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Stories told by Śrīla Prabhupāda
<< 16 The man who wouldn’t change his word >>
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| And now there is a story about sugar cane. Is it? No. We’ll go on to the story about “The man who wouldn’t change his word”. Yes, this is a story to illustrate dogmatism. You know, when one becomes dogmatic, then he sticks to some argument even when their argument is no longer useful. He sticks to some philosophy or whatever when it’s no longer valid. And although we as devotees, we must always preach from the Vedic scriptures and the Vedic scriptures never change, but that doesn’t mean that we should not adjust our preaching as we heard before to time, place and circumstance. So this is a story that illustrates this point very nicely.
| | There was a man who is an expert in some certain field and that field was very important in criminal investigation. You know, just like when there are criminal cases, they call experts on blood analysis or other such things to testify, to clarify the evidence. So there was such a man, he was always being called to the court to give his opinion. He was always sworn to tell the truth, you see, you must tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God, hold up your right hand. When he was sworn in like that the first time then the first question he was asked: “Could you please tell us your age for the record?” He said: “My age is 60 years.” Then after that year after year whenever he was called to the court, even ten years later, he was sworn in and then asked his age: “Sixty years old”. The judge after ten years said: “My dear sir, you’ve been coming in this court regularly for ten years and every time you say you’re sixty years old, but it’s now ten years later.” And the man replied: „I have sworn the first day I came here that my age is sixty years old, I cannot change my word.”
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