Vidyadar was a very famous, honored writer in India. He was a very great thinker and scholar. He was invited to a party. And he went to the party in very ordinary clothes, not very nice clothes, a bit shabby. It was a royal party, so when he went there, the guards would not let him in. They chased him out! He went back home and put on his coat and came back.
When he came again to the party, everybody was dining. And he started taking all the food and shoved it in the pockets of his coat. He told the coat, “Now you eat it, you eat it. All this food is for you, not for me.” He put the ice cream all over his coat and desserts all over his coat. He would not eat. The viceroy and other people who were there, they wondered what the matter was with him, “What is it? What are you doing?”
He told his story. “I got honored because I was invited. When I put on the coat, they let me in. Without the coat when I first came, they wouldn’t let me in! So all the honor is just for this coat, not for me!”
Rupa dhana kula kriyadi-bhedah.
And what one does, that is also not important. A devotee could be chopping vegetables, selling tomatoes, could be doing any job. The job is not an obstruction for enlightenment, for living love in your fullness. One can be doing any job. Through the job or the actions they do, do not judge a person. We judge people by their family, or the race, or their educational qualification, or how much money they have, or what they do. Do not look into these things. All these distinctions vanish, because love is beyond all this.
