A Saint who had a way of taking any situation and using it to teach spiritual principles, was going through the marketplace of a town with his disciples.

He saw a man dragging his cow by a rope, and the Saint said “Wait” to the man, and told his disciples “Surround this man and the cow. I am going to teach you something.”

The man stopped – the Saint was a famous mystic – and he was also interested in what he was going to teach these disciples and how he was going to use him and the cow.

And the Saint asked his disciples “I ask you one thing: who is bound to whom? Is the cow bound to this man or is this man bound to this cow?” Of course, the disciples said, “The cow is bound to the man. The man is the master, he is holding the rope, the cow has to follow him wherever he goes. He is the master and the cow is the slave.”

And the Saint said “Now, see.” He took out his scissors and cut the rope – and the cow escaped.

The man ran after the cow, and the Saint said “Now look what is happening! Now you see who the master is; the cow is not interested at all in this man – in fact, she is escaping.” And the man was very angry, he said “What kind of experiment is this?” The Saint turned to his disciples and said, “… and this is the case with your mind.”

“All the nonsense that you are carrying inside is not interested in you. You are interested in it, you are keeping it together somehow – you are becoming mad in keeping it together somehow. But you are interested in it. The moment you lose interest, the moment you understand the futility of it, it will start disappearing; like the cow, it will escape.”

Identify the Spiritual Laws in action.