Sri Ramakrishna used to tell a story about a snake.

It was a venomous snake, and everyone in the area was scared of it. One day a holy man came by and gave it a sacred word to repeat. He also asked it to stop hurting people. And the snake listened.

Some time later, the holy man came back and found the snake in terrible shape. It was bruised and thin, weak. He asked what happened.

A group of boys had figured out the snake didn’t bite anymore. So they grabbed it by the tail and kept slamming it against the ground. The snake let them do it. It thought that’s what the holy man wanted.