Stories of Kindness from Around the World

MAHAVIR AND THE COW HERDER, .................... from Jain Stories series

Lord Mahavir, as usual, was always going from one place to other, he stopped near a big tree to meditate. While he was meditating, a cow herder came there with his cows. The cow herder wanted someone to look after the cows so he can go somewhere to finish something else he wanted to do. The cow herder asked Lord Mahavir if he would look after his cows for a few hours. Lord Mahavir was in deep meditation, and did not reply to the cow herder. However, the cow herder went away thinking that Lord Mahavir had heard him.

In a few hours, the cow herder returned and found that his cows were missing. He asked Lord Mahavir, "Where are my cows? What did you do with them?" Lord Mahavir was still in meditation and did not reply. He started wondering. "Where could they be?" Since, Lord Mahavir did not reply, the cow herder searched for them everywhere in the valley, but could not find them.

He came back where Lord Mahavir was , and to his amazement, his cows were there standing near Lord Mahavir. Lord Mahavir was still meditating. The cow herder got very angry at Lord Mahavir because he thought that Lord Mahavir was hiding the cows. So, the cow herder got out his rope and was about to whip Lord Mahavir with it. Just then an angel from heaven came down and held the rope.

"Can�t you see that Lord Mahavir is in deep meditation", said the angel that had come from heaven.

"But he tricked me!" said the cow herder. The angel replied, "He is a God. He does not care for your cows. He was in meditation and did not hear you. He did not do anything to your cows. You would have gotten bad karmas for thinking of hurting him."

There was no response by the cow herder. He realized that he had made a mistake. The cow herder apologized to Lord Mahavira and went away silently. The angel went back up in the sky. The angel was happy that he could stop Mahavir from suffering. Mahavir didn't have any bad feelings towards this man, because he held no anger towards anyone.

We should not make hasty decisions because we can be wrong. We should, also, not hurt anyone, and should observe forgiveness instead of anger. This way we can stop new karmas from coming into our soul.