Sri Guru Purnima: Remembrance Day

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Sri Guru Purnima day, Kolkata-Worldwide
5 July 2020, part 1

Hari bol, dandavat. Please accept my humble obeisance to you all.

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
Jay saparikara Sri Sri Nitai Gaurachandra ki jay
Jay Laksmi Nrisinghadev ki jay
Prahlad maharaj ki jay
Bhagavan Nrisinghadev ki jay
Bhakta-prabara Prahlad Maharaj ki jay
Suddha-bhakti-vighnar vinasankari Bhagavan Nrisinghadev ki jay
Sri Sada-Siva Gangadhar Giriraj Govardhan ki jay
All the assembled sannyasi-vrinda ki jay
All the assembled devotees ki jay
All the worldwide devotees ki jay
Harinam sankirtan ki jay
Samagata Sri Gaura bhakta-vrinda ki jay!
Nitai Gaura premanande Hari bol

Today is a very good and auspicious day, the day of Sri Guru Purnima (full moon). Gurudev always spoke on this day. You can celebrate this day properly and remember Gurudev. On this day, we can remember, we can come to our Gurudev and pray to him that he may engage us in service more and more, so that we could progress in our spiritual life, so that we could submit ourselves to him as a devotee.

Sometimes, we fall down into Maya. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita tells very clearly why this happens,

'কৃষ্ণ-নিত্যদাস'—জীব তাহা ভুলি' গেল ।
এই দোষে মায়া তার গলায় বান্ধিল ॥

'krsna-nitya-dasa'—jiva taha bhuli' gela
ei dose maya tara galaya bandhila

"When the jiva soul makes the mistake of forgetting that it is an eternal servant of Krishna, Maya captures the soul by its neck."

(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya-lila, 22.24)

As soon as we forget that we are eternal servants of the Lord, Maya attacks us. That is the main thing. We must always remember that we are eternal servants of the Lord, that we are servants birth after birth (janma-janmantarer sevak/das). If we forget that we are eternal servants of the Lord, then Maya can attack us any time.

We celebrate this Sri Guru Purnima or any other festival to always remember this. It is like charging your battery. If you use your mobile phone but do not charge it from time to time, after some time the charge will finish and you will not be able to talk, work, use the internet or do anything else with this phone. It is necessary to have a charger and it is necessary to charge the phone. In our spiritual life also, it is necessary to charge your 'battery'—we need sadhu-sanga, good association, we must always talk about Krishna-katha, Guru-katha, Hari-katha, about Krishna's pastimes, Gurudev's pastimes. We must always remember these things, then it will give us inspiration in our spiritual life, we will get more and more energy and we will engage ourselves more and more in service. In this way, we can improve our spiritual life. So, you must always remember this day and other festival days also.

There are so many festivals, but we cannot gather many people in this situation, but we can still try little by little—we can give lectures through video calls and in other ways. In this age of internet, we are able to connect with all the devotees all over the world, and it is very nice for us.

We received very sad news yesterday—one ISKCON guru and acharya passed away, left us... He was acquainted with me personally. His name is Sripad Bhakti Charu Swami Maharaj. He was a disciple of Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaj Srila Prabhupad, and Gurudev told me that he used to come to Srila Guru Maharaj (Srila Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj) also. Later, he bought one land (the Land of Nectar) and gave it to Srila Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj. I have seen the deed of that land, it was actually his land initially. Later on, he came back again to his previous mission, to ISKCON. What can we do? But he preached very nicely—he made an ashram in Ujjain, he went for preaching to Bangladesh and so many other countries. We have lost him now in this virus. He was attacked in America, and yesterday he passed away.

"Krsna-bhakta-viraha vina duhkha nahi dekhi para (কৃষ্ণভক্ত-বিরহ বিনা দুঃখ নাহি দেখি পর): I cannot see any other sorrow except that of separation from a devotee of Krishna." It is very sad for us because we lost one of the captains yesterday—one of the pillars in our Krishna consciousness society has broken down. It is a great loss for our society. Whenever any Vaishnav leaves, we feel very sad. He may be an ISKCON guru, but we see him as a fighter against maya, so for us, we have lost one of our fellow soldiers (sahayodha, সহযোদ্ধা) in our Krishna consciousness society...

Everybody has to leave one day, and we do not know when this day will come. Ten years ago, Gurudev also left us, went away from our eyes; now we cannot see him properly... Param Guru Maharaj is gone, Srila Prabhupad is gone. We are losing so many devotees, so many fellow soldiers in our line—Sripad Vaishnav Maharaj, Sripad Tapasvi Maharaj, Sripad Siddhanti Maharaj, Sripad Parvat Maharaj, Sripad Narayan Maharaj from Mauritius, Yudhamanyu Prabhu. It is very sad. And yesterday we also lost Sripad Bhakti Charu Swami Maharaj... What can we do? We have to harmonise with this situation because this situation will come and we have to tolerate it. It is very sad for us. What more can I say or do?

So, today is Guru Purnima. We must always remember Gurudev on this day. Actually, we must always remember Gurudev. From the moment we wake up in the morning, we must first of all see Gurudev's face and give obeisance to our Guru (offer guru-pranam). This is one of the main things in our spiritual life.

So, we shall start today with a few songs. It is very important.

Jay Srila Gurudev.

[His Divine Grace then sings "Gurudev krpa bindu diya," "Kabe Sri Chaitanya more karibena daya," "Akrodha paramananda Nityananda Raya," "Sarvasva tomara charane sampiya," and then continues the class.]

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• Listen to the audio or download (3.4 Mb, 8 min)

• Listen to the kirtans or download (8.2 Mb, 20 min)