Stories That Will Change Your Life

The Boatman and Scholar

The sun was shining; many dark clouds were wandering in the sky. Professor Perkins ambled down the shrubby slope to the beachfront below. The chilly breeze coming through the trees, he turned up his collar and made his way more quickly to the little boat dock, with its slats of soggy old wood.

"Boatman! Take me across!" he said as he caught sight of a poor man who was waiting for a passenger to come and sit in his boat. Professor Perkins' voice held arrogance because of his arrogant nature.

"Yes sir, climb aboard!" the boatman said humbly.

Professor Perkins wasn't what you'd call an old man—graying, to be sure, but still energetic or athletic-looking. In his academic circles, he was a man to keep eyes on. There was no one who can match his fertile wit and intelligence. His ways of treating things with a logical approach have always proven him superior in every field of learning.

The boatman’s body, however, was bent from hours' paddling in the sun; he was working to keep his family fed and a roof over their heads.

As the scholar leaped onto the deck and seated himself down beneath the hooped, cabin roof, the boatman bowed his head in reverence. He remembered an adage: a king is respected in his own realm, but a learned man is respected all over the world.

The boatman began rowing his boat to the other side of the land.

"Boatman,” the scholar said commandingly, “the water is becoming rather choppy. You make a living by rowing your boat, but have you ever thought about the relationship between total torque and cross current impact?"

"No, sir, I never thought about it," the boatman didn't have the slightest idea what Professor Perkins said to him. It was like a foreign language for him.

"A streamlined apparatus should likely yield a greater mechanical advantage. But then, I guess you haven't studied much about physics, have you?"

"Not at all, sir. I just row this boat across the bay."

"Hmm. Boatman, it appears that you've wasted twenty-five percent of your life."

A little later, the scholar asked, "Boatman, have you ever looked into statistics and probability? I'm thinking here of Gaussian or possibly Poisson distribution. With all these dark clouds coming over us, do you have any idea what a graph of storm probability would look like?"

"No, sir, I never studied whatever you're talking about. I don't even understand what you're trying to say."

"You never studied advanced mathematics? Gosh! My dear fellow, you should know that you've surely wasted fifty percent of your life."

With each question that Professor Perkins asked, his chest filled with pride. Actually more than his chest, it was his ego that was bloating.

As both of them conversing or instead Professor Perkins intellectually bullying poor boatman, a big storm was taking its form. The boat was becoming unsteady, and the sky took on a dark glow.

Professor Perkins, however, still reveled in asking questions, "Tell me, boatman, do you know anything about gauging deviations from the STP—standard temperature and pressure—to forecast wind velocity in a storm center?"

"I'm sorry, sir. I really don't," the boatman replied.

"You're a bit dense, boatman, aren't you? Are you telling me that you've never learned anything about meteorology?"

"I guess I haven't, sir."

"Well, then, you've wasted seventy-five percent of your life! What do you have to say for yourself!?"

"Nothing, sir. I'm an illiterate fellow," the boatman said with an embarrassed smile.

Suddenly a massive storm took place. The boat started struggling against the waves. The boatman screamed, "Hold on tight! It's really raining and blowing hard!"

But within a twinkling of an eye, a huge wave came, and the boat capsized. While the boatman floated and readied himself to swim across the bay, the scholar shouted, "Boatman, help me!"

The boatman said, "Sir! We'll have to swim for the rest of the way!"

"But … I ... can't ... swimmmm!"

"Then, sir, it looks you've wasted one hundred percent of your life!”

Moral of the story: Whatever else we may learn in our life's voyage, there's one thing we all need to learn that how to cross safely to the spiritual world when death "capsizes" our material body.

Information on the material platform is always becoming obsolete because this material world is only temporary, both in its totality and in its parts. Whatever we see here is only for some time, and then it passes away. So this human life, with its valuable asset of developed consciousness, should not be wasted in dabbling on a mental plane.

What did you learn from this story?