Do you believe in things like luck, faith, destiny and fortune?

Do you believe in things like destiny, luck, fate and fortune? Then why don't you read Liehtse’s famous parable of The Old Man at the Fort :- An Old Man was living with his Son at an abandoned fort on the top of a hill, and one day he lost a horse. His fellow villagers came to express their sympathy for this misfortune. But the Old Man asked them, “How do you say that this is a misfortune? The fact of the matter is that one horse is missing and there is one horse less in the stables. That is the fact. Whether it is good luck or bad luck – well that is a matter of judgment.” A few days afterwards, the Old Man's horse returned with a number of wild horses. The villagers came again to congratulate him on this stroke of fortune, and the Old Man replied, “How do you know this is good luck? The fact of the matter is that there are more horses in my stable than before. Whether it is good luck or bad luck – well that is a matter of opinion.” With so many horses around, his young son began to take to riding in a big way. One day while riding a wild horse the Old Man's Son was thrown off and broke his leg and the accident made him lame in one leg. Again the neighbours came around to express their sympathy, and the Old Man replied, “How do you know this is bad luck?” A few years later a great war broke out. All the able bodied men were forcibly conscripted into the army and sent to the warfront to fight in the war. The war was so terrible that most of them were killed fighting in the war. Because the Old Man’s son had a broken leg, he did not have to go to the war front and his life was saved. Almost all the villagers had lost their sons in the war and were envious at the Old Man’s “good fortune”. But this time they did not say anything to the Old Man as they knew what his response would be. This parable drives home the lesson that there are no such things like good luck and bad luck. What disturbs you are not events but your attitude towards them. Like in the story, sometimes what you think is “misfortune” may be a precursor to “good fortune” You must learn to distinguish between facts and your attitude towards those facts. Destiny, Fate, Luck, Fortune - it is all in the mind. Facts are the truth and are ground reality. But the way you interpret those facts depends on your attitude which in turn is governed by your “mental map” and accordingly you call it good luck or bad luck. This mental map is formed due to your values, beliefs and experiences and you tend to view the actual facts or events (territory) through mental filters based on your values, beliefs, biases, prejudices and experiences which form your mental map. Remember, just like the actual physical geographical territory exists on the ground and its map is drawn on paper, actual facts and events happen in reality and each one of us interprets them depending on the different maps prevalent in our minds. Events, by themselves, don’t hurt you. It is your attitudes and responses (due to your mental maps) to those events that disturb you and give you trouble. It then becomes your paramount duty to introspect and continuously redesign your mental maps to develop the correct attitude and responses towards external events. When something happens the only thing in your power is your attitude towards it. We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them. The secret of inner calm resides within you. You just have to develop the proper mental “maps” and the correct attitude in your mind, so that you are not disturbed by the vicissitudes of external events which are akin to the outside “territory”. So the next time you think of things like destiny, fate, fortune or luck, remember the parable of THE OLD MAN AT THE FORT.---by RSB