The Crippled Fox and the Generous Lion
On a certain day, a man was seized by a spiritual thirst. In those days, when you were spiritually thirsty, you went to the forest.
So this man went deep into a nearby forest and found a tree, under which he sat cross-legged and began intoning the sacred syllable aum.
Now, you can do aum for only so long. After that, the stomach has its own aum, which asserts itself periodically! Each time his stomach growled, the man would go to town for a meal. He would then come back and resume his austerities.
One day, he returned after his meal and sat down on a rock. He was about to resume his chanting when he noticed a fox. It had lost both its forelegs but was still well-fed and healthy. This struck the man as distinctly odd. in a jungle, governed by the law of the survival of the fittest, it was strange to find a disabled but healthy animal. How had this fox managed to survive?
The man looked at it with some surprise. After a while, he resumed his practices.
That evening, while meditating, he heard the growl of a lion. He promptly forgot his aum and clambered up a tree.
A lion came by with a large chunk of meat in its mouth. To the man's amazement, the lion walked up to the crippled fox, dropped it in front of him, and walked away. the fox began tucking into his dinner.
The man looked on in disbelief. The same practice went on day after day. The man could not believe his eyes. A crippled fox being fed by a generous lion! this was a miracle.
"This has to be a message from God," he thought. "What is God trying to tell me?" He struggled with that question for a while, and then it dawned on him. When even a crippled fox was being fed in the jungle by a generous lion, why should he keep running to town in search of food? Surely God wanted him to trust he would be provided for and wanted him to focus on what really counted--his spiritual practice.
So the man changed his strategy. For the next three days, he kept up his [i]aum]/i] practice without stirring from his spot. By the fourth day, he was considerably weakened; by the fifth day, he could barely stay conscious; by the seventh day, he was gasping for life, caught in the throes of death.
A yogi happened to be passing this way. Hearing these noises, he found the man and asked; "What happened to you? Why are you in this condition?"
"Because a divine message came to me. I obeyed it, and see my plight!" Groaned the man.
"What divine message?"
And so the man related to the yogi the entire story of the crippled fox and the generous lion. "So tell me, yogi," gasped the man, "was this a divine message or not?"
The yogi said, "Yes, of course this was a divine message. But why did you choose to imitate a crippled fox rather than a generous lion?"
A short story by Jagadish Vasudev via his book on Karma.
