Woodcutter

Once upon a time when forests were not protected zones, there was a wood-cutter called ‘Dhaboo’. The poor guy used to slog days together collecting wood from the Jungles to make his living. A hard day’s work used to barely yield enough money for him to afford a single meal a day. He used to head out to the periphery of the town early in the morning, collect head loads of wood.



By the time he was back it would be dusk.  Dropping off the load in one of the houses, he would collect few coins, which would then become his sustenance for the day. On Days when he could not go out to work, he used to sleep hungry. Such was the life he led, till the day he met ‘Swamiji’.

Swamiji was passing through the town that day, and decided to camp just across where Dhaboo was cutting wood. Three hours of discourses, and multiple hymns latter, seated under the banyan tree, ‘Swamiji’ noticed Dhaboo single minded working on the wood, across the clearing. Swamiji noticed as to how Dhaboo never was distracted by the activities happening around him. The swami’s devotees camping around and creating such a cacophony never seem to bother Dhaboo,  would first bring down a dead branch, and with great precision chop it down to even lengths of 3 feet each,  long enough for him to tie-up together and balance on his head back to the village.

 “O young man” exclaimed Swamiji, walking up to Dhaboo,  “why do you struggle so hard in this blistering sun, when you could come over to my hut and part take of all the goodies which my devotees leave behind for me”  asked the Swamiji.

“Swamiji, I am a person of small means,  by habit I work hard, and know that hard work pays, whereas the food that your devotees bring for you, will not feed my family forever, so Swamiji,  let me rely on my efforts to feed for myself”,  Dhaboo said.

The Swami smiled in acknowledgement, and used to watch from afar, every day, Dhaboo painstakingly working his way around the wood.  Seasons changed and Swamiji kept notice of the clock work regularity shown by Dhaboo over the months.

One fine summer day, the sun was beating down relentlessly.  The crowd in the ashram had ebbed due to the exceptionally harsh weather, but the Swami noticed Dhaboo, sweating it out as usual.  Taking pity on him, the swami, called him over, and said, “Son, I have noticed you relentlessly doing your duties, irrespective of all the distractions around you, I am impressed with your perseverance” he continued, “I want to help you” he said. “If you are ready to take a small risk, and go five kilometres into the woods, you will find avenues to multiply your earnings five times”.

 “As you wish ‘Swamiji’, I will take up your asking, so saying Dhaboo set off into the dark jungle. The Jungle was dense and the work hard. Soon Dhaboo reached the location shown by the ‘Swamiji’.  Just like the swami had predicted, Dhaboo, found a small niche in the rocks, and sitting on a niche in the rocks, protected from the weather, was a small book.


As Dhaboo, was drawn by curiosity towards the book, his senses were overpowered, by the smell of Sandalwood.  He looked up, to see Sandalwood trees all around him.   “Aaah, he exclaimed, so this is why Swamiji sent me here”.  He quickly set about cutting down the Sandalwood trees. He slogged and slogged, and cut down enough wood to sustain himself for five more days. 


But the visit inside the jungle was fraught with danger, snakes around the trees waited to snare him in their fangs, but he was an honest man, and made sure not to hurt them as he went around doing his job. Yet it took a long time for him to cut through the jungle, and after a good day’s struggle he brought home enough to sustain him for five days.  This went on for some months.

The honest man that he was Dhaboo, was satisfied with what he used to earn, and now started whiling away the time he saved due to his extra earnings. One day a though struck him, that he should go to the Swami, and ask for more bounties. 

So he set off the next day in search of the ‘Swamiji’,   finally he found the Swamiji a few villages away.   “‘O Swamiji’, do you remember me!  I am Dhaboo, the honest wood cutter, you had shown me the way to the Sandalwood trees, but now I am tired of working once a week, can you show me the way to more riches?  He asked.

“Why not Son”! Exclaimed the Swami.  “You are a honest man, and honest men are rare,  so here it is, if you take some more risk, and go further ten kilometres into the jungle you will find avenues to better  your earnings”.  

The next day, unmindful of the wild cries of animals in the jungle, or of the silent eyes watching him from inside the bushes, Dhaboo, held his axe high and set off deeper into the Jungle.

Soon, as promised by the swami,  he stumbled upon a clearing, and in that clearing protected by a niche was a small book,  as Dhaboo bent down to look at the book closely, he was distracted by a glitter on the Rocks,  he rubbed one such rock, and lo & behold,  a gold nugget dropped into this hands.


 Forgetting about the book, Dhaboo started collecting the rocks, and set back on the journey back to town.  This time around, the money he made from the sale was enough to sustain him for years, and soon he stopped working, grew fat, and lazy, till one fine day his money ran out.  Too lazy to go back to the mines to get nuggets Dhaboo went searching for the Swami.

Few towns away he finally found the swami.” ‘O Swamiji’, I am dhaboo, the honest wood cutter, you had shown me the way to the Sandalwood trees, and the gold mines, but now I am tired of working so hard, how can I enhance my fortunes? “He asked.

