Aptavani-2
33
your own, torments you. Such is the worldly life.
Minding one’s own affairs
This world is a huge trap and not even an ounce of it
belongs to you. The house in which you live is yours only if you
pay rent for it. If a sparrow has built a little nest in your house,
do you think she thinks of you as her landlord? No, she thinks
it as her own house because she too lives in that house. A lizard
on your wall too thinks the house belongs to her. Every living
being has a claim of ownership of this world.
The Lord said, “Everyone should mind their own affairs.
I will take care of my own.” There was a group of milkmen who
lived and worked together but they cooked their own meals.
They had set up a camp in an open ground. Each one of them
had their own special cooking clay pot in which they cooked
khichadee (rice and lentil). They would put their cooking pot
over a fire between three stones and left their khichadee to cook
slowly before they went to town to sell their goods, leaving one
person in charge. When they returned in the evening, one of the
milkmen could not remember where he put his cooking pot; he
could not find it. He could not remember which tree he had set
his cooking pot under. He thought for a while and decided that
if he picked up the wrong one, others would think he was
strange so he pondered a little. He then picked up a large stone
and called out, “I am going to break open my cooking pot;
please take care of your own pots.” All the other men reached
out for their own pots and he found his!
We need to take care of our own ‘cooking pots’ as we
proceed in this worldly life. This worldly life is like people
traveling on a boat, each one will go his own way when the
shore comes. And yet you say, “I can’t live without her!” How
will you make progress if you take this approach to life? All
relationships are unfolding of karmic accounts of past life; how
long can you go on living like this? Why this interference (why