Our Greatest Aspiration

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Kolkata-Worldwide, 14 June 2020, part 4

Actually, I was in Nrisingha Palli yesterday and the day before yesterday also. Today is Sunday, I have a class, so I told them that I had to leave today. I will go back there again in two-three days, I have some service there. The lockdown is being gradually relaxed, so we should resume our preaching, we should again start to preach Krishna consciousness, to make programmes. We will start making programmes keeping some social distance. Also, devotee will soon be able to travel from some countries. I think that they will start international flights from July.

We always live with so many viruses around us, so what is the problem? It is one virus more, but as it is we always stay with so many elements in this world. When Srila Gaura Kishor Das Babaji Maharaj lived in Nabadwip, he stayed in a public toilet during some time. Somebody asked him, "Prabhu, you are staying next to a public toilet, there is too much bad smell. How do you tolerate it?" Srila Gaura Kishor Das Babaji Maharaj replied, "I can tolerate this smell, but there are some materialist people in this world whose smell is very strong—that smell I cannot tolerate. I do not want their association."

বিষয়ীর অন্ন খাইলে মলিন হয় মন ।
মলিন মন হৈলে, নহে কৃষ্ণ-নাম গ্রহণ ॥

visayira anna khaile malina haya mana
malina mana haile, nahe krsna-nama grahana

"If you take food that comes from materialistic people, your mind becomes contaminated. When your mind is contaminated, you cannot chant the Name of Krishna."

(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, Antya-lila, 6.278)

Sriman Mahaprabhu told this to Srila Raghunath Das Goswami when he used to take money from his father and use it to give Vaishnav-seva. Mahaprabhu was not happy with that, and He said that to him. "Visayira anna khaile malina haya mana." Gurudev also always told that. If you take money from materialist people, it is very dangerous to try to digest it. Yet those who are proper devotees, proper Vaishnavs, they give everything for the service of their Gurudev, so it is not a problem for them—no reaction will come to them. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, but if you do not produce any action, then why will any reaction come? Watch out. We must be always very careful with this.

We sometimes cannot consider ourselves a proper disciple—we always consider ourselves a guru. That is the problem in our life. Prakasananda Saraswati, Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, et.al. always dissed Mahaprabhu, but after that Mahaprabhu defeated them. How did Mahaprabhu defeat Prakasananda Saraswati, Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, and Digvijayi Pandit Keshav Kashmiri? Mahaprabhu defeated them by giving very sweet examples from Srimad Bhagavatam. In the case of Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, even when defeated, he was not fully convinced—only when Mahaprabhu showed him His six-armed form (sad-bhuja rupa—the Lord's form in Satya-, Treta-, Dvapar-, and Kali-yuga) did he finally understand it and surrender himself at the lotus feet of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

That was the case of Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, but we should see the examples of Srila Rupa Goswami, Srila Sanatan Goswami, Namacharya Srila Haridas Thakur. How did they live? What was their lifestyle? You know, Haridas Thakur never even went inside the Jagannath temple. When Jagannath prasadam came to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Mahaprabhu took it, then Haridas Thakur accepted those remnants of Mahaprabhu's prasadam. He would chant the Holy Name loudly. We can see his example. Mahaprabhu gave him a place near His house—Mahaprabhu stayed in Kashi Mishra's house in Puri, and Mahaprabhu arranged for a place near Kashi Mishra's for Srila Haridas Thakur to stay with Him. Later, we can see how much separation Mahaprabhu felt when Srila Haridas Thakur's niryan pastime happened-when Srila Haridas Thakur left his body. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself made all arrangements, we can see how much He served Srila Haridas Thakur when he left his body. You all know this, we are not going to explain it now again.

In this way, the Lord Himself came to us as a great teacher, as a great acharya—the Lord Himself came to rescue all of us, and after that He sent His associate to rescue all of us because we are all fallen souls. We consider ourselves fallen souls—we have no quality, no qualification to serve Vaishnavs, but we can still try to serve. Because the Guru and Vaishnavs are always very kind, they will accept our service, so relying on their kindness, we will try to serve them properly, we will try to help them in some way. That is our greatest aspiration.

— : • : —

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

• Listen to the audio or download (6 min | 2.5 Mb)