There was a just and popular emperor who ruled in ancient India. All his life he fought many battles and expanded his empire to great extents. Besides this, he also treated his subjects very kindly. The people in his kingdom enjoyed all liberty in their lives. As the emperor grew older, his thirst for spirituality increased. Now he wished to attain salvation.
One day, he reached near a saint and told him his wish. The saint told the emperor that for attaining salvation, he would need to sacrifice all that he acquired from this world. When the emperor would sacrifice everything acquired, it would become very easy to attain salvation and get united with the Supreme Energy.
The emperor became happy to listen this. He returned to his capital and gave all his empire to his children and donated all his property to the poor. He then happily returned to saint and said, "I have now sacrificed everything." The saint understood that the emperor has sacrificed only materialistic things but not the "actual" ego that he had acquired from the world.
He said to the emperor, "I could see that you brought everything with you." The emperor did not understand it but remained silent. With the aim of removing the ego from the emperor's mind, the saint assigned the task of cleaning the garbage of ashram to emperor.
This task seemed harsh to other disciples of ashram. But the saint insisted and said, "This task is necessary to make the emperor a vessel of acquiring truth." The emperor started doing his task honestly. After few days passed, the saint sent one of his disciples to check the activity of emperor. The disciple saw that while taking the garbage through a road, the emperor collided with a passerby and much of the garbage fell across the path. The emperor looked at the passerby and angrily said, "You don't seem to be blind." The disciple returned and told everything to the saint. The saint said, "Still the emperor is not able to sacrifice his "I"."
After few days, the emperor again collided with a passerby. This time the emperor said nothing but stared angrily. When the saint came to know about this incident, he thought, 'It is so easy to leave the materialistic thing but not the ego which is the actual hindrance in achieving salvation.'
After few days, again one passerby collided with emperor. But this time, the emperor did not become angry. He quietly collected all the garbage and went ahead. When the saint came to know about this, he said, "Today, the emperor has actually sacrificed the ego that he had acquired from this world. Now he is ready for getting self-knowledge and attaining salvation."
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