From One Soul to Another

Rick Colby

Once I was traveling all alone in Tarai Bhavar toward the mountains in Nepal. I was on my way to Katmandu, which is the capital of Nepal. I walked twenty to thirty miles each day.

At about six o’clock one evening I became tired and decided to take a short nap in a cave which was about two miles from the nearest road. I spread my blanket on the floor of the small cave because it was a little damp. As soon as I lay down and closed my eyes I was pounced on by three little tiger cubs, who made gentle little cries and pawed at my body. They were hungry and thought that I was their mother. They must have been only twelve to fifteen days old.

For a few minutes I lay there petting them.

When I sat up, there was their mother standing at the entrance to the cave. First I feared that she would rush in and attack me, but then a strong feeling came from within: I thought, “I have no intention to hurt these cubs. If she leaves the entrance of the cave, I will go out.”

…The mother tiger backed off from the entrance and I went out. When I had gone about fifteen yards from the entrance, the mother tiger calmly went in to join her babies.

~ Swami Rama

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Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world…