FIRE TO BURN!

FIRE TO BURN!

 

Baba said, "I shall consider you blessed, when you will renounce all attachments" in Sri Sai Satcharitra, Ch. XLIII & XLIV.

 

Raja Janak lived in a palace but regarded nothing as his own. He was a man of true renunciation. To him came, one day, a sanyasin who outwardly had renounced the world and put on an ochre robe. Seeing the king surrounded by pomp and grandeur, the sanyasin thought himself, "How could this man, living as he does in the midst of luxury, have attained God?"

 

Just then was heard a cry, "The palace is on fire!" Immediately, the sanyasin ran out to save his loincloth, which he had washed and hung on a rope to dry. When he returned, he was astonished to find Raja Janak sitting there unconcerned.

 

The sanyasin asked, "O King, did you not hear that the palace was on fire? How is it, then, that you sit here as though nothing has happened?"

 

Raja Janak quietly answered, "What is mine is with me; it cannot be burnt by fire."

 

Raja Janak was a man of true renunciation.