I was delighted to hear this story at our weekly meditation group on Sunday. Doesn't it fit it with what I've been writing about?
The Master gave a jewel to one of his followers and said, "Go and try to sell this jewel in the mareketplace, but do not sell it before telling me what you will get for it. Only when I am satisfied that you are getting a price close to its real value will we sell it. Otherwise we should keep it".
The disciple first went to a vegetable vendor. The vendor looked at the jewel and handed over some carrots and some radishes saying, "All right, you take this in exchange for it." The disciple refused and went on to another shopkeeper who had a provision store who offered him some sugar and said, "You can have this in exchange for it."
After going to 4 or 5 shops the disciple went back to the Master and reported what had been offered in exchange for the jewel. The Master replied, "This is not acceptable. This is a very great jewel, but these people do not know its value." So he asked the disciple to go to a jeweler saying, "The jeweler will pay you according to its real value."
The disciple went to the jeweler and offered him the jewel. The jeweler took it in his hand, examining it closely. He then took 100 rupees from his vest and placed the rupees and the jewel into the disciple's hand. The disciplie did not understand what was going on. The jeweler had given him one hundred rupees for the jewel, but had also given the jewel back by mistake. So he said, "You should keep the jewel because you have paid the right cost for it."
The jeweler looked at him kindly and replied, "One hundred rupees is not neraly the value of this jewel. I don't have enough money to pay for the real value. I paid you the one hundrd rupees to look at the jewel-for just witnessing it! This jewel is so vauable it cannot be purchased."
The disciple then understood how valuable the jewel really was. Merely seeing it was worth one hundred rupees! He also ralized that only a jeweler, who could ascertain the true value of jewels, could recognize its worth. The other shopkeepers had offered practically nothing.
What is Success anyway?
I've been thinking a lot about success lately. In the last year many of us have had just about everything we know turned upside down and we are being forced to take a new look at old assumptions. For example, what is success? How we define it has a lot to do with who we are. Definitions of success are as varied as snow flakes -- no two are alike. Commenting fondly on the human condition, my spiritual teacher once said that there are 6 billion religions in the world, one for each of us on this planet, (although we tend to believe that everyone should believe the way we do!) Similarly, there are as many individual definitions of success that spur us on to take action (or not).
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the results), there is a powerful cultural overlay defining success that pushes us in directions which may or may not be right for us. If we do not have a deep inner barometer of success defined by our own truth and measured by our own integrity, this cultural definition of success can lead us towards dissatisfaction and even dishonesty.
If we hold a well lit mirror up to our pop culture icons we will see our cultural malaise and disease reflected back in various degrees of severity, from anorexia, to teenage breast implants, to the Wall Street white collar thugs who ransacked our nation's wealth. Bernie Maddox probably thought that he was a very successful man. And so did just about everybody else.
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the results), there is a powerful cultural overlay defining success that pushes us in directions which may or may not be right for us. If we do not have a deep inner barometer of success defined by our own truth and measured by our own integrity, this cultural definition of success can lead us towards dissatisfaction and even dishonesty.
If we hold a well lit mirror up to our pop culture icons we will see our cultural malaise and disease reflected back in various degrees of severity, from anorexia, to teenage breast implants, to the Wall Street white collar thugs who ransacked our nation's wealth. Bernie Maddox probably thought that he was a very successful man. And so did just about everybody else.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
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