In plain words
Man is not ignorant
First of all we must understand who man is. Man is not one who is ignorant. He is not merely a miser. Not a sinner. He is a great jñānī. The meaning lies within the very word mānava. Mā: Ajñāna. Na: without; va: conducting oneself. The one who conducts himself without Ajñāna is the mānava. So: “Durlabhame mānuṣo dehaḥ.” We have come to a human birth, which is hard to win. We must make such a birth worthy of itself. We must take part in actions that befit our form and our name. Once, a certain person came into the court of King Bhoja in the guise of a sannyāsī. That day the sannyāsī gave sacred discourses on Vedānta. The king admired his discourses and handed him a tray of gold coins. Then the sannyāsī said, ‘I will not accept this. What has a sannyāsī who has renounced every attachment to do with coins? So I do not need this,’ he said. On the second day the same person came into the court in the guise of a dancing woman. She danced very well. Well, he gave her too a few gold coins as some reward. She said that these few coins did not satisfy her, and that he must give a little more. Then he recognised that the person who had come in the guise of a sannyāsī had come in the guise of a dancer. “Mother, yesterday, however many coins I gave, you said you did not want them. Today you say these few coins are not enough for you. What is the inner meaning in this?” he said. “If our conduct does not befit our guise, we become people who have burnt to ashes our good fortune and the whole of our culture of Bhārata. We become people who have simply ruined it. Yesterday my guise was sannyāsa. My name was sannyāsī. Today's guise is a dancer. I wore the guise that fitted this. Yesterday I behaved as befitted that guise. Today I am behaving as befits today's guise,” she said, and at that Bhoja said, “Well done! I like teachings such as this. I am a king. I must behave as befits a king; it is not good for a king to go down an evil path.” And he praised her: “You did this to teach me.”
One may wear the ochre robe as one's guise. But the heart is all butcher's.