Mahabharata : Aiming at the Target

Mahabharata is just not the description of a fierce fighting between Kauravas and Pandavas, but the epic is full of moral building tales relating to many other aspects of life.

When the Guru Dronacharya was teaching Archery to Kaurav and Pandav princes, he took them to a ground and far away and on a tree he kept an artificial bird on the branch of the tree He asked his disciples to aim at the eye of the bird with their bows and arrows. When they had aimed, as a test, he asked them one by one a simple question, ‘What do you see?’ Someone said that he was seeing the tree and the large sky behind it. Someone said that he was seeing the bird from its beak to tail. Someone said that he was seeing the bird, the branches and the leaves etc. But when the same question was put to Arjun, who was considered to be the best archer, he replied that he was seeing nothing but the eye of the bird.

Dronacharya was much pleased to hear the reply of Arjuna. He asked him to shoot his arrow. And the arrow did hit the exact target that it was aimed at.

The small incidence has a lesson for all of us to focus our attention exactly on what we want to achieve and let not anything else disrupt us. This applies not only to our worldly affairs, but also to our spiritual practice. Pin-pointed concentration leads to success.