Vedanta Through Stories

Swami Sambuddhananda

(We are grateful to Ramakrishna Math, Mumbai for allowing us to publish this story from their publication "Vedanta through Stories" page 45)

Workings of Karma

A gentleman who lived with his wife and two sons got initiated by a monk of a high order. The elder son was given to evil ways while the younger was spiritually inclined and liked to spend his days in studying sacred scriptures. One day a learned man came to that village and it was arranged that he should give a spiritual discourse. All the people of the village went to hear the discourse. The elder brother, however, did not attend though asked by the younger brother. When the father returned after hearing the discourse, he found his younger son had not returned. The elder son, however, came back and handed over a lump of gold to his father saying, he’d picked it up on the way back home. The father and his elder son went with the servants in search of the younger son. They found him lying unconscious under a banyan tree. He was brought back home and when he regained consciousness, he said, on the way back from the religious discourse, his foot had struck violently against the stump of a tree and he had fallen down unconscious.

The father found it strange that the son who never thought of God even once in a day had found a lump of gold whereas the boy who was deeply devoted had met with an accident while returning home. Next day when his Guru came, he told him all that had happened and then spoke about the doubt that had entered his mind. He said, it seemed useless to him to say prayers to God if he was going to be awarded in this fashion. The Guru sat silent for a while engaged in deep concentration