The morning singing at Kartarpur had finished, and people were going home.
A few stayed behind, the way people do, to ask for things.
And when nearly everybody had gone, two young men came up. They were cousins, and their names were Sheehan Ji and Gajjan.
They went straight down at Guru Nanak Dev Ji's feet, and they did not get up.
The Lord bless you, said Guru Ji.
They stayed where they were.
So after a while he reached out and put a hand on each of their heads and lifted them himself, and said: bless you. Get up now.
They got up and looked at him, and then bowed again.
And the elder one put his hands together and said: we have been longing to see you. And now that we have, we have come to beg.
Go on then, said Guru Ji, smiling. Tell me what you are greedy for.
And Sheehan Ji, who was not shy, said: give us all four. Put us on the true road. Make us prosperous. Give us the things we want. And save us at the end of it.
And Guru Ji laughed out loud.
You really are greedy, he said. Four things in one breath.
Very well, the Lord will bless you. But listen. What a person gets is according to what he has done.
Sheehan Ji had an answer ready.
The learned men say our lines are already drawn and cannot be changed. You are the only one who ever gave hopeless people any hope. You have said the old wrongs can be washed off.
We have no strength of our own. Do a miracle for us. Wash our old doings away, and let us have what we want.
And Guru Ji told them a story instead.
Suppose I did, he said. Suppose I washed it all off you tonight.
You would go straight out and do the same things again, because you are still the same people, and habits are habits.
There was a holy man once who met a poor man who had made himself ill and ruined by living badly. The holy man was kind. He cured him, and blessed him, and the man became rich.
And within a little while the man was doing exactly what he had done before, and was ill again, and ruined again.
And the holy man could not understand it. I cured him, he said. I made him rich. And here he is, back where he started.
Now, said Guru Ji, tell me what the holy man got wrong.
Nothing, said the cousins. He was kind. Where is the fault in that.
The fault, said Guru Ji, is that he changed the man's luck and never changed the man.
He should have shown him how to become somebody different first. Then, when the money came, he would have known what to do with it.
Do you know how a habit is made, said Guru Ji. You do a thing, and you do it again, and you do it again, and then it does you.
I want to give you something that changes what you are like. Once that changes, everything else you asked for follows on behind.
And what is it, said Sheehan Ji. We are not clever men. Tell us plainly.
The Name, said Guru Ji.
Sit with good people, and say it. O Lord. Say it until it stops being something you say and becomes something you remember, and then until it stops being something you remember and becomes a feeling that He is here, watching, right now.
Because what a man thinks about, he turns into.
A thief thinks about stealing all day and all night, and steals, and he becomes a thief.
So somebody who spends his days thinking about the One who is all goodness will end up with goodness in him. It is the same rule, running the other way.
And once your nature has changed, said Guru Ji, your doings change by themselves, without your having to fight them.
And once your doings have changed, the wanting goes quiet.
And when the wanting goes quiet, you will find you are no longer short of anything.
To stop wanting is to have your wishes granted, he said. To be content is to be rich.
Goodnight. They came asking for four things and were handed one, and the one turned out to contain the other three.