What Are You Hiding in Your Heart?

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Caracas, Venezuela
20 September 2009

[A devotee enters the hall at the very end of the class.] Why are you so late?

Devotee: The kids were very tired...

বিষয় ছাড়িয়া কবে শুদ্ধ হ'বে মন ।
কবে হাম হেরব শ্রীবৃন্দাবন ॥

visaya chhadiya kabe suddha habe mana,
kabe hama heraba sri-vrindavan

"When will my mind, leaving the material world, become clean? When will I see Sri Vrindavan?"

"বিষয়-বিষম-বিষ সতত খাইনু, visaya-visama-visa satata khainu: we always take the deadly poison of material enjoyment."

Seeing him now I remembered one story, I can tell it to you all now.

There are phalgu-vairagis and yukta-vairagis. We always practise yukta-vairagya (proper renunciation), we have everything—father, mother, husband, wife, etc. Living in a family is not a problem, but the family must be Krishna's family. A phalgu-vairagi shows he is a renunciate, shows he is a sannyasi, but inside, in his heart, he has another desire...

Prabhupad Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur told that somebody may wear white clothes, have a family life, but they can be a sannyasi because they have no attachment to their wife and family; whereas somebody may wear the saffron colour clothes but have another desire inside. When somebody asked Srila Prabhupad, "Is the family life an internal or external thing?" he said it was internal: সংসার ভিতরে, না বাহিরে, samsara bhitare, na bahire.

So, the story is this (it is a funny story, you will laugh). One time there was one phalgu-vairagi who thought, "There are so many people here, I cannot read Bhagavad-gita with all these people around, there is too much noise! I must go to a quiet place up in the mountains." (He shows he has no desires, but inside he has some other desire.)

So, he went up some mountain and started Bhagavad-gita there. One day, he read one-two slokas and fell asleep. While he was asleep, a rat came by and ate his Gita—when he woke up half of the book had been finished. He thought, "This rat is disturbing me so much, I need to get a cat..." He found a cat, but the cat soon got hungry and started meowing all the time. He thought, "The cat is hungry, what shall I do? It needs milk, so I have to get a cow now." He brought home a cow, but the cow also needed food and care. He spent all his time on looking after the cow and did not have so much time to read Gita. Soon he thought, "I do not have time to do all this. I need to find a woman for the cow service." He found a woman and brought her home. Soon they got married and ended up having five babies. So, in the end, when he was reading Bhagavad-gita, the first child would come to him and cry, "Papa, I am hungry!" then another baby would come, "Papa, I need a pen!", and so on...

One day, his Gurudev thought, "This disciple is very young, let me go and see him." He came to the place where his disciple was staying and was surprised, "Where is your Gita?" The disciple said, "Gurudev, everything is gone now!"

This is story told by Prabhupad Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur. The name of the story is "Gitar samsar," or "The Family of Gita."

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