Satsang A story of greed By Sri Narasimha Swamiji

Satsang A story of greed By Sri Narasimha Swamiji

Sai Baba then went near and thus addressed the creatures.

Sai Baba: Hallo! Veerabhadrappa! Even now, you have no pity for your enemy
Basappa though he has now taken birth as a frog, just as you have turned
into a serpent? Shame! Shame upon your hatred! Get rid of hatred and rest in
peace!
These words acted like magic. The snake let go its prey, dived into the
river and was lost to sight. The frog hopped away and hid in some tree.

Wayfarer: What a wonder! I cannot see why the snake dropped its prey at your
words. Which of these creatures is Veerabhadrappa? And which Basappa? Give
me their full history, please.

Sai Baba resumed his seat, shared a few puffs with his visitor at his pipe
and spoke: Some 6 or 7 miles off my place, there
was a village sanctified by a temple of Maheshwara. That temple was getting
dilapidated. So the villagers began to collect funds for its renovation. The
treasurer appointed was a rich miser. He spent but little of the collections
on the renovation which consequently made very poor progress; and he
swallowed much of the public funds. Seeing the work thus hampered, God
appeared in a dream and told the wife of the treasurer: "If you spend any
money in renovating this temple, Maheshwara will give it to you back a
hundredfold". On waking, the wife communicated the dream to her husband. But
he sniffed "expenditure" as the drift of her dream and this Shylock would
launch into no such venture. He replied that this was no business
proposition. Was he not the man in charge of funds? If God meant business,
would He not have come to him? And how far was he from her?

Another night, God again came to the wife in her dream and said: "Do not
bother yourself about your husband and his money. Give, if you like, out of
your own." The wife then told her Lord that she was going to endow the
temple with the value of her own jewels. They were worth Rs. 1000. Then this
treasurer, not content with the amounts already embezzled by him, wanted to
do Maheshwara, even in this transaction. He told the wife that he would take
the jewels himself and give them to God i.e. the temple, his vast stretch of
land as its endowment; and the simple woman agreed. But the land was not
his. It was the property of one Dubaki, a poor widow, who was just then too
poor to redeem it. But there was no period of limitation for exercising the
right of redemption. And the present possession of the land was worth
nothing. It was barren, saline coastland yielding nothing in the best of
seasons.

Thus ended this transaction; and sometime later there was a terrific storm.
Lightning struck down the house of the treasurer. He and his wife died. That
lady was born in the same village, as the daughter of the temple priest, to
whom the above land, had been given as service inam. And she was named
Gowri. She had come back to enjoy the land and the priest who was very fond
of her devoted the land to her use. Then he adopted a boy Basappa who was no
other than Dubaki, the mortgager of that land in the previous birth. Basappa
was to have the reversion after or a joint right with Gowri.

Gowri had to be married and the priest came to his great friend Sai Baba,
living in a mosque in that birth also, and asked for advice. Baba told him
to wait for the man destined to marry her would himself soon turn up. Then
came a poor boy of their caste, named Veerabhadrappa, and he married Gowri.
Who was Veerabhadrappa? That embezzler of public money, and God's money, the
treasurer. He had been born of poor parents at Muttra and named
Veerabhadrappa. Veerabhadrappa was at first devoted to Baba as the latter
had proposed his marriage to Gowri.

(to be contd....)
http://www.saileelas.org/magazines/saipadananda/jan1999.htm#Astoryofgreed