Parikrama:
Mood, Intention, and Prayer

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Sri Puri Dham, the day after Ratha Yatra
19 July 2015, translated from Bengali, part 2

So many people visit holy places—so many come here as tourists, for their own pleasure, eat meat, fish here—and the holy place becomes polluted. But what you do you, Vaishnavs, come here? The holy place too wants devotees to come to them, the holy place says, "Come to my Dham, you will chant the Holy Name and I will become pure again." That is why you come here, you do parikrama and chant kirtan.

People spend so much money, time, energy to do eye exercise on pretext of spiritual benefit, but I never want you to have a loss. I want you to get spiritual benefit. If the Guru cannot direct you to the right path, he cannot be a Guru.

গৌর আমার যে সব স্থানে
করল ভ্রমণ রঙ্গে ।
সে সব স্থান হেরিব আমি
প্রণয়ি-ভকত-সঙ্গে ॥

gaura amara ye-saba sthane
karala bhramana range
se-saba sthana heriba ami
pranayi-bhakata-sange

"In the company of loving devotees, I behold all the places my Gaurasundar roamed during His ecstatic Pastimes."

I take you to the places that Mahaprabhu went to, and I do not have any other motives besides this.

Some of you could not come inside the Gundicha temple, but what is the problem? You can sweep outside, you can pay obeisance outside. There is no need to become upset, you can even pay obeisance from afar.

Everybody says, "Haribol, Haribol," but devotion to the Lord depends on the quality of faith and intense desire. People go after money, wealth, cars, houses, etc. but how long will you stay here? You came here without anything and you will go without anything too. Do not eat so much (atyahara), do not hoard things (prayascha), do not talk too much or listen to gossips (prajalpa), accept what is favourable to devotion, reject what is unfavourable to devotion (niyamagraha), give up greed (laulancha) and bad association (jana-sanghancha)—this is how you should do parikrama.

I said before that when I go to Vrindavan I will not take so many people with me. Param Guru Maharaj also said, "I want quality, I do not need quantity." When there is much quantity, what is the use? Suppose you go to the market to buy some potato—if you buy a lot of cheap potato, you will get all rotten potatos, but when you buy two kilos, all potato must be good. We want quality, we are not interested in quantity.

So, you have come here for the parikrama, and if you can pray to Lord Jagannath, "O Jagannath, please be merciful to me! Please forgive me!" it will be good. We make so many offences, we do so many things, it is necessary to ask for forgiveness. The Lord is extremely forgiving, extremely merciful. If we cannot follow our Guru, if we do not understand what the proper service and devotion are, if we do not understand who the Lord is, then we actually did not understand anything at all...

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