Listen and Learn

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur's disappearance
Nrisingha Palli, morning, 3 January 2021, part 2
Translated from Bengali

স্থানে স্থানে কত মঠ স্থাপিয়াছ নিষ্কপট
প্রেমসেবা শিখাইতে জীবে ।
মঠের বৈষ্ণবগণ করে সদা বিতরণ
হরিগুণ-কথামৃত ভবে ॥

sthane sthane kata matha sthapiyachha niskapata
prema-seva sikhaite jive
mathera vaisnava-gana kare sada vitarana
hari-guna-kathamrta bhave

"Sincerely, you established so many temples to teach the souls loving service to the Lord. The Vaishnava residents of these temples incessantly spread the nectar of the glories of the Lord."

(Acharya Vandana)

Why do pure Gaudiya Vaishnavs and guru-varga open temples? To give people place to stay and eat? So that cockroaches and rats can have a place to stay? Duplicitous people like to look for holes and criticise and gossip about everything, but a temple is a place for bhakti-siddhanta sravan sadhan: a place for practising hearing the devotional precepts. A temple is only for Hari-katha and kirtan. It is not necessary to think about anything else. There must be only Hari-katha and kirtan at the temple! There must be no gossiping, no nonsense talks, no material talks—all this turns a temple into a commode! Do not do this.

There are many services at the temple, engage in that, and you must also remember those who cook for the Deities do a greater service than even those who serve the Deities. The Lord feels very much love for those who cook for Him because they cook for Him with heart and soul, with all their attention, putting their whole being into it. Those who cook are often dissed and not given proper respect, but pujaris are given much respect—people even come to offer them obeisances (and nobody will give obeisance to the cook). Srila Prabhupad said that those who cook do an even greater service than pujaris because those who cook serve the Lord extracting and smearing mellows of deep love from their hearts. You can relate to it yourself also—when will you feel happy: when somebody worships you or when somebody cooks and serves your prasadam nicely?

It is necessary to cook in a very orderly, skilful way. You know, I have seen people making posto-bora (white poppy seed fritters) at home—when they make it, posto gets into their hair or gets all stuck under their nails! They do not know how to make it. How does one make posto-bora? You take some posto (white poppy seeds), add some water and grind it. I think you all also do that. But this is not how it is made! Posto must be first ground dry, then you put water. Remember this. You must learn this. I learnt this from those who know these things very well. In the same way, you must learn to speak Hari-katha from those who know how to do it well—it is necessary to listen to such persons carefully. When sannyasis come here, I also sit and listen to what they say. It is necessary to know how to listen. Once, I heard, "You must become a good listener (srutasrava)." To be a good listener means to be able to listen well and to be able to remember what you listen to. There is srutidhara, and there is srutasrava. Both words refer to good listeners. If you do not listen properly, how will you speak? Therefore, you must listen to Gurudev's Hari-katha with heart and soul. Otherwise what will happen? What happens when you stop going to school? You think you can go to the market, buy some books, and study everything from books. If you hear from Gurudev's mouth and from Vaishnavs' mouths, you can realise everything much quicker. You can look at school and college teachers—they also listened to their teachers first, after that they started teaching others.

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