The prince's illumination13

There was a prince who was very handsome. He was extremely proud of his beauty. Everybody appreciated his beauty, and he himself used to admire his own beauty. One day, when he was walking along the street, he saw a religious mendicant carrying a skull. The prince said, “What are you doing? Such an ugly thing you are carrying!”

The mendicant said, “Ugly? In my life, I have never seen anything so beautiful as this skull. Therefore, I am carrying it and I keep it with me twenty-four hours a day.”

“That is beautiful?” mocked the prince. “It is so ugly!”

“No,” said the mendicant, “it is beautiful. Only I want to know whose skull it is — whether it was a king’s or prince’s. I am trying to find out, but if I don’t get the answer, no harm.”

The prince asked, “You can’t see any beauty in me?”

“You are beautiful?” laughed the mendicant. “You are nothing in comparison to my skull.”

“Are you telling me the truth?” the prince said. “I am the prince.”

“If you want to know the truth,” said the religious man, “I am telling you the truth. But if you want to hear flattery, I will say that you are more beautiful than my skull.”

“Are you saying that everybody is flattering me?” asked the prince.

“That I don’t know,” said the mendicant, “but I want to say that my skull is infinitely more beautiful than any part of your body.”

The prince was still bewildered. “How?”

The mendicant explained, “Beauty we see with our inner heart. You may see beauty in something, and I may see beauty in something else. It is our own inner development that determines what we consider beautiful. I can clearly see from my yogic practice, from my spiritual experience, that this skull belonged to a person who practised spirituality. To me, whoever practises spirituality is beautiful. You do not practise spirituality, so you are ugly according to my inner understanding. Whoever practises spirituality is beautiful and whoever does not practise spirituality is ugly.”

The prince was at once humiliated and illumined.


GIM 173. 20 February 1979