There should be a vision for viewing the world. If viewed with a clear vision the world will look clear. If viewed with a faded vision, the world will look faded. He cannot see anything whose eyes suffer from cataract. Everything looks yellow to a jaundiced eye. Everything looks green to the one who goes blind in the month of Sravana. Perform your duty, don’t mind what others are doing.

 

A king had a tank dug in the centre of the city. He ordered that the next morning every citizen should pour a vesselful of milk into it so that it would be filled with milk.

 

At night a citizen of the city thought that it will make no difference if he will pour water, while all other citizens will pour milk; no one will know, as the water will get mixed in the milk.

 

Carrying a vesselful of water he reached there in the morning where he saw the tank filled with water, there was even a not single drop of milk in the tank.

 

The same type of idea should have stricken to others also, as to him, hence the tank was full of water. If he would have resolved to carry just milk, even though first step to change a view in to look into oneself. We think very high of ourselves, to the extent that we find ourselves decked with all virtues and others much inferior to ourselves. We are so habituated that we search out other’s defects and we hide our defects.

 

It is said, we view even a lice on others’ body, but ignore buffalo on our body. We daily come across the roll played by birth and death. We think the life is transient. We understand, or else, we pretend to understand. Yet we do not think that we also have to die. We put ourselves quite apart.

 

It is a very big fact that there are not as many miseries in the world as we face. We ourselves create many miseries and remain cought by them. It seems, the number of miseries is yet a bigger one, as if we feel happier in facing a bigger number of miseries.

 

But, when the point of view changes, then the scene also changes. The place may be the same, the environment may be the same, but the direction of viewing is changed. the form is changed, the subject is changed. The scene itself is changed.

 

Lord Rama asked Hanuman, ‘O Hanuman’ of what colour were the flowers in the Ashoka-vatika?’

 

‘They were all red in colour.

 

‘O Sita. you should also have seen those flowers. Tell me what was the colour of the flowers.”

 

‘O lord, those were all white.’

 

Wonderful. The same place, Asoka-vatika, the same time, the same thing, the same flowers. Still then they saw different colours.

 

The reason behind was their point of view. Hanuman was enraged, his eyes flowing anger. Anger is fire. The colour of fire is red. So the flowers looked red through the eyes of Hanuman.

 

Sita was calm that time, as tranquillized. The colour of calmnes white. The same flowers looked white to her. The colour of the flowers had not changed. What was changed was the point of view.

 

So is the case with attachment and aversion. adherence and non-adherence. The change of one into the other may take just a few minutes.

 

Five neighbouring kings staked their claim for marriage with the princess. The situation became highly complicated. All the five were prepared. The king was restless. The princess told. ‘You organize the ‘svayamvara’. I will look after the arrangement’.

 

The ‘svayamvara’ was organized. The kings arrived. All the arrangement was made under the supervision of the princess herself. She got prepared a same-size image of her own person. It looked as if the princess herself was there. The kings were taken to it, and they understood it to be the princess herslef.

 

As they moved closer to the image, the lid was removed from the top of it. As soon as the lid was removed a flow of the foulest smell broke out from the image, which the kings could not tolerate. On enquiry the attendants told, ‘This is the position inside the body of each one. The fermentation of the eaten food creates the same type of foul smell in each one’s body.”

 

The attachment changed into aversion immediately. All the kings turned back without participating in the svayamvara.”

 

The diversion of the point of view is essential. Everything in the world will look pleasing if we like it to be pleasing. All other will start looking us with the same point of view. It is the first step of a good behaviour.