Moral Story
The dreaming priest
Long time ago there
lived a priest who was extremely lazy and poor at the same time. He did not
want to do any hard work but used to dream of being rich one day. He got his
food by begging for alms. One morning he got a pot of milk as part of the alms.
He was extremely delighted and went home with the pot of milk. He boiled the
milk, drank some of it and put the remaining milk in a pot for converting the
milk to curd. He then lay down to sleep.
Soon he started
imagining about the pot of curd while he lay asleep. He dreamed that if he
could become rich somehow all his miseries would be gone. His thoughts turned
to the pot of milk he had set to form curd. He dreamed on, ‘By morning the pot
of milk would set, it would be converted to curd. I would churn the curd and
make butter from it. I would heat the butter and make ghee out of it. I will
then go to that market and sell that ghee, and make some money. With that
money, I will buy a hen. The hen will lay many eggs, which will hatch and there
will be many chicken. The chicken will in turn lay hundreds of eggs and I will
soon have a poultry farm of my own.’ He kept on imagining.
‘I will sell all
the hens of my poultry and buy some cows, and open a milk dairy. All the town
people will buy milk from me. I will be very rich and soon I shall buy jewels.
The king will buy all the jewels from me. I will be so rich that I will be able
to marry an exceptionally beautiful girl from a rich family. Soon I will have a
handsome son. If he does any mischief I will be very angry and to teach him a
lesson, I will hit him with a big stick.’ During this dream, he involuntarily
picked up the stick next to his bed and thinking that he was beating his son,
raised the stick and hit the pot. The of milk broke and also his dream, and he
woke from his day dream.
Moral: There is no substitute for hard
work. Dreams cannot be fulfilled without hard work.