Saturday, March 03, 2012

charity should come from heart


charity should come from heart

Charity should emanate from the bottom of the heart.. empathy for fellow human beings should be rooted very deep in our psyche. 

Posts in Facebook or even token contributions and activities with a lot of fanfare may not be proper substitutes. 

The mongoose episode at the end of Rajasooya Yajna of Yudistira as described in Mahabharatham should be an eyeopener. 

A poor family consisting of a father, mother, son and daughter in law were living in a household.

 It was a famine and cereals were is short supplly.

 After long days of wanderings the son of the family got a full measure of cereals and the family was about to divide  it into four and partake in it. 

Suddenly an old brahmin visited the household as a guest. 
He was hunger personified. 

The family had nothing more to offer to the guest than the four shared portions of the cereal. 

The daughter in law, being the youngest of the lot offered her share to the guest first, and after eating it the guest was not satisfied.

 The son, eager to do the athithi dharma and also to  preserve the life of the parents, offered his morsel then to the hungry guest. 
The guest's intestinal activities flared up with hunger and he asked for more. 
The mother gave her part and their last hope that the old father of the family would be spared. 
But this was not to be so. 
To satisfy the hunger of the brahmin, the old man's share aslo went down his gullet. 
The guest was satisfied and was about to leave. 

Simultaneously the four hosts were also leaving for the next world being denied of food for days and days together.

 They fell down dead one by one. 

But then something wonderful happened.

The guest was none other than dharma devata who had visited the family to test their willingness to give.

 He praised them and took them in a golden chariot for eternal sojourn in heaven. 

A stray mongoose who had been watching all these was so overwhelmed by the sight of such great sacrifice and in honour of the great souls he just tried to roll over then area of the house where a little of the cereal flour was lying scattered,

 He could cover only half his body by rolling 
and lo! that side became golden. 

This half golden mongoose visited the Rajasooya premises of Dharmaputra and was rolling all over the place including the huge kitchens where thousands of brahmanas and others were fed. 

But howsoever earnestly the mongoose would try he could not get the other part of the body turned into gold.. 

The mongoose was raising the query whether the Rajasooyam of Dharmaputra was indeed a great action in comparison to the sacrifice of that old brahmin family.. 

The story gives a lot of food for thought.

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