Parables by Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa

1.Once upon a time there was a monastery,whose inmates went everyday to beg. One day a monk, having issued forth to seek food, found a zamindar beating a poor man very severely...He interfered...The zamindar in a furious rage turned his anger against the monk and beat him until he lost consciousness. The other monks, warned of what had happened, came running up; they found him lying on the ground, carried him gently to the Math and laid him upon his bed. Sitting round him sadly thy fanned him, and one gently poured a little milk into his mouth. After a time he came to himself, opened his eyes and looked around him. One of them, anxious to know if he recognised his brethren, cried in his ear,..."Brother, who poured the milk into your mouth?" The monk replied in a faint voice, "Brother, He who beat me, He himself poured the milk into my mouth..."

'You are in the world. Stay there! It is not for you to abandon it. You are very well as you are, pure gold and alloy, sugar and treacle... We sometimes play a game in which one must gain seventeen points to win. I have passed the limit and I have lost. But you clever people, who have not won enough points, can still continue to play...In truth it matters little if you live in the family or in the world, so long as you do not lose contact with God.'

Arjuna invoked Sri Krishna as the Absolute...Krishna said to him "Come for a while and see what I am like." He led him to a certain spot and asked him, "What do you see?" "A great tree," said Arjuna, "with bunches of berries hanging from it." "No, my friend," said Sri Krishna, "draw near and look closer; these are not blackberries but innumerable Sri Krishnas."
And was there any need for pilgrimages to holy places?
'It is the sanctity of men that makes the sanctity of places. Otherwise how can a place purify a man?'
God is everywhere. God is in us. Life and the Universe are His Dream.


2.A wood-cutter went to sleep and dreamed. A friend woke him up. "Ah!" said the wood-cutter, "why did you disturb me? I had become a great king, the father of seven children. My sons were accomplished in war and the arts. I was enthroned and occupied with the affairs of state. Why did you shatter this happy world?"
The friend replied,"What harm have I done? It was only a dream!"
"You do not understand," the wood-cutter answered. "To be a king in a dream is as true as being a wood-cutter. If to be a wood-cutter is real, to be a king in a dream is real also."

Reading anything about Ramakrishna is like walking with God. Mahatma Gandhi describes the experience as to 'see God face to face.' No wonder, therefore, that people of all creeds flocked to him- Hindus, Moslems, Christians. They found intricate questions about God raised in scholarly books, but Ramakrishna always had the right answers to them. His answers left people wondering about the depth of his scholarship. They found it difficult to believe that he had no formal schooling and had not read many books, either. What is interesting is that he did not seem to contradict anybody, but only reminded people that the real goal was further ahead from where they were and they must always keep moving forward.

3.Once several men were crossing the Ganges in a boat. One of them, a pandit, was making a great display of his erudition, saying that he had studied various books- the Vedas, the Vedanta, and the six systems of philosophy. He asked a fellow passenger, "Do you know the Vedanta?" "No revered sir." "Have you read no philosophy whatsoever?" "No, revered sir." The pandit was talking in this vain way and the passenger sitting in silence when a great storm arose and the boat was about to sink. The passenger said to the pandit, "Sir, can you swim?" "No," replied the pandit. The passenger said, "I don't know Samkhya or the Patanjala, but I can swim."

What will a man gain by knowing many scriptures? The one thing needful is to know how to cross the river of the world. God alone is real, and all else is illusory.