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 a story titled ‘The Wayward Princess’ from the book titled ‘Tales of Dervishes’ which is a compilation of tales recorded during the past thousand years. Here the stories contain several levels of meaning and work like psychological mirrors in which the reader may see himself and reality reflected, and come to better understand both.

The Persian word dervish is generally considered to be derived from the verb der-vekhtan to wait at a door. The reference is to waiting before the door of enlightenment.

The Wayward Princess

A CERTAIN king believed that what he had been taught, and what he believed, was right. In many ways he was a just man, but he was one whose ideas were limited.

One day he said to his three daughters:

‘All that I have is yours, or will be yours. Through me you obtained your life. It is my will which determines your future, and hence determines your fate.’

Dutifully and quite persuaded of the truth of this, two of the girls agreed.

The third daughter, however, said:

‘Although my position demands that I be obedient to the laws, I cannot believe that my fate must always be determined by your opinions.’

‘We shall see about that,’ said the king.

He ordered her to be imprisoned in a small cell, where she languished for years. Meanwhile the king and his obedient daughters spent freely of the wealth which would otherwise have been expended upon her.

The king said to himself:

“This girl lies in prison not by her own will, but by mine. This proves, sufficiently for any logical mind, that it is my will, not hers, which is determining her fate.”

The people of the country, hearing of their princess’s situation, said to one another:

‘She must have done or said something very wrong for a monarch, with whom we find no fault, to treat his own flesh and blood so.’ For, they had not arrived at the point where they felt the need to dispute the king’s assumption of rightness in everything.

From time to time the king visited the girl. Although she was pale and weakened from her imprisonment, she refused to change her attitude.

Finally the king’s patience came to an end.

‘Your continued defiance,’ he said to her, ‘will only annoy me further, and seem to weaken my rights, if you stay within my realms. I could kill you; but I am merciful. I therefore banish you into the wilderness adjoining my territory. This is a wilderness, inhabited only by wild beasts and such eccentric outcasts who cannot survive in our rational society. There you will soon discover whether you can have an existence apart from that of your family, and, if you can, whether you prefer it to ours.’

His decree was at once obeyed, and she was conveyed to the borders of the kingdom.