JOIN USI have often heard many people utter these hackneyed lines: “We get into the pooja mode every day early in the morning.
There isn’t a ritual we haven’t performed. A temple we haven’t visited. We regularly observe fast. Yet, why are problems persistently knocking only at our doors?”
I’m reminded of an apocryphal story of a village head, a staunch devotee of Lord Shiva.
Every day, he peformed hours of rigorous rituals, at times even in austere conditions. But his life was shorn of inner peace and happiness, with sleep eluding him at nights.
During that time, a saintly man with the power of clairvoyance appears in the village. The village chief calls on him, and pours out his agonies. He bewails saying he is drowning in dreadful miseries, despite doing dozens of his daily poojas with ardent devotion.
The holy man smiles saying, “Son, maybe you aren’t aware of the human vices you are glutted with. Being the village head, you’ve imbued surplus conceit. And intoxicated with power, you have started abusing it to terrorise everyone around. You have usurped pawned properties of the poor, inflicting pain on them. And, you are trying to pull people down — whoever you see as a threat to your post, blocking their success.
Apparently, you are a ruthlessly self-centered man who hasn’t helped anyone around.
Remember, we need magnanimity to accept our vices, shortcomings and flaws. For, we always justifying our wrongdoings, besides assuming we are good humans treading the right track. Though it is believed this birth’s quota of happiness/grief is governed by the good/bad deeds of our previous birth, still the good wishes/blessings from good humans do have the ‘power’ to alter our destiny, and to mitigate our problems of this life. But in your case, all through you have incurred only people’s curses.
Incidentally, God always holds a mirror to us and treats us the way we treat others. As people around are all God’s creation, His children. Naturally, when people are happy, God would be. So, when you are kind-hearted, generous, compassionate, God would be the same with you. Now, all along, you have snatched peace, happiness and sleep from people; hence you are deprived of those in your own life.
In a nutshell, God deals with you the way you deal with others. Your endless poojas are inconsequential to Him!
Hearing this, the village chief gets enlightened. He realizes just worshipping God can’t wash away the sins committed by us. For, what we ‘spread’ around us is what we’d be extravagantly showered with, ultimately!