(5/9) Turn Karma Into Seva

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Preaching programme in Hooghly district,
24 February 2019, evening, part 5
Translated from Bengali

When we were in our mothers' wombs and experienced hellish suffering, we made a promise to the Lord...

Actually, the experience of dying inflicts even more suffering. When somebody leaves their body – when their soul comes out of the body, Yamaduts (messengers of Lord Yama) come and forcefully take the soul away. I have described what the soul undergoes at this time in Guidance 3. You can read it and see what hell is.

So, you can understand what kind of suffering we felt when we were in our mothers' wombs. None of you can remember it now, but Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur said, 'Janani-jathare, chhilama yakhana, visama bhandana-pase (জননী-জঠরে ছিলাম যখন, বিষম বন্ধন-পাশে). When I was in my mother's womb, I lived in terrible confinement.' Curling ourselves up, we stayed there with our heads down, legs up, floating in urine, bitten by insects. At that time, we cried and called out of the Lord, 'Please release me from here as soon as possible!' If the soul is very fortunate, the Lord grants it His darshan.

'Why have you called Me?' He askes the soul.

'O Lord, I cannot stay here any longer! Please release me from here!'

'I will release you and you will be born as a human, but what will you do next?'

It is actually not so easy to become a human. You think that when a boy and a girl get married, they have a child. It is not like that. Sixty thousand souls stand in a queue waiting to get a human birth, and only one of them enters a woman's womb. The rest 59,999 souls become goats, cows, sheep, cats, mosquitoes, frogs, lizards and all kinds of other species, entering all kinds of places (some live in water, some live on the ground, some become trees, and so on). Only one out of sixty thousand souls gets a human birth. That is why it is said that the number of the souls in this world is enormous, but the number of human beings is minute; among these humans, many say that they follow the Vedas, but they live doing what is prohibited in the Vedas.

Some people like to say that karma (pious activities) is the highest path, but we say that karma must be given up because if you engage in karma, you become bound by it, and the result of such bondage is hellish suffering. You may ask, 'How will my family survive if I give up all works?' The answer is that you must turn material activities (karma) into service (seva).

When somebody does karma and another person does seva, both actions look the same. For example, we are sitting now in a devotees' house, and they are cooking here, cutting the vegetables, stirring the pots. It all looks like usual mundane activities (karma), but who do they cook here for every day? For the Lord. Does it mean that the children who live at this house starve? Of course, they do not: they take prasad. The main difference is that devotees cook for the Lord and outside people cook for themselves.

Outside people cook thinking, 'My husband is going out to the office, I am cooking his dinner – he will come back in the evening and have it', 'My son is going to school, I am making lunch for him', 'My daughter is going to the college, I am making lunch for her.' They think like that, but their family may or may not return home. What is the point cooking for them? When you cook for the Lord, then the Lord will make sure that your family come back home and take His prasad. This is the difference.

Giving up karma does not mean that we reject everything. For example, you have mangoes on a tree. Atheists and impersonalists will say, 'No, no, I am a sadhu, I will not eat it! Let it rot, I will not eat it, I do not care.' This is not right. These mangoes are the Lord's property (they have a relationship with the Lord) – we will not eat these mangoes ourselves, but we will offer them for the Lord's pleasure (bhoga), then the mango tree can get some benefit because you have engaged it in the service to the Lord. Many people plant flower trees outside their houses or on the rooftops to decorate their houses, but those flowers dry up and die – the lives of those flowers and trees are wasted because they cannot do any service. But when devotees plant flower trees, they pick those flowers and offer them at the holy feet of Lord Govinda, so those flowers and flower trees get benefit. Many people also keep cows at their houses – they can serve the Lord with their milk; such cows become fortunate and can later get a human birth and get an opportunity to practise Krishna consciousness.

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Size: 23 Mb
Length: 48 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Cherish Tulasi Seva
2) Know Thyself
3) Align Yourself with Your Soul
4) Appealing to Intelligence
5) Turn Karma Into Seva
6) Mental Hunger
7) No Cheating
8) Kali's Poison
9) A Taste of Sadhu-Sanga