One should help only deserving persons

CHENNAI, AUG. 22. The amount of toil, care and time taken by a group of persons to lift a stone idol over a gradient and instal it on the top of a hillock can be imagined only by all those who are involved in this stupendous task. But even a little amount of callousness will result in the idol slipping out of control and rolling down the slope and ultimately being reduced to rubble. This analogy is generally applied in the case of those who sincerely yearn to resort to the path of religion.

The one easy method to reform themselves is to obtain the company of godly souls, study their routine and adopt the methods they have shown to reach the goal of salvation. These pious men will always be meditating on God, though they may lead life here as anyone else and exert their influence on all others who come to them, as humble and good. The chief characteristic of these men is their magnanimity to overlook the faults of those who seek their help. Hence, those who wish to be in the company of such chosen divine souls should be equally careful and go along with them and they will stand to gain. The warning to be administered in general to people is that when they seek the guidance of such religious leaders, they should be ready to shed all their wicked thoughts. Otherwise, even when amongst such guides, if a person misbehaves or commits a sin, he would reap the consequences.

Sri Sakatapuram Sankaracharya, in a discourse, illustrated this by referring to the story of a demon-king who wanted to become a ``supreme'' force by obtaining a boon that on whomsoever's head he placed his hand, the incumbent should die. He tested whether the boon so received was genuine, and so made Siva, who granted the boon as the victim. Ultimately Vishnu destroyed the arrogant demon by making him keep his hand on his own head.

Also, to show how one should not provide assistance to undeserving and ungrateful persons, a story is told of a saintly man who while taking bath in a river saved a scorpion and made it land safe on the bank but the very next moment, it stung him stating that to do so was its very nature. Likewise, a sage trained a cat to get rid of the rat menace, a dog to protect him from the cat and ultimately a tiger to keep off other wild beasts from entering his hermitage, but the ferocious animal tried to devour him. Scriptural literature clearly warn us to refrain from having friendship with those who are sure to turn ungrateful or having derived power with our help, attempt to harm us.

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