(8) Stand Up to Maya

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Uluberia, 1 April 2019, part 8
Translated from Bengali

This here is the temple of your district. It is the first temple of Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math in the Howrah district. I first established Sankirtan Maha-Mandal here, and now a temple is being constructed. The preaching in his area started in Gurudev's time and now it has fructified. Many kinds of obstacles and dangers will come in the future; people will speak and say many things to stop you. We are all destined to hear all kinds of things in our lives, but remember that if something is not there in your destiny, it can never happen.

I can give you an example. We have a place in Naihati. Santosh Prabhu went there to make a festival, and I had also been there for a programme. In the end, they gifted us a three-storey house. The land is so expensive in that area that the registration only cost four hundred thousand rupees. I spoke to the local devotees and we agreed to partially break the house and build a temple. The plan was approved. It cost us five thousand rupees to get the plan approved at the municipal office. That all happened before I went to Vrindavan and Dvaraka. There was a condition stipulated in the deed of gift: the lady who lived at the house never married and was about sixty years old, so the condition was that as long as she lived, she had to stay at the temple. I did not mind it, but you can see what the will of the Lord was like. I went to Dvaraka soon after that (before that, you all celebrated my birthday and I gave a lecture). There is one sannyasi who sits in some place and does his demoniac works. That lady went to Dum Dum Park. (She had tried calling me but could not get through because we were travelling at that time.) That sannyasi spoke to her and told her all kinds of rubbish, and she believed him. When she went back to the house, she had many of the old, big trees cut down (there were mango and jackfruit trees). I said, 'Whatever. When she dies, then I can take care of the place.' Now she understands that she has done wrong – she keeps calling me, but I am not answering her phone calls. If she has no faith and is eager to listen to other people, then she can go and do so. She can do whatever she wants. My plan for the temple there has been sanctioned, but because of what she did I do not go there anymore. I have her phone number, so when I see that she is calling, I do not answer it. Then, she called from another number – the number was unknown, so I answered it. She said, 'Dandavat, Maharaj, please accept my humble obeisance.' I replied, 'Pranam, I am busy now,' and put the phone down. She has not called me for two months already – she stopped trying before Gaura Purnima. I know now that she is a duplicitous person, so I do not want to get involved.

Question: Where is she now?

At Dum Dum Park. I heard that on the day when we went to the Champahatti parikrama, she came to our Nrisingha Palli temple. They told me about it, and I told them, 'Let her be. She can come and take prasad, it is not a problem.' I did not speak to her. I had forgiven her many times, but now I feel that I do not care about her offences, neither do I care about her asking for forgiveness for her offences.

So, always remember these things. I told you earlier today that if one does not feel that kind of natural love and attachment to the temple (when they feel sincerely, lovingly that the temple is their very own), you cannot teach them to love it by any reasoning, beating or forcing. You cannot teach one to love because love is something that comes natural, just as self-interest is natural too. It is not necessary to teach one how to be selfish – selfishness comes and grows on its own. I have written about this here, in Guidance 3. I also wrote about Santosh Prabhu. He was very great. Although he was a householder devotee, I made him the secretary of the Mission. In Srila Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj's time, my Gurudev was also a grihastha and Srila Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj made him the secretary – he refused to appoint anybody else. In Gurudev's time, Gurudev made me the secretary. Gurudev gave Santosh Prabhu to my hands, but Santosh Prabhu could not serve the Lord, and there is a reason why. I know that reason, and I do not want to say it in front of everybody. He told me himself, 'Maharaj, I cannot serve the Lord anymore because Maya is pulling me back too hard – Maya is giving me too much trouble.' So, the Lord has taken him away, bringing him to Himself.

I wrote about Santosh Prabhu:

"Many do not know about the service of late Sripad Santosh Krishna Prabhu and he himself also during his life often said that he had not been able to become even an insignificant servant of the Math (he never thought that he had become anything big); but seeing how strong was his attachment to the interest of the Math in the many small services he did, it puts us to shame now. He never once even saw the accounts of his material property; neither did he ever try to increase his wealth even by a cent (many people say that he had taken a lot of money from the temple and bought a lot of land – it is all lies); but it is inconceivable how much this person tried, with heart and soul, to collect and beg for the Math. Nobody ordered him, nobody encouraged him – he took care of the Math's various paraphernalia like an expert householder of his own accord, he would be always seen very busy with all kinds of works of the Math; at the same time, he never once gave anyone even a slightest hint of the service and works he was doing. Some of us help the Math's preaching with some money, etc., give physical labour, but if we do not see any mention about us in a newspaper column, at the preachers' assembly at a holy dham, or in an eulogy written by Sri Guru and Vaishnavs, then we decide, 'There is no use serving the Math. They are prejudiced. They do not praise me, do not give me 'jay' (that is why I usually do not mention anybody's name – so that others do not start thinking like this), so I better rough it at home than waste time, money and life for the interest of the Math.' (Making such a decision, people choose to live in Maya's world.) However, the great soul who we have mentioned before, gave so much money for the service of 'Jayasri', continuously toiling as a low menial worker – it is impossible to mention everything. However, he never once said anything that would give a slightest hint that he wanted to see his praise in a newspaper column or even more so to see his name included in the Math's Calendar; but we have seen that his effort to look after the interests of the Math was gradually making him great."

Always remember these things, always read books.

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