105. Why the monk went to hell🔗

There is a beautiful story in the Mahabharata about a courtesan and a monk. There was a monk who lived across a courtesan's house. He used to keep a count of the men coming to her house and used to imagine all kinds of things about her lifestyle.

The courtesan was a devotee of Krishna. She spent all her free time praying to Krishna to redeem her from her miserable life. Whenever she saw the monk, she would pay her respects from a distance.

One day, they both died at the same time. Both reached the court of Yama. Yama looked at both their life records and gave the decision: the monk should go to hell and the courtesan should go to heaven!

The monk was shocked and started protesting, 'I lived such a pious life! But look at that courtesan, she lived such an immoral life! How can I be sent to hell and she to heaven?'

Yama replied, 'In my court of judgment, your actions are of no value, only your intention matters. You wore a monk's robes and lived a good life outwardly, but your inner space was filled with lust. So in the outer world, your body is now being buried with honor, but you have to suffer hell. The courtesan's heart was always with Krishna, even while her body was sold to men. So her body doesn't even have anybody to even do the last rites, but she is going to heaven.'

Krishna says again and again in the Bhagavad Gita: intention is much more important than action. Action does not get recorded in the cosmos. Only intention gets recorded in the cosmos.