The brahmana was stupefied.

"Revered sir, I know why you have come. Let us go home," said the butcher and he took the brahmana to his house where he saw a happy family and was greatly struck by the devotion with which the butcher served his parents.

Kausika took his lessons from that butcher on dharma, man's calling and duty. After wards, the brahmana returned to his house and began to tend his parents, a duty, which he had rather neglected before.

The moral of this striking story of Dharma- vyadha so skillfully woven by Vedavyasa into the Mahabharata, is the same as the teaching of the Gita, that man reaches perfection by the honest pursuit of what- ever calling falls to his lot in life, and that this is really worship of God Who created and pervades all.*

The occupation may be one he is born to in society or it may have been forced on him by circumstances or be may have taken it up by choice but what reallymatters is the spirit of sincerity and faithfulness with which be does his life's work.

Vedavyasa emphasizes this great truth by making a scholarly brahmana, who did not know it, learn it from a butcher, who lived it in his humble and despised life.