Guiding Light of The Month

O Lord, how ardently do I call and implore Thy love! Grant that my aspiration may be intense enough to awaken the same aspiration everywhere: oh, may good- ness, justice and peace reign as supreme masters, may ignorant egoism be overcome, darkness be suddenly illu- minated by Thy pure Light; may the blind see, the deaf hear, may Thy law be proclaimed in every place and, in a constantly progressive union, in an ever more perfect harmony, may all, like one single being, stretch out their arms towards Thee to identify themselves with Thee and manifest Thee upon earth. - The Mother

The vain lion


www.thelionking.org

Just imagine, there are plants which are vain! I am speaking of plants one grows for oneself. If one pays them compliments, by words or by feelings, if one admired them, well, they hold up their head- with vanity! It is the same with animals. I am going to tell you a short amusing story.

In Paris there is a garden called” The Garden of Plants”: there are animals there also, as well as plants. They had just received a magnificent lion. It was of course in a cage. And it was furious. There was a door in the cage behind which it could hide. And it would hide itself just when the visitors came to see it! I saw that and one day I went up to the cage and began speaking to it (animals are very sensitive to spoken language, they really listen). I began speaking softly to my lion, I said to it “Oh! How handsome you are, how much we would like to see you…” Well, it listened. Then, little by little, it looked at me askance, slowly stretched its neck to see me better; later it brought out its paw and finally, put the tip of its nose against the bars as if saying,” At last, here ‘s someone who understands me!”


(“Collected Works of the Mother”, Volume 4, Centenary Edition, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1972, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry)

No comments: