There was a time when Shri Babaji Maharaj stayed in the house of a very wealthy person- a seth – who offered the hospitality of his large mansion to Shri Babaji Maharaj. The room in which Shri Babaji Maharaj lived in the seth’s house was adjacent to a large and well-kept garden. The seth would wander out into the garden every day and take a walk there. One day the seth asked Shri Babaji Maharaj why he never ventured outside his room to take a walk in the garden.
And Shri Babaji Maharaj replied: “Baag ki sair to beemaar kiyaa karte hain! Only the sick need the walk of a garden. And I am not sick!”
The seth said to Shri Babaji Maharaj: “But Sir, I am apparently healthier than you in appearance, and yet I go out into the garden daily!”
Shri Babaji Maharaj said: “You may not be ill physically, but you are ill spiritually!”
The seth was surprised and said: “ In what way?”
And Shri Babaji said: “Listen, therefore, O seth! When your mind becomes restless inside the house and the fine objects inside the house cannot hold your heart, a desire arises within you to go out and look at the finery in the garden. You thus become a slave of that desire and are compelled to go out of the house. In other words an illness afflicts your body and mind for the garden, and you go to the garden to seek a cure for it. And when the illness is cured you return to your house. Thus you come back to the same place from where you had gone.
“I, on my part, do not suffer from this illness of unrest and I do not seek a cure for it by going outside into the garden. However there is a garden in which I roam:
Andeshaye khaar ast dareen saire gulistaan
Dar khilwate dil gulshane be khaar babeened
There is the fear of thorns while walking in a garden,
But in the silence of the heart, look upon a garden without thorns