Practise and Preach—Properly

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Speaking to the devotees in Malaysia
19 November 2011, part 1

I am very happy to see you all today. It is a good, auspicious day because we can hear some Hari-katha, Krishna-katha. You are all devotees of Gurudev, all disciples of Gurudev and you are keeping Gurudev in your heart, that is why I can see Gurudev through you all.

"Prana achhe yara, sei hetu prachara (প্রাণ আছে যার সেই হেতু প্রচার): as long as you have life in the body, you must preach." Your preaching movement is going on properly in four places in Malaysia—seva and puja are going on properly there, but actually what is more necessary than seva and puja is preaching.

Krishna consciousness is more about preaching, it is sankirtan yajna. So, you must give more importance to sankirtan. The more sankirtan movement is there, the more the preaching movement is growing. It is necessary to always engage yourself in sankirtan movement. Our problem is that we do not practise properly.

ব্রহ্মাণ্ড ভ্রমিতে কোন ভাগ্যবান্ জীব ।
গুরু-কৃষ্ণ-প্রসাদে পায় ভক্তিলতা-বীজ ॥

brahmanda bhramite kona bhagyavan jiva
guru-krsna-prasade paya bhakti-lata-bija

"Having travelled throughout the universe and got the mercy of Guru, Krishna, a fortunate soul receives a seed of the devotional creeper."

(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya-lila, 19.151)

We are fortunate souls—we have got initiation from Gurudev, we received that bhakti-lata bij, the seed of devotion, but we are not taking proper care of it. It means that we do not practise sravan and kirtan, that is the problem. First we must understand that sravan and kirtan are necessary. From the nava-vidha bhakti (nine types of devotion), the main practices are sadhu-sanga, sravan, and kirtan.

First we get sukriti, we have that already, and from sukriti we get faith. "Sraddha-anusari bhakti-adhikari (শ্রদ্ধা-অনুসারী ভক্তি-অধিকারী): quality of devotion depends faith." (Cc, 2.22.64)" There are four types of faith: kamala-sraddha, taranga-sraddha, drdha-sraddha, sudrdha-sraddha. Sukriti can also be of two types, ajnata and jnata (conscious and unconscious). You must use everything for the service to the Lord, then you will get benefit—you are chanting yourself and you must let others chant too, you are eating and you must let others eat too—then you will also get benefitted.

You know that when there were problems at Chaitanya Math, Srila Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj went to Vrindavan to do bhajan on his own, but Prabhupad gave him some inspiration, "Why are you here? You must go to Nabadwip! Make disciples—give Krishna consciousness to others!" If you have some knowledge and you do not donate that knowledge to others, that is a big problem, an offence will come. If you have knowledge, you must donate that knowledge to others. If you have qualities for preaching and you are not preaching, it is bad for you. You think, "Oh, Gurudev gave me this mala [chanting beads], so I will only chant on the mala!" No. We must preach Krishna consciousness properly, then our Malaysian temple will increase more and more.

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