(5/16) Make Effort

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Sriman Nityananda Prabhu's appearance day
Sri Ekachakra Dham, evening class
17 February 2019, part 5

I have written here, in Guidance 3, how we must live our lives.

'We have been nourished and brought up with much care and love in a particular society since our childhood, and we have got entangled in this life so much that we do not have even a moment to spare for the discussions of our eternal life.' I tell you the same thing all the time. I have seen in my own life that if you take a book and try to give it to somebody at Howrah station, 'Please take this book, it is only ten rupees,' everybody says, 'I have no time!' Thousands and thousands of people are running to catch a train – they do not think about their eternal life, they only think about food and clothes. They wake up in the morning, go out to work and get back home by ten o'clock at night – they do not even see their children's faces. This is how much people work only for their food. 'We spend twenty-four hours a day busy with our work, so much so that we do not even try to know what our real position is. If we think in terms of eternity, one hundred years of a lifetime is very little. Therefore, the duty of intelligent people is not to spend the hundred years of their lifespan on sense-gratification, but to seek their own spiritual benefit.' How can you get benefit? How can your soul get benefit? This is what you all must think about. If you can understand it, it will be good for you.

Who can bring you to the Lord? There are great souls who place their service on their heads and always do it – you can get benefit by serving such souls faithfully. By serving such souls, by taking shelter in such souls, you can come to the Lord. 'Service to Vaishnavs (devotees) is higher than service to Vishnu, and it is everyone's duty to serve Vaishnavs. The glories of service to Vaishnavs are greater than those of service to Vishnu. When one serves Vaishnavs, service to Vishnu is automatically accomplished.' If you serve Vaishnavs, you automatically serve Lord Vishnu, but if you serve the Deity but do not serve Vaishnavs, that is not sufficient. You can ring the bell, you can offer the bhog, but this is not sufficient – it is necessary to serve Vaishnavs.

What do we often do? One time, Guru Maharaj asked somebody, 'Have you made a festival?' The devotee replied, 'No, we did not make a festival; we only made an offering for the Deities.' Guru Maharaj said that this will not do – the Lord will not be happy if you cannot give prasad to devotees. You cannot serve Deities like this. You must give prasad to devotees. It is said also that we must always give prasad to devotees with love and affection, and if we have no prasad, we should serve devotees with sweet words, with love and affection. This is Mahaprabhu's instruction (you can find it in Srila Jagadananda Pandit's Sri Sri Prema-vivarta). Everybody must learn these things.

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Size: 53 Mb
Length: 110 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Nityananda Consciousness
2) Seek Real Help
3) External and Internal Contamination
4) Sheltered and Shielded
5) Make Effort
6) Collecting vs. Begging
7) Pure Association, Residence and Practice
8) Proper Utility
9) Our Sole Concern
10) Lord's Arrangement
11) When? And How?
12) Stay on Board
13) Service, Desire and Mercy
14) Mindless Service
15) Disciple's Folly
16) Love for Service