05 – A Double Victory
Mukunda attended for some time a school in which a certain boy took pleasure in attacking the younger children. One day, as the bully was inflicting on tiny Bharatam a brutal beating, Mukunda felt a surge of righteous anger.
Striding up to the bully, who was easily twice his size, Mukunda told him to leave Bharatam alone. “If you want to fight,” Mukunda said, “then fight with me.”
The boys nearby gathered excitedly around, amazed at Mukunda’s courage. The bully grinned sadistically. “Gladly!” he cried, removing his hands from Bharatam. Turning toward Mukunda, he leaped at him like a hungry tiger. Lifting Mukunda high in the air, the boy dashed the child on the ground.
As the bully bent over to raise the child high in the air again, Mukunda seized his opportunity. Quickly, with both arms, he grasped the big boy around the neck, squeezing it as hard as he could. The bully, try as he would, couldn’t force Mukunda to relax his hold. He beat the child’s head frantically against the ground time and time again, rendering him almost unconscious. Still Mukunda hung on.
“Do you give up?” Mukunda at last managed to say.
Gasping for air, the boy finally answered, “Yes, yes! I give up. Let go my throat!”
As soon as Mukunda had freed the bully, he broke faith. He leaped a second time at Mukunda. But this time all the boys around them cried, “Mukunda has beaten you fairly. If you fight him again, we’ll all jump on you.” Heeding this threat, the bully grudgingly acknowledged that he had been bested.
Mukunda became a hero to his schoolmates. He had beaten a boy twice his size, to protect a friend. But later, when Mukunda was alone, his conscience gave him more pain than did his aching body. Alas! in the fight he had allowed himself to become a little wrathful. Even righteous anger was not becoming in a devotee of God, he told himself.
Raising his hand, he made a solemn vow: “Never, from this day forth, shall I allow myself to become angry.”
And from that day on, never again did he know anger, no matter how deeply men sought to hurt him. Though he could be fiery when occasion demanded, though he was forced to scold the disciples when they needed it, he never lost a divine inner calmness. Nor did he cease from loving and forgiving all the error-stricken children of earth.
