WHAT TO DO WITH IT: A SHORT STORY

Thirty years ago a Hare Krisha member stepped up to him outside the Los Angeles International Airport and with a friendly smile handed him a hard copy of a book entitled Bhagavad-Gita: As It Is, commentary by Swami Bhaktivedanta, whoever he was.  But then also whatever this Bhagavad-Gita was as well.  He'd never heard of it.  Today, as it happened, he knew much more about it.

Yet, looking back all those years ago he still wonder why, out of all those people at the airport, he was singled out to receive what after all was a beautifully published book on spirituality.  But then it was a rhetorical question, was it not?  He knew perfectly well why he was picked from the crowd.  He had been picked from many crowds.  His problem was what to do with it. 

When he was a kid he wanted to be a minister one day.  He then wanted to be a priest, then a monk, then a mystic.  Yes, definitely a mystic.  Where he ended up, though, and where he was now, was in a state just beyond mystic, in a condition that had no name, could not be named, much less described.  Still the problem, what to do with it.

But then it didn't ask that he do anything with it.  It was not something that needed to be done anything with.  It was not the beginning of something but the completion of it.