“You are a honest man, and honest men are rare,  so here it is, if you take some more risk, and go further  into the jungle, you will find a cave with a book, it is there that you will get your answers” replied the swami.  

So again Dhaboo set off in search of wealth. This time he was no fool, he dragged along a cart into which he could load the riches he would find. The journey was tough & the forest dense. As he ventured deeper into the jungle, the march became a struggle, the drag caused by the cart was
getting difficult to manage, marshy land pulled at the wheels of the cart.

The animals now deep inside the jungle became more ferocious and bold, no more threatened by the axe which lay there useless inside the cart shorn of its gleaming blade. Yet undeterred Dhaboo moved on.

Fighting all odds, he reached the clearing as indicated by the swami.  Again he found a niche in the rock, and protected by the niche was kept a book, as he bent down to have a closer look on the book, a glitter from the stones nearby caught his eyes. As he went nearer, he found that to be a perfectly formed diamond, glittering in the afternoon sun.  He was overwhelmed beyond words; he pocketed the diamond and began looking for more. His search yielded a few more.  With his bare hands now he scrapped the stones around looking for more gems;  

he picked up his disused axe and tried using it as a tool to find more. He slashed at the rocks with his axe, which by now in a sad state of misuse, broke into two. By now Dhaboo was a man possessed. He broke down his cart to make tools out of which he could dig for more gems,   but alas, apart from dismantling the cart it did him no good. In all this frenzy he did not notice that it was getting dark.   The howling of the jackals from the nearby bushes brought him down to reality. He quickly lit the remains of the cart into a bon fire, and managed to survive the night. Come day time, he was hungry.  Looked around and found nothing edible around, but the euphoria of the heavy diamonds tucked into his pocket kept him on. 

Jungles are places where one has to carefully tread, Dhaboo in his hurry had lost his way, and how he was without his axe, his cart, defenceless, hungry and lost. His energy levels started to ebb and he dragged himself along, soon he came to a clearing, and tumbled out exhausted, and passed out.  When he came to his senses, he was surrounded by bandits, pointing their swords at him, and asking him for his gold, when he denied having anything on him, one of them searched him, and found the diamonds instead. They broke out into a cheer and started celebrating, completely forgetting him.

In the frenzy he somehow managed to slip back into the Jungle, and on the way grabbed some eatables stored by the bandits. How he reached home he did not know, everything went by in a trance.

As luck would have it, his only child was down with some infection, and when he reached home, it was just in time to see the child pass on into the other world.

Defeated and broken, physical labour now no more possible, jobless, Dhaboo remembered the Swami and went looking for solace. As he narrated his entire experience the Swamiji broke into a loud Guffaw. Puzzled Dhaboo asked him “Swamiji, why are you laughing”?

The ‘Swamiji ‘ replied, “Dear Dhaboo, you were a hard working young man, the money you were earning through your work did not justify your efforts, but it did not matter to you, because you loved your work.  In order to reward you for the hard work, I gave you the clue to the Sandalwood grove, not for you to cut down the trees, but for a larger cause. In the niche in the rocks there was a book, which would have taught you to enhance your skills, taught you an art which would have made you the greatest wood carving artisan in this kingdom, but alas, you chose not the book but the Sandalwood. Even then nothing was lost; you could have done your daily labour and still maintained a living better than your earlier one. But you chose to rest for five days and work only once a week and yet was not happy with that life, and you came asking for more”.

The ‘Swamiji’ continued, “when you came to me the second time, nothing was lost yet, you still had the capacity to work, so I gave you the directions to the gold mine. The idea was not to bestow upon you the gold, but had you picked up the book in the gold mine, and read it through you would have learnt the importance of hard work & the secret art of mining the gold and the expertise of creating ornaments out of it. Anyone who had read that book was destined to become the greatest goldsmith in this kingdom, but you chose to ignore the book and chose the gold, which did not anyway last you very long”.

“Finally when you came to me, I gave you the greatest gift of it all, the path to the diamond caves, in a niche in that cave was a book which would have revealed to you the futility of running after wealth, it would have shown you the path to happiness & of mental peace, it would have given you a spiritual energy which would have made you the greatest saint of all times, alas, you chose to pick a diamond instead of the book.  In life, you have lost so much, that I do not have the power to give back any of it, but follow me, get back to your earlier hard working mode, and I assure you of mental peace and enough to sustain you in your life”.

So saying the ’Swamiji’, picked himself up, and slowly walked into the horizon, With Dhaboo following.

@ Inspired by a talk by Swami Sukhbodananda

We all start with boundless energy in life, put all this to work, and yet are impatient to achieve more,  in the process we take more and more risks,  we gain a lot, but we do not notice all that we lose in the process. Till a time comes, when our wants become endless, the risks that we take more and more unsustainable, for causes, that we will find did not matter at all.

We get lot of chances to mend our ways, like Dhaboo, there are lot of books that we pass by, and take shortcuts which are unproductive in the long run. We give up what we have to aspire for more, the more we get, the more we lose.

Finally when the journey ends, we realise that we were much happier, and contented, in the initial days of our struggle, when the only thing which mattered to us was our hard work, and the satisfaction which it gave us.