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Stories told by Śrīla Prabhupāda
<< 4 Only a lazy man cannot cook >>
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| And now here is a story about the lazy man. This is also an often-told story, but devotees appreciated very much. So we’ll read it today. “Only a lazy man cannot cook”. This is the point that Prabhupada wanted to make with this story. Only a lazy man cannot cook, because cooking, what follows cooking? Eating. So everybody likes to eat – this is the point. Nobody is too lazy to eat. But sometimes we’re lazy, we want others to cook for us. So there is a story: There was a king who announced: all the lazy men in this kingdom could come to the charity house and be fed. So hundreds of people came and they all said: “I am a lazy man.” The background of the story is that the king was having a discussion with his minister and they were talking about this, who is really lazy, and the minister was saying: “Your Majesty, from what I have seen there are very few people who are actually really lazy. There are many people to say they are lazy, but when it’s in their own interest, they can become very active and then you see they’re not really lazy.” So this whole arrangement was just to see who is really lazy. So it was announced: “All lazy men can come to the charity house and have a big feast. So many, many people came: “I am lazy, I am lazy, I am lazy”. They were introducing themselves in that way. Then the king told the minister to set fire to the charity house. They all were sitting and eating and then suddenly the minister set fire to the wooden house. Then all these lazy people became very active to save their lives, they were all running, jumping out the windows.
| | Then after everyone had left, the king looked in and he saw two men, by this time the whole place was burning and there were two men who were sitting in the middle, fire all around them and they were still eating very slowly, like this, and the king was watching and he saw one of the man turn to the other and say: “My back is becoming very hot from the fire.” The other one said: “Just turn your other side.” From this the king could understand that here are two really lazy men.
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