Page 76 - Towards The Goal Of Beautiful Life

etc. Similarly he can repay the social obligation through good actions such as helping
others, extending cooperation to others as much as possible, paying respect and honour

to others. In the same way, Man can also repay his social obligation by conducting any
socially useful profession that comes to his lot, irrespective of whatever the nature of

profession, with love, honesty, integrity and efficiency. Another excellent method to
repay this social obligation, is to look after and take care of the members of the family

such as mother, father, husband, wife and children, to make necessary efforts to ensure
their happiness, success and contentment, give excellent education to children and bring

them up well, so that they can become excellent citizens of the nation. In this way, by
virtue of such benevolent deeds, Man as well as the society in which he lives, can

definitely achieve material prosperity and spiritual progress as well. In this context, there
is a story which depicts, how important it is for Man to perform good actions in order to

succeed in life. A youngster wandering in search of a job, arrived in a kingdom. In this
kingdom, there was a strange convention according to which, the king was allowed to

rule only for ten years and at the end of that period, he was sent to an island where
there was no human habitation. This island was covered with dense forests and there

were ferocious animals in the forests. Hence, when the king was sent to this island, he
never returned because the ferocious animals on the island would eat him up. Besides

there was also another equally strange convention. According to this other convention,
an elephant holding a huge garland in its trunk was freely allowed to garland any person

who was then crowned as the King of that kingdom. This youngster while wandering in
search of a job, entered the capital of this kingdom, and he saw a very peculiar scene.

People were running in all directions in panic when they saw an elephant with a garland
approaching them. While figuring out to himself why these people were running in panic,

the elephant approached the youngster and garlanded him moment this youngester was
garlanded, the minister, the administrative officers of that kingdom and the crowd

surrounded him. The minister took the youngster to the palace and coronated him
immediately. The minister then explained the various conventions of that kingdom to this

new king and went away. Taking note of the fact that he would be sent to that isolated
island after ten years where he was sure to die, this new king started contemplating as

to what he should do to face this problem. In the process of contemplating on this
difficult situation, he found a way to tackle this problem. Accepting the situation as it

was, he decided to give it a beautiful shape. The new king took total command of the
kingdom and systematically devised various plans to rule it. Thus on one hand, this king

72