DAY 6 : MAY 18
The Cobra + The Yogi
I really like this story about the cobra and the yogi
There was a big, mean cobra that lived in a village and he would bite anyone that would come too close to him. A Yogi came to stay at the village and one day decided to practice right beside a tree near the cobra. The cobra slithered over to the yogi and lifted up as if to bite him and the realized felt the yogi’s vibrations and knew that the yogi would never harm him, so he didn’t bite him.
The cobra loved the vibrations he felt and told yogi that he wanted to learn all about yoga from him. The yogi told the cobra he would come back in a year to teach him if he could practice ahimsa (non-violence) for the entire year.
So the cobra practiced ahimsa daily and became harmless, of course then, the village people started to get closer to the snake, as the snake was not harming them. As humans often do, they began to abuse the cobra, and to throw rocks and sticks. Even still the cobra did not bite them.
A year went by and the yogi came back, the cobra was near death because of the abuse from the village people. The yogi asked the cobra what had happened and the cobra told the yogi about the village people, but that he never bit anyone for the entire year.
The yogi replied – “I told you to practice non-violence, but I didn’t say you couldn’t hiss.”
