The Bench in the Rain
Short story about the three voices within us — and the one who hears them.
Every morning on his way to work, Yoav passed the same bench at the bus stop.
And every morning, the same old man sat there.
They had never spoken. Sometimes they simply nodded to each other.
One morning, heavy rain was falling. When Yoav reached the stop, he saw the old man standing beside the bench.
A young woman was sitting on the bench, crying.
Yoav's bus was already visible at the end of the street.
For a moment, he thought:
It's none of my business.
He kept walking.
After two steps, he stopped.
Maybe I should do something.
He turned around, approached the woman, and asked if she was all right.
She didn't answer.
Immediately his mind began racing.
Who should he call? What had happened to her? Should he get her a taxi? Call an ambulance? Maybe he was exactly the person she needed right now.
Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.
It was the old man.
"Do you have an umbrella?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Give it to her."
Yoav handed the woman his umbrella.
She looked up at him with red eyes and quietly said, "Thank you."
That was all.
The old man sat down beside her in the rain.
Yoav watched his bus pass the stop.
"Shouldn't we do something else?" he asked.
The old man shrugged.
"If something is needed, we'll do it."
A few minutes later, a car arrived.
The woman stood, handed the umbrella back to Yoav, and got into the car.
Before closing the door, she said:
"My father died last night. I just couldn't make myself go inside the house."
The car drove away.
Yoav and the old man were alone at the bus stop again.
"At first I just wanted to walk away," Yoav said. "Then I wanted to save her. And in the end..."
"In the end, you held an umbrella," the old man said.
They were silent.
And then Yoav understood.
There is a force within us that says:
Do nothing.
There is a force that says:
Do something and change everything.
And there is a quieter force that says:
See what is needed now — and do only that.
Tamas.
Rajas.
Sattva.
Yoav looked at the rain-covered road.
"How do I know which one of them is me?"
The old man smiled.
"Who heard all three voices?"
Perhaps you are not the voice that wants to escape, nor the voice that wants to achieve, nor even the voice that wants to do good. Perhaps you are the one who can see all three — and choose.
Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 14
“Sattva, Rajas and Tamas — these qualities born of Prakriti bind the imperishable embodied one to the body.”
This is an original Ohananda story inspired by the Bhagavad Gita's teaching on the three gunas, especially Chapter 14. Yoav, the old man and the encounter at the bus stop do not appear in the Bhagavad Gita and are not presented as a historical event.
The Bhagavad Gita describes Sattva, Rajas and Tamas as the three gunas, or qualities, of Prakriti. Tamas is associated with inertia, heaviness and obscuration; Rajas with activity, desire and restlessness; and Sattva with clarity, harmony and wise action.
Chapter 14 goes further than choosing one quality over another. It asks what becomes possible when we can observe all three arising without completely identifying with any of them. In that seeing, right action and inner freedom can begin.
Who heard all three voices?
