We can be like the cat in the story that knew only one way of escape.
The story goes that there was a conversation between a jackal and a cat in the jungle. The jackal asked the cat, "If a hunter attacks us just now, what will you do?" The cat said, "I will jump to the top of a tree." The jackal replied, "Do you know only one trick? What a fool. I know a hundred tricks to escape. Nobody can catch me. I know a hundred tricks when you only know one trick."
While this conversation was taking place, they heard the barking of hounds attacking them from all sides. The cat immediately jumped to the top of a tree, but the jackal was thinking, "What trick should I use now? Which is better, this trick, that trick, or the third, fourth, or fifth?" The jackal spent a long time revolving these ideas around in its mind, but before it could act the hounds attacked it. In the final analysis, it was certainly not wiser than the cat.
Likewise, we have been trying to be 'wise' in this world, but too much of this wisdom is not necessary. We have to employ a simple technique of being honest in every encounter. That is all. When we are honest with nature, it also reacts very sympathetically, like a mother's reaction to a child. We see that a mother's reaction towards her child is not complicated. It is very simple, as we know, and immediately there is a happiness between them. But if two politicians meet, what a complexity arises. How to shake hands, how to smile, how to look — they are all great skills. All these are absent in the simple affection between mother and child because it is real, whereas the friendship of politicians is false. This type of artificial relationship never stands; it eventually fails. Nature does not expect us to be a politician with it. It wants us to be very simple in our approach. Nature wants us to be very simple — not complicated or complex.
The simple way of the child's approach to the mother is itself yoga. Yoga requires a very, very honest approach and an opening of our hearts to the 'motherliness' of nature. If we cry before nature, "Mother, I am yours," it will open its resources to us immediately. "Yes my child, please come to me." But to be simple is the most difficult of things in this world. We can very easily make things complex, but we cannot be simple. Truth is simple, and that is why simplicity is difficult. Yoga is this supreme simplicity of approach, where we become so humble and so uncomplicated — almost a nothing.
This is what they call self-surrender in the bhakti marga, the path of devotion. We almost become a nothing; and then nature inundates us, takes possession of us and fondles us as her own. We become one with the world when we cease to be an independent person. This is yoga in one sense, but we have many layers of complicated personality, and these complications have to be resolved. It is for this reason that we study these interesting technicalities of yoga practice. It appears to be a technicality because we do not understand it properly, but when we understand it, it becomes a natural thing.
To walk with two legs is a tremendous technicality; but once we know how to walk, we walk without thinking of our legs.
[Source: "In the Light of Wisdom" by Swami Krishnananda. The Divine Life Society, Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India.]
