The Devotee and the Barber

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
18 June 2010

Sripad Bhakti Madhav Puri Maharaj, a disciple of Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaj Prabhupad and a sannyas disciple of Srila B.R. Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj, wrote one very good article. I saw it in English...

Once a devotee went to a barber shop to shave his hair and face. It was a barber shop like in India. There were many people waiting in the queue because there was only one barber, so somebody was reading a newspaper, somebody was doing something else, and when that barber saw the devotee's tilak, kanthi mala, he became jealous. The barber said, "There is no Lord, no Krishna, no Bhagavan in this world!" The devotee replied, "You will see..."

Another day the devotee went to a train station and saw a big crazy person: with long-long hair and long-long beard, who had not shaved for ten years. He brought that man to the barber shop and said,

"Look! There is no barber in this world!"

"There is! I am a barber. I shaved you the other day. Then why are you saying there is no barber here?"

"If you are a barber, then why does this man have long hair and long beard—why?"

"That man did not come to me, how could I shave him?"

"Then how do you know there is no Bhagavan? You never went to Bhagavan. You never go to Krishna's devotee, you never go to Krishna's temple. Go and you can understand whether Krishna exists or not. You can understand it easily if you get association of Krishna's devotee, otherwise you cannot. This man did not come to you, then you cannot shave him; if you cannot go to Krishna's temple, you cannot understand whether there is Krishna or not."

It is a good example, is it not?

Actually, Krishna consciousness comes through practising, through Krishna-anusilana. If you do not practise, if you think, "Oh, it is not necessary to go to the temple..." You know some devotees do not come to the temple, do not get good association—their Krishna consciousness will disappear.

Param Guru Maharaj, Srila Sridhar Maharaj, gave our sangha a good name: Krishna-anusilana-sangha. Anusilana means practising: our sangha is practising Krishna consciousness. Our main temple's and society's name is Chaitanya Saraswat Math, and we are all under one sangha, and that sangha's name is Krishna-anusilana-sangha.

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