(8/22) Seek Out Eternal Shelter

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Bolpur, noon, 20 January 2019, part 8
Translated from Bengali

You keep changing your bodies. Somebody will go to heaven, somebody will go to hell. Even if you go to heaven, what happens to you after that? What does Srimad Bhagavad-gita and Srimad Bhagavatam say? People go to heaven as the result of accumulated piety, but when their piety finishes, they again come back from heaven. You can go to heaven and enjoy as gods and goddesses. You can see this in this world also – somebody sleeps on the street or at the station (they do not have any home), somebody sleeps in a mud hut, but somebody sleeps in a luxury five-storey house. And there are also dogs that roam the streets and sleep everywhere, who have no home...

What should we do? We come from the Lord, and the Lord is crying for us. Do you know this? We are all lost children of the Lord. Our Param Guru Maharaj wrote a book called The Loving Search for the Lost Servant. We are all lost children of the Lord, and the Lord is crying for us all. Krishna is our father, Krishna is our mother, Krishna is our all-in-all.

I have told you before that the fathers and mothers we have in this world have only given us our bodies. Cat parents give their child a cat's body; dog parents give their child a dog's body; pig parents give their child a pig's body, and so on. We have got this body from our parents, but it is the Lord who gives us life, gives that which we are (our soul).

I am wearing these clothes today, but tomorrow I will be wearing other clothes – just as we keep changing clothes every day, our souls also keep changing our bodies life after life according to the results of our actions. We are suffering from this cycle of births and deaths – when we are born, we have to grow old, get sick and die. I have told you about adhibhautik-jvala (আধিভৌতিক-জ্বালা), miseries caused by other souls created by the Lord. There is also adhidaivik-jvala (আধিদৈবিক-জ্বালা), miseries caused by gods (earthquakes, tornados, floods, wild fires, and so on). And the third type of miseries is adhyatmik-jvala (আধ্যাত্মিক-জ্বালা): diseases, anguish and mental suffering. You think that those who have millions of rupees must be living a happy life – you think that if a person is a chief minister, they live a very happy life because they travel everywhere by plane. The chief minister had a meeting recently, and they say that she keeps worrying that her position can be taken away from her. This is an example of the misery caused by one's own mind. You think they live a happy life, but even the chief minister worries, 'What if I do not get elected next year? What will happen then?' They are nagged by worries, too, so much so that they cannot sleep. What is the way out of all this suffering? 'Bhagavata pada Vaisnavera sthane, ekanta asraya kara Chaitanya-charane (ভাগবত পড় বৈষ্ণবের স্থানে, একান্ত আশ্রয় কর চৈতন্য-চরণে). Read Bhagavatam under guidance of a Vaishnav and take exclusive shelter of the lotus feet of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu' (Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, 3.5.131). If you take shelter in the Lord – through the medium of the holy feet of the guru and Vaishnavs – then you will realise that whatever is happening, whatever will happen, everything happens by the will of the Lord. What is there for you to worry then? You will leave everything to the Lord and rely on Him.

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Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Course of Life
2) Special Arrangement for Kali-Yuga
3) Beyond Religious Bigotry
4) Innermost Desires
5) Fortune, Faith and Frauds
6) Think about Your Real Self
7) Come to Krishna's Family
8) Seek Out Eternal Shelter
9) Proper Surrender
10) Misdirected Worship
11) Deepest Faith
12) Beyond Illusory World
13) Turn Home
14) Gross and Subtle Cheating
15) Watch for Milestones
16) Come Home with Me
17) All That Glitters Is Not Gold
18) Do Not Cheat Yourself
19) Soul's Plight
20) Eternal Transformations
21) Origin of Hinduism
22) Pig's Life, God's Life, Devotee's Life