Taking Flight...Thoughts to Ponder..

A Guru was so impressed by the spiritual progress of his disciple that, judging he needed no further guidance, he left him on his own in a little hut on the banks of a river.

Each morning after his ablutions the disciple would hang his loincloth out to dry. It was his only possession! One day he was dismayed to find it torn to shreds by rats. So he had to beg for another from the villagers. When the rats nibbled holes in this one, too, he got himself a kitten. He had no more trouble with the rats; but now, in addition to begging for his own food, he had to beg for milk as well.

"Too much trouble begging," he thought, "and too much of a burden on the villagers. I shall keep a cow." When he got the cow, he had to beg for fodder. "Easier to till the land around my hut," he thought. But that proved troublesome too, for it left him little time for meditation. So he employed laborers to till the land for him. Now overseeing the laborers became a chore, so he married a wife who would share this task with him. Before long, of course, he was one of the wealthiest men in the village.

Years later his Guru happened to drop by and was surprised to see a palatial mansion where once a hut had stood. He said to one of the servants, "Isn´t this where a disciple of mind used to live?"

Before he got a reply, the disciple himself emerged. "What´s the meaning of all this, my son?" asked the Guru. "You´re not going to believe this, sir," said the man, "but there was no other way I could keep my loincloth!"
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In Belfast, Ireland, a Catholic priest, a Portestant minister, and a Jewish rabbi were engaged in a heated theological discussion. Suddenly an angel appeared in their midst and said to them, "God sends you His blessings. Make one wish for peace and your wish will be fulfilled by the Almighty."

The minister said, "Let every Catholic disappear from our lovely island. Then peace will reign supreme."

The priest said, "Let there not be a single Protestant left on our sacred Irish soil. That will bring peace to this island."

"And what about you, Rabbi?" said the angel. "Do you have no wish of your own?"

"No," said the rabbi. "Just attend to the wishes of these two gentlemen and I shall be well pleased."
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Little boy: "Are you a Presbyterian?"
Little girl: "No. We belong to a different abomination."
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It intrigued the congregation to see their rabbi disappear each week on the eve of the Sabbath. They suspected he was secretly meeting the Almighty, so they deputed one of their number to follow him.

This is what the man saw: the rabbi disguised himself in peasant clothes and served a paralyzed Gentile woman in her cottage, cleaning out the room and preparing a Sabbath meal for her.

When the spy returned, the congregation asked, "Where did the rabbi go? Did he ascend to heaven?"

"No," the man replied, "he went even higher."
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When Earl Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, announced that his nephew, Prince Philip, was engaged to Princess Elizabeth, Mahatma Gandhi said to him, "I am delighted that your newphew is going to marry the future queen. I should like to give them a wedding present, but what can I give them? I have nothing."

"You have your spinning wheel," said the Viceroy. "Get to work and spin them something."

Gandhi made them a tablecloth, which Mountbatten sent to Princess Elizabeth with this note: "This you lock up with the crown jewels."

...for it ws spun by a man sho said: "The British must depart as friends."
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An elderly gentleman ran a curio and antique shop in a large city. A tourist once stepped in and got to talking with the old man about the many things that were stacked in that shop.

Said the tourist, "What would you say is the strangest, the most mysterious thing you have here?"

The old man surveyed the hundreds of curios, antiques, stuffed animals, shrunken heads, mounted fish and birds, archeological finds, deer heads-then turned to the tourist and said, "The strangest thing in this shop is unquestionably myself."
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A small crowd collected around the speaker at a street corner. "Come the revolution," he was saying, "everyone will drive around in big black limousines. Come the revolution, everyone will have a telephone in the kitchen. Come the revolution, everyone will possess a plot of land they can call their own."

A voice from the crowd protested, "I don´t want to own a big black limousine or a plot of land or a phone in the kitchen."

"Come the revolution, "said the speaker, "you´ll do as you´re damned well told,."


...If you want a perfect world, get rid of the people..
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One day Abraham invited a beggar to his tent for a meal. When grace was being said, the man began to curse God, declaring he could not bear to hear His name.

Seized with indignation, Abraham drove the blasphemer away.

When he was at his prayers that night, God said to him, "This man has cursed and reviled me for fifty years and yet I have given him food to eat every day. Could you not put up with him for a single meal?