Capital Misjudgement

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Translated from Bengali, part 8
27 January 2018, Sri Ekachakra Dham

"Following the whims of your mind on pretext of service is not service; following the order of the Guru, serving the Vaishnavs and satisfying them is called service." It is necessary to always serve the Guru. Some shave their heads during the shraddha ceremony and some shave their heads on Nityananda trayodasi—do you think it is the same?

There is a story that Prabhupad Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur told. "I will say nothing, and you too will say nothing."

This country's name is India, and some time ago the government here was British—the magistrates, judges were all British. One time, a man came to a judge and brought him a jackfruit. Foreigners usually do not know this fruit, so they do not know how to eat it, what the seeds look like, etc. The judge was busy in the court when the man came, so he saw the fruit only later. It was a big ripe jackfruit. He was surprised, "What kind of fruit is this?"

He pressed it and felt that it was soft inside. The judge was British, so he did not know what to do with it—he cut the fruit and took out the peel and then he started digging in the sticky part of it that is usually discarded. Now, the judge had a big beard. So, when he tried to eat the jackfruit, the sticky sap of the jackfruit and its pulp all got stuck in his beard. No matter how he tried to get it out of his beard, nothing helped.

In the morning his assistant came and the judge chastised him, "What kind of fruit is this?! All my beard is ruined now! How can I go to the court like this? Bring a barber!" The assistant called a barber and the barber shaved the judge's beard off. When he came to the court, everybody talked among themselves, "Look, what has happened to the judge's beard? Where did it go?"

That day, a sadhu came to the court (he had some case). You know that sadhus shave their heads, they have no beards. When the judge saw that sadhu, he told him to come to his house in the evening, after all the hearings. The sadhu came, and the judge asked him, looking at his shaved head,

"Have you also eaten a jackfruit?"

"No..."

"How come you have no beard then?"

"All of us are like that—we shave our heads and beards."

"All right, do not tell anyone about it. I will keep quiet and you also keep quiet."

There is another story also. One time, a man went to a house where they had a night-long kirtan and listened to the kirtan the whole night. In the morning he thought, "I must go to the mangal arati." So, he went to take a bath in a pond (after that he was going to go to the temple). When he came to the pond, he saw another man taking bath there. It was a thief who was taking a bath after having stolen something.

The thief asked the man, "Which district did you steal in this night?"

The man said, "What do you mean? I went to that house over there, they had a night-long kirtan."

"Oh, and I thought that you too had been stealing..."

A thief thinks every man steals.

We are also like this—we think that everyone is like us...

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