Uninterrupted Service Life

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Kolkata—Worldwide, 10 January 2021, part 2

Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur said, "Prana achhe yara, sei hetu prachara (প্রাণ আছে যার সেই হেতু প্রচার): you have life, you are alive, then you must preach." As long as we have life in this body, for as long as we are alive, we must preach Krishna consciousness to people. In this age of Kali, so many people will not come to Krishna consciousness because of maya, because of the influence of Kali, but Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur said we should not be disheartened—we must do our job.

Srila Param Guru Maharaj, Om Vishnupad Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj, said: when you are giving a class in the nat mandir, there may be no people listening, but you can realise that the Deities are listening, even every pillar in the nat mandir is listening to your Hari-kahta. So, we must preach—we must tell our message, tell and tell it every day, and one day people will listen. Because the influence of Maya (illusory environment) is very strong, people cannot easily accept Mahaprabhu's message—they are not eager to hear about such things.

"Sithilita vidhi"—Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur so much reduced the rules and regulations. He even relaxed the rules of following ekadasi—he said if you are hungry, you can take some fruit or potato, it is not necessary to fast the whole day without water. If it is not possible for you to do a complete fast, you can take some anukalpa (non-grain prasad, permissible on ekadasi). We all know our temple's rule that we must fast until noon, but sometimes, for health reasons, some people have to take something earlier because they suffer from acidity, for example, and if they fast, then so much problem comes; or sometimes we must take some medicine in the morning and to take that medicine we have to eat something first—in such cases we can take anukalpa earlier also. Other than that, we must try to follow the rules and regulations as much as we can, we must do our best in our practising life. All of our guru-varga, all followers of Sri Rupanuga line have already accepted and established all these things. There are many rules and regulations, and we must continue our service life.

I have seen also when Gurudev travelled by aeroplane, he would even take the food from the servant at the aeroplane. Gurudev is not some simple, ordinary person—he is the representative of the Lord Himself! The air-host could be a Muslim, a Christian or even an atheist (a person without any religious creed), but Gurudev did not cringe to take food from their hand. He was never like that. Gurudev is not an ordinary person—it is not like he will take food from others and thereby lose his caste. No! When somebody comes near Gurudev (if somebody gets mercy from Gurudev), they become purified. We must understand it in this way. If some nurse or an air-host gives food to Gurudev because they had accumulated sufficient sukriti and got this chance to serve Gurudev, then their heart will be satisfied and they will be ultimately purified by the association of Gurudev. These people got this kind of fortune to give food to Gurudev! This is how we take it.

On the other hand, some smartavadis, some other ordinary people can criticise Gurudev for taking such food. There are also people who criticise for every small thing. We see that Ramachandra Puri also criticised Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. There are always such people in this world, their duty will always be to criticise—what can you do? You cannot stop their mouth. There are such people whom Krishna has given a mouth not for chanting the Holy Name, but for criticising. There are such people in this world, but you must be careful—always try to avoid the association of such people.

— : • : —

{ 2001  |   2002  |   2003  |   2005  |   2009  |   2010  |   2011  |   2012 }
{ 2013  |   2014  |   2015  |   2016  |   2017  |   2018  |   2019  |   2020  |   2021 }

• Listen to the audio or download (2 Mb, 5 min)