Acharya Mahaprajna
There is an ancient Chinese story. It is said that once the emperor of China said to a man, “You have done a good job and as a reward I want to give you a large piece of land. I will give you the entire land, which you are able to measure walking from this place in the morning and returning to it in the evening. I will give as much as you are able to cover it with your legs.” The man was very ambitious. He was also very greedy. He went on running. As he wanted to grab the maximum land, he continued running and running till evening. He was about to return to the point from where he started and was thinking that he would get a lot of land but as soon as he arrived, he dropped dead.
The ambition is driving society to death today. We see that many of the presentday diseases have been caused by man’s ambition. Out of five or six dreadful diseases that grip human society today, heart disease tops the list. As a matter of fact the root cause of the heart problem is unrestrained human ambition, which is devastating his life. It is estimated that more than five hundred million people would die of the heart disease in the next ten years. A person nurses an ambition in his heart but he finds it impossible to satiate it. He continues to accumulate wealth, which may be enough for the sustenance of the next two generations. He also knows it well that he cannot enjoy all the wealth he has amassed but he goes on accumulating the wealth only because he is egged on by ambition and competition. As a result of this unbridled human ambition social balance is being disrupted. It is natural that if one acquires more, the other will have less. If there is a mountain on the one hand, inevitably there will be a crater or a pit somewhere. So what is necessary is that we think again about the concept of development. Here are some practical exercises which will help you to strengthen your resolution.
