Karma & Dharma

A Hindu priest was standing on a rock next to the river.

There was a black scorpion which fell from a rock to the water, trying to swim across, but failed.

The old man placed his hand cupped in water below the scorpion and lifted the water out to rescue the poor creature from drowning. While placing it over the rock again, he got stung by the scorpion. The scorpion again got dropped into the water losing grip over the slippery rock surface. The old man again did the same, getting bitten by the scorpion again in this act.

Seeing this ridiculous act, an onlooker asked “swamiji, you should know by now the scorpion will sting you. Why did you keep on helping it?”

This was the story I told to a class full of 8^th graders in the Saint James Catholic School.

This was my own version of a story I read somewhere, when I researched about Hinduism, to talk to them.

I was just surprised that there were so many interesting things we can extrapolate from these stories.

I will tell you what the answer from the Swamiji was, in the end of this article.

When my colleague from Philippines asked me to give a talk to school kids on ‘Hindu Religion’, I was initially inclined to say “No”. I never even talked about this to my own children. Then somehow I took it as a challenge to talk to a group with totally different view point.

When I started, I told the children,” I am neither a priest nor I feel myself as religious. I am just here to make you learn from the University of Life.” Children liked that.

One week earlier, I had sent them an assignment with Trivia regarding Hindu Religion, which their teacher loved so much. She never thought that someone who came for an hour casual talk in an eighth grade class would do so much 'home work'. She later sent me all the comments and feed backs written by children. My first fan mail experience!

Interestingly I had a captive audience.

I got applause when I actually read a question from someone’s mind “Why you have so many Gods?”

The part which I liked was the way children approached religion.

Even though they were all Catholics, they were having an open mind to learn something foreign to them, something their parents never could sit and listen without emotional conflicts. I told them I was there as  one among them, to see things as they were, understanding the human culture and diversity, in the end we choose what is worth for us to pursue. I was not selling anything.

…and the swamiji’s answer to the bystander was “The Dharma of the scorpion was to sting; mine was to rescue a life; both fulfilling the destiny”