(2/3) Gurudev's Appearance

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Srila Gurudev's Vyasa Puja, Nrisingha Palli
14 December 2019, noon, part 2
Translated from Bengali

Selecting this day, Sri Gurupadpadma made his advent in Sri Bamunpara, in the family of Sri Nitaipad Adhikari and Tarangini Devi Adhikari. Srila Gurudev came to the temple in 1947. Many years before that his father left his body, so the entire burden of supporting the family fell on his shoulders. Leaving his family in Bamunpara, he went to Nadanghat and started to work as a compounder for a doctor (he also cooked very well). He worked there for only twenty rupees a month.

When Sri Gurupadpadma came to the temple, his mother came with his younger brother and started to cry and beg him to return. Srila Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj asked her, 'Why do you want to take him away?' She said, 'He is the only breadwinner of the family, we all rely on him. We cannot manage without the twenty rupees he earned.' Then, Srila Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj said, 'If you get twenty rupees, will you be satisfied? If so, I will send you twenty rupees every month.' So, he would sent twenty rupees to Gurudev's mother every month.

As you may know, we now have a big temple in Bamunpara and a small ashram in Nadanghat. In 1947, Pujyapad Bhakti Kamal Madhusudan Maharaj, Sri Narasimhananda Brahmachari (later, he became Pujyapad Bhakti Vivriti Puri Maharaj) and Sri Bhutavrit Prabhu (later, he became Pujyapad Saudha Ashram Maharaj) went for preaching to Nadanghat. There, they stayed at a local zamindar's house. During the day they went out for collection, and in the evening, when they got back, they chanted kirtan and gave a class. Guru Maharaj was very young at that time, a seventeen-year-old youth. He came to one of those evening programmes and saw that the person who played the mridanga did not know how to play well. He, on the other hand, played very well because his father was a professional lila-kirtan singer and learned to sing and play the mridanga from him. So, he asked the devotees if he could play the mridanga, and when he played it, everybody was surprised and pleased. Later, when Guru Maharaj recollected it, he said that the assembly of those devotees headed by Sri Narasimhananda Brahmachari reminded him of King Birhambir’s assembly. He said, 'They brainwashed me. They said, "These legs are nothing, these eyes are nothing, these ears are nothing. The soul is everything."'

'Will you come with us to our temple?' they asked him in the end.

'Yes! Will you take me today?' Guru Maharaj replied.

'All right, let us go.'

Crossing the Ganges at Nandanghat, he walked with the devotees all the way to the temple. It was the day of Nrisingha-charutdasi. Everybody fasts on this day the whole day and only takes some anukalpa in the evening. Srila Guru Maharaj was very hungry. He is a Bardhaman boy, so he was used to eating rice or mudi three times a day, but when he came to the temple, he was frustrated, 'There is nothing to eat here!' In the meantime, Srila Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj was chanting the Holy Name and walking to and fro on his veranda. He noticed Gurudev and could understand that he was very hungry. He asked him, 'Are you hungry? There is a ripe pawpaw on the tree over there, can you climb it and get it?' Gurudev climbed the tree and brought the pawpaw to Srila Sridhar Maharaj. Srila Sridhar Maharaj gave it to Gurudev to eat. The rules of fasting on that day did not matter.

One day when Srila Sridhar Maharaj was speaking some Hari-katha, he told our Gurudev, 'Remember what I am going to say to you. Do not follow what your mind tells you, only follow what I tell you.' In those days, our Math was quite poor and simple – there was no money to buy vegetables at the market, so they often grew vegetables themselves or collected whatever was naturally available. There were some dumur (fig) trees growing near the Math, and they often cooked dumur tarkari (a green-fig curry). Do you know what dumur (fig) is? These days I do not see anybody selling it so much... The thing is that dumur trees are covered with ants. Srila Sridhar Maharaj told everybody to take turns every day to climb the trees and collect dumur, and if somebody did not do it, they would not get any prasad that day. Gurudev said that whenever it was his day to collect dumur, he would shudder anticipating all the ants' bites.

Within just seven days after Srila Gurudev's coming to the temple, Srila Sridhar Maharaj decided that this boy, our Gurudev, would become his successor acharya in the future. How did he understand it?

In those days, whenever there was a remainder of prasad, it was never thrown away. Now sannyasis and brahmacharis are too proud to take remainders from the day before. It is the truth... In those days they kept the leftovers and took them the next day. So, one day, they had some dal left over. They forgot to cover it, and some insects got inside it. One way or another, it happened so that the dal with insects was put on Gurudev's plate. When Gurudev saw the insects, he hesitated at first, but then he took the insects out and ate the prasad. Srila Sridhar Maharaj saw it and told him, 'Come see me after you finish taking prasad.'

'You have called me?' Gurudev came to Srila Sridhar Maharaj and asked.

'Yes. I want to ask you something. How come you ate that dal with insects?'

'Oh, but you have told me not to follow my mind... My mind told me, "I will not eat this!" but then I remembered that you told me that I must not follow what my mind tells me, that I must follow what you say.'

Hearing his reply, Srila Sridhar Maharaj decided, 'This boy will become the next acharya!'

— : • : —

{ 2001  |   2002  |   2003  |   2005  |   2009  |   2010  |   2011  |   2012 }
{ 2013  |   2014  |   2015  |   2016  |   2017  |   2018  |   2019  |   2020  |   2021 }

CLICK TO LISTEN TO THE LECTURE

Size: 35 Mb
Length: 72 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Great Fortune
2) Gurudev's Appearance
3) Gurudev's Desire