(7/8) Become Devoted

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Preaching programme, morning
Translated into English from Bengali
18 February 2020, part 7

Start to follow ekadasi now. Some of you are thinking, "Why must I fast on ekadasi? It will decrease my husband's life!" Is this told anywhere in the scriptures? People tell lies! They say that you must eat meat on ekadasi, and that if you do not eat meat some day, they call that (random) day ekadasi. People think that if a married woman fasts on ekadasi, it will reduce the life of her husband. Where is it said? No scripture says this! You must fast on ekadasi days from eight to eighty-eight years old—observe ekadasi as long as you are live. If you are old (eighty-eight years old) and fall ill, then you cannot fast, but even then you must follow ekadasi. Fasting on ekadasi is not something bad, and Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur has made a special provision for ekadasi—nobody says that you must fast without eating or drinking anything. Srila Prabhupad said that if you can fast until midday, it is good, and if you cannot fast even until midday, then you can make some potato with pepper subji and sunflower oil. You can also boil some nuts—if you eat frief nuts, you will get gas in the stomach, so you can boil nuts instead. You can take fruit, curd, milk. There is no problem.

You chanting the Holy Name so much, but there are offences to the Holy Name.

aparadha-sunya haye laha krsna-nama
achirat tumi pabe krsna-prema-dhana

"Chant the Holy Name of Krishna without offence and you will quickly get the treasure of divine love to Krishna."

Do not talk please. Say with me:

হরে কৃষ্ণ হরে কৃষ্ণ কৃষ্ণ কৃষ্ণ হরে হরে ।
হরে রাম হরে রাম রাম রাম হরে হরে ॥

hare krsna hare krsna krsna krsna hare hare
hare rama hare rama rama rama hare hare

Srila Raghunath Das Goswami Prabhu left everything as stool and urine. When you suddenly feel an urge to pass stool on the train without a bathroom, what is your condition then? You will wait one station, two stations, but on the third station, you will cry, "I cannot stick it anymore!" You will get off at the next stop and run, you will not care who is calling you and who is looking. And once you pass stool, you feel happy. In the same way, the more this material world holds you, the more you worry—the more money you have, the more you think about it (How can I protect it? How should I spend it?).

You can see my example also—we have opened so many temples, and I have to worry about them until midnight every day. They call me at midnight and say, "Oh, the goshala man has left!" What kind of servitors are they that they call in the middle of the night to tell such news? They call me from another place and say, "Oh, the cook has got sick, what should I do now?" or, "The electricity bill has come for this-and-this sum." What a headache! Then I tell myself, "What do you want? You have made so many temples... There must be a headache." That is why Param Guru Maharaj told Gurudev not to make many temples, but Gurudev made many temples, and I have also increased the number. Now I can see what a pain it is. Do you know what kind of pain it is? I think that I must have committed sins for ten million lifetimes, and as the result of that I am suffering like this now. Otherwise, why would I suffer, dealing with phone calls until midnight? They do not think that Gurudev is writing or lying down. They call because they are inconvenienced... We always only talk about our own problems...

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Size: 16 Mb
Length: 36 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Deposit Your Heart
2) Special Price
3) Watch Your Step
4) Primary Realisation
5) Full-Hearted Appeal
6) 'My Constant Sadness'
7) Become Devoted
8) Decision Is Yours