(6) Krishna's Household

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Bhanjipur, 2 December 2019, noon, part 6
Translated from Bengali

ei-bara karuna kara vaisnava gosani
patita-pavana toma bine keha nai [1]

'O worshippable Vaishnav, please be merciful to me this time. O saviour of the fallen! I have no one except you.'

kahara nikate gele papa dure yaya
emana dayala prabhu keba kotha paya [2]

'If anyone comes to you, their sins go away. Where can you find such a merciful master?'

gangara parasa haile paschate pavana
darsane pavitra kara ei tomara guna [3]

'After touching the Ganges, one can eventually attain salvation, but your quality is such that one can be purified just by seeing you.'

hari-sthane aparadhe tare hari-nama
toma-sthane aparadhe nahika edana [4]

'If somebody offends the Lord, the Lord’s Name delivers them; but if somebody offends you, it is impossible to get away with it.'

tomara hrdaye sada govinda-visrama
govinda kahena mama vaisnava parana [5]

'Always resting in your heart, Govinda says, "My devotees are My heart and soul."'

prati janme kari asa charanera dhuli
narottame kara daya apanara bali [6]

'In every birth, I aspire for the dust of your feet. Please mercifully consider Narottam your own.'

dayal vaisnava thakura, dayal vaisnava thakura,
vaisnava thakura, dayal vaisnava thakura,

'If you commit an offence to the Lord, the Holy Name can save you, but if you commit an offence to a Vaishnav, there is no way to get away with it.' If we commit an offence at the holy feet of the Lord, Vaishnavs can forgive us and help us, but if we commit an offence at the holy feet of such Vaishnavs who can forgive our wrongdoing, then we will be in big trouble.

Gurudev comes to this world from Goloka Vrindavan. The Lord sends him to this world. Why does He send him here? To remind us. To remind us about what? We have forgotten something. What is it? We have forgotten that we are eternal servants of Lord Krishna.

‘কৃষ্ণ-নিত্যদাস’—জীব তাহা ভুলি’ গেল ।
এই দোষে মায়া তার গলায় বান্ধিল ॥

‘krsna-nitya-dasa’—jiva taha bhuli’ gela
ei dose maya tara galaya bandhila

‘Jiva souls forgot that they are eternal servants of Krishna. Because of this mistake, illusion threw its ropes around their necks.’

(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, 2.22.24)

The soul is an eternal servant, eternal slave of the Lord. This is what gurudev comes to remind us about. He comes and tells us, 'You are not your body.' You can understand this yourselves. You call each other by some names, but when some person leaves this world, will you call this person by their name then? You will not. The name that you knew referred to the person's body only, but the soul that lives in that body is now nowhere to be found – it received another body and was born somewhere else.

Our gurus and Vaishnavs are all householders, but in whose household do they live? They are members of Krishna's household. Gurudev does not come here to enjoy. He is actually the greatest enjoyer in the world because there is no lack of anything in Vaikuntha. When he comes to this world, he comes to take everybody with him because he wants everybody to go to Vaikuntha and enjoy. He does not want to enjoy there alone. He wants to take you all with him to Vaikuntha and enjoy all together. That is why the Lord sends gurudev, and that is why gurudev comes and, putting up with all and any austerity, goes door to door and preaches to people.

How much do you think you can enjoy? You marble your room to sleep nicely, you install an A/C in your room to feel cool, you get an expensive car to drive around – this is the extent of your idea of enjoyment. How much is your capacity to enjoy? You cannot even conceive of the kind of enjoyment available in Vaikuntha. Therefore, you cannot offer impure or inauspicious items to gurudev – whatever you offer must be of the purest type, and you must always strive towards perfection.

When you enjoy in this world, you always want more and more. For example, if you install an A/C in your room, you will see that tomorrow you will want to create even more comfort by getting something else. I read in the newspaper just yesterday that one MP's son was getting married. They live in Delhi, but they decided to celebrate the wedding in Dubai, and to take the groom's party there, they hired fifteen aeroplanes! Can you imagine this? So, the more people enjoy, the more and more they want to enjoy. We cannot even conceive of it. In villages, if a husband celebrates his wife's birthday, everybody laughs at him, but very rich people give their wives aeroplanes as birthday presents! Aeroplanes cost half a billion rupees or more. And their planes are so big that you can even play badminton on board! So, imagine you are flying to America and on the plane you can play badminton and do many things. How much enjoyment this is! There is this kind of enjoyment in this world, but there is so much more enjoyment in Vaikuntha. Lord Narayan presides over Vaikuntha and lives among immense wealth and enjoyment. In this world, we always want to enjoy more and more, no matter how much we get, we always want more – this hankering for enjoyment can be satisfied there.

So, you cannot serve the Lord with the impure things of this world. Even all the planes are impure – you know, when a plane is in the air, it takes only one bird to destroy it. If a bird hits a plane, the plane crushes. We do not want this kind of impure enjoyment.

Krishna lives with His family in Vaikuntha and you live in the world of Sakuntha. Yet the Lord resorts to an amazing trick, or deception, for you. What trick is that? The trick is called gurudev. The Lord sends His own associate from Vaikuntha in the role of gurudev. He sends him from Vaikuntha into the material world, and through him He creates His own family within the mortal plane. In this way, gurudev, or a great soul, starts Krishna's family in this material world and recruits others into this family. The Lord does not send gurudev saying, 'Go and make your own family.' No, He says, 'Go and start My family there. Increase My family.' Therefore, a genuine guru does not make his own family – he creates a family of Krishna. By the desire of Krishna and on His order, gurudev pours in all sorts of offerings onto Krishna, who is the master of the family, and does everything to make Him happy. He strives to make Krishna happy with all his heart, soul and mind.

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