Story from the legend

In the year of 1897, Swami Vivekananda stayed at the house of late Gopal Lal Seal at Cossipore. One day many pundits came to meet Swami Vivekananda in the hope of having an philosophical discussion with SwamiJi.

All the pundits were well versed in Sankrit and they were discussing the matter in fluent sankrit. So Swamiji also spoke in sanskrit with them. But at one occassion, Swamiji made a grammatical mistake in the spoken sanskrit language. He used the word Asti instead of Svasti, which made the Pundits laugh out. Swamiji quickly accpeted his mistake and the discussion went on. In the end Pundits were convinced of the Swami Vivekananda arguments and they accepted his view points and left gladly.

After the pundits left, Swami Vivekananda explained the whole discussion to the disciples and also told about the fact that they laughed at him because they had picked up a grammatical mistake in his words. Swamiji further said that as He had stayed for a long period of time away from india, so he has not spoken sanskrit for so many years. After that day disciples started speaking with Swamiji in sanskrit only.

Swamiji spoke further about this discussion and said that in the West no one would make a big point of the small grammatical mistake which he made. But they would have given more importance to the point which he wanted to assert. Pointing at the mistake deviates the attention from the real topic. He further said that in our country, all the fighting is going on over the husk, nobody searches for the kernel within.

Note : All the pundits who have came, it seems wanted to put down the Swamiji and that small grammatical mistake was the only occasion they got to bring Swamiji down. But it made no difference to Swamiji and he accepted his mistake humbly. Pundits were not able to challenge his arguments and in the end they were convinced with Swami Vivekananda. Moral of the story is that we need to focus on the essential and not on the mundane things.

Every one has to find out the essential seeking for his life. One should look deep into the things and see what is the essential quality which always remains with us and we can carry it in our next life also. A sincere seeker is never going to deviate from his goal and will always focus on realizing the truth.
 

From the Legend

Swami Vivekananda