You know that story of the green glasses? The story is of a holy man who goes from house to house to beg for food, as is appropriate for a renunciate. He comes to a very wealthy mansion and there he goes to the kitchen to get some food. The owner of the house sees him and he calls him in and says, "Swami I want to ask you something. I have been to every doctor in the world. I have this continuous headache and I always have this bellyache and I see double and I have this ringing in my ears and I am suffering so much. I have gone to see every doctor and nobody can give me any help. You are a holy man. You must tell me what I should do." The holy man looked around. There were so many things all over the house, so many knick-knacks, so much stuff, so much confusion. He said, "This is what you do. Bring the color green into your life. Let yourself only see green. Wherever you look, there should only be green. Green is a warm color, particularly a nice pastel green. You know, something that will feed you. It will give you some strength and then the symptoms will disappear after some time." And so the man thanked him very much and said, "I will certainly do as you said." And he made his parting salutations, and the holy man went off.

   Six months later the holy man came back to that area and again he went there. He was amazed as he came close to that mansion to see that everything had been painted green. The gate was green, the house was green, the trees of course were green but the stems of the trees were also painted green. There were working men around on green ladders, painting green. There was so much activity. Every place, wherever he looked, there was this green. And since the holy man was dressed in his ochre robe, the watchman ran out and put a green cloth over him, so that there was no chance for the owner to see something other than green. 'What madness is taking place here?' the holy man thought to himself. The owner recognized the saint and called him in. The holy man asked him, "Well, how are you doing?" "Worse than ever! I am so worried that something will happen, that someone will come or some workman will do something and I will see something other than the color green. I am spending hundreds of thousands of rupees doing everything to make it all green, but I am so concerned, I am so worried, that my headache is worse than ever!" The holy man said, "What a great fool you are! You have created so much chaos and confusion in your life. Look at all this senseless activity and how much money you have wasted. All you had to do was to buy some green-colored glasses. For four rupees you could get some green glasses. Then all you would see would be green. Instead you have made all this trouble for yourself."

30  Bliss