Once, a friend and I were standing in the Gurudwara kitchen hall when a young boy came and asked for the keys to the supplies store - the supplies store is one of the rooms located on the outside of the Gurudwara building.
I fished out the keys and gave it to the boy. He ran off and came back a few minutes later saying, "This is not the right key."
I was quite surprised since that sure looked like the right key. But anyhow, I fished out another bunch of keys and told the kid to try those. He ran off and came back with the same answer.
I asked my friend about it - he took a good look and selected a key from the first bunch and told the kid, "This is the right one for sure. Try to push the door inwards when turning the key. Sometimes it needs quite a bit of strength to open the supplies door."
After several minutes, the kid came back, all puffed up and panting, "No, that was not the right key!"
My friend decided to investigate. He came back smiling.
I asked him, "What happened?"
"Oh, nothing," he replied, "the kid was trying the wrong door!"
~~~~~
There were several excellent morals sent in by the readers for this story and it was really tough to pick one. Perhaps too tough for me, sooooo I picked the top ones and here they are (in no particular order):
Jim Moore (NC, USA)
The moral is to not assume that you know where God's treasure is. As humans we complicate and obscure the truth by inventing rules and traditions pretending religion is from God. Religion is just the door where we try to enter and understand God.
A better ending to the story would have been "the kid was trying the wrong door, but it was not locked anyway!"
RajPratap Singh (Toronto, Canada)
A fortunate few are blessed with the perfect understanding and given the correct perspective for living (the key). But unless we make the effort to practice that knowledge in order to change our habits and outlook (finding the right door) - we continue to suffer, and nothing will seem to work out (wrong door). Having reached nowhere, we will return to question and argue over the interpretation of the teachings (the key).
Reema Dhawan (Winnipeg, Canada)
In my perspective, the right key means that we are spiritual beings from core, that this identity is the real truth (Satnam). So we do have this key and all we have to do this to find the right door. Right door can be found through shabad guru. We keep on keying the wrong door, the door of 5 evils which is wide open all the time.
Rob Abbot (Cary, NC)
Not that the above is "spiritual moral" per say, but it sortive fits in a weird way. The sufficient conclusion is the kid knows that he must use keys to unlock the door. The insufficient premise is he does not know he is lost and the keys will not complete his journey as he is headed in the wrong direction.
Possibly one could say, "be centered / balanced... know where you are and where you are going and get off of autopilot". Like the saying goes, "you can not use the same thinking to solve a problem that was used to create it". The kid seemed to be focused on the keys and not all elements of that situation.
Ok, so I'm not too deep, but working on it. I know there is transcendence and beauty in this situation, but I'm not enlightened enough yet to see it.
