"The best way to please God is to act according to His injunctions. For instance, I advise students not to indulge in excessive talk. Carry out your duties. Contemplate on God. Is all this advice being given for God's sake? No. Whatever Swami tells you is for your own good. Recognise that everything is for your good."
Swami recalled in this context a story in which there was a minister to a king who was in the habit of declaring that whatever happened was for one's good.
"Once the king cut his finger while slicing a piece of sugarcane. Seeing the bleeding finger of the king, the minister remarked that the cut was for the king's good. The king was so angry that he committed the minister to prison. Even then the minister remarked that the prison sentence was for his own good.
A few days later, the king went alone for hunting in a forest and was resting under a tree. The servants of the tribal chief of the forest seized the king to be offered as human sacrifice for the tribal goddess. When the king was about to be beheaded, it was noticed that the king's finger was mutilated and such a mutilated person could not be offered as sacrifice.
The king was freed. He remembered the minister's words and realised that the injury to his finger had saved him from death. He straight went to the prison and asked his minister how he could declare that the prison sentence was good for him. The minister replied that but for his being confined in prison, he would have accompanied the king and the tribals would have chosen him in place of the king for their sacrifice!
The lesson of this story is that one should learn to welcome everything that happens as for one's own good. Recognition of this truth is the means to acquire God's grace. Develop the firm conviction that whatever God says or does is for your own good."
~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba ~
(Divine Discourse - 29.8.1995)
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