The Begging Bowl

There lived a king whose palace was the most beautiful thing in the kingdom. One morning coming out of the palace he encountered a beggar. The king being kind asks,"what do you want?" The beggar laughingly says, "you ask as though you can fulfill my desire!" Offended, the king replies, "of course I can. What is it?" The beggar warns, "think twice before you promise anything."

The king insisted and said, "I will fulfill anything you ask, for I am a very powerful king who can fulfill any desire." The beggar said, "it is very simple desire. Can you fill this begging bowl?" "Of course!" Said the king, and he instructed his vizier to "fill the man's begging bowl with money." The vizier did, but when the money was poured into the bowl, it disappeared. So he poured more and more, but the moment he did, it would disappear.

The begging bowl remained empty.

Word spread throughout the kingdom, and huge crowd gathered. The prestige and power of the king were at stake, so he told his vizier, "if my kingdom is to be lost, 'I am ready to lose it, but I cannot be defeated by this beggar." He continued to empty his wealth into the bowl. Diamonds, pearls, emeralds. His treasure was becoming empty.

And yet the begging bowl seemed bottomless. Everything put into it immediately disappeared!

Finally, as the crowd stood in utter silence, the king dropped at the beggar's feet and admitted defeat. "You are victorious, but before you go, fulfill my curiosity. What is the secret of this begging bowl?"

The beggar humbly replied, "There is so secret. It is simply made up of human desire."

One of our biggest challenge is making sure our life's purpose doesn't become a beggar's bowl, a bottomless pit of desire continually searching for the next thing that will make us happy. That's a losing proposition.

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Excerpt from the book "The One Thing" by "Gary Keller".