Once a beggar saw the King walking and approached him. The King asked, "What do you want?"
The beggar said, "I have just this small begging bowl. Don't think about my worth. Fill it with something that you think you are worthy of. But remember one condition: the bowl has to be filled completely."
The King called his prime minister and told him, "Fill his bowl with precious gems so that he will remember for his whole life that he has met with an emperor."
But immediately there was a problem: the moment anything went into the bowl, it disappeared. The question of filling it seemed to be impossible. Slowly, all the precious stones disappeared. Then gold and silver. By the evening, the King himself was a beggar, and the bowl was as empty as it had been in the morning.
The King fell at the feet of the beggar and asked, "I have failed to fulfill my promise; forgive me. But what is the secret of your begging bowl?"
The poor beggar laughed. He said, "I found this skull of some dead man. I cut it in the shape of a begging bowl. The secret is, man's skull is so small, but even the greatest empire is not going to fill it. It will go on asking for more. The magic is in the human head. Everything disappears and the desire for more remains the same.
~ Author Unknown
Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe, the human head.
~ Michio Kaku
No comments:
Post a Comment