Page:Ramakrishna - His Life and Sayings.djvu/184

166 loses all hope, and, having no confidence in him, launches forth into the broad world ever in search of a new adviser, he is sure at last to return to his original master after a fruitless search, which has, however, increased the reverence of the repentant aspirant for the master.

295. In the month of June a young goat was playing near his mother, when, with a merry frisk, he told her that he meant to make a feast of Pis-flowers, a species of flowers budding abundantly during the time of the Elslild festival. *Well, my darling,' replied the dam, 'it is not such an easy thing as you seem to think. You will have to pass through many crises before you can hope to feast on RJIs-flowers. The interval between the coming September and October is not very auspicious to you ; for some one may take you for a sacrifice to the Goddess DurgH ; then, again, you will have to get through the time of K&H-p$g&, and if you are fortunate enough to escape through that period, there comes the ^agaddhitn-pii^, when almost all the surviving male members of our tribe are destroyed. If your good luck leads you safe and sound through all these crises, then you can hope to make a feast of Ris-flowers in the beginning of November.' Like the dam in the fable, we should not hastily approve of all the aspirations which our youthful hopes may entertain, remembering the mani- fold crises which one will have to pass through in the course of one's life.

296. As the fly sits, now on the unclean sore of the human body, and now on the offerings dedicated to the