Once there was a disciple who lived with his master in a hermitage. However, the disciple was very lazy and would always postpone his work for tomorrow or the day after. This habit caused his work to be delayed, and he would later repent. Due to his laziness in his studies, he fell behind all the other students in the gurukul. The master was aware of his disciple's habit and was concerned about it. One day, the master found a way to teach his disciple a lesson. He went to his disciple, gave him a black stone, and said, "Son, take this stone. This is not an ordinary stone; it is a philosopher's stone. The specialty of the stone is that if you rub any iron with the stone, that iron will turn into gold. I am giving this black stone to you, and with its help, you can turn iron into gold and get as much gold as you want. I am going out for a day, and I will come back by tomorrow evening. Till then, you keep it. When I come back, I will take it back from you." Saying this, the master turned back to leave but passed for a moment and added, "Remember, you have time till tomorrow evening." Then the master left.
The lazy disciple thought that he had a close fist on becoming rich. He planned to buy a lot of scrap iron from the market and turn it into gold with the help of the stone. However, he kept procrastinating and delaying the work, thinking he had enough time. When he woke up on the day of his master's return, he realized he had missed his chance. The master had come back, took the stone back from him, and said, "Your time is up. A lazy person like you cannot do anything in his life. You had 24 hours in which you could make as much gold as you wanted, but because of your laziness, you could not do anything. I will not give you the stone even for a second, and this is the punishment for your laziness. The man who does not value time cannot do anything in his life." The disciple was embarrassed, and he had missed a golden opportunity to get rich because of his laziness. However, he had now understood the lesson which his master wanted to teach him. In front of his master, he vowed never to be lazy and always make good use of his time.
In our lives, we sometimes become lazy and start to delay our work for tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. Whenever it comes, it comes in the form of the present. If we want to do something, we should do it now because the wheel of time is never going to stop; it will always keep moving. If we cannot complete our work on time, then our condition will also be like that of the disciple who missed a great opportunity due to his laziness. Therefore, we should always remember that we can get everything by giving our time, but we cannot get time back by giving our everything. We should never put off until tomorrow what we can do today because we may delay, but time will not.
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