(6/12) Short-Lived and Short-Sighted

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Kadigachha, Festival anniversary,
4 March 2019, evening, part 6
Translated from Bengali

How long will we be alive in this world? Srila Prabhupad said, 'Do we have time to think about material things?' We do not. We must spend time on serving Govinda. We must not spend time on talking nonsense, talking about this, that – we must talk only about the Lord.

We spent ten months and ten days in the womb of our mothers, suffering hellish miseries and living with our heads down and legs up. If somebody hangs you like this now, you will vomit blood. When we were in our mothers' wombs, we suffered so much that we started calling out to the Lord, 'O Lord! Please release me! I cannot stay here any longer!'

'I will release you, but will you forget Me when you come out?' the Lord asks. 'I will give you eyes – will you see My Deities with these eyes?'

'Yes, I will,' we promise.

'I will give you ears – will you hear about Me with these ears?'

'Yes, I will.'

'I will give you legs – will you circumambulate My holy abode with them?'

'Yes, I will.'

We have promised all these things when we were suffering in our mothers' wombs!

We have these legs to do dham-parikrama, and if you cannot come to the holy land, you can do parikrama of Tulasi Devi. What is the problem? Everybody can plant Tulasi at home and circumambulate her two–four times every morning and evening. This is how you can become rescued from this material world, and this is how devotion will come also. Even if you do not know the Tulasi parikrama kirtan, you can simply chant the Hare Krishna maha-mantra: 'Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare / Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.' Otherwise, you can buy the kirtan books and chant the Tulasi kirtan from there: 'Namo namah Tulasi Maharani, Vrnde Maharani namo namah.' If you can do that, it will be good. If you do Tulasi parikrama, you get the same result of doing Vrindavan parikrama. Many of you do not have money to come to Vrindavan, or many people go to Vrindavan with a bus tour – what will they see there? Parikrama must be done in the association of sadhus. You can go to Vrindavan, see some great buildings and come back – this is something that Srila Sridhar Maharaj called 'eye-exercise.' When you do parikrama together with devotees, they will sit and tell you about the glories of each place. We also go to Puri like that – we go there by train and visit all the places during seven days. When we go to Vrindavan, we walk to some places, and sometimes we take buses to reach some places. We go there every year with one–two hundred devotees.

Nobody can say how long we will live in this world. Pariksit Maharaj got a seven-day notice that he would die seven days later, but is anybody of us that fortunate? Can any of us say when we will die? None of us can say if we will or will not die even in seven minutes, let alone seven days. There is no guarantee that we will not be taken to the crematorium in seven minutes. Then why are you trying so hard to show off, to impress others? Why all this pride? 'I can do it', 'I am doing this', 'I am doing that', 'I am doing everything.' No. We cannot do anything. We have no power, no strength to do anything. Everything happens by His will.

ঈশ্বরঃ পরমঃ কৃষ্ণঃ সচ্চিদানন্দবিগ্রহঃ ।
অনাদিরাদির্গোবিন্দঃ সর্ব্বকারণকারণম্ ॥

isvarah paramah krsnah sach-chid-ananda-vigrahah
anadir adir govindah sarva-karana-karanam

'Krishna, who is known as Govinda, is the supreme controller. He has an eternal, blissful, spiritual body. He is the origin of all. He has no other origin, for He is the prime cause of all causes.'

(Sri Brahma-samhita, 5.1)

He is the cause of all causes. But we do everything bypassing, or ignoring, Him. The Lord is the one who has sent us to this world – He is the one who has given us this body, who has provided all the food for us, who allows us to eat, dress, sleep and exist – but we forget about Him. That is the reason why we are suffering now from all these miseries.

— : • : —

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Length: 56 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Pure Hearts' Kirtan
2) Worship of Lord Siva
3) Proper Worship Comes from Proper Identification
4) Know Thyself
5) Pivoted Life
6) Short-Lived and Short-Sighted
7) Do Not Cheat Yourself
8) Devotional Service
9) Temple Is Not Made of Bricks
10) Spiritual Foundation
11) Stray Souls
12) Embrace Sheltered Life