Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’.

Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.

This week I bring to your attention yet another story which is extracted from an interesting and thought provoking work, ‘World Tales’ by Idries Shah.

‘World Tales,’ is divided into five volumes and contains stories from great works like Panchatantra, Thousand and One Nights, Straparola, Boccaccio, Chaucer and Shakespeare and a dozen others which now form the basis of the classic literature of Europe and Asia.

The Skilful Brothers

Once upon a time there was a King who had a beautiful daughter. The lived happily until, one day, the Devil took it into his head to carry her away.

This he did, conveying her to his dwelling-place, deep in the earth, where human beings cannot normally reach.

The King was distraught beyond measure; and he announced that whoever should save the girl could have her hand in marriage, provided that she agreed to accept him.

Seven intelligent, noble and skilful youths each volunteered to rescue the Princess, and they set out together to seek the hiding-place.

Now these brothers were well equipped for their task. The first had such acute hearing that he could hear any sound, even from the most remote distances. The second had the power of making the very earth open to any depth. The third could steal anything from anyone without their knowing it. The fourth could hurl any object to the very confines of the world. The fifth was able to build a lofty and impregnable castle in an instant. The sixth was such a marksman that he could hit anything, no matter how high in the air it was, or how distant. The seventh could catch, and safely hold, anything which fell from the sky, whatever the altitude.

The seven had not gone very far when the youth with the acute hearing put his ear to the ground and heard that under that very spot was the Devil’s hideout. He said to the second young man;

‘Cause the earth to open at this point!’

Instantly, by the second youth’s magical power, the earth opened; and the party descended into the ground to where they saw the Devil, deeply asleep and snoring, clutching the maiden to him.

The third youth stole the Princess from the diabolical grasp by his power to abstract anything anywhere without it being known. In her place he put a toad.

The fourth companion took off one of the Devil’s unique shoes, and hurled it so far that it descended at the other end of the earth.

Carrying the Princess, the brothers started their journey back to her father’s palace.

Very soon, however, the Devil awoke. He roared and screamed with fury when he found the toad, the Princess gone and his irreplaceable shoe missing. He threw himself into the air and sped to the end of the world to recover the footgear, and then started off in hot pursuit of the travelers.

As soon as they saw him coming in the distance, the fifth young man caused by his art a mighty and almost inaccessible tower to be built.