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Stories told by Śrīla Prabhupāda
<< 27 A man chopping wood in the forest >>
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| Oh, this is a very good story. Sometimes devotees, they are maintaining wrong desires in their heart and they’re serving superior devotees, serving the spiritual master and at the same time they’re keeping these wrong desires in their heart. Actually that’s very dangerous and we will see why. There was once a man chopping wood in the forest. He was splitting the woods stacking it in piles. It’s a very exhausting work, he thought. So he sat down under one particularly very nice tree. This tree looked very attractive – it was giving such a nice shade. So he sat down and he was cooling off. And then he thought to himself as he was sitting there: “I just wish all this wood that I need to chop today would just be chopped by itself.” Suddenly his ax jumped up and went to all the trees and very quickly chopped all the wood, split it and all the wood piled up into very nice stack. And he was surprised. And than he looked again at tree he was sitting under and he realized: “This is a kalpa-vrksa tree. This is a tree that fulfills all desires.” So then he began to think of himself: “Oh, what do I want? I know I want a beautiful woman.” So, puff – there was a beautiful woman. “And now I want a beautiful place to live in and I want many nice servants and I want an opulent feast and I want money.” And in this way he went on and on and on and everything he was thinking about it all appeared there and he was so happy: “Oh, I have everything.” Then he was still sitting under the tree, as it got very dark. Then he was looking as the sun went down, he thought: “Hmm, it’s getting dark now. Now this is in the jungle. So watch out here in the dark, I know what can happen. A tiger will jump out and eat one.” So just at that moment a big tiger appeared and jumped out and ate him.
| | The moral is when we bow down to the vaishnavas, we pray: vancha- kalpatarubhyas ca – we address the devotees as desire trees, and that’s a fact. Every devotee is a desire tree and we are associating with devotees all around us, so we have to be very careful about what we desire. Because if we desire material things, then these desires may actually be fulfilled or they may increase more and more in our heart and become very, very troublesome to our advancement. Since we are in association of devotees who are like desire trees, we should desire to advance in devotional service and that desire will come true.
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