I had a friend who was a great artist. One day I saw him standing on the roadside, looking at a stone, which was shapeless. I went up and asked him, “What are you doing?” It was one of the greatest mistakes I made, because he immediately invited me to give him a hand in lifting the stone. So, with what little effort I could, we both started lifting it. Luckily, many others who were standing around came and helped us.
We lifted laboriously that piece of stone and moved slowly with it into his studio. And in his studio, he placed it in a particular place, turned the stone around in several directions and finally fixed it in a certain way. And there afterwards, he just looked at us, as though we were not needed over there. We all left, and for two, three or even four days, I did not meet him, for he did not come out of his room.
The fifth day, when I went there just to see what was happening, I found him covered with dust, and the whole studio full of chips. He was standing there with his hammer and chisel, and chipping away on that piece of stone. He had brought out of it a beautiful, attractive, shining and enchanting ‘Kṛṣṇa’ form! He was not even conscious that I had entered the room and that I was watching over his shoulders.
In sheer appreciation of the beauty that he had created and with the best of intentions I congratulated him spontaneously, “What a beautiful Kṛṣṇa you have created!” The fellow, red-eyed for want of sleep (and probably food also) for the past three days, turned with his hammer in hand and said, “You come into this sacred place and you dare accuse me that I have created this beautiful form! The form was already in that shapeless stone.
All that I did was chip away the rough stone that was concealing the beauty of the form, and ‘Kṛṣṇa’ who was already there, was brought out vividly for you to see. I saw this Kṛṣṇa even when the stone was lying there on the road side.” The artist had the vision to see the beauty in that which you and I rejected as ugly. So too, the teachers must have the vision to see the beauty inherent in every student.