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thought. You may compel a person not to be violent, and he may sit calmly, but you cannot stop the inner turmoil. Once Mahavir told King Shrenik that even the King could not stop the butcher Kalchowrik, who killed five hundred bullocks every day, from killing animals. The King took up the challenge and said that he could stop the butcher for twenty-four hours. Then he sent for the butcher, put him in a basket, and had him lowered into a dry well so that he wouldn't get a chance to kill anything. The next day, the King told Mahavir that the biggest butcher in the land had not killed anything for a whole day. Mahavir smiled and asked the King to ask the butcher what he had been doing while he was in the well. The King put the question to the butcher, and the butcher answered that he had been killing oxen in the well. He said that he had made an ox out of clay at the foot of the well and chopped off its head saying, “One is killed.” He had made another and had said, “Two are killed.” In this manner, he had passed the day. “What else could I do in the well ?” he asked. It was a game; but the game involved emotion, so it was true to life. Mahavir told the King and the others: “If you don't change a man's thought pattern, you can't change his action pattern."
If you change yourself by external actions and your thoughts are the same, there will be no change in you. That is why nothing is greater than meditation. In meditation you are in tune with yourself, with your own music, with everything that you are
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