A certain person gets sick and goes to the doctor for help. The doctor examines him, then writes a prescription. The patient firmly believes his doctor. He returns home and in the room, in the red corner, places a beautiful portrait or statue of the doctor. Then he sits down and expresses respect to the portrait or statue: he bows three times, lays flowers at the foot, lights incense; then he takes out the prescription the doctor prescribed for him and very solemnly reads it out loud:
- Two pills in the morning! Two pills in the evening!
All day long he continues to read the prescription - and this continues throughout his life, because he firmly believes in the doctor. But still the recipe does not help him.
The patient decides that he needs to find out more about this recipe; and so he runs to the doctor and asks him:
- Why did you prescribe me this medicine? How will it help me?
Being a smart man, the doctor explains:
- Here, listen: this is your illness, and this is its cause. If you take the medicine that I have prescribed for you, it will eliminate the root cause of the disease. When the cause is removed, the disease will disappear by itself.
The patient thinks: “Oh, how wonderful! How smart my doctor is! His recipes are so helpful!” And he goes home, and there he begins to quarrel with his neighbors and acquaintances, insisting:
- My doctor is the best! All other doctors are useless!
So what does he gain by such arguments? He can continue to fight all his life, but still it will not help him at all. And if he begins to take medicine, only then will this person be able to free himself from his illness, from his misfortune. And only then will the medicine help him.
Every liberated person is like a doctor. Out of compassion, he prescribes a prescription, gives people advice, and tells them how to get rid of suffering. If people develop blind faith in this person, they turn his recipe into sacred scripture and begin to quarrel with other faiths, claiming that the teachings of the founder of their religion are supreme. But no one bothers to practice the teaching, to take the medicine prescribed to eliminate the disease. Having faith in a doctor is helpful if that faith encourages you to follow his advice. Understanding the action of a medicine is also beneficial if this understanding encourages the patient to take the medicine. But without actually taking the medicine, one cannot be cured of the disease. You must take the medicine yourself.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru