India, May 10 -- It was a warm sunny morning on the 9th September 1986. We all sat huddled at the Ram temple in Siddhabari, where Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayanandaji had just presided over a religious ceremony with much chanting of mantras amidst the hustle bustle of the crowds trying to gain a better view of the ceremony. So after it was over, Gurudev began to tell us this story:

A hunter carrying a bagful of birds was enlightened by a saint on the multiple suffering he had caused to the families of so many helpless birds. The reformed hunter stopped hunting and started farming to feed his family, but he saw other hunters perpetrating the same suffering on other birds. So he caught a hundred parrots and taught them to repeat a mantra: "...