Several people were crossing the Ganges in a boat. A pundit amongst the passengers was gloating over his erudition claiming to have read the Vedas, the Vedanta and the six systems of philosophy. Mockingly, he asked one of the fellow passengers, ?Are you conversant with the Vedanta?? The commoner expressed his ignorance over Vedanta. Then, ?Have you read the Sankhya and the Patanjali??, the pundit continued to jeer him. ?No, revered sir? remained the layman'sreply. The pundit maintained to anguish his fellow passengers with this way of sarcasm. And then the weather took a tempestuous turn. A great storm broke loose, listing the boat in a precarious way. The boat was about to capsize any moment. The fellow passenger frantically asked the pundit, ?Sir can you swim?? ?No? replied the panicked pundit. Now the fellow passenger mocked back at the pundit ? ?I neither know Sankhya nor Patanjali, but I can swim at least.?
Merely knowing the scriptures without gleaning its real essence remains defunct. And so, one needs to be prudent in imbibing scriptures in a meaningful way.
