Passage 9

Tap any word for its meaning.

In plain words

You must know about King Kong. He had the strength to stop a car coming at speed with one hand. But in the end, where did King Kong's death come? He fell right under a car and died. He went in a Car accident. He could indeed stop a car, but when he fell under a car he could not hold on to his life. Here is another example, King Kong's own. Every day he ate many kinds of food and, they say, ate twenty to twenty-five eggs a day. At daybreak he would run on the road to do his exercise. There is no Bhāratīya who does not know his name. Everyone thought King Kong a great strong man. One day, as he was running along the road, that very day a woman who sells milk was going to a village with a basket of milk on her head. Then she saw his figure. He had not put on a vest, so his body looked lump upon lump, as if dollops of cow dung had been slapped on it. Seeing this figure, she could not hold back her laughter and laughed out loud. When she laughed, King Kong got angry. In his anger he went on scolding her in many ways. Then, they say, she said, ‘Ayyo! I thought King Kong was so very strong, and you have become a weakling who cannot bear a single woman's laughter!’ she said, they say. So, where is our strength seen? It is seen in things like these. Strength without mastery of the senses is nothing but brute strength, not true strength. So today, instead of trying to build up the body, we must set about the effort to build up the oneness of the mind. That is most essential today. We must not set about getting worked up over trifles or creating disorder in some way, or anything of that kind. Setting about such things shows itself as a weakness shameful for a human being. Truly, whether in learning or in mastering ourselves, we have to test ourselves in a very subtle way. We must inquire how we are to test our power of self-mastery and the purity of our feeling. I am telling you the story of Dharmarāja as a small example of this. Dhṛtarāṣṭra placed the Kauravas and the Pāṇḍavas with Droṇācārya so that he would teach them. This guru went on teaching many kinds of learning. The other four Pāṇḍavas and the Kauravas went on reciting by that same evening what the guru had taught in the morning. One day he taught about Śānti in many ways, with comparisons, and kept saying that Śānti is very necessary for a human being.