In a small city, there lived a homeless person who roamed about near the downtown district for most of the day. He would beg for some food and change, and then also make some money recycling soda cans and bottles. Once he had enough money, he would go to the nearest wine shop, buy some cheap liquor and drink away until he became stone drunk. Upon getting drunk, he would move about from block to block, stopping various passersby and ask them “Sir/Madam, Can you tell me the correct time?” Most of them would oblige, report the time and then walk on. The homeless man however would move on to the next person, and then ask the same question “Sir, what is the correct time!?”
One day, a new shopkeeper who has just set up shop in that area was sitting outside and doing some accounting. The shopkeeper happened to notice the activity of the drunkard for the first time. The homeless man kept asking the time to all the passersby. After three hours of this activity, the shopkeeper grew curious and asked the drunkard “Why do you keep asking the time again and again?”
The drunkard said “Sir, I want to know the correct time. Unfortunately each person is giving me a different time - no two people gave me the same number. To find out who is speaking the truth, I keep asking the time until two people report the same time!”.
The poor drunkard did not realize that three hours had passed since he first started asking the time! In the above case, although all the people reported the correct time, the drunkard did not have the mental capacity to understand that all of them were speaking the truth, and that is was him who was taking what was said in a literal sense, without understanding the context behind their answers.
Just like the passersby, all the great spiritual masters in the great spiritual traditions spoke about the same universal truth. Each mighty master spoke the truth in a manner that was most suited to the times in which they lived, depending on the capacities of the people around them, the social and economic climate, and also their own individual personality.
Like the drunkard, many people take everything that is said by the masters quite literally without understanding the context in which it was said. Comparing the scriptures word to word, we foolishly try to prove that what masters of our tradition said is true and what masters of other traditions said is false. When we fail to see that all masters from different spiritual/religious traditions spoke the one and the same truth, are we any better off than the foolish drunkard in this story?
Courtesy: Inspirations by Sudhir Krishnan
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