Practitioner's Pure Pride

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Kolkata-Worldwide, 31 May 2020, part 6

Question: What should we remember about Raghunath Das Goswami during his festival that is coming?

At Srila Raghunath Das Goswami's festival, you should glorify and remember the glories of Srila Raghunath Das Goswami, remember his Vaishnav character. He had an extremely strong desire to meet Mahaprabhu, and he finally reached Mahaprabhu, he finally got service from Mahaprabhu. In the end, he got a place to stay at Radha Kunda in Giri Govardhan. You must remember how he always 100% followed Mahaprabhu's instruction. Mahaprabhu told him,

স্থির হঞা ঘরে যাও, না হও বাতুল
ক্রমে ক্রমে পায় লোক ভব-সিন্ধুকূল
মর্কট-বৈরাগ্য না কর লোক দেখাঞা ।
যথাযোগ্য বিষয় ভুঞ্জ' অনাসক্ত হঞা ॥

sthira haya ghare yao, na hao batula
krame krame paya loka bhava-sindhu-kula
markata-vairagya na kara loka dekhana
yatha-yogya visaya bhunja' anasakta hana

"Be sensible, go back to your home. Do not be crazy. One reaches the shore of material existence gradually. Do not show your false renunciation to people. Serve accepting material things, but without attachment."

(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya-lila, 16.237-238)

"Go back to your home, do not show others monkey renunciation. It is not necessary to show your vaishnavata (Vaishnav qualities) to others. Go back to your home and serve your family. Please them and internally always remember Me." Raghunath Das Goswami did it, and he finally reached Mahaprabhu after he had got mercy from Nityananda Prabhu in Panihati.

Devotee: Are you going to Panihati this year?

If Raghunath Das Goswami, Nityananda Prabhu call me, I will go and pay obeisance there. It is not crowded there this year and it is not so far from Kolkata. I passed Panihati yesterday...

Question: How important are the instructions of a siksa-guru for our spiritual life?

If somebody teaches you very nicely, then you can accept them as a siksa-guru and you can accept what that siksa-guru teaches you. There are so many siksa-guru in this world. If somebody teaches you how to cook, they are also your siksa-guru. Whatever you learn, if somebody teaches you something, they are your siksa-guru. There can be many different siksa-gurus, but the diksa-guru can be only one. When we study at school, college, or university, there are many siksa-gurus there, and we can give honour to them. Our duty is to give honour to others, we will give honour even to animals. Therefore, whoever becomes our siksa-guru, we can show respect to them.

Does anyone has any other questions?

Question: Sometimes when we serve Gurudev we become proud. How can we not forget because of this pride that we are servants?

We are servants of the Lord, servants of Gurudev. That is our quality. We must be servants of Gurudev. That is our designation. There is no question of pride here—what pride can there be? We are servants. We are servants of Gurudev, we are sweepers of Gurudev, we are gatekeepers of Gurudev, we are gatekeepers of our Gurudev's temple. We have no problem with that. Yes, we are dogs of our Guru, that is our pride.

রাধিকা দাসী যদি হোয় অভিমান ।
শীঘ্রই মিলই তব গোকুল কান ॥

radhika-dasi yadi haya abhimana
sighra-i mila-i taba gokula kana

"Those who pride themselves on being maidservants of Sri Radha, will quickly meet Gokula Kan (Krishna)."

"If I have such pride (abhiman) that, 'I am a servant of Radharani,' then I will get Krishna."

But material pride is not good. Why will we have material pride? Material pride is not good—when you become a proper servitor of Gurudev, then your material pride will automatically leave you.

Question: We hear that our mind is always very naughty. Sometimes, we try to engage in good things, we try very hard to focus on one thing, but our mind and anarathas take us to another place. What should we do?

It is a good question. Mind is always roaming the external world, but we must control our mind. We have our intelligence, and we must control our mind with our intelligence. We must give a good beating to our mind. You know, when you drive a horse, you must sometimes beat the horse with a whip; in the same way, you must whip your mind—that whip is your good intelligence. Sometimes, you can hit your mind, hit your head with a shoe also.

Our mind's character is that it always goes to different places, it always goes to another place. It is necessary to take medicine for controlling your mind. That medicine is intelligence. When your mind goes out, you must bring your mind back to proper things.

This is true especially at the beginning of our life. When you go to school, you sometimes want to play football, cricket, etc., you want to see some other things—you do not like to spend time on studying, so you go to do other things. You cannot control your mind without proper practising. If you cannot control your mind, if you cannot conquer your mind, how will you then conquer the world? You must first conquer your own mind. There are so many diseases, so many bad elements inside us in our life—we must control all these things.

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