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(8/12) Gist of Spiritual Life
His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Vaishnav-seva programme in Begampur (Hooghly),
Early February 2019, part 8
Translated from Bengali
Srila Prabhupad also said another thing. When you talk to outside people, you can tell them that when people worship Deities (Kali, Siva, Durga, Manasi, Saraswati or any other god or goddess), they offer worship to worshippable Deities, but in fact instead of actually worshipping them, they turn them into bribe-takers. For example, if you want to become a high-school teacher, you can give a million or two-million bribe to some official and get a job. What do you call such officials? Bribe-takers. In the same way, we take some money, rice, sweets, fruit and bring it to worship Deities and in lieu of our offering we ask them for some knowledge or wealth. We give them some money and get something from them. We bribe gods, turning them into bribe-takers. Do you understand it? It is necessary to understand this.
Srila Prabhupad also wrote an article called Is Religion the Cause of National Downfall?. I was proofreading it the other day. He wrote very beautiful things in it.
Anyhow, much has been said. We can talk about it all the whole day. We have come today for vaishnav-seva. It is said that even if you give up everything, there is something you cannot give up. It is anaratha (unwanted elements within) and paramartha (spiritual wealth). What is real spiritual life? Srila Prabhupad explains it very beautifully. I think that many of you have not heard it. It is printed on the first page of our Gaudiya Gitanjali.
Those who chant the Holy Name and serve the Lord are liberated souls. Many people are afraid of committing sins – they are always worried about offences and sins, 'If I do this, it will be a sin', 'If I do that, it will be a sin.' But it is said:
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'Devotees dedicated to the Lord's service are eternal servants of Sri Guru and eternal servants of Sri Krishna. Devotees eternally serve Sri Krishna following faithfully (anugatya) their Guru. If someone does not consider it necessary to faithfully follow their Guru and the Vaishnavs, their endeavour to serve the Lord is not service to the Lord – it is service to maya. If someone does not faithfully follow their Guru, but, following their own idea, behaves virtuously, visits holy places, performs the sixty-four practices of devotion to the Lord, practises renunciation, austerities, Nam-sankirtan, japa, meditation, or engages in any other devotional (?) practices, they do not do even a little service to the Lord thereby, rather, they are simply fulfilling the desire to gratify their own senses. 'When service to the Lord appears to be sense gratification in disguise, many people are often cheated by such disguised enjoyment. A deceitful show of service to the Lord motivated by desire for fame, wealth, and women is not 'service to the Lord' – it is simply hypocritical cheating of oneself and others. 'Service to the Lord is based on faithful following (anugatya) of one's Guru and the Vaishnavs. Pretending to serve the Lord without faithfully following your Guru is a wicked idea compared to "jumping over the goda to eat grass" [bypassing the proper channel; goda is a raised platform for cows to stand while eating grass]. In the conditioned state, one cannot gain entrance into the Lord's service without faithfully adhering to the Guru and the Vaishnavs, and even in the liberated state, in which one serves the Lord in a spiritual body, constant adherence to one's Gurudev continues. If one does not faithfully follow the eternal embodiment of the Lord's shelter (the asraya-vigraha), Sri Gurudev, and his followers, one only commits, in essence, the offence of worshipping one's own self.' |
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CLICK TO LISTEN TO THE LECTURE
Size: 54 Mb
Length: 109 min
Language: Bengali
READ OTHER PARTS:
1)
Your Sreyo Must
Become Your Preyo
2)
Joy in Sadness
3)
Who Will Understand?
4)
Vaishnavs' Dignity
5)
Read and Absorb
6)
Sincere
Self-Realisation
7)
Mahaprabhu's
Conception
8)
Gist of Spiritual Life
9)
Prison of
Misconception
10)
Learn and Live the
Ideal
11)
Service Alertness
12)
Be Attached and
Detached
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