Dear everybody,
I would like to thank and welcome everyone who visits this blog regularly.
Today, I come with another story explaining the essence of Vedanta. The last time, we saw how shallow our fears are when the truth is known. This time, with yet another story we would like to talk about the falseness of our bindings with this world, body, mind, ego, whatever it is. We all say, we are bounded, lets see how true we are..I present you with a story based on a wood cutter and his three donkeys.

Once, there was a very poor woodcutter who owned three donkeys. Everyday he would take his donkeys deep into the woods where he would chop trees, and load the wood on to the donkey’s backs. Every evening, he would return home. But one day, he was out too long, and the sky grew dark, and woods grew black and the woodcutter could not find the way out of the woods. He realized he would have to spend the night in the woods, and began searching for a place to stay. In the distance he saw a faint light, and as he approached it, he found a sage meditating by the fire at his hermitage. The woodcutter said, ‘I would like to stay here tonight as it has become too late for me to find my way out of the woods.” The sage agreed. The woodcutter lay down to go to sleep, but as he started to doze, he realized he hadn’t tied his donkeys. So, he asked the sage for rope. The sage said, “I have no ropes. Do you tie your donkeys every night?” The woodcutter answered “Yes, otherwise they may run away or be attacked by wild animals.” So the sage advised, “Go to the donkeys and just act as if you are tying them up.” The woodcutter did as he was told and pretended to tie the donkeys up. Then he went off to bed.

In the morning, the woodcutter awoke and found his donkeys right where he left them. He thanked the sage for his hospitality, and then started on his way home, but he was dismayed to find that the donkeys wouldn’t follow him. He said to the sage, “What have you done to my donkeys? They won’t follow me home!” The sage asked, “Did you untie your donkeys?” The woodcutter complained, “But I never tied them!” “The donkeys don’t know this,” said the sage, “Go untie them.” So, the woodcutter pretended to untie his donkeys, and the three followed him back home.

This is how we are. We have imaginary bondages but we think them as true like the donkeys.This idea exposes us to all sorts of sufferings in life. The spiritual Master shows us how false our idea about bondages are. We are never bounded, we are free by nature. Each soul is potentially divine, the goal is to manifest this divinity, as said by Swami Vivekananda. We are ever free. When somebody goes to a Master, Guru, he is told about this repeatedly,that you are neither the body nor the mind nor the ego, that, you are That, the Self, repeatedly, so that for once it comes to the comprehension of the disciple or aspirant about His true nature, that He is a soul, ever liberated, divine, eternal, birthless and deathless, not the body or mind or ego. Spiritual realization happens when this comprehension is reaches the saturated state.
Love to you all,
In the service of humanity,
Swami Probuddhananda.