A Leader of the village observed that all the men folk were addicted to alcohol.

He is being
compassionate thought of educating the men about the evil effects of drinking. The next day he called
for a meeting to address this issue.

The men folk assembled the next day to hear their leader speak. During the meeting he took 2 glasses in
his hand, one filled with water and the other with alcohol. He then added some worms in to each of the
glasses and shook it gently. As the audience watched the glasses carefully, they observed that the
worms in the glass which contained alcohol died whereas the ones in the water survived. At this
moment the leader spoke “ Thank you for coming today, I have demonstrated an experiment in front of
you, what do you learn from it ?

The audience applauded and answered we have learnt that by drinking alcohol all the worms in our
stomach will die and hence drinking alcohol is better than drinking water.

The leader was dejected that the audience failed to get the message that the worms symbolize humans
and if they take to alcohol they will ultimately perish.

Through this example we learn that we should not be like village men who mistook the real message. So
the vedic shastras explain that when we listen to the scriptures we should be like a SWAN, which has a
unique ability to separate water from milk. Here Water stands for the impurities or impediments that
we face while practicing devotional service. If we are determined and focused like the swan and
eliminate the impediments then we will be able to taste the real nectar of the milk which is pure
devotional service.