Chapter-4. ADVICE TO HOUSEHOLDERS-27-24

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16/02/2018

24. Futility of mere lecturing :-

"What can you achieve by mere lecturing and scholarship without discrimination and dispassion? God alone is real, and all else is unreal.  God alone is substance, and all else is nonentity.  That is discrimination.

"First of all set up God in the shrine of your heart, and then deliver lectures as much as you like.  How will the mere repetition of 'Brahma' profit you if you are not imbued with discrimination and dispassion? It is the empty sound of a conch-shell.

"There lived in a village a young man named Padmalochan.  People used to call him 'Podo', for short.  In this village there was a temple in a very dilapidated condition.  It contained no image of God.  Aswattha and other plants sprang up on the ruins of its walls.  Bats lived inside, and the floor was covered with dust and the droppings of the bats.

The people of the village had stopped visiting the temple.  One day after dusk the villagers heard the sound of a conch-shell from the direction of the temple.  They thought perhaps someone had installed an image in the shrine and was performing the evening worship.  One of them softly opened the door and saw Padmalochan standing in a corner, blowing the conch.  No image had been set up.  The temple hadn't been swept or washed.  And filth and dirt lay everywhere.  Then he shouted to Podo:

You have set up no image here,
Within the shrine, O fool!
Blowing the conch, you simply make
Confusion worse confounded.
Day and night eleven bats
Scream there incessantly.

To be continued ..
Sri Ramakrishna

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