Business to the Buddha

Tag: Prayer of The Frog

  • Prayer of The Frog – Temple, worship & love







    prayer of frogI have been reading one or the other story of Father Anthony De Mello’s books – The Prayer Of The Frog Vol. I and Prayer of The Frog Vol. II and share the same here occasionally. The books have small and very interesting stories. One of the story I read was on a religion here it is –

    Two brothers, one a bachelor, the other married, owned a farm whose fertile soil yielded an abundance of grain. Half the grain went to one brother and half to the other.

    All went well at first. Then, every now and then, the married man began to wake with a start from his sleep at night and think: “This isn’t fair. My brother isn’t married and he gets half the produce of the farm. Here I am with a wife and five kids, so I have all the security I need for my old age. But who will care for my poor brother when he gets old? He needs to save much more for the future than he does at present, so his need is obviously greater than mine.”

    With that he would get out of bed, steal over to his brother’s place and pour a sack full of grain into his brother’s granary.

    The bachelor too began to get these nightly attacks. Every once in a while he would wake from his sleep and say to himself: “This simply isn’t fair. My brother has a wife and five kids and he gets half the produce of the land. Now I have no one except myself to support. So is it just that my poor brother, whose need is obviously greater than mine, should receive exactly as much as I do?” Then he would get out of bed and pour a sack full of grain into his brother’s granary.

    One day they got out of bed at the same time and ran into each other, each with a sack of grain on his back!

    Many years later, after their death, the story leaked out. So when the townsfolk wanted to build a temple they chose the spot at which the two brothers met for they could not think of any place in the town that was holier than that one.

    The important religious distinction is not between those who worship and those who do not worship but between those who love and those who don’t.

    [Tweet “The important religious distinction is not between those who worship and those who do not worship but between those who love and those who don’t.”]

  • Matter of choice







    prayer of frogIt’s no good having our prayers answered If they are not answered at the right time:

    In ancient India much store was set by the Vedic rites which were said to be so scientific in their application that when the sages prayed for rain there was never any drought. It is thus that a man set himself to pray, according to these rites, to the goddess of wealth, Lakshmi, begging her to make him rich.

    He prayed to no effect for ten long years, after which period of time, he suddenly saw the illusory nature of wealth and adopted the life of a renunciate in the Himalayas.

    He was sitting in meditation one day when he opened his eyes and saw before him an extraordinarily beautiful woman, all bright and shining as if she were made of gold.

    “Who are you and what are you doing here?” he asked.

    “I am the goddess Lakshmi to whom you recited hymns for twelve years,” said the woman. “I have appeared to grant you your desire.”

    “Ah, my dear goddess,” exclaimed the man, “I have since attained the bliss of meditation and lost my desire for wealth. You come too late. Tell me, why did you delay so long in coming?”

    “To tell you the truth,” said the goddess, “Given the nature of those rites you so faithfully performed you had fully earned the wealth. But, in my love for you and my desire for your welfare, I held it back.”

    If you had the choice, which would you choose: the granting of your petition or the grace to be peaceful whether it is granted or not?

    Source – Prayer of the Fro Vol 1, Prayer of the frog Vol 2, by Father Antony De’Mello

  • Blasphemy – cry of wisdom







    It took a lot of time for me to title this blog. Do not confuse the words on right and word on left of the hyphen. Read the story and understand the title 🙂

    One day Mulla Nasruddin saw the village schoolmaster leading a group of children towards the mosque.prayer of frog

    “What are you taking them there for?” he asked.

    “There is a drought in the land,” said the teacher, “and we trust that the cries of the innocent will move the heart of the Almighty.”

    “It isn’t the cries, whether innocent or criminal, that count,” said the Mulla, “but wisdom and awareness.”

    “How dare you make such a blasphemous statement in the presence of these children!” cried the teacher.

    “Prove what you have said, or you shall be denounced as a heretic.”

    “Easy enough,” said Nasruddin. “If the prayers of children counted for anything there wouldn’t be a school teacher in all the land, for there is nothing they so detest as going to school. The reason you have sur­vived those prayers is that we, who know better than the children, have kept you where you are?”

    Source – Prayer of the Fro Vol 1, Prayer of the frog Vol 2, by Father Antony De’Mello

    This is a scheduled and thus auto published blog, author is currently having limited access to the internet.

  • Spirituality & Business







    It was winter of 2012, Sujoy was getting married. I traveled to Pune to attend his wedding function. There I met one of my very old College mate – Anurag Tambe.

    Anurag is smart guy, thoughtful and practical. We discussed many things, including my faSteve_Jobsvorite topic – purpose of what we do? This topic eventually boils down to spirituality. Anurag told me about Steve Jobs and what his experience was about India and spirituality. His visit to India made him go back to the US and keep doing his work as good as he could. [Anurag’s reference to the book on Steve Jobs]

    Here is an interesting story from Father Antony De Mellow, book – Prayer of the Frog Volume 1 and Prayer of the Frog Volume 2 on similar concept.

    —

    A cobbler met a Rabbi and said. “Tell me what to do about my morning prayer. My custo­mers are poor men who have only one pair of shoes. I pick up their prayer of frogshoes late in the evening and work on them most of the night; at dawn there is still work to be done if the men are to have their shoes ready before they go to work. Now my ques­tion is: What should I do about my morning prayer?”

    “What have you been doing till now?” the Rabbi asked.

    “Sometimes I rush through the prayer quickly and get back to my work—but then I feet bad about it At other times I let the hour of prayer go by Then too I feel a sense of loss and every now and then, as f raise my hammer from the shoes, I can almost hear my heart sigh. “What an unlucky man I am that I am not able to make my morning prayer.”

    Said the Rabbi. “If I were God I would value that more than the prayer.”

    —

    Steve Jobs, I think, did what the Rabbi suggests in the story.

  • At the master’s door







    prayer of frogI have been reading one or the other story of Father Anthony De Mello’s books – The Prayer Of The Frog Vol. I and Prayer of The Frog Vol. II. The books have interesting stories, many a times half page. One of the story I read was on a seeker going to a master’s abode. I’m tweaking this story (I would want to claim the copyrights!), here it is –

    At the master’s door

    A spiritual seeker was almost at the door of one of the masters. Sensing the abode as the best place to find his prey, a devil made his permanent residence there. When the devil saw the seeker enter the house of the Master, devil determined to do everything in his power to turn him back from his quest for Truth.

    The devil tried giving this seeker all the possible temptations. His list of temptations included every possible means – women, wealth, fame, power and prestige even wisdom (perhaps false sense of it). However, our protagonist was too committed a seeker. He fought all these baits and stood his ground.

    The devil was almost lost, he was about to let go of the seeker. Suddenly, an idea cropped up in the mind of the devil. He tried it. The devil said – I shall give you all spiritual knowledge you seek, come with me!

    This time our protagonist could not resist his temptation – he followed the devil.

    —

    Now if you understood the story and the BOLD copyright part (of mine above), you may laugh at it! You may learn few lessons – including me claiming ownership of the story. However, I know “You only lose what you cling to“.

    Even the desire to be spiritual is a temptation!

     

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