Lessons On The Path

One of the first jobs I tackled in New York after Guru put me in charge of organising the 1991 Peace Run was to publish a brochure about the Run. Since I was new to this kind of work, I was feeling my way, but I was aware that Guru wanted very much to be involved and that he liked to see anything before it was printed. I spent a lot of time with other disciples working on the text and the layout, but for some unknown reason, when it came time to print the brochure, I didn't show it to Guru. After we had printed 3,000 copies, I very proudly gave it to one of the disciples to show Guru. Later that day the disciple informed me that not only did Guru not like the brochure, but he actually did not want us to use it at all. Furthermore, Guru did not like the way I showed it to him after the fact, since it meant I was obviously expecting him to say what a good job I had done. Needless to say, I was a bit shattered—not only had I displeased Guru but I had also succeeded in wasting about $400 in donated funds. We started on the brochure again, and this time I meticulously showed Guru everything and got his approval. But when it was printed, the brochure still looked terrible. I told Guru this, and he compassionately said, "What can you do?" We used these copies of the brochure, but we also started redesigning it. I tried to show Guru our work, but because it was during April Celebrations, he was so busy that he hardly looked at it. Torn between trying to show him again and just going ahead, I gambled and got it printed. When I showed Guru the final product, he was very happy and so proud that he asked for copies to be sent to his family in India so they could see it.

Salil (Canberra)