The Monkey Story
When I was very young – I read following short story and have refined it for modern times……..
Once there was a very highly revered Monk. He went to high cold peaks of Himalayas for meditation at very young age and after spending 20 years with various sects of nagas and acquiring divine powers came back and started his ashram. Very soon he started having a huge follower base and he became very famous due to his Yoga lessons, well being teachings and charms. His followers firmly believed that he has supreme powers and used to talk in hush tones about supernatural powers he possess and can do any chamatkar.
One of his poor followers Rochak was serving him since his initial days of returning from Himalayas and was serving him with complete honesty and dedication and was taking all the pains to make Guru comfortable in his daily activity
Rochak firmly believed that monk knows some special prayers and mantras which can provide great wealth. He was waiting for the day when monk will be delighted with his service and share the mantras. When after few years nothing happened, He started asking the Monk for sharing the holy mantra which will change his life with very little effort and make him super rich.
Monk as with others tried to teach him the value of hard work, dedication, honesty and focus on his job to achieve his life objectives, He also quoted all the verses from Gita for the follower but to no avail and he kept pestering the Monk.
After getting frustrated with constant nuisance Monk decided to give him the mantra and called him in his room. He whispered the mantra in the ear of the follower five times and asked him to remember the mantra thoroughly.
The Mantra goes like this “OM Namoh, O’ God give me courage and power to do my job with complete passion, honesty, dedication, hard work & focus and make me very successful and rich in life”
Rochak was very delighted with such a simple mantra task and asked the Monk for how many days he needs to pray to get the desired results. Guru told him it’s very simple he just needs to repeat the Mantra 101 times using the holy beads in a very peaceful place.
Rochak was very happy and asked for the permission to go to a quiet place for meditation. When he was walking towards the door, Monk called him and said Rochak wait also take this final and very important instruction i.e.
“Just remember during meditation process, You should not think about Monkeys, don’t let monkeys enter into your thoughts, at all and if you think about monkeys you need to start a fresh”.
Rochak smiled and thought “why I am going to think about monkeys during this simple meditation technique, which is going to make me rich, I am no fool”
Rochak went to a quiet place, closed his eyes and started chanting the mantra. He started very well and was able to reach the half way through easily, but lo suddenly from some corner of his thoughts and mind a monkey came quickly, smiled, jumped and left.
He thought “Ok no issues, first time, it happens, I will start again – I can concentrate” This is not so tough reciting mantra 100 times without thinking of Monkeys
He started second time and this time he reached the 40th bead and slowly two monkeys slowly crawled and started smiling and dancing in his thoughts.
He started again and third time, surprisingly, it was group of monkeys who was playing, shrieking and shouting everywhere in his thoughts.
He started again and again and again and he was not able to say mantra 101 times without thinking about monkeys and ultimately – he reached a situation where the closure of his eyes was sufficient to bring in the group of monkeys playing all around in his thoughts. Even without uttering a single word of the mantra.
He also started abusing the monk in his thoughts for mentioning the monkeys after giving the mantra, As otherwise he would have said the mantra very simply 101 times without thinking of Monkeys, but still he persisted in his effort and continued for many days repeating the mantra in spite of 100s of groups of monkeys dancing all around in his thoughts
“OM Namoh, O’ God give me courage and power to do my job with complete passion, honesty, dedication, hard work & focus and make me very successful in life”
Finally, after repeating the mantra few million times He realized the meaning of the mantra i.e. to be really successful in life he need to really work hard passionately with dedication and honestly and keep focus on his goals rather then getting digressed with so many unnecessary thoughts which does not contribute to his goals and try to find some easy way to be rich.
Finally, he went to the Monk and thanked him for the Lesson and committed himself to the essence of the mantra and became very successful in his life.
This is what I have observed in my life, everyone has urge to be very successful but not the willingness to work with Passion, honesty, dedication, hard work and focus. We loose focus so easily on our objectives, get digressed; spend energy on thinking about monkeys, spending too much time on fun activities or other petty issues….be focussed and you will be successful.
