(5/9) Do Not Poison Your Mind

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

[After kirtans His Divine Grace resumes the class.]

Jay Om Vishnupad Jagad-Guru Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaj ki jay.

মূকং করোতি বাচালং পঙ্গুং লঙ্ঘয়তে গিরিম্ ।
যৎকৃপা তমহং বন্দে শ্রীগুরুং দীনতারণম্ ॥

mukam karoti vachalam pangum langhayate girim
yat krpa tam aham vande sri-gurum dina-taranam

‘The dumb can speak, the lame can climb a hill – all it takes is mercy from gurudev.’

(Bhavartha Dipika)

So, you have been listening about the Lord all this time. Please always remember the Lord. The only way to come to the Lord is through listening about Him (sravan) and thought chanting His glories (kirtan). You will not come to Him through any other practice. At the same time, what you must remember is that if you arrange 8-prahar, 16-prahar or 24-prahar kirtans, hiring professional kirtan singers to come and sing somewhere, this is not sravan and kirtan. You hire people for ten, twenty or fifty rupees and get them to read Bhagavatam for seven days, but if you listen to such reading, you will never get any spiritual benefit, nor will you ever come to the Lord like that. Such practices are not Krishna-kirtan.

[Clamour] Why are you talking so much? What has happened? When I meet people, I can never find what to say, but you are talking so much. Where do you find all these things to talk about?

Do not listen to hired Bhagavatam readers or kirtan singers. Even if you listen to them for ten million lifetimes, it will not bring you to the Lord because those hired people commit offences to the Holy Name. The Holy Name can never come out of their mouths. You may object, 'No, but they come and sing so well playing the harmonium.' This is not kirtan. This is only alphabet and literary exercise, the same letters as the Name, but it is not the Name proper.

Kirtan must come from the heart. If somebody else sings or chants something, what benefit does it give you? You can give somebody ten rupees or two thousand rupees, they will come to your house and sing something, but what do you gain through that?

'My body is not sick – it is my mind that is sick.' If you do not feel well, lie down and you will feel better. Health is never bad. For example, there is a class and kirtan held at this house today, and you think, 'Oh, I am not feeling well,' so you stay at home and sleep. This is how you end up actually getting sick. If you try to cheat, then you will sink and die. You have come to the Lord's family – if you try to cheat and dodge all and any activities, then the Lord will kill you. 'My body is not sick – it is my mind that is sick.' This is what Srila Haridas Thakur said when Mahaprabhu asked him, 'Haridas, what has happened to you? Why are you unwell?' But if we are asked about our health, we always say, 'Oh, I have got a cough', 'Oh, I have a fever', and so on; but Srila Haridas Thakur said, 'My body is not sick – it is my mind that is sick.' All illness is in the mind.

Anyway, what we have come to tell you is this. When people hold 8-prahar, 16-prahar or 24-prahar kirtans, you must tell them not to do it, forbid it, and if they do not listen to you, then stop going to the houses of such people yourselves. If you listen to such kirtans, it will destroy everything in your lives, just as all the benefit of drinking milk can easily be destroyed, too. These are Lord Siva's words. Lord Siva is a great Vaishnav, and he is worshipped here, in Hooghly, in your district (Tarakeswar is the area of Taraknath, and we have a temple there now – if you go there, you can see it). So, if you respect Lord Siva, then you must follow what he says. He said that if you drink milk, you get nourishment, but if a snake takes a sip of some milk, that milk will kill you. Both normal milk and poisoned milk look the same. We chant the Holy Name and sahajiyas or hired singers also chant the Holy Name – both look the same. People like hired singers more because they dress nicely, put on nice make up, use nice parfume, and they dance nicely, too. They roll on the ground, they shed tears emotionally (they put some onion juice or mustard oil in their eyes). You give them money, they come and sing, and then they take your money and use it to buy alcohol, cigarettes, etc. The Holy Name can never come out of such people's mouths! What they utter is not the Holy Name – what they utter is offence to the Holy Name. If you listen to such kirtans, it can never bring you any benefit.

So, we must not go to such places, and we must not listen to what is going on in such places. Do not mix with such people. Even if you listen to such kirtan your whole life, it will not give you any benefit. Such kirtan can never bring anybody to this path. You can see big bands that sing pala-kirtan and lila-kirtan and that charge thousands of rupees (sometimes, even a hundred thousand rupees!), but they cannot bring to this line even one person because they themselves never came there. If you fall into a pit, can you take another person from the pit? You must first get out of the pit yourself, then you can pull another person out of it.

— : • : —

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CLICK TO LISTEN TO THE LECTURE

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Length: 64 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Self-Rectification
2) Resist Defective Lifestyle
3) Six Pillars of Devotional Life
4) Leave This World
5) Do Not Poison Your Mind
6) Once Upon a Guru
7) 'My Happiness or Your Head'
8) Price of Peace
9) Pave Your Road to Holy Dham