Once upon a time, there lived a king in a very prosperous kingdom. He had everything, but he had a strange curiosity – he wanted to see the ‘real value of time’ firsthand. One day an old sculptor came to the royal court. He gave the king a unique gift: two glass vases.
First Kalash: It was filled with the world’s most precious diamonds and jewels.
Second urn: It was filled with ordinary sea sand. The sculptor said, “Your Majesty, these two urns are magical. You can take out a diamond from the first urn whenever you want, but it will come out only if you spend one hour of the day in some meaningful work (like charity, service or education). The sand in the second urn will keep falling automatically every hour, whether you do anything or not.” The king smiled and said, “It is very simple. I will concentrate on the vase with diamonds.”
Months passed. The king did many good works out of greed for diamonds – built hospitals and planted gardens. He thought he was being very successful, but one day he saw that the urn containing diamonds was still half full, while the urn containing sand was almost empty.
The king got scared and went to the sculptor and said, “I still have a lot of diamonds left, then why is the sand running out?” The sculptor replied in a calm voice: “Maharaja, diamonds are your ‘karma’ and sand is your ‘life’. You spent so much time in collecting diamonds (achievements) that you forgot that the falling of sand (time) is not dependent on the emergence of diamonds. You can earn diamonds by doing karma, but you cannot put the grains of sand that have fallen from those diamonds back into the urn.”
The king realized that he was counting achievements, while forgetting to live the simplicity of life. He understood that time is not just to be ‘used’ but also to be ‘felt’ every moment. The moral of this story is that often we become so busy in saving our achievements and future plans that we forget that time is a resource which is being spent even without any effort on our part. It is essential to do good deeds, but it is even more important to enjoy every moment of life and live in the present.
