Practice Makes Happy

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
speaking to the devotees of Ukraine and Russia,
22 November 2014

I am very happy to see you all. How are you? If everybody OK?

Devotee: Yes, everyone is OK, Gurudev.

By the mercy of Gurudev you are all happy. You chant the Holy Name, you always remember Krishna, remember Gurudev, you always practise properly and engage yourself in service to the Lord, so Krishna always makes you happy, Krishna is always with you, Gurudev is always with you.

We can only proceed in our spiritual life by the mercy of the Guru, by the mercy of the Vaishnavs. Whenever we do some service, if we always remember our Guru, Vaishnavs, and Bhagavan, then we can happily practise Krishna consciousness and proceed in our spiritual life, and no bondage will come.

You may have some bad things inside, like anger or ego, but if you get the mercy of the Guru, of the Vaishnavs, everything bad will be removed from you. There is so much bondage—kama, krodha, lobha, and so on—but it cannot touch those who have got the mercy of the Guru and Vaishnavs. Sometimes some bondage, some problem may come in our spiritual life, but it is Krishna testing us: how much love and affection do we have for our Guru, for the Lord? How much attachment do we have to Krishna and to our service?

It also depends on the devotee and the quality of the devotee—those who have the strongest faith, get the strongest devotion; those who have little faith get little devotion. Gurudev told that if you give your Guru 25%, you will get 25%. You cannot hope to get 50% because you did not give 50%, but if you give 50%, you will get 50%.

We only have a very short time—there is not enough time to serve Krishna, serve the Guru, and the problem is that maya takes our time for herself, for the service to herself. We must be careful—if maya takes our time, we will not get the proper time to chant the Holy Name and serve our Guru.

Are there any questions?

Devotee: Gurudev, in the book Golden Staircase, Srila Sridhar Maharaj speaks about intuition. What is intuition in the context of Vaishnavism?

Intuition is anubuti (অনুভূতি), it means some feeling. That kind of feeling comes and inspires you to take initiation, or takes you to your Guru. That kind of feeling should come automatically by the mercy of the Guru—if you have an open heart, you are simple-hearted, these feelings come automatically.

Devotee: What should we think about when we are separated from the association of the devotees, so that we can practise properly in our devotional life?

You can remember the Lord and your Guru through their pastimes, activities, instruction, and so one.

When Vraja gopis were separated from Krishna, they always remembered Krishna's Pastimes. Uddhav Maharaj also remembered Krishna's Pastimes—when he heard from the gopis, from the trees of Vrindavan about Krishna, he wanted to become a tree to always hear Krishna-katha.

In your separation, remember the Lord's Pastimes and you can easily understand it and be happy with that.

Devotee: Gurudev, you spoke about difficulties in our spiritual life. Should we think that this difficulty comes from Krishna, or perhaps it comes from maya or somewhere else?

Actually, Krishna created maya. Everything comes from Krishna, and He also gave the solution, the siddhanta, so if we follow that, we can overcome maya, we can overcome all problems...

{ 2001  |   2002  |   2003  |   2005  |   2009  |   2010  |   2011  |   2012 }
{ 2013  |   2014  |   2015  |   2016  |   2017  |   2018  |   2019  |   2020  |   2021 }

• Download (3 Mb)