Story · 26
Chintamani: The Gem the Fool Never Recognized
A miser found the chintamani, a gem that grants every wish, and could not hold onto it. A rich man saw it, took it for an ordinary stone, and let it go. Both stories ask the same question: why do we not recognize what already lies in our hands.
Rama asked, “Gurudev, does it ever happen that we fail to recognize a thing that is our very own?”
Vasistha said, “Rama, listen to two stories of the chintamani. One of a miser, and one of a rich man.”
The Miser
There was a miser, and his name was Kripan.
Every day he counted his old cowrie shells. He had only a few cowries, and he loved them dearly.
One day one of his cowries slipped away somewhere and was lost.
Kripan grew frantic. He searched every corner of the house, and still it was nowhere to be found.
So he set off into the forest to look for a few more cowries. There, beneath a tree, close to a stone, he began his search.
Just then his eye fell on a stone that looked ordinary, yet shone with a bright glow.
Kripan picked it up.
The moment the stone lay in his hand, a wish rose in the miser’s mind: he wanted a single roti (a flatbread). And in that very instant, the roti appeared before him.
The miser was astonished. He made another wish, that he wanted gold. And gold came too.
The miser began to think.
That this was the chintamani, the stone that fulfills every wish.
But the very next moment another thought came to him: he had come only to find his one lost cowrie, and that cowrie must surely be lying somewhere else.
With that thought, he left the chintamani where it lay and walked on to search further.
After searching a long while, he finally found a single cracked cowrie, and he turned home happy.
On the way he passed the same tree where he had left the chintamani. The stone still lay there, shining, but the miser did not so much as glance at it. In his hand was one cracked cowrie, and to him this was the greatest wealth of all.
The Rich Man
Now listen to the second story. There was a rich man who had everything, and yet he was always restless.
One day he heard that there was a chintamani, a stone that fulfills every wish. The rich man resolved, deep within himself, that he would find it no matter what.
He went into the forest and searched for many years. One day he came upon a stone that shone, and the rich man picked it up.
But the rich man could not bring himself to trust that stone.
He thought, what kind of stone is this, it looks so ordinary. The chintamani must surely be something far grander.
And he flung the stone to the ground.
The stone lay where it fell, and the rich man walked on to search further. For many years he went on searching this way.
And one day he died.
What lay in his hand he never recognized, and what he searched for he never found.
Rama spoke, thinking it over, “Gurudev, both of them held the chintamani.”
“Yet neither of them recognized it, because one was searching for something small, and the other for something great.”
“And the true chintamani lay in the hand of each all along.”
Vasistha said,
“Rama, each of us carries a chintamani, and it is our own consciousness. It can fulfill every wish, and still we do not recognize it. Sometimes we search for small things, sometimes for great ones, but we never once turn to look at our own consciousness.”
Rama kept gazing at the water.
The literary source
Both of these stories are based on the Nirvana Prakarana of the Yoga Vasistha, sarga 6a.83 and sargas 6a.88 and 90 (within the story of Chudala). Both are a small allegory of the irony by which consciousness goes unseen.
A philosophical view
A miser, searching and searching for one small cowrie, comes upon the chintamani, and recognizing its worth, is set free. A rich man holds the chintamani in his hand, yet never grasps its value, and loses it. One and the same stone, two different outcomes. The story says that having realization stand before you and recognizing that realization are two separate things, and the deciding factor is the worthiness of the one who recognizes it. His affluence has nothing to do with it.
Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) said many times, in Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi (1955), that the truth stands before us at every moment. There is no need to go searching for it. The work is to build the worthiness to see it, and this worthiness does not come from books or from tapas (austerity). It comes from the simplicity that can rest inside a single question, “Who am I?” This is the warning of both chintamani stories. Realization does come before us, again and again, and we either recognize it, or take it for a common stone and throw it away.