24th June 2025
“Once a wise man & his disciple in their travels, saw a hut in the distance.
As they approached they realized that it was occupied in spite of its extremely poor appearance.
In that desolate place; a man lived with his wife, 3 young children & a thin, tired looking cow.
Since they were hungry & thirsty, the wise man & his disciple stopped there & were well received.
The wise man asked: “This is a very poor place, far away from anything. How do you survive?”
“You see that cow? That’s what keeps us going,” said the head of the family. “She gives us milk, some of it we drink & some we make into cheese. When there is extra, we go into the city and exchange the milk & cheese for other types of food. That’s how we survive.”
The wise man thanked them for their hospitality & left.
When they reached the first bend in the road, he said to his disciple:
“Go back, get the cow, take her to the cliff in front of us, and push her off.”
The disciple could not believe what he was hearing.
“I cannot do that, master! How can you be so ungrateful? The cow is all they have. If I throw it off the cliff, they’ll have no way to survive. Without the cow, they’ll all die!”
The wise elderly man, took a deep breath & repeated the order: “Go ahead, Push the cow off the cliff.”
Though outraged at what he was being asked to do, the student was resigned to obey his master.
He returned to the hut & quietly led the animal to the edge of the cliff & pushed. The cow fell down the cliff & died.
As the years passed by, remorse for what he had done never left the disciple.
One spring day, the guilt became too much to bear and he left the wise man & returned to that little shack.
He wanted to find out what had happened to that family, to help them out, apologize, or somehow make amends.
Upon rounding a turn in the road, he could not believe what his eyes.
In place of the poor shack there was a beautiful house with trees, a farm full of rich crops, several cars in the garage etc.
3 good-looking teenagers & their happy parents were celebrating & enjoying the luxuries.
The heart of the disciple froze. What could have happened to the family?
Without a doubt, they must have been starving & forced to sell their land.
At that moment, they must all be begging on the street corners of some city.
He approached the house and asked a man who was passing by about the whereabouts of the family that had lived there several years before.
“You’re looking at it,” said the man, pointing to the people gathered around the barbecue.
Unable to believe what he was hearing, the disciple walked through the gate & took a few steps closer to the lush garden where he recognized the man from several years before, only now he was strong & confident, the woman was happy & the children had grown up to nice-looking teenagers.
He was dumbfounded, and went over to the man & asked:
“What happened? I was here with my teacher a few years ago & this was a miserable place.
What did you do to improve your lives in such a short time?”
The man looked at the disciple & replied with a smile:
“We had a cow that kept us alive. She was all we had. But one day she fell off the cliff & died.
To survive, we had to start doing other things, develop skills we didn’t even know we had.
And so, because we were forced to come up with new ways of doing things, we are now much better off than before.”
Sometimes our dependence on something small & limited is the biggest obstacle to our growth.
Perhaps the best thing that could happen to you is to push your “cow” off the cliff.
Once you free yourself of the thought “it’s little but it’s certain,” — then your life will really change.
Is there a cow (a person, an idea, mental block, stereotype, or mind set) in your life that is keeping you miserable?
Throw it off the cliff, Get out of your comfort zone,
Take the risk to get the best results & stay blessed forever.