One day, one of his young disciples, Kirti, for whom Somdev was very fond, could not control his curiosity. He folded his hands and prayed – “Gurudev! I have learned sculpture from you for years. I am not greedy for money, but my soul is yearning to know what your best creations, which the world can never see, look like? Please take me to that basement once.” Somdev looked at her smilingly and said – “Okay, this wish of yours will be fulfilled tonight.”
In the silence of the night, Somdev went down to the basement with his disciple. What Kirti saw in the dim light of the lamp astounded her senses. There were five idols kept in a row, but those idols were not of any deity, king or apsara.
The first statue was of a very cruel, fearsome-faced bandit, with a violent gleam in his eyes. The other statue was of a man who was burning in the fire of jealousy and envy, his face was deformed. The third statue was of a greedy businessman, clutching some coins in his fist with fear on his face. The fourth statue was of an arrogant king, with his head held high with pride. Kirti was shocked. He asked fearfully, “Gurudev! You are such a great artist. If you wish, you can make statues of beauty and divinity. Then why did you waste precious years of your life in making statues of these ugly, sinful and deformed human beings?” Somdev remained calm. He removed the cloth from the last idol. That statue was exactly Somdev’s own, in which his face was seen to be very calm, gentle and meditative.
Somdev placed his hand on Kirti’s shoulder and said – “Son! People think that a sculptor only carves the outside of stones, but in reality, art is a medium for me to carve myself. When the thought of anger or violence towards someone came within me, instead of suppressing it within myself, I took that anger out on the stone and it became a bandit. When I felt momentary jealousy after seeing someone’s success, I molded it into stone and it became a distorted face. When the greed of the world within me became When I woke up, I took out that greed and created the idol of a greedy businessman and when I became even a little proud of my art, I carved that ego into the form of an arrogant king and separated myself from myself.”
Pointing towards his own peaceful statue, Somdev said – “After taking out all these shortcomings and disorders from within me one by one and putting them in stone, what is left in the end is this peaceful form within me. This basement is not a collection of my art, but a graveyard of my inner garbage.”
The moral of the story is that we often try to hide our shortcomings, our anger, jealousy and ego or look for them in others. True education and self-improvement is that we recognize our inner disorders, accept them and carve them out of our personality in such a way that in the end only the pure and peaceful form of our soul remains. The greatest art of life is to improve oneself before improving others.
