The plight of conditioned soul in this material world

By Dharmana Chandramouli
Once a man was chased by a rogue elephant in a forest. Seeing no respite, he climbed a tree to save himself but unfortunately slipped off. Before hitting the ground he could hold on to one of the lowest branches of the tree. He looked around and found that the elephant is lingering just nearby waiting to crush him with its mighty mountain like legs. He then looked above, there were two rats, one black and another white, were slowly nibbling the branch he was hanging on to. As the man looked down, he discovered that there were many venomous snakes awaiting to suck his life out. He understood that very soon the branch would fall to the ground and his life came to an end. 

Suddenly a drop of honey fell on his face. He pulled his tongue out and licked it. Tasty! There was a honeycomb between the two branches he was holding. Due to disturbance caused by his holding and shaking the branch, bees were out to bite him. But at the same time honey was also oozing from the comb. He just adjusted his tongue to get drops of honey straight on his tongue. Now, he was happy indeed forgetting his precarious situation amidst all dangers.

Supreme Lord Narayana, who is the best well-wisher of all living entities eagerly wanting to help this poor ignorant soul and stretched his hand to grab him back to back home back to Godhead. But the eyes were blind, intelligence is covered and the wicked mind finding illusory happiness in tasting dripping drops of honey – How can he recognize Lord Narayana?

This analogy from the Mahabharata perfectly fits a conditioned soul in this material world. We are stuck in this precarious situation of this material world where Death (elephant) is chasing us continuously; it will not leave us without devouring. The white and black rats represent day and night eating away our life span. The hissing snakes represents the big sufferings and miseries in our life. Honey-bees represent the day to day problems we face in our life. The sweet honey represents the flickering ‘pleasures’ of this world in its myriad forms.

If only we accept the lending hand of Krishna, we can save ourselves a lot of trouble but we are too attached to the drops of dripping honey. What can be done?

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