(7/10) Inane Interests

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Morning class during village preaching
16 February 2020, part 7
Translated from Bengali

জীবন অনিত্য জানহ সার
তাহে নানাবিধ বিপদ-ভার ।
নামাশ্রয় করি' যতনে তুমি
থাকহ আপন কাজে ॥

jivana anitya janaha sara
tahe nana-vidha vipada-bhara
namasraya kari' yatane tumi
thakaha apana kaje

"Know that the main thing is that life is temporary and filled with all sorts of danger. Carefully take shelter of the Name and do your work."

(Sri Gitavali, Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur)

Life is not eternal! You can leave this world at any moment. And this life is full of danger. You will get happiness, and you will also get unhappiness and distress. The problem is that we live in this world, but we cannot understand anything. We do not feel troubled to eat, but when it comes to chanting the Holy Name, we find all kinds of excuses. I asked somebody yesterday, "Why do you not chant the Holy Name?" and the reply was, "Oh, my fingers hurt when I do mala." I said, "If your fingers hurt, then chant with your mouth!" The man said, "Oh, if I chant with my mouth, my mouth will hurt." But your mouth does not hurt when you eat... So, that man sits on a chair the whole day, swinging his legs and thinking about all the other things. He can chant the Holy Name, he can do his mala, but he does not do that—he just sits and swings his legs...

You say that your mouth hurts if you chant, but when you eat, your mouth does not hurt. You use your mouth the whole day without giving it a break—you eat the whole day: in the morning, afternoon, evening and inbetween. You wake up at dawn and start eating—as soon as you wake up, you think about food. Does nothing hurt then? But if you chant the Holy Name for one hour, then you think your mouth will hurt. You talk so much—mothers-in-law go in the afternoon house to house, mixing with everyone and telling stories about whose daughter-in-law did what, and there is no difficulty with that. This is what you are all busy with. Many mothers-in-law do that, and their daughters-in-law are none the better (it is not that only mothers-in-law are at fault).

People are always busy with prajalpa (idle talks, gossips) and gramya-katha (village talks), all the time talking about this, about that. We must instead think, "How can I find the Lord?"

You can come to the Lord only through love. You should not serve the Lord out of fear, with the hope to get something or thinking, "The Lord is sach-chid-ananda (eternal, ever-cognisant and ever-blissful), and we are His servants, so we must serve Him." How does a mother love her child? How does she take care of her child? Out of duty? No. Out of love. When the child is very small, does a mother think, "Oh, when he grows up, he will look after me—he will work and feed me"? She does not. She serves her baby out of love. If a child eats soil, the mother will take the soil of its mouth, and the child will cry then, "Mother does not let me eat! I am hungry!" The mother knows that eating soil is not good, so she takes it out and gives the child a sweet instead. When the child takes the sweet, it smiles, "Oh, how nice! Mother knows better—this sweet is much better than soil!" The child does not understand that soil is not healthy (that it can upset your stomach or make you sick), but it understands that sweets are tasty. We are also like this—we are like children in front of the Lord. We ask the Lord for money, a house, a car: "Give me wealth, give me knowledge, make me beautiful, give me a good wife, make me a poet", "I want a wife", "I want a son", "I want a daughter" and so on. We want everything, and the Lord thinks, "They are babies! Like crazy, they only want to eat soil!" People never say, "O Lord! I want You! If I get You, I will get everything." If you get the Lord, there will be nothing else left to be got—neither money, nor a house, nor a car, nor anything else. Then why do we make this mistake of always wanting material things?

কৃষ্ণ যদি ছুটে ভক্তে ভুক্তি মুক্তি দিয়া ।
কভু ভক্তি না দেন রাখেন লুকাইয়া ॥

krsna yadi chhute bhakte bhukti mukti diya
kabhu prema-bhakti na dena rakhena lukaiya

"If devotees aspire for enjoyment or liberation, Krishna hides the knowledge about pure devotion from them and dismisses them, giving them enjoyment or liberation."

(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, 1.8.18)

If we want enjoyment or liberation in lieu of devotion, then the Lord will take devotion away from us, and we will sit with the burden of all kinds of ego on our heads—we will stay proud of our money, wealth, knowledge, beauty, good qualities and so on. If you put a fifty-kg sack of rice on your head, you will cry, "Oof, I cannot hold it any more! I cannot take it anymore!" Seeing your struggle, somebody will take you to an A/C room, but you still have that sack of rice on your head, so will that A/C room reduce your struggle? It will not. Only when you take the load off your head will you feel relief—you do not even need an A/C room. So, when we bow our heads at the holy feet of Sri Guru and Vaishnavs, the burden of our ego will be removed from our heads. We will become light, and then we will only think, "O Lord, You are mine, and I am Yours."

Always remember and be mindful of this. Unless you understand these things, you can never progress in this devotion line.

— : • : —

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Length: 87 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Life Suffused with Kirtan
2) Listen with Your Heart
3) Internal and External Transformation
4) Create a Relationship
5) Always Think about Hari-Katha
6) Connection with the Transcendental
7) Inane Interests
8) Bhakta-Vatsala Krishna
9) Become Pure Servant
10) Come to Worship the Lord