22/09/2025
A haughty king on seeing a majestic elephant expressed his wish to ride it. The advisors of the king counselled against riding the majestic but mad elephant that went uncontrollably wild even when ridden by the best mahout in the kingdom. The king could not be convinced against his wish and decided to ride the elephant. As expected, the moment, the king rode the elephant, it went wild. The king fell from the elephant and banged onto the ground. He started running away, from the elephant running amuck, trying to save his life. In a bid to run away and save his life from being trampled under the elephant, the king faced a dilemma of jumping into a well. The king jumped into the well, and 10 while falling, his legs were stuck in the trunk of a small tree growing out of the rondure (of the well).
Life could not have been more miserable for him. Dangling precariously upside-down from the tree, the king saw the face of horror – in numerous terrifying cobras on the surface of the well swaying their hoods waiting for their prey. As the king looked towards the trunk, he could see two rats gnawing at the base of the trunk Mindful of his imminent horrible death, the eyes of the king oscillated between the cobras, the rat and the wild elephant eager to playfully crush him to death. Just then, like a whiff of breeze on a hot day, a drop of honey from the hive on the tree growing out of the well trickled into the mouth of the king. As more drops trickled into the king’s mouth, he started relishing the honey and became oblivious of his life sandwiched in dangers. He forgot about the cobras, the two rats, and the elephant and, quaintly, about his own precariously dangling upside down posture. The moment the trunk was to break, the king realized his situation and repented in waste of being engrossed in relishing the honey. But there was no time for him to do anything to save his life. While the king fell from the trunk into the well with cobras waiting to relish him, he continuously repented about wasting the precious moments he could have used to save his life.
Drawing some parallels to this story we can learn that the advisors of the king are the saints and prophets. The king is the man who is moving heaven and earth to amass worldly wealth and is, therefore, enslaved by the satanic forces like pride, ego and guile. But the man is constantly and selectively deaf towards the advice and teachings of the saints and rides the mad elephant of pride. Man tries his best to chase the worldly treasures enticing him to fall in the ditch of forgetfulness. His state is like the aware but unmindful king precariously dangling in the well.
The cobras represent his death while the honey is the taste of the glamour and temptations of the world that are fatally engrossing. The two rats (one black and the other white) gnawing at the trunk represent the day and the night and as the trunk of life is consumed ultimately the death approaching man with the swift passage of time in the form of breathing (inhalation and 11 exhalation). The time taken to cut the trunk is symbolic of the time between birth and death. And what effort could the king make? Perhaps the only thing he could do was to remember God and pray for His mercy.
The moral, unmistakably, is our constant obliviousness towards the advice and teachings of the saints who have counselled man since times immemorial about not wasting the precious moments of one’s life in chasing the material possessions. One aspect that scriptures converge upon is that if we want to save our life from being wasted away, we must pay heed towards the
Divine-Knowledge bestowed by the True Master to awaken ourselves to Eternity, and free ourselves from the temptations of this world while remaining associated with it (a magic in itself!). It is the body, mind and our material possessions that suffer from the effects of satanic forces. If a man meets a seer, he realizes that he is not a body. His true identity is in the image of God i.e. our soul.
