It’s a special Monday and a special Monday Truclusions this week. It is the 50th Truclusions, the golden jubilee article. Today on this special occasion I wish to first thank the wonderful team at KYS, for believing in my writing and giving me a platform to share my thoughts. None the less you readers are equally special, if not for you guys “Monday Truclusions” wouldn’t have been a reality and reached fifty articles.
Today on this special occasion, let me tell you an incredible experience I had last week. Usually most of us believe knowledge and wisdom are attained through education. Though we all pretend to know that this isn’t true, we find it extremely difficult to accept it. Isn’t it?
How many times has it happened that we are rude or don’t show respect to someone who deserves it? Or at least we don’t think they deserve it, even though most of us don’t make it explicit. Just because someone might not be graduated or certified like us, we tend to believe they are stupid. For all we know the people on the other side might be masters in their own right.
We don’t even care to understand what the situation the other person is facing. We only look at a person’s economic status and tend to judge their knowledge or wisdom levels. People might be much more qualified than we are but we define them only based on their economic status.
The story I am going to tell you today may not seem relevant to the above context, but the person who told me this story is very much related to this context. Let me first narrate the story and then we shall talk about the person I heard it from. This is how the story goes!
The First Of The Teerthankaras
Ages ago there was a king who lived. His name was Rishabh Dev. He is believed to be the first Teerthankara (sage) among the 24 sages of the Jain cosmology. Legend says god cursed him for accidentally killing an ant, because of which he had to re-incarnate in human form 21 times. But god cursed him for a purpose; he was assigned a task of penning down all his lives, so that his teachings lead laymen like us in the righteous path.
From Bahubali to Mahaveer
King Rishabh Dev in his birth as a king had two sons- Bharath and Bahubali. Both of them were legends in their own rights. But as destiny had it, Bharath the elder of the two was very proud of his divine powers. After all he commanded a divine wheel that could overpower any other supernatural weapons. He wanted to conquer the world and be the omnipotent emperor. After he had won over every other warrior in the world and was about to announce his undisputed supremacy, he realised that there was one man he hadn’t over-powered yet. That was his own younger brother, Bahubali!
Though Bahubali refused to fight, he was pushed till he finally decided to fight. But he had no intent of wasting innocent lives of soldiers and other brave warriors. So Bahubali put forth a condition that only the two of them would go on war and there would no unnecessary bloodshed.
The other condition was that the war would be three fold. There would be a sight fight and the water wrestle. Bharath lost in both. Hurt emotionally and egoistically, he decided to use the divine wheel on his own brother.
The divine went towards Bahubali, revolved around him thrice as if in salutations and then stopped in front of him. Bharath realised that his younger brother was someone divine. He saluted Bahubali and offered all that he had won to him. Bahubali denied his offerings saying nothing belonged to him; not even the clothes he wore, neither the two feet land that he stood upon. This is how Bahubali attained godliness to become Mahaveer.
From Pride To Humility
Thousands of years later a south Indian king decided to go on a pilgrimage along with his mother. One night as the mother and son took shelter at night, the goddess she believed in came in her dreams and advised her to tell her son to install a statue of Lord Mahaveer amidst the hills nearby.
A huge 58-feet tall mind boggling monolithic statue was carved. The king was very proud of what had manifested. He organised huge festivities to celebrate his success and not the lord himself. The king ordered 1024 huge pots of milk, honey, sugarcane juice etc. to be poured on the statue, in order to showcase his riches and prosperity. All the liquid that was poured on the statue could not even reach the mid-drift of the huge statue.
The king was humiliated and humbled in front of thousands by what he saw. He joined his mother in humble prayer to the goddess they believed in. A while later they saw an old lady come by. She was carrying a tiny pot of milk that she poured on the statue. To everyone’s surprise the milk in the tiny pot drenched the statue from head to toe. That is when the king understood the power of being humble.
Now why did I tell you these stories? To tell you that I’ll have to talk about the person who narrated these stories to me.
Humility Is The New Superpower
It so happened last week one of my aunt visited me at our house. She brought along with her the rickshaw driver. She said I must meet him and spoke very highly of him. I greeted him warmly and then my aunt introduced both of us.
His name was Ramakrishna and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was a highly qualified person, an M.Phil in Kannada literature. He later shared that he had qualified for KAS, but for the lack of money to pay as bribe, the man was deprived of a bright future.
The thing that surprised me yet again was when I learnt from him that the qualifications that he had attained were after his disappointment of losing out on the administration services. The zeal of life he had and the humility he had to earn his livelihood as a rickshaw driver in spite of being highly qualified filled me with awe.
Yes, you might say he did it because he had to survive. But how many of us would agree to do what he did? Most of us would have cribbed all our lives on losing such a great opportunity, but his hunger to learn made him humble.
Food for thought- Is our learning, our knowledge making us humble or proud and arrogant?
Liked reading this? Then you might also like to read Monday Truclusions – Finding The Answer To A Pertinent Question That Decides Your Future Course Of Life!
If there’s any story that needs to be told, we will tell it. Write to us at contact@knowyourstar.com with your story lead, or contact us on Facebook or Twitter.