THE WISE OLD MAN’S LESSON

A wealthy man requested an old scholar to wean his son away from his bad habits.


The scholar took the youth for a stroll through a garden. Stopping suddenly he asked the boy to pull out a tiny plant growing there. The youth held the plant between his thumb and forefinger and pulled it out.



The old man then asked him to pull out a slightly bigger plant. The youth pulled hard and the plant came out, roots and all.


"Now pull out that one," said the old man pointing to a bush. The boy had to use all his strength to pull it out.


"Now take this one out," said the old man, indicating a guava tree. The youth grasped the trunk and tried to pull it out. But it would not budge.


"I – It's impossible," said the boy, panting with the effort.


"So it is with bad habits," said the sage. "When they are young it is easy to pull them out but when they take hold they cannot be uprooted."


The session with the old man changed the boy's life.



REFLECTION



Habits form character and character is destiny- we sow our thoughts and reap our actions; we sow our actions and reap our habits; we sow our habits and reap our characters; we sow our character and reap our destiny. Thus, first we form habits, then habits form us.


Bad habits are like a comfortable bed, easy to get into, but hard to get out of. It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

There is an old saying that, one can't kill a frog by dropping him into hot water. As we drop him into the hot water, he reacts so quickly that he immediately jumps out unharmed. But if we put him in cold water and gradually warm it up until it is scalding hot, we have him cooked before he knows it. The encroachment of bad habits in our lives is very much like this.The chains of bad habits are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.



Conquer your bad habits soon or very soon they will conquer you! 

THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE MONK

There was a millionaire who was bothered by severe eye pain. He consulted so many physicians and was getting his treatment done. He did not stop consulting galaxy of medical experts; he consumed heavy loads of drugs and underwent hundreds of injections.

But the ache persisted with great vigour than before. At last a monk who has supposed to be an expert in treating such patients was called for by the millionaire.

The monk understood his problem and said that for sometime he should concentrate only on green colours and not to fall his eyes on any other colours.
The millionaire got together a group of painters and purchased barrels of green color and directed that every object his eye was likely to fall to be painted in green colour just as the monk had directed.
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When the monk came to visit him after few days, the millionaire's servants ran with buckets of green paints and poured on him since he was in red dress, lest their master not see any other colour and his eye ache would come back.

Hearing this monk laughed said "If only you had purchased a pair of green spectacles, worth just a few rupees, you could have saved these walls and trees and pots and all other articles and also could have saved a large share of his fortune."!!

REFLECTION

You cannot paint the world green.Let us change our vision and the world will appear accordingly.

It is foolish to shape the world, let us shape ourselves first.
Lets change our vision!! Think simple, Live simple!