PRIDE TO POWDER

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When there is pride, 

God knows how to crush it to powder it.


Pride, a complicated emotion, rears its head even in the most unsuspected corners. One man may be proud that he is proud, and another, proud that he is not proud. While one may be proud that he is a non-believer in God, another may be proud of his devotion to God. Learning may render one man proud, and yet ignorance can also be the source of pride for another man.

 

Another by-product of pride is vanity, which intensely craves admiration and applause. It is an undue assumption of self-importance. It often results in open and rude expression of contempt and hostility. It quickly takes for granted superiority and privilege, which others are slow to concede.

 

However, if you think pride or ego is easy to get rid of, think again!

 

The following story of Shri Krishna’s second wife exemplifies how her vanity was crushed to powder.

 

Krishna’s second wife was Satyabama, a very proud woman. She believed that she was the most beautiful and the richest woman, because her father was an extremely rich man and she had all the wealth and jewels she wanted. Vanity was one of her problems.



Once, on Krishna’s birthday, she decided to display to everyone how much she loved Krishna. She wanted to distribute whatever was Krishna’s weight in gold to the people of the town. This is called tulabhara. This is something that happens in temples. People weigh themselves on a weighing balance against butter, ghee or rice, and distribute that to people. You can give rice, salt, pulses, gold or whatever you can afford. That is part of the tradition.

Satyabama set up the tulabhara. People were impressed, but Krishna was not impressed by these things. He went and sat in the balance. She knew approximately what his weight was and had that much gold ready. But when she put the gold in the balance, it did not move even a bit.

Something similar happened when Krishna was a child. A certain demon came and tried to carry him away. Krishna became extremely heavy and the demon just collapsed with Krishna on top of him and was crushed. ­

Krishna increased his weight and sat in the tulabhara. She put all the gold that she thought would balance his weight but to no avail. By now, everyone in town had turned up to watch. Then she asked her servants to bring all the jewellery she had. One by one, she put her jewellery on the tulabhara hoping that it would work. She put everything she had on the scale but it did not move.

She started weeping because this was so shameful for her. The whole town had gathered there to witness this ritual but she did not have enough gold. Someone who was always so proud of her fortune and wealth did not have enough gold or know what to do.

Then she looked at Rukmini – a person that she was always a little jealous of and had trouble with. She asked Rukmini, “What shall I do? Because this shame is not just for me, this is for you, me and everyone. What to do?”

Rukmini just went and took three leaves from a tulsi plant that was outside, and put it on the tulabhara. 

Krishna just went up! It was Rukmini's humility that saved Satyabhama from getting  embarrassed.

The life of recovery begins once you surrender and leave pride.

 

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