“A young widower, who loved his five year old son very much, was away on business when bandits came who burned down the whole village and took his son away. When the man returned, he saw the ruins and panicked. He took the burnt corpse of an infant to be his son and cried uncontrollably. He organized a cremation ceremony, collected the ashes and put them in a beautiful little bag which he always kept with him.
“Soon afterwards, his real son escaped from the bandits and found his way home. He arrived at his father’s new cottage at midnight and knocked at the door. The father, still grieving asked: “Who is it?” The child answered, it is me Papa, open the door!” But in his agitated state of mind, convinced his son was dead, the father thought that some young boy was making fun of him. He shouted: “Go away” and continued to cry. After some time, the child left.
“Father and son never saw each other again.”
After this story, the Buddha said: “Sometime, somewhere, you take something to be the truth. If you cling to it so much, even when the truth comes in person and knocks on your door, you will not open it.”
When Reality clashes with a rigidly held belief, Reality is generally the loser.
Our beliefs may suit our mind, but do they fit the facts?
Truth cannot be grasped nor expressed by the conceptualizing mind.
An elephant will sooner fit into the swimming trunks of a rat than Truth or God into our notions of him! To realize Truth or God we need to raise the shutters of our Truth or God-thoughts.
An enlightened Master systematically destroys every doctrine, every belief and every concept of the Truth, for these things which were originally intended as pointers were now being taken as descriptions. Truth only reveals itself when one gives up all preconceived notions of Truth.
The biggest obstacle to discovery of the Absolute Truth is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge. Whenever a person shuts himself to the entrance of Truth on account of intellectual pride, preconceived opinions, prejudices, or for whatever reasons, nature will see to it that Truth in its fullness will come to that one from No source. When a person opens himself fully to the entrance of Truth from whatever source it may come, nature will see to it that Truth flows to him from all the sources.
Chintu
For a human being to say that he understood the greatness of God is like an ant telling another ant that he knew the size, shape and structure of a huge dinosaur when it could have seen, even if it were to be beside a dinosaur for a day, but just a very tiny part of the body of the dinosaur.
Let us,as our great masters tell us, be open to truths all the while.