Article Title: The rat and the snake

Article Summary

This is an article based on spirituality that focuses on fate as how things happen in life while the performer has no clue of what lies in Store ahead of him

The author writes about a poem on a rat and a snake written by Bhartrihari. In this story the snake lives in captivity and is very weak because he’s starving. One day a rat gnawed his way into the snake’s basket. The snake eats him up, gets his strength and escapes from the hole made by the rodent. The author believes that Providence as even Bhartrihari explains through his poem that it operates in a manner that the agents taking part in the whole operation may not be aware of what lies in store for them. The author also expresses that Bhartrihari is not a fatalist as he believes that Providence is a by-product, an effect of something we have done and is different from that of a traditional fatalist (who accepts all things and events as inevitable). The author concludes through the words of Bhartrihari that what we call Fate, is nothing but the combined effect of the efforts undertaken by the individual doer during her long chain of births and whatever happens to us good or bad is because of the things we did in our past and present .