DISCOURSES Volume II - Avatar Meher Baba Trust

190 DISCOURSESall the metaphysics of the world but who does not allow any of histheories to modify his everyday life.The difference between the comparative importance oftheory and practice in the field of Sadhana may be brought out bymeans of a well-known story of an ass. An ass, who was ploddingStory of an assalong a path for a long time and was veryhungry, happened to see two heaps ofgrass—one at some distance on the right side of the path and theother at some distance on the left side of the path. Now the assthought that it was of utmost importance to be absolutely certainwhich of the two heaps was clearly the better before he couldintelligently decide to go to one heap rather than the other. If hedecided without thorough thinking and without having sufficientgrounds for his preference, that would be impulsive action and notintelligent action. So he first considered the distance at which thetwo heaps were respectively placed from the path which he wastreading. Unfortunately for him, after elaborate consideration, heconcluded that the heaps were equally distant from the path. So hewondered if there were some other consideration which mightenable him to make a "right" choice and speculated upon the respectivesizes of the heaps. Even with this second attempt to betheoretically sure before acting his efforts were not crowned withsuccess, because he concluded that both heaps were of equal size.Then, with the tenacity and patience of an ass, he considered otherthings such as the quality of the grass, but as fate would have it, inall the points of comparison which he could think of the two heapsturned out to be equally desirable.Ultimately it happened that since the ass could not discoverany deciding factor which would make his preference appeartheoretically sound, he did not go to