Once upon a time, there lived a priest in a small village, who was a great devotee of Lord Rama. He would make it a point to tell everybody that Lord Rama was the only deity that one must pray to. The villagers did not pay much attention to his talk, but lost no opportunity to ridicule and tease him.

    The priest acted in a very peculiar manner. He would never allow anyone into his house. Everyday, at the same time, come rain or shine, he would go to the riverbanks for his bath and daily rituals. Right from the time he left for the riverbanks, till the time he got back, all the villagers would tease him. As soon as they saw him, they would start saying, ‘Ram-Krishna-Hari’. Since even small kids knew about his insistence to pray only to Lord Rama, they would run behind him saying, ‘Ram-Krishna-Hari’. The people loved annoying him.

    Among them was a small boy who was got suspicious of the whole thing. He decided to visit the priest’s house and find out why nobody was allowed in there. When the priest had gone for a bath as usual, the boy entered his house. To his amazement, he found pictures of different God's: Rama, Pandurang, Krishna, Shiva, etc. As he was about to leave the house, the priest entered. The priest was surprised to find the boy there. He quickly recovered and said, “I believe and pray to all God’s. Nobody knows that but you, and I want you to keep it that way till I die.”

    The boy said, “Okay, I will do as you please, but can you please tell me why you ask people to chant* only Lord Rama’s Name, when you yourself believe in all the other deities?” The priest replied, “Actually there are several reasons. All these people are ignorant. They get totally engrossed in their worldly life and forget God completely. But since they think that I am Lord Rama’s devotee, they tease me by chanting other deities’ names. Even if now they are chanting God’s Name to tease me, maybe due to all this chanting, at some point in the future they will develop a liking for it. Even if that does not happen, at least for that moment they are thinking of God instead of other things. Also, the environment becomes sattvik when they chant the Lord’s Name.” The boy bowed down with respect to the priest and kept his promise to not say a word while the priest was alive. After the priest’s death, he told the story to everybody, and the villagers continued to chant God’s Name after that.

Fulfillment of intense desire to spread Spirituality

    I had been following the spiritual practice of chanting the Lord’s Name for quite some time. My spiritual practice was going on well. However, besides continuing my individual spiritual practice, I had the intense desire to contribute to spreading Spirituality. Since we could not leave the school premises while at school, I wanted to help spread Spirituality in the school itself or talk about it to a family member.

    One day, my father came to visit me in school. As he was leaving, I thought of talking to him about chanting the Lord’s Name. I was a little hesitant whether I should do so or not. Even though I had the desire to do so, during the whole time that he was with me, I did not say anything about chanting. Finally, my father was ready to leave and started towards his scooter in the parking lot. By this time, I desperately wanted to tell him about chanting, but did not know how. Suddenly, a thought flashed in my mind, “If the scooter starts now, my father will leave and I will not be able to tell him about the importance of chanting the Lord’s Name. On the other hand, if it does not start now, it will give me some time to talk to him about it.” So, in desperation, I wished that the scooter would not start and my wish did come true! The scooter would not start even though my father kept trying. Then I started to talk to him about chanting.

    He listened very intently to what I said. He chanted our Family Deity’sName just once and gave another try to starting the scooter. And it started immediately! He immediately followed what he heard about repeating the Lord’s Name and started chanting from that moment itself. This incident made me realize that if we have the intense desire to do the Lord’s work, that is, spreading Spirituality, the Lord (or Guru) Himself creates situations conducive for us to do so.