An Oasis Of Hope

Once when King Brahmananda was ruling Benares, the Bodhisattva was born in a Vaisya family of traders. When he grew up, he began looking after the family business. He used to take his merchandise in as many as five hundred carts. They travelled in a convoy. 

It so happened that once they were crossing a desert. The smooth white sand was spread over a stretch of sixty miles. The area would be cool at night when they travelled and halted soon after dawn when the sun would be up in the sky and it would be too hot both for men and cattle to travel. Just as in the vast ocean the ships took direction from the stars, in desert too travellers would be guided by the stars.
In the daytime, the carts were parked in a circle and the cartmen raised a tent in the middle and rested. They carried water to drink and cook and rice, oil land all ingredients for their food. 

The food used to be prepared and eaten before noon, so that the men could rest for a long while till the sun set.

The bodhisattva and his convoy thus travelled and traversed the desert till there was only a distance of a couple of miles left to reach the city. Before they started the journey, the men driving the carts poured all the water that was left with them and threw away the leftover firewood, so that the carts would be light and the bullocks would run swiftly.

The cartman at the head of the convoy would be alert and shout the directions so that the men in the carts behind him would not lose their way. He went to sleep hoping that they would reach the city before dawn.

As there were no directions coming from the leader, the drivers of the vehicles behind merely followed the cart in front. When the first light of dawn fell on the carts, the cartmen realized that they were nowhere near the city and they were still in the middle of the desert. They now decided to go back to the place where they had rested the previous day. Unfortunately, there was no water available in that place.