(3) Reckless Rat Race

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Preaching programme in Singur,
7 May 2019, noon, part 3
Translated from Bengali

Having promised to the Lord that we would be born and serve Him, we have got very nice human bodies and were born in this auspicious land of Bharata-bhumi. But then what actually happened is that we fell into illusory bondage under the influence of Maya's power and end up living only thinking about our perishable bodies. 'What will I eat?', 'What will I wear?', 'How will I sleep?', 'What is going to happen?', 'What awaits me next?' – we always only think about our material lives. A hundred out of a hundred people are like that. Falling into the ocean of material existence, we live in the world of material desires, and it never occurs to us to think, 'How can I serve the Lord?'

You must think about your own selves! You will say, 'Oh, but that is what I do!' Do you? You think, 'What will I eat?', 'What will I wear?', 'How will I sleep?' – you think that this is what it means to think about yourselves, but this is not thinking about your own selves! This is only thinking about the perishable body! When this body falls down dead after a few days, it will be taken to the crematorium and burnt. You only think about your bodies, worrying how you will live, what you will eat, what will happen to your bodies, and so on. You never think about your actual selves! You never think about what is good for your souls! 'Who am I? What is my relationship with God?' – a hundred out of a hundred people never think about this. Only very few rare souls awaken their hearts and live always thinking about this.

That is why sadhus, gurus and Vaishnavs mercifully come to us from time to time to remind us that we are not our bodies. We always keep thinking about our bodies: what we will eat, what we will wear, where we will sleep, where we will live, what we can do to get a nice sleep and live a comfortable life. This is how we finish off our lives. We do not have any time to think about God! Ask a hundred people and all them will say, 'Oh, I have no time!' To such people I say, 'You spend fifteen minutes sitting on the toilet pan, and if you go to the bathroom twice a day, you spend there half an hour each day – instead of wasting this time, chant "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare / Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare."' Is that so or not? Chant! Chant with your mouths. If you do not chant with your mouths, the sound vibration will not reach your hearts. Gurudev places the Holy Name in your hearts and after that you must chant it with your mouths.

You are always only busy thinking about money, food, clothes, sleep, always only busy worrying about your bodies. The Lord vested human bodies with many senses (eyes, ears, nose, skin, tongue, mind, intelligence, ego), and all we do is use these senses to worry about our bodies. We have eyes, so we think, 'I want to see nice things!' We have mouths, so we think, 'Oh, I want to eat nice things!' We have ears, so we think, 'I want to hear all kinds of nonsense!' We have legs, so we think, 'I want to go to all kinds of nonsense places!' We have hands, so we think, 'I will do all kinds of bad things!' This is what occupies all our time. We never think about what will become of us when these bodies expire.

এদেহ পতন হ'লে কি রবে আমার ।
কেহ সুখ নাহি দিবে পুত্র পরিবার ॥

e deha patana ha'le ki rabe amara?
keha sukha nahi dibe putra paribara

'When this body drops dead, what will remain "mine"? Upon death neither my sons nor my family will give me any satisfaction.'

(Sri Kalyan-kalpataru, Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur)

What will become of us when our bodies fall down dead and taken to the crematorium? Nobody will come to give us any joy at that time – neither our sons, nor our families... When our bodies die, they will only think how to get rid of them as soon as possible because they will start stinking and decaying – they will quickly take our bodies out of the house and hurry to take them to the crematorium and burn them. This is what people do in this world. But have you ever thought about yourselves? What will become of you? Where will you go? Where are you now and where will you go from here?

You worry and worry, you worry all the time... There was an election recently and you are waiting for the results now, worrying about who will win so much that you even had to take pills to sleep at night! Whoever has it in their fortune and destiny to have their name in the vote box, those will win. What is the use worrying how many votes who will get? This is what people in this world worry about... This is all mental suffering. You can imagine how much the candidates worry during the election time. They spend so much money and have to worry about their competitors (other parties). People run behind name and fame, they want everybody to know them, they want to become prime ministers and ministers – they waste so much time to earn pratistha, but they never think about themselves. And if we say this to them, they will say that we are crazy. First we must think who is actually crazy, they or us... They are the crazy ones.

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