Compiled by London swaminathan

Post No.2215

Date: 4   October 2015

Time uploaded in London: காலை 15-15

Thanks for the pictures.

Don’t use pictures. Don’t reblog for at least a week.

There was a Sadhu (ascetic) in Malabar, a tall and stout person. He was in the police service before becoming a sadhu. He used to wear only a small towel round his waist. Once when he was going for his Biksha ( asking for alms/food), a householder, seeing his good physique, asked him why he should not work and earn his bread, instead of begging for it. The sadhu was told that he would be given a meal if he was prepared to cut a few logs of firewood that were lying in the householder’s court yard.

The Sadhu without uttering a word, started splitting the firewood with an axe given to him and, within a short time, cut the whole lot and stacked the pieces in the proper place. Then, leaving the axe near the stack, the Sadhu simply walked away.

The householder saw the Sadhu going without taking food. He called him back and asked him why he was going before getting his meal. The Sadhu then replied, “I do not take my food where I work, and I do not work where I take my food!”. This means Sadhus subsist only upon alms offered to them with love.

–Story told by Swami Ramdas of Anandashram, Kerala.