(4/5) Gift of Willpower

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Preaching programme, evening class
Translated into English from Bengali
15 February 2020, part 4

If you do not have desire (if you are determined, "I will not chant the Holy Name"), then nobody can force you. You can teach a parrot to say "Hare Krishna", and it will say it, but when a cat grabs it, it will not cry, "Hare Krishna!"—only bird sounds will come out of its mouth. So, if you worship the Lord only one day and after that stop, it will not do. Devotion must be eternal, daily. You do Tulasi parikrama, offer some water and incense and ring the bell today, but this is not what service to Tulasi is. You must do Tulasi parikrama every day, you must offer water to Tulasi every day, and so on. Taking shower and coming to offer obeisance to the Lord in the evening, or coming to see the Lord in the afternoon and telling Him about your desires and wishes is not service. When a mother or a father raises a child, they do not do it expecting to receive something in return—they bring their child up out of love. Such love must come for the Lord.

বিষয়ে যে প্রীতি এবে আছয়ে আমার ।
সেই মত প্রীতি হউক চরণে তোমার ॥

visaye ye priti ebe achhaye amara
sei-mata priti hauk charane tomara

"May I have the same affection and attraction to your feet that I now have for material things."

(Gitavali, Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur)

How long will you live in this world? I have placed important questions in front of you today. You know, when people go to work in this world, they can get promoted, and they can also get demoted. Similarly, having got repeatedly promoted, you have now received this human birth, and not just any human birth—you were born right here in India. But there is no guarantee that you will not become demoted and not be again born as cows, goats, dogs, sheep or cats (on the contrary, it is actually inevitable unless you understand what this human life is for). The meaning of life is not in eating, sleeping and wearing clothes. These are all temporary, arbitrary concerns. The actual concern is that having got this human birth, we have got some good intelligence. If you do not give 5 kg of chicken or goat meat to a tiger or lion, it will get enraged; but if human beings want, they can become vegetarian, they can stop eating onion and garlic, they can fast on ekadasi—they can give up anything they want.

If you have no desire, then you can never accomplish anything. It is necessary to want to change. You must want to leave meat, fish, eggs, garlic, onion, alcohol, cigarettes, heroine, marijuana or any other intoxicants. The grandson of one of my disciples became addicted to heroine ('brown sugar') at a very young age; he was fourteen or thirteen years old at that time. Parents kept him in a home for addicts, paying 6,000 rupees' fee every month. They do not feed them properly there, and after six months, they only showed them a CCTV video showing that their grandson was all right. The family felt sorry for the boy and brought him back home, but he started beating his parents and breaking the house because he did not get money. I heard he is sixteen-seventeen years old now. So, attachment to meat and fish is not this kind of addiction that cannot be given up—if we want, we can leave it.

How long more are you going to wait? Many of you say, "Oh, I am still young. When I get old, then I will call out to the Lord." This is all cheating and nonsense. You are cheating the Lord. You think you will call out to the Lord when you grow old, but when you are old, you will have many diseases—you will not be able to walk or sit, your back will pain, your legs will pain, your eyes will not see. You will always be busy trying to manage your health—do you think you will feel happy chanting the Holy Name then?...

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Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) My Question to You
2) "Theirs Not to Reason Why"
3) Move Forward
4) Gift of Willpower
5) Ultimate Remedy