Monday, May 25, 2009

The Snake and a holy man

 

There was a certain village, where one snake used to live. Now this snake used to keep biting people and all the people in the village were very scared of him. So the people of the village never used to venture out of the house much because of the snake, even children did not used to play outside their houses.

 

One day one holy man was passing through the village and he was surprised to see the village so quiet, and on enquiring he got to know about the snake. So this holy man went to talk to the snake, in general you cannot talk to snakes, but holy men have special powers and they can talk to them.

 

Holy man gave all the gyan to snake, and explained him that it was not a good idea to be biting people around and harassing other living beings. It was against the scriptures and he might suffer in his next birth. The snake was very impressed with the holy man and he promised that he is going to change himself and become a really good good snake.

 

Now fast forward, one year ahead.

 

The holy man is again passing through the same village, and he sees the village full of activity. He feels very proud of himself. As he goes forward he sees a group of children crowded around something, jumping and playing. When he went near he saw that these children had surrounded the same snake, and they were hitting him with stones and catching its tail and the snake looked completely tortured. Snake was looking very sorry looking and meek.

 

The holy man drives all the kids away, and feels very sorry for the snake. He asks the snake, what happened. Snake says that as people started realizing that snake had stopped biting, they started making fun of him, and harassing him.

 

Then the holy man tells the snake, “I had only asked you to stop biting, but not to stop hissing, you have to be nice but still stand up your ground.”

 

“Be nice to people, but don’t get walked over”, I guess this is the moral of the story.

 

Guess this is little stupid story, but I really found it very relevant and really liked it.

 

 You may also like to read the following:

How umbrella and slippers came in to existence

A small story

6 comments:

Deepti said...

nice story...:)

Rocksa said...

Liked the moral of the story!Nice one.

broca's area said...

nice philosophy!!:)

Lakshmi Krishnamurthy said...

Good one! Useful for my internship.

Ree said...

in mythology, the wise old sage is alternately sage narada or the buddha :) nice to revisit it here

Parul Gupta said...

goli! good to see your blog back in action! keep writing .. is good to read your posts :-)