(3/13) At Lord's Home

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Sri Vyasa Puja of Srila B.S. Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaj
Sri Nrisingha Palli, evening class
1 January 2021, part 3, translated from Bengali

Every country has big rivers, but there is no other country in the whole world that has a river that could compare to the Ganges, Yamuna, Saraswati or Godavari. Srila Bon Maharaj, an honourable sannyasi from Mayapur, mentioned this today in his speech. There is no other place in the world where the Ganges, Yamuna, Saraswati and Godavari flow. In the same way, there is land everywhere, but the Lord appeared in the land of Bharata-bhumi (India). He did not and will not appear in any other place. In India, people are religious, and the Lord comes here time after time. Moreover, in the Age of Kali, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appeared in Mayapur, Nabadwip, in the district of Nadia in West Bengal, here in Bharata-bhumi. This is such a great fortune, and you all are so fortunate! Who will you tell this to? Who will be able to see it and who will be able to understand it?

You go to Mayapur only for some sightseeing, to buy souvenirs for your grandchildren and to see some great buildings, but what else do you see? Srila Sridhar Maharaj said that such ‘excursions’ are eye-exercise. If you come to look at things like this, what will you understand? Can you understand anything by such seeing? The truth is that you cannot see or understand a sadhu with your eyes: you must see the sadhu with your ears. Likewise, when you come to a holy place, you must come on a parikrama, and you must walk not with your legs but with your head. You must take the dust of the holy place on your head.

We are present here in Sri Nrisingha Palli; this area is also called Deva Palli (‘a village of demigods’) because all 330,000,000 demigods reside here. As you know, every temple comes here during the parikrama, and when we were at our old ‘jal mandir’ Nabadwip temple (Kolerganj), we used to also come here on the third day of the parikrama. Now Gurudev has mercifully given us a place in Godrumdwip. It is a great fortune for us. This place has appeared for you all, so that you can come and stay here. At first, when there were difficulties, you had to struggle and stay in the nat-mandir, but now you can see that everything has become manifest. Everything is not built suddenly and at once: as they say, Rome was not built in a day. Rome is a very beautiful city, but even that city was not built in a day. It was built gradually, slowly. Here too, everything is appearing gradually.

When I first came to our old temple, I did not see there any great buildings or anything like that. There was only Param Guru Maharaj’s house, Gurudev’s house, the two-storey Bengali building and the Western brahmachari building. At Govinda Kunda, where you can see the five-storey guesthouse building today, people would come to pass stool, and in the place where the four-storey Centenary building is (where I stayed), people used to grow roses. The goshala also increased gradually – at first it did not even have a boundary wall.

When one makes a house and the husband, wife and children live there peacefully, then you can call it home, or a family, but if there is no happiness or peace in the family, how can you call this place home? You cannot. The place can have cement and bricks, but if there is no peace there – if you do not feel peace there even when you sleep at night – then it is not home. When you come here, you can find happiness. Nobody will come to arrest you, nobody will come to beat you, nobody will come to swear you, nobody will come to complain to you or about you. The environment here is beautiful. You can see that devotees started arriving from the day before yesterday, and Hari-katha has been going on all the time here. Today, some lady asked me, ‘Why are all these classes, kirtans, etc.? Is this your home?’ This is a temple! Lectures and kirtans are going on here every day – every morning, noon and evening. Just as you do arati and kirtan at home, the same is done here; the only difference is that there are few people at home, and there are many people here. There is continuous, eternal daily service going on here; nothing is stopped. All temples run in the same manner: lectures, kirtans, aratis, bhoga offering and all other services are carried out at each temple, every day.

Ordinary householders’ houses are not temples, so they can wake up at 8 a.m. and go to wake up the Lord at leisure. It is not like this here; we do not live like householders who are attached to their material lives: waking up at ten, and when you fancy or have time, you go with a plate of some food to the Deities. No. Temples have rules. You must wake up at 4 a.m., wake up the Deities, do arati, offer balya-bhoga (usually some sweets and milk or water), do parikrama. Then, you sit and chant kirtans, listen to Hari-katha (a lecture, reading from scriptures), do archan, offer morning bhoga and take prasad. After taking prasad, everyone does whatever service they have at the temple. At noon, you again offer bhoga and do arati, then put the Deities to rest, close the temple, take prasad, and you can also go to rest or continue your service. In the afternoon, you get up and wake the Deities up at 4 p.m., offer some bhoga (usually some fruit and muri or a snack). A little later, at 6 p.m., you do the evening arati and parikrama; you sit and chant kirtans and listen to Hari-katha (the evening class, reading from scriptures); then, you offer the evening bhoga. Finally, you put the Deities to rest again, take prasadam and go to rest yourself. These are the rules at all temples.

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Length: 80 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Know and Love the Lord
2) Develop Deepest Dedication
3) At Lord's Home
4) Pure Preacher's Position
5) Clear Vision
6) Clear Identity
7) Sustaining Yourself on Gurudev's Words
8) Internal Purity
9) Kirtan-Yajna
10) Give Up Illusory Luxuries
11) Who Will You Blame?
12) Analysis Is Paralysis
13) Western Idiosyncrasies