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Stories told by Śrīla Prabhupāda
<< 14 The ax and a tree >>
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| Next story is a story Srila Prabhupada told actually to describe himself, to define his own mission. This is called “The ax and a tree”. Mayavadi gurus have ruined the whole world with their philosophy. But there was another Bengali who would destroy them, you see. The greatest mayavadi gurus in recent history were all Bengalis. Rama Krishna was a Bengali, Vivekananda was a Bengali, that Paramahamsa Yogananda, who went to America in the early 50s, he was a Bengali, there is another one, Sri Chinmoy, who is very well known, he is a Bengali and there are others. So the real big mayavadis were all Bengalis. Srila Prabhupada said, all he said that Bengalis are very intelligent. So when a Bengali comes out of Bengal, especially if he comes to the West, where people don’t know philosophy, it’s very easy for a Bengali to cheat, because they’re very clever. So Prabhupada said that it takes another Bengali, meaning himself, to defeat such clever Bengali mayavadis.
| | The story Prabhupada told to illustrate this was a story of an ax head, you know just the middle sharp part of an ax was lying next to a tree and the ax and the tree were talking. So this ax head said to the tree: “I will cut you down.” And the tree replied: “You can’t do that.” And the ax said: “No, but I am very sharp, I can cut you down.” And the tree replied: “You can’t do anything unless I first give you one of my branches for a handle.” The ax represents the western world, who were being cheated by the Bengalis. The tree represents Bengal or the Bengalis. So westerners, it is like Prabhupada said, when Vivekenanda came to Chicago, there was a conference, big world religious conference in Chicago I think was 1898 or something like that, 1896. And Vivekananda came there and he stood up because it was a religious conference so there were all religions there and they all were expecting to hear different ideas about God. Then Vivekananda stood up, he had his big turban and he was very impressive and everyone was astonished when he came to speak and he said: “Why have you gathered here to speak about God, how to worship God in different ways? Don’t you know you‘re all God?” And so they were astonished, they never heard anyone say something like that before. The Christians, they wanted to protest, but this Vivekananda was so clever he was talking circles around him. They felt in their heart that this is wrong. How is it that we are all God, how he can say – this is mad, they couldn’t believe they‘ve heard this and they wanted to protest, but he was so clever and they couldn’t defeat him.
| | This is the story to illustrate, that the tree represents Bengal and unless Bengal gives one of her branches to the ax no one can cut this tree down. Srila Prabhupada came from Bengal to deliver the actual Vedic philosophy of Krishna consciousness and defeat all the mayavadis. Therefore we pray Srila Prabhupada with that pranam mantra nirvisesa sunyavadi pascatya desa tarine. He has come to the lands where nirvisesa sunyavadi philosophy has spread and he’s preaching the message of Caitanya Mahaprabhu.
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