(9/22) Proper Surrender

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Bolpur, noon, 20 January 2019, part 9
Translated from Bengali

You should leave everything to the Lord and rely on Him. At the same time, I am not saying that you must leave everything to the Lord and sit idle. You think, 'OK, I will sit and only chant the Holy Name. Let me see if the Lord comes to feed me or not.' The Lord's promise is there in the scriptures, so He will arrange everything for you. It is necessary to have faith in this, but you must not challenge or try to test the Lord. The first and foremost quality is surrender. Only those who have surrender can actually see that the Lord is providing everything.

Did the Lord not protect Draupadi? When Duhsasan was forcefully taking Draupadi's clothes off, Draupadi said at first, 'They are insulting me by disrobing me in front of everyone! You are my husbands, why are you not helping me? Save me!' Draupadi's husbands (the Pancha-Pandavas) were very powerful, but the will of the Lord, their power was gone. Bhima was so enraged that he declared, 'If I ever get the kingdom back, I will drink Duhsasan's blood!' Duhsasan got even angrier, so he started pulling Draupadi's clothes off even more forcefully. Draupadi cried, 'Save me!' But her husbands were powerless – the Lord had taken their kingdom away, along with their power. Then, Draupadi, scared that she would be disrobed, held her clothes with one hand and started calling the Lord with her other hand. When she realised that she could no longer resist, she threw both her hands up in the air and cried, 'O Lord! Please protect me!' You cannot surrender with one hand only. You know, if somebody puts a gun to your throat, you put two arms up in surrender. So, surrender means you join both your palms together and say sincerely, 'O Lord, I surrender to You.' So, when Draupadi could no longer hold onto her clothes, she finally threw both her arms in the air and prayed to the Lord to save her, and the Lord did save her.

The Lord protects us. I heard you chanting in the morning:

দৈন্য, আত্মনিবেদন, গোপ্তৃত্বে বরণ ।
'অবশ্য রক্ষিবে কৃষ্ণ'—বিশ্বাস পালন ॥
ভক্তি-অনুকূল মাত্র কার্য্যের স্বীকার ।
ভক্তি-প্রতিকূল ভব—বর্জ্জনাঙ্গীকার ॥

dainya, atma-nivedana, goptrtve varana
'avasya raksibe krsna'—visvasa palana
bhakti-anukula matra karyera svikara
bhakti-pratikula bhava—varjanangikar

'(1) Humility, (2) self-submission, (3) accepting the Lord as your maintainer, (4) keeping faith that "Krishna will certainly protect me", (5) engaging only in what is favourable to devotion, (6) rejecting what is unfavourable to devotion.'

(Saranagati, Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur)

I have seen even among devotees that people do what is favourable to devotion and at the same time they also do what is unfavourable to devotion. It does not work like that. If you drink milk, you get vitamins, but if you drink milk and then drink alcohol, all the vitamins from milk will be destroyed. Suppose you start a fire sacrifice. At first, you offer some ghee into the fire – when you put ghee into the fire, the fire increases. If you put a spoon of ghee and then a spoon of water, then again a spoon of ghee and a spoon of water, will the sacrificial fire burn like that? It will not. That is why it is said that we must accept what is favourable to devotion, and we must give up what is unfavourable to devotion. Anukulya-sankalpa (আনুকূল্যসঙ্কল্প), we will accept what is in favour of devotion; and pratikulya-vivarjana (প্রতিকূল্যবিবর্জ্জন), we will reject what is not in favour of devotion. This is the highest standard of devotion.

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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