Devotees' Humility

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Kolkata-Worldwide, 19 July 2020, part 1

Dandavat. Please accept my humble obeisance.

Jay Om Vishnupad Jagad-Guru Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaj ki jay
Visva-varenya Srila Guru Maharaj ki jay
Jay Om Vishnupad Paramahamsa-kula-churamani Jagad-Guru Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj ki jay
Om Vishnupad Bhagavan Sri Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Goswami Thakur Prabhupad 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 Sri 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
Samagata Sri Gaura bhakta-vrinda ki jay
All the assembled devotees ki jay
All the sannyasi-vrinda ki jay
All the brahmachari-vrinda ki jay
Bhakta-vrinda ki jay
Harinam sankirtan ki jay
Nitai Gaura premanande Hari bol

Haribol. How are you, everybody? By the mercy of Gurudev, we are all gathered here again after one week, and I am very happy to see your smiling faces and service mood. You always think of yourself as little devotee servants of the Lord, servants of devotees, and that makes me very happy.

Devotees are always humble. Whatever service they do, whatever they do, they always think, "Gurudev is my own"—that is the real connection with Gurudev. We must keep Gurudev in our heart, that is the main relationship. We may sometimes serve Gurudev in our own way and we cannot understand what Gurudev likes (which way he likes us to serve or live). We must serve in that way which Gurudev likes, that is better for us, practitioners. It is very important. We must serve in the way that Gurudev likes.

Krishna always knows what you are doing, how you are practising. He can see everything. Somebody serves Deities and sees that the Deities are made of stone or made of wood, and somebody sees that this is the Lord Himself. It depends on the mood of the devotee. Everybody's mood, everybody's faith is not the same. If you can see the Deities, you can see that the Deity is Lord Krishna Himself—"Vigraha tumi nao, saksad Vrajendra-nandan. You are not an idol, You are the Son of the King of Vraja, Himself." A Deity is not only a vigraha, some idol, a Deity is the Lord Himself. We must try to see that, and we must try to serve in this way.

At the same time, it is much easier to keep connection with Gurudev because we can talk with Gurudev directly, we can give prasadam to him directly, we can talk with Gurudev and ask what Gurudev needs, how we can serve him, how we can help Gurudev. That is why it is very easy to keep connection with Gurudev. Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur also says that if you send a letter to the Lord, you will not get an answer from Him, but if you give your letter to Gurudev, you will easily get an answer.

Once, a devotee came to Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur and said, "Prabhupad, I cannot do proper bhajan. I am not doing anything, I am very lazy..." Srila Prabhupad asked him, "Are you telling the truth?" The devotee replied, "Yes, I am telling the truth." Then, Prabhupad replied, "Then your bhajan is gradually progressing. Your practising life is going on properly." Those who think, "I am a great devotee," "I got everything," "I know everything," actually do not know anything. Those who are proper devotees will never say, "I know everything," "I have so many qualities, so much qualification," "I am senior to everybody," etc. Such thoughts and mood are a symptom of a disqualified or unqualified person. Those who are qualified will not tell anything about their bhajan, about their practising life—they will only think that they are simple persons, they are tiny, small persons who have no quality, no qualification. This is how devotees show their devotion. Do you understand it? Devotees do not like to tell about their practising life openly. They will keep their practising life inside, with them. This is the proper way to practise.

I see that so many devotees, so many new devotees join this mission and they want to know what they should do, how they can practise, how they can avoid bad association; the mind is also sometimes fickle, it goes everywhere, so they want to know how we can control our mind. So many things, so many kinds of questions are coming to me, and I am telling to everybody—yes, the mind is very fickle, the mind is very naughty, it always does its own job, but you can control your mind through your good intelligence and through good association. Our mind always controls everything—eyes, ears, nose, tongue, etc.—but you should give some pressure to your mind through your intelligence and engage your mind in good activities. You must think whether what your mind is telling you is good or not, you can think about it and you will understand it. Avoid bad things. As soon as you feel some bad elements are starting to come, you must stop it from the beginning (nip it in the bud). This is how you can control your mind.

If you keep increasing your bad propensities thinking, "Nobody can see me, so nobody will know whether I am doing wrong or right, nobody can correct me, nobody will say anything to me," so you continue always doing wrong, doing wrong, and the Deities at first tolerate these wrong things that you are doing, Gurudev also tolerates, but we must think—how many days, how many years will they tolerate it? There is some limit to Gurudev's tolerance, to the Deities' tolerance. Therefore, we must think, "Is what I am doing good or not?" We must ask senior devotees for advice, we must always think what is good for us, what is good for our practising life.

I told you last week that you must not fight against the outside world, you must fight against your own self. We have so many elements inside us—lust, anger, greed, illusion, madness, envy (kama, krodha, lobha, moha, mada, matsarya), and we must fight against all this. When you try to fight these elements, then you will understand how hard it is to fight against that. We must always think about it very seriously. Also, you must always avoid para-ninda, para-charcha—criticising others, harassing others. It is not necessary to do such things. Always search your own faults. Vaishnavs always search their own faults, they do not search others' faults. So, we must not search others' holes—we must always search our own holes. That is the main things.

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