Wisdom –

Our revered spiritual Master Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa has an exquisite ability to teach the greatest of values with simplicity.  This is one of the examples to differentiate common sense and wisdom.  Master was giving a simple practical lesson to teach his three disciples about wisdom, he instructed each disciple one at a time to go to the adjoining room and drink a glass of milk and return to his chamber.  The first disciple went to the closed room and saw three glasses of milk kept in golden, silver and a glass made of a mixture of alloy, copper, bronze, and tin respectively, he had milk from golden glass and happily returned to Master, the second disciple went to the room and saw the golden glass was empty, he noticed silver and  metal glass filled with milk, he was a bit disappointed for not  getting an opportunity to drink milk from a golden glass, but never mind, he had milk from a silver glass, the third disciple went to  the room and saw  gold and silver glasses are empty, but the mixture of metal glass is full of milk, he was completely distraught,  though he was disappointed thoroughly, he sincerely followed his Master’s instruction and returned to him.  When Master asked their experiences of consuming milk, first disciple was extremely happily to have milk from golden glass, second one was satisfied to have milk from silver glass, and the third one was uncontrollable with tears.  Master replied that all three glasses were filled with the same flavored milk with saffron and cardamom, but their experience of consuming the milk was completely different,  because they three gave importance to the glasses in which they consumed the milk, they did not give importance to the flavored milk they had in common.  Therefore, the moral is wise people do not think about the texture of the glass, they value the content in it.

The shocking revelation is that many of us forgets to appreciate what we have in our lives, three fourths of our lives we spend in finding what is lacking in our lives,  like the third disciple without knowing the value of the content.