One day, as she was hurrying to sell flowers, she was captivated by a discourse being given by a saint. This led to a delay in her distributing flowers to the brahmin. This continued for a few days that annoyed the brahmin. On questioning, he found out that the girl had been listening to a spiritual discourse on her way. But when he asked her to repeat the finer points of the discourse, the girl could not recollect a thing.
The brahmin wanted to teach her a lesson. He asked her to fetch water from a nearby river in a container that was used to collect cow dung. By the time she reached the brahmin’s place, all the water in the container had drained. Just like the water in the container getting drained, by the time she finished hearing the discourse and set out to deliver flowers, the spiritual knowledge she had gained from the talk too disappeared from her mind.
The girl responded innocently that she would not have been able to bring water but at least the container had become clean. Likewise, won’t her heart and soul too become clean by trying to carry the spiritual knowledge? These words left the brahmin dumbstruck. He had never thought about things from this perspective.