One of the disciples of Buddha was Shrona. He was a prince who left home, and renounced his palaces. He was a great pleasure seeker as a prince; he had made all arrangements in his palace for pleasure and indulgence.
Then one day Buddha visited his town, and Shrona became his disciple. Buddha’s followers were astonished and they said, ”We never thought that Shrona would ever become a sannyasin. You have performed a miracle.”
”No,” said Buddha, ”it is no miracle on my part, not in the least. Shrona was bound to become a sannyasin, because the mind travels from one extreme to the other. Before long you will see his behaviors: your actions are nothing compared to what you will see from Shrona.”
And that was the way it happened. Soon people saw that Shrona was the most ascetic among them. Buddha’s bhikshus used to take one meal a day; Shrona would take one meal in two days. If other bhikshus would walk on the road, Shrona would walk on the rocky and thorny path. Other bhikshus would rest under the shadow of some tree at noon, but Shron would be standing out in the sun.
”You see,” said Buddha, ”he was torturing his body before he became a bhikshu, and he is torturing it even now. Previously he was torturing it in the form of indulgences, now he is torturing it in the form of penances, but the torture, the enmity continues.”
Within six months nothing remained of Shrona’s beautiful body but dry bones, wrinkled and dried up, his eyes sunken, his feet full of wounds and blisters; nobody could have recognized that this was prince Shrona.
One night Buddha visited his hut and said to him, ”Shrona, I hear that you were an expert at playing veena when you were a prince. I would like to ask you one thing: Will music still arise from the instrument if the strings are stretched too taut?”
Shrona replied, ”Yes, music will still arise, but it will sound very shrill; and if the strings are really too taut they will snap and there will be no music.”
Then Buddha asked him, ”And if the strings are very slack – what then?”
Shrona said, ”Then too, music will not be born. Or if it will be, it will sound very dreary and lifeless. And if the strings are slackened enough there will be no music at all.”
Buddha asked, ”Then what is the law governing the birth of music from the instrument?”
Shrona said, ”The strings should be stretched to a middle point – not too tight, not too loose.”
Buddha stood up to leave and said to Shrona ”Shrona, I just came to tell you that this law of music is the law of life too. The music of samadhi – enlightenment – will arise in life only when the strings are at the midpoint of their tension. Avoid extremes! It is easy to move from indulgence to renouncing, but you have to stop at the midpoint of the two and that is where the balance is.”
