Who is a blind man? The one who is attached. The one who identifies one’s own self with something or other in life. Let’s look at an example. There were two friends, one was blind the other was not blind. Both of them were traveling together. The blind friend had a stick to guide him. The other friend admired that stick and told the blind friend from time to time that the stick was really beautiful. After a long travel, the friends had to cross a particular river and at that point, the blind friend lost the stick. The other friend felt very sorry for it. They tried to search and could not find it. The blind friend managed with some other stick and walked further. That night both the friends stayed over in a tent. The weather that night was freezing cold. While the friends were sleeping, a snake got into their tent. Due to the intense cold, the snake became stiff like ice. In the morning when the blind person woke up, he was searching for the stick. By mistake, he put the hand on the snake and thought “Wow, what a beautiful, polished stick”. The blind person woke his friend up. The friend was frightened and screamed “Hey look, you are holding a snake. Before it becomes warm please allow it to go. The blind person said, “What nonsense are you talking about? I lost my stick because of you. Had you been careful that time, I would have not lost it? Now, God is so kind giving me a beautiful stick which is nice and polished. Maybe you are jealous of me having got a better stick than what I lost. That’s why you want me to throw it away by calling it a snake”. This friend tried his best to convince his blind friend and at last, was fed up and left him alone. Finally, the blind man fell prey to the snake. This story drives a point that inherently blind people tend to not trust people very easily. Now, who is worse than the blind man? A person who is attached to everything around him. When we are attached, we tend to behave like a blind person. We don’t understand what is right or wrong and we don’t trust others as well. We try to question other intentions knowingly or unknowingly. Hence, we need to observe ourselves as to how attached we are in our life.
From the book Prashnottara Ratna malika, Commented by Swami Ananda Saraswati