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Stories told by Śrīla Prabhupāda
<< 25 The boy who would not give up sweets >>
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| And this is another nice story “The boy who would not give up sweets”. A woman brought a child to see a saintly person. She told the sadhu: “The doctor informs me that my child is a diabetic and he must stop eating all kinds of sugary sweets. But in spite of what I tell him he won’t stop. Since you are a saintly person I am sure that if you tell him to stop eating sugar and sweets, he will listen and his life can be saved.” Surprisingly to that woman, the sadhu replied that he could not tell the child to stop eating sweets on that day. He said: “Bring the child back after four days.” The mother was a little disturbed by this. “Why he can’t tell my child right now? Four more days my child will eat sweets, this is not good. But anyway,” she thought, “he is a saintly person, so I should do what he said”. But she was really disturbed in her mind about this. Then after four days she brought her child back and then the child sat in front of the sadhu and the sadhu said to him in a very grave voice, very seriously: “You must stop eating sweets.” And the child was very profoundly affected by these words and he bowed down at the sadhu’s feet and said: “Yes, I promise from this day on, I will never eat sweets again. This is my promise to you.” Then the mother was very surprised and she asked: “Please swamiji, tell me why is it, that four days ago you would not tell my child this and now today when I brought the child you were so speaking with such determination, so seriously that it completely changed my child’s heart?” The sadhu replied: “You see, on that day you came – four days ago, I myself was eating sweets. Therefore I had to give up the sweets myself. Now I can tell this child with complete seriousness and no hypocrisy – don’t eat sweets and it has effect”.
| | So moral – example is better then precept. Precept means principles, speaking principles, but to set the example of those principles is more important. A leader cannot tell the public to stop smoking for instance, if he himself smokes. He should practice himself first. Then he becomes acharya.
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