I was watching a renowned saint’s talk on TV three days back. During his speech, he told several stories. A part of a story inspired me and this post is based on that. Here is the excerpt from the story.

A saint was on his deathbed counting his last days.  His disciples were around and looking after him.  The disciples were always astonished with the knowledge and wisdom that their guru had and wanted to know who his guru was who might have been more knowledgeable than him.  So they asked the guru who his guru was.  The guru smiled and said that he had learned from thousands of gurus throughout his life and that he doesn’t have enough time to tell about all of them.  The disciples were persistent and asked the guru to tell at least about few of his gurus.  The guru agreed and started telling about few of his gurus and what he learned from them.

“The first guru to me was a thief.  I was in search for knowledge and was walking through a village.  It was late night and the entire village was deep asleep. I wanted to take shelter for few days in the village but at that time of the night I didn’t wanted to disturb anyone. As I walking through a small street I saw someone near a house and as I closed in, I could recognize that it was a thief who was trying to get into a house and steal. Not daring to bother about what he is doing I asked him, if I could find any shelter in the village. The thief said that there is no public shelter but then he offered that I could stay in his house provided he doesn’t mind staying with a thief.  I thought about it and really didn’t care because he is a thief. Every day the thief went in the night to do his work and returned back in the morning. Every morning he came empty handed and I would tell him he failed to steal and he would say that he will make it tomorrow. I stayed with the thief for about a month and for the entire month he was not able to steal anything but he still kept saying he would make it tomorrow.  That was the first lesson I learnt from the first guru.  A lot of times I was impatient that I am not getting enough knowledge and wisdom to carry on the saint path that I even considered renouncing it and going back to normal life. But the thief guru taught me the concept of never giving up and if I am here today it is that first lesson that I learnt has brought me up till here.

My second guru was a dog.  I was drinking water from a pool of water. A thirsty dog came by and wanted to drink the water from pool.  As he put his head down to the pool he saw his own reflection and thought it was another dog and started barking.  The reflection of him also did the same actions but the dog thought there was another dog inside the pool which is barking at him. So he stepped back and attempted again. Again the same thing happened and he backed away. This happened for few times and then I don’t know what the dog thought it jumped into the pool. Once he was in he didn’t see any other dog and started drinking the water to its content. That was a big lesson for me that taught me that if I have to become knowledgeable I have to delve deep into it, just by looking at the outset I will not be able to feed to my content.”

The saint told few more of his gurus and what he learned from them but more related to sainthood and Godliness. The first two lessons that the guru learnt are applicable whether you are software engineer or a saint. Never give up and delve deep into what you are learning.

Have a great week.

Note:- This post is part of the “Foundations” series of posts.