came out of the row of images, saying, “What do you mean? It looks just like me!”
“All right,” Yamaraja said,
“Come with me.”
MORAL: You cannot cheat death.
(GOLD AND DEATH – STORY! READ HERE!)