The Unfilled Bowl

An emperor was coming out of his palace for his morning walk when he met a


beggar. He asked the beggar, "What do you want?"The beggar laughed and

said, "You are asking me as though you can fulfill my desire!"



The king was offended. He said, "Of course I can fulfill your desire. What

is it? Just tell me."

And the beggar said, "Think twice before you promise anything."



The beggar was no ordinary beggar, he was the emporers past life master. He

had promised in that life, "I will come and try to wake you in your next

life. This life you have missed but I will come again." But the king had

forgotten completely. Who remembers past lives after all? So he insisted, "I will

fulfill anything you ask. I am a very powerful emperor, what can you

possibly desire that I can not give to you?"

The beggar said, "It is a very simple desire. You see this begging bowl?

Can you fill it with something?"



The emperor said, "Of course!" He called one of his viziers and told him,

"Fill this mans begging bowl with money." The vizier went and got some

money and poured it into the bowl, and it disappeared. And he poured more

and more, and the moment he would pour it, it would disappear. And the

beggging bowl remained always empty.



The whole palace gathered. By and by the rumor went throughout the whole

capital, and a huge crowd gathered. The prestige of the emperor was at

stake.



He said to his viziers, "If the whole kingdom is lost, I am ready to lose

it, but I cannot be defeated by this beggar."



Diamonds and pearls and emeralds, his treasuries were becoming empty.The

begging bowl seemed to be bottomless. Everything that was put into it

--everything! --immediately disappeared, went out of existence. Finally it

was the evening, and the people were standing there in utter silence. The

king dropped at the feet of the beggar and admitted his defeat. he said,

"Just tell me one thing. You are victorious - but before you leave, just

fulfill my curiosity. What is the begging bowl made of?"



The beggar laughed and said, "It is made up of the human mind. There is no

secret. It is simply made up of human desires!!"



*Summary*



There is no end of fulfilling our material sense desire. Everyone has to

engage himself in service of others. Hence serving own sense desire keeps

him in engage in serving his own material senses. A person should find the

means to end this whirpool of desires caught in material sense

gratification. Soul suffers in repeated cycle of birth and death in Lord

material energy.



While contemplating the objects of the senses, a person develops,

attachment for them. From such attachment comes lust, then anger, illusion,

bewilderment of memory and loss of intelligence, and then one falls down

into the material cycle of birth and death. ---- Bhagavath Geetha.