Rusty and Nasty

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
15 October 2018, Dum Dum Park, part 3

In 1995, I heard one story about service from one sadhu, an acharya sannyasi, who came to our temple as a guest at the inauguration of the centenary building in honour of Srila Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj's 100th appearance day. Gurudev asked him to speak some Hari-katha at the assembly, and I can still remember what that sannyasi said to this day.

Once, two brahmacharis stayed at some temple. They would fight each other every day—one of them would say, "I do so much service, and you are not doing anything!" and the other one would say, "I do everything, it is you who is not doing anything! You only do puja, and I arrange everything—I do the shopping, I do the cooking, etc. I do everything!" and so on. One day, they fought like this in front of their Guru. Their Gurudev was old and blind (he could not see anything), so when the two brahmacharis fought in front of him saying, "O Gurudev, I do everything, I cook and do this and this and this, and on top of that I come to massage your body with oil, I help you to take a bath!" and the other one said, "It is not true! I also come to help Gurudev to take a bath! And I also give him prasadam. I do everything!" Hearing this, Gurudev told them, "You are always fighting because of my service, so I am going to divide your service." Then he said to one of the brahmacharis, "From today, you will massage my left leg, and you," he said turning to the other brahmachari, "will massage my right leg."

And they did that every day—one of the disciples massaged his Guru's left leg, and the another one his right leg. A few days later, one of the brahmacharis, who was supposed to massage his Guru's right leg, got a little sick and could not come to massage his Guru's leg, so the other brahmachari came and massaged only the left leg of his Guru. Gurudev asked him, "You are massaging only my left leg, why are you not massaging my right leg?" The disciple replied, "Gurudev, you divided the service a month ago and said that it was his leg. It is not my leg, that is why I am not massaging it." Gurudev said then, "Oh, it is his leg?! Is it not my leg?! Then I will break this leg!" Gurudev was very sad and felt pain to see this—what kind of service is this?

That is the kind of service we do. It is actually not service. What is service in spiritual life? The main thing is that you must make your Gurudev happy. That is what service is. If we see how our Guru-varga—our Param Gurudev Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur—preach Krishna consciousness, what they do to make their Gurudev happy, how they serve their Gurudev, then we can understand what service is. How much service Srila Rupa Goswami, Srila Sanatan Goswami, Srila Raghunath Das Goswami, Srila Jiva Goswami, Srila Narottam Das Thakur did for their Guru! If we look at their examples, we can understand it. That is the main thing, but we cannot understand it...

How will we understand these things? If you keep an iron outside, it becomes full of rust and a magnet cannot attract it. Magnet always attracts iron, but if that a piece of iron is full of rust, magnet will not attract it. We have been covered by the illusory environment for so many years, so many lifetimes—how will Krishna take us from this illusory environment to Krishna consciousness, to our proper place in Goloka Vrindavan? How will we get service to Radha Krishna in Goloka Vrindavan? How is it possible? If we do not get proper association of a proper sadhu, it is impossible. You must understand that. That is why we need to make our Guru happy. That is called service. If you do whatever service Gurudev has given you properly, you will be able to understand easily what is service to the Guru and Vaishnavs. That is the main thing.

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