The Lady and the Beautiful Bird

Once there was an incredibly wealthy lady who had a great liking for beautiful things. She had exquisite taste and searched the whole world for the best of everything that she could find. Her home was an ornate collection of the most beautiful furniture the world could supply all tastefully arranged and displayed. Her gardens carried many a plant bought back from countries far and wide and arranged in a colourful display that bloomed through every season. The lady had expert gardeners to tend her grounds, French chefs who presented her table with the finest cuisine possible, housekeepers to clean and polish and even an zoo keeper to look after the small menagerie of animals she had acquired on her travels. This lady however kept one beautiful large South African parrot that she alone was responsible for.
As soon as she had seen this parrot she immediately fell in love with it and just had to have it. And who wouldn’t! It was so beautiful with its long red tail feathers, yellow breast and blue and golden wings. It could even talk and before long delighted the lady by learning to say her name. What a spacious and ornate cage this lady so proudly kept her parrot in. Daily she would clean and polish the cage until it shone like gold and sparkled like jewels and almost every day she would purchase some new toy or accessory for the bird and it’s cage but as time went on there was just one little thing she often forgot to do. She was so enthralled with her beautiful bird, grooming it and looking after its glossy cage that she forgot to feed it. Naturally the neglected bird was very unhappy. All the care of the cage and even the grooming of it’s feathers and beak could not make up for the lack of sustenance so gradually much to the astonishment of the wealthy lady the poor bird stopped talking, lost his zest for life and was slowly fading away. Of course the lady brought in experts to cure her bird who simply told her, ‘Your bird is starving, you need to feed it!’


Yoga Message
Similarly we need to nourish ourself, the divine individual soul within each of our bodies. We need to not only look after our body and our possessions but also to spend time developing our spiritual life.