THE STORY OF A GOAT AND A TIGER
[IMG]http://alaivani.com/Portals/0/Blog/flickrphotos/digitalART2.jpg[/IMG] There once lived a tigress in a forest. She was pregnant. Once, while she was hunting for food among a group of goats, she fell down grievously wounded. In that situation, she went into labor, delivered a baby tiger, and then died.
This baby tiger was brought up among the goats. It adopted the habits of the goats and was foraging among the grass and nibbling at the leaves. It even cried out like a goat.
As time passed in this manner, the tiger cub grew into a big tiger.
One day, a tiger from the deep forest came to attack this group of goats.
It was astonished to find a tiger [IMG]http://alaivani.com/Portals/0/Blog/animals/goat.jpg[/IMG] cub foraging among the goats, imitating their behavior.
As soon as the tiger from the forest saw this, it ran towards the tiger cub and caught the goat-imitating tiger by its neck.
The goat-imitating tiger, upon being captured by the tiger, started to shout like a goat and asked the tiger to leave it alone, claiming it was a goat.
The tiger then took this goat-imitating tiger to a water tank and showed the image of the two of them, saying, "Look at our reflection in the water. You are like me, a tiger. You are not a goat. Now take this piece of meat."
At first, the goat-imitating tiger refused to partake in the meat.
Eventually, when it tasted blood for the first time, its attitude changed, and its real hidden nature emerged for the first time.
Now the tiger from the forest said to it, "Now do you know that we are both tigers? Come with me to the forest, and let us hunt together."
Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa says that a real guru is like that tiger from the forest, bringing out our real nature.
Many of us are like that goat-imitating tiger, underestimating ourselves. We have immense potential. We are like tigers, free, yet we think we are like goats.
Swami Vivekananda used to say, "Awaken the Atman. Power will come, glory will come."