(2/7) Keep Your Fire Ablaze

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Evening class, Sri Nrisingha Palli
3 November 2020, part 2
Translated from Bengali

When a soul forgets Krishna, Maya attacks it. In other words, as soon as we are taken out of the Lord's service, Maya will take this chance and attack us. I have written in Guidance 4 that we must never stay out of sadhus' association. Those who go for preaching alone are very unfortunate. You should not go for preaching alone. Loving, submissive devotees do not stay anywhere except the house of their Gurudev. But when you go for preaching, you have to stay at some other places. What will you do? You must create the atmosphere of a temple, the atmosphere of your Guru's house in that place. Wherever you stay, you must remember that you have the Lord, you have your Deities, you have your service. It is necessary to always remember this. Vaishnavs do not live in the universe of Kali. They live in the abode of the Lord’s service, in the abode of their Guru's service.

When you go for preaching, you must have the feeling that you are in the temple. Just as every morning at the temple, you give the class, chant kirtans, do mangal-arati, Tulasi-parikrama, serve the Lord, in the same way you must live your life in the service of the Lord, in Hari-katha, in lectures and kirtans when you go for preaching. You must preserve all these eternally practised devotional activities following all rules and regulations.

You should practise preserving this mood as much as possible, then you will progress in your own devotional practising life; otherwise you can be attacked by illusion (Maya).

Collecting items conducive for service is not the main purpose of preaching. If you become concerned only with money, you will be removed from Krishna consciousness. You must create the atmosphere of the temple as far as it is possible, and stay within it.

When you go for preaching, you must create an atmosphere favourable to devotion. When you give a class and chant kirtans yourself, then you will encourage people around you who have faith to join this kirtan. It is very important to create the atmosphere of a temple for self-preservation, i.e. to protect your service and devotional practice. How will you do this? You must live in preaching, in Hari-kirtan.

We can see that sannyasis always sit amidst fire blazing on all four sides. Why do they sit amidst blazing fire? They do not do it not to collapse from cold. This fire is Hari-katha, kirtan, service to the Lord, and service to the guru. You must progress in your practising life keeping the sacrificial fire of your service ablaze. What is this fire? It is service intelligence. Keeping yourself busy with preaching to give benefit to yourself and others. Going to preach alone is not advantageous—it is advantageous to preach in the association of Vaishnavs. You should not stay without Vaishnavs. It is your bad fortune if you go for preaching on your own.

When you go for preaching, you should always keep the mood that I have come here for the service of the Lordships—i.e. service of Sri Guru, Sri Govinda, Sri Gopinath, Sri Madan-mohan. During preaching, you go to many places where you will find neither a temple nor people who have faith. That is why it is necessary to create a temple.

Do you understand these things? I have written in this chapter about how one must preach. A householder devotee calls you to his house and you think you will go there to eat nice things and go back. If you do this, it is of no use to anyone. This kind of behaviour is unfavourable to devotion. All these things are written in Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita also.

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Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Worship Gauranga
2) Keep Your Fire Ablaze
3) Happiness Is Service
4) Make Kirtan Your All-In-All
5) Qualification for Kirtan
6) Sadhus' Surrender
7) You Must Want To Learn