Once, a young girl asked her Guru to tell her about the purpose of her existence. “Tell me, Master,” she beseeched him. “What does God want me to do with my life? What tasks am I expected to perform?”
A Lesson From Nature
The holy man thought for a while and then bade her go to a nearby garden and observe the flowers there. “Come back and tell me what you find,” he said to her.
The girl came back in a short while. “I have seen beautiful, fully formed flowers in bloom,” she told the Master. “They are wide open, their petals are a lovely colour, and they are so fragrant. But I have also seen buds which are yet to open—they are not so beautiful, colourful or fragrant. They seem to be waiting for something to happen.”
The Bud's True Purpose
The Guru nodded in understanding. “The purpose of the bud is to bring out all the beauty and colour and fragrance that it has inside itself,” he explained to her.
“Its purpose is to become a perfect flower.”
“You too are capable of such beauty, such perfection,” he added. “Your aim must be to evolve into a perfect human being, an ideal person in whom all the beautiful virtues such as compassion, kindness, service and sacrifice will be manifested. You too must be in full bloom like the perfect flower!”
Striving For Perfection
The purpose of life is to attain perfection. It is to become at least a little better today than we were yesterday.
(Dada J. P. Vaswani was a humanitarian, philosopher, educator, acclaimed writer, powerful orator, messiah of ahimsa, and non-sectarian spiritual leader.)
