Master and the Coward Student
Master and the Coward Student:
Once there was a man in a village. He was called by villagers a coward because of his lack of courage.
The man then decided to change himself.
So, he visited a spiritual master in his village to teach him courage and bravery.
Master said, “I am ready to teach you but on one condition. You need to go and live in a big city for one month.
And during the stay, tell every person you meet there, You are a coward.
When you tell, you have to say it loudly, openly, and look straight into the eyes of the person.
After that, come back here.”
The man returned home and was thinking about the task. He was scared. He kept on thinking about it for some days.
Then he decided to travel to the city instead of living his entire life as a coward, which is unbearable.
In the initial days in the city, he could not talk to anyone.
Whenever he tried, he could not see the face and talk, or sometimes no words came out of his mouth.
He felt like he is going to die out of fear.
As the days passed, he pushed himself to finish the task.
He started talking to people.
As every passing day, his voice sounded louder, his eye contact with the person improved. His body was responding without any shivering.
One day he felt that he was not scared anymore to talk to people. Then he continued doing the task till the end of the month.
He returned to his village and met his Master.
He said, “Master, I finished the task. Now I do not have fear. I feel I can do anything with courage.
But I have one question.
What made you think this task will help me overcome cowardice?”
Master replied, “Being a coward is a habit. If you want to come out of this habit, you have to do things that scare you.
That is what you did. As a result, you have replaced your cowardice with the habit of courage.
So, similarly, if you have any bad habit that you want to change. Replace the bad habit with a good one.”
Moral of the story:
To overcome cowardice and fear, we should move out of our comfort zone and face it upfront.
To throw out any bad habits, we should replace them with good habits. And it may not happen immediately. We should take our time and work on it.
Once we have courage, we can accomplish anything in life.
