Over Service Hurdles

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Sri Jagannath Mishra Ananda-mahotsav
24 March 2016

When we came here, we did not know anything, we did not know anything about Krishna consciousness—when I joined the temple I also did not know about Krishna consciousness, but everything comes by the mercy of Gurudev. Tolerance and patience are necessary.

Actually, I do not know what love and affection is: Gurudev mostly, 99-100%, gave galagal to me (chastised). Maybe 1% of the times he told me something good, but he always chastised me. He told me maybe a hundred times to get out of here. Would you be able to tolerate this? But for me this was his love and affection to me.

In 1996, I saw that Gurudev had a very small veranda, and when Gurudev was leaving for a world tour, I asked him if I could repair his bathroom, and in this way, cleverly, I took the bathroom and the room keys from him and expanded Gurudev's veranda (at the place where Gurudev is sitting now, there was Gurudev's bedroom). When I did it, somebody phoned Gurudev and said to him, "Oh, Vinod has broken your house." Gurudev became upset. He asked me if it was true, and I said, "Yes, I have broken something..." When Gurudev came back, we were giving him some reception, doing kirtan, but Gurudev did not speak to me because he was upset that I had broken his house. At first he did not enter his room, but he saw that his veranda had been expanded and thought, "What has happened? How did he expand the building without breaking it?" Then he said, "OK, I will go inside." He was very surprised, "How is it possible to do this?" and finally said, "What you have done is very nice."

Also, before there was no prasadam hall behind, instead there was a goshala. There were many cows there but not so much space for them. I spent very much money on it, and the treasurer always complained to Gurudev that I was spending so much money, but when Gurudev saw the goshala he was very happy.

Later, the nat mandir was also small, there used to be rooms on the ground floor, and I broke those rooms to expand the nat mandir, and somebody complained at first too...

I have always, from my very beginning at the temple, been facing so many problems from Gurudev's godbrothers... Sometimes I told Gurudev about it, and he said, "I am keeping an Alsatian dog for my protection, and one morning, when I am going for a walk, an enemy attacks me and the Alsatian dog jumps on my shoulder and cries, 'Please protect me, please protect me!'" From that day, I never complained to Gurudev about anything that was going on downstairs—I managed everything.

You can see so many problems have come, so many sannyasis have left—somebody has left because of money, somebody has left to become a Guru on their own—but my duty is to protect my Gurudev, and it is my desire, my hope to protect Gurudev's mission.

...Actually, I am requesting the devotees, if anyone wants to serve here, wants to spend a few months in India, you are always welcome. Come serve here.

Some austerity will come, but it is necessary to have tolerance. I too have some experience about that. When my temple age was seven days, I got a chance to serve prasadam, but I did not know which devotee liked what kind of prasadam. That day we finished Chaitanya-charitamrita class in the evening and I went to serve prasadam, but I gave more subji to one brahmachari and he took the spoon from my hand and hit my finger with it. My finger started to bleed, but I removed the blood and continued serving prasadam.

After this happened, Gurudev asked me, "When he beat you, why did you not beat him?" At that time I did not know so much conception about Vaishnavism and I said something using the language of my jada vidya (material knowledge), "If a dog bites me, why will I bite the dog?" Gurudev said, "It is also an offence because you are comparing a devotee, a Vaishnav, to a dog. You cannot do that, even if they beat you."

Gurudev teaches us so many things. Another time (I have told you this story many times), Gurudev was going out to see something. I stood in front of his car and he asked me, "Will you go with me?" At that time, I had not closed my office and I had some service there (I was waiting for some guests to arrive), so I asked, "Where to?" Gurudev's mood changed and he became angry, "Come with me! You are foolish because you are asking me, 'Where to?' You do not have 100% chastity! You must learn more." So, we must learn so much tolerance, must learn to be patient—I learnt these things from Gurudev.

Once Gurudev sent me to Hapaniya—at that time there were some repairs, some construction, going on in the kitchen. I know something about construction, so when I saw that the worker was giving less cement (like, he was mixing sand with cement 10:1), I told him it was not the way to build and asked him why he was doing it. The worker replied it was the order of temple manager. When I came back to Nabadwip, I gave the news to Gurudev, and Gurudev was very unhappy to hear that. He spoke to the manager and stopped supplying money for that construction. The manager was very angry, and when one day later Gurudev again sent me there, that brahmachari closed all doors of the temple and tried to kill me—he beat me and put me into a sack. When this happened, I started calling out, "Radha Gopinath! Radha Gopinath!" and fifty boys jumped in over the wall and saved me...

This is how I got tolerance—I have experienced so many things. So, when you stay in a temple many problems will come, but you must not leave your service.

Jay Srila Guru Maharaj ki jay!

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