Damodar Month

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
25 October 2018, Dum Dum Park, part 1

I am paying my full obeisance at the lotus feet of my beloved Gurudev Om Vishnupad Jagad-Guru Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaj, as well as all Vaishnav-vrinda, all the devotees of Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math, and the worldwide devotees from other sampradayas also. I am paying my obeisance to you all.

Yesterday, our temple Chaitanya Saraswat Math, and now already other temples all over the world, started Kartik vrata, niyom-seva vrata. In Kartik month, we must sing the Damodarastakam song ("Namamisvaram sach-chid-ananda rupam lasat-kundalam gokule bhrajamanam...") every day.

Now is Damodar month. 'Dam yog udhar': 'dam' means a rope, 'udhar' means belly. Mother Yasoda tied her son, our Lord Krishna. This is vatsalya rasa. She always thinks, "Krishna is my son." In that instance, Krishna wanted to take His mother's milk, but His mother was very busy—she was boiling milk to make paneer, butter and other things. She told Krishna, "Wait, the milk is overflowing, and the fire is on. Wait." You know that if the Lord wants something, He will do that—He disturbed His mother with His face, and His mother pushed Him away a little. Then, Krishna took whatever His Mother had kept in the storage room—paneer, milk preparations, butter, etc.—and distributed it to the monkeys of Gokula!

When Mother Yasoda saw it, she was very angry, "I have cooked all this for You! Whatever I make or keep is all for You, but You have become so naughty! You are giving everything away to monkeys! It is very bad!" Then, she decided to tie her son. Krishna also showed His lila, thinking. "Oh, My Mother wants to tie Me? I will teach her a lesson!" At first, He showed He was very afraid that His mother was going to tie Him, but every time Mother Yasoda tried to tie Him with a rope, the rope turned out to be too short. She would bring more and more rope—she called all the gopis and told them to bring the rope from all the cows (and they had so many cows—nine hundred thousand!), but no matter how much rope she tied, it was always two fingers too short. In the end, she became very tired, and then Krishna allowed her to tie Him.

There is some meaning in why the rope was two fingers too short. We can explain it. One finger means a very strong (the strongest) desire, and the other finger is mercy. If you have much desire, if you have the strongest desire to get devotion to Krishna, Krishna will give you His mercy: if you have the strongest desire to serve the Lord, to serve the Lord's devotees and associates, then Krishna will arrange everything, He will engage you in the service to His associate or in His own service. So, these two fingers mean that it is first necessary to have strongest desire: if you come one step to Krishna, Krishna will come ten steps to you.

This Kartik month (Damodar month) is Krishna's dearmost month. There is Radha-Damodar temple near our Vrindavan temple, and every Kartik we go for parikrama in Vrindavan. This year also we have a great wish to start Vrindavan parikrama in Damodar month.

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