A king once went to a master to ask for a technique to become more powerful than his neighboring kings. He sat in front of the master and started telling him the purpose of his visit. The master listened patiently to the king.
He then told him to go to the royal garden where a rose plant and a cypress plant were growing side by side. He told the king, ” They are your teachers. They can teach you what you want to learn. ”
The king went into the garden, saw the two plants but could not understand what he was meant to learn from them. He went back to the master and asked, ‘ What do you mean, master? ‘ ‘ I am not able to understand what and how these plants will teach me.’
The master took the king to the plants and explained, ‘ This cypress plant has been next to the rose plant for so many years. Never once has it even aspired to become a rose plant. Similarly, the rose plant has never aspired to become a cypress plant. If man had been the cypress plant, he would ahve compared himself with the rose an felt jealous at the attention the rose plant was getting from all the people. Or, if man were the rose plant, he would ahve looked at the cypress plant enviously thinking how peaceful the plant was without the torture of getting plucked by people all day ! ‘
The two plants prospered because the used all their energy for their own growth instead of using it to compare themselves with the other.
