Asadhu-Sanga Saps Spiritual Strength

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Kolkata-Worldwide, 28 June 2020, part 1

Jay Om Vishnupad Jagad-Guru Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaj ki jay
Visva-varenya Srila Guru Maharaj ki jay
Om Vishnupad Jagad-Guru Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj ki jay
Jay saparikara Sri Sri Guru Gauranga Gandharva Govinda Sundarjiu ki jay
Om Vishnupad Bhagavan Sri Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Goswami Thakur Prabhupad ki jay
Om Vishnupad Srila Gaura Kishor Das Babaji Maharaj ki jay
Sachchidananda Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur ki jay
Sarvabhauma Sri Jagannath Das Babaji Maharaj ki jay
Rupanuga-guru-varga ki jay
Namacharya Haridas Thakur ki jay
Vrinda Devi Tulasi Devi Sri Bhakti Devi ki jay
Sri Shyama Kunda Radha Kunda Sri Giri Govardhan ki jay
Sri Mayapur Dham Sri Nabadwip Dham Sri Vrindavan Mathura ki jay
Sri Purusottam Ksetra ki jay
Baladev Subhadra Jagannathjiu ki jay
Akar Math-raj Chaitanya Math ki jay
Mayapur Yogapith ki jay
Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math ki jay
Tandiya sakha Math samuha ki jay
Sri Mather sevak vrinda bhakta-vrinda ki jay
Ananta-koti Vaishnav vrinda ki jay
Sri Gaudiya Acharya vrinda ki jay
Tridandi-pad-gan ki jay
Saparsada Sriman Nityananda Prabhu ki jay
Saparsada Sriman Mahaprabhu ki jay
Bhakta-prabara Prahlad Maharaj ki jay
Suddha-bhaktir vighnar vinasankari Bhagavan Nrisinghadev ki jay
Sri Sada-Siva Gangadhar Giriraj Govardhan ki jay
All the Eastern and Western devotees ki jay
All the worldwide devotees ki jay
Samagata Sri Gaura bhakta-vrinda ki jay
Samagata sannyasi-vrinda ki jay
Srila Bhakti Kusum Ashram Maharaj ki jay
All the sannyasi-vrinda ki jay
Harinam sankirtan ki jay
Nitai Gaura premanande Hari bol

I am very happy to see you all. I can see you all every week and I am getting inspiration to chant the Holy Name, preach Krishna consciousness and do some service to the devotees. It gives me enthusiasm. That is why it is always necessary to meet with devotees and keep good association (sadhu-sanga). Good association is always very good for us. Through good association, we will get more energy to chant the Holy Name, to practise Krishna consciousness. Association is the main thing in our spiritual life. Always stay within sadhu-sanga, within good association; always chant the Holy Name; always talk about the matters related to Krishna consciousness; always talk about Krishna's pastimes, about His beauty, about Gurudev's pastimes, Gurudev's glories. If we all can always share these things with devotees, it is good for us all and it will give us more energy. In this current situation, we cannot meet each other physically, but thanks to science, thanks to electronic progress and electronic movement, we can reach everybody. We have got a very good opportunity in this age.

I am very happy to see you all, to see your smiling faces, to see that you are practising, you are doing service, you are getting energy, and passing your time in a good way every week. This is good for us, and this is what is necessary for all devotees.

We always criticise devotees, we always hear, we always listen to devotees' faults and discuss it—this is not good at all for our practising life. Even if we see some fault in somebody, we will not discuss it so much with others—rather, it is better if we keep quiet. If we keep quiet, it will do us good. Gurudev told once: suppose you see or you know that somebody is stealing prasadam from the kitchen, and you tell about it to everybody—the person who steals prasadam will get the result, but you too will get the result for it because you discuss somebody's fault with everybody. You may think, "No, what is the problem? I saw it, it is bad, and I will tell everybody about it." This is not good at all for our practising life. Even if you chant Harinam one thousand times every day, you will get no result because that same very tongue criticises others. It is called para-charcha (পরচর্চা, criticising or discussing others).

Sometimes, you hear about somebody's fault, you smile and stay to listen some more, you feel interested. I wrote about it in Guidance 4 [Chapter 'Srila Rupa Goswami's Siksamrta', page 118]. If you eat some chanachur (some salty food, like potato chips), you get some pleasant taste in your mouth, but your stomach will not be full; if, on the other hand, you take some chapati, rice, subji, your stomach will be full. This is called mukharochok (মুখরোচক, pleasant to the taste). In the same way, if you discuss bad things with others, if you discuss somebody's faults or you listen to that, you may feel it is very tasty, but it is actually bad for your stomach (just as if you eat too much chanachur, you will suffer from acidity). Discussing others is unfavourable to devotion; it is not favourable to devotion, it is not good.

I have told you many times—suppose you are making a fire sacrifice, if you put one drop of ghee into the fire and then one drop of water, your fire sacrifice will not happen because the fire will go out. In the same way, you practise properly, but you also sometimes secretly do something wrong thinking that nobody can see that—but Krishna always sees it, He always observes what you are doing. The Lord and the Guru can always understand what you are doing. We can hide something from a human being or others, but we cannot hide anything from our Guru and the Lord. They will always know what we are doing. They always know it.

So, if there is some fault in our heart, if we do some wrong, we must try not to do it every day. If you think that nobody can see you doing it and continue doing wrong, then it will slowly increase and it will harm your spiritual life. We must always avoid bad things; if we can always avoid that which is unfavourable to devotion, it will be good for us. We can see Mahaprabhu's teaching, we can see so many examples from Mahaprabhu's time, from Srila Prabhupad's time, from our Gurudev and Guru Maharaj's time, we have got so many lessons, especially from Gurudev's time.

So, what I want to say is that we must always avoid bad association—gossiping, talk about others is not good for us, it is not good at all for our practising life. This is how we must continue our practising life.

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