Unconditional Life

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Kolkata—Worldwide, 31 January 2021, part 6

Question: Is it proper to make an offering with some prayer for those of us who do not have an altar in the house?

But why do you not keep an altar? You have a house, or a flat—you must keep a photograph of Gurudev's Deities and guru-parampara. You can even keep Tulasi tree as well. Otherwise, when you offer something, it is necessary to offer it in front of somebody, but if you have no altar, who are you offering the food to? Try to understand this. Cooking and offering the bhoga at the altar is a part of devotional practice. You must make an altar in your house, I tell it all the time. Find some place in your house and make an altar, it is a simple matter. You can take a picture of Gaura Nitai, Nabadwip Deities' picture or a picture of the Deities of any of our temples, print it out and put the guru-parampara picture below it, and worship according to the level that you can. This is how you practise spiritual life. It is necessary to do this.

যে দিন গৃহে ভজন দেখি ।
গৃহেতে গোলোক ভায় ॥

ye dina grhe bhajana dekhi
grhete goloka bhaya

On the days when I see devotional service taking place in my home, I feel that Goloka has manifested there.

('Suddha-bhakata-charana-renu' by Srila Bhakti Vinod Thakur)

Are there any other questions from anyone?

Question: Could you please speak about forgiveness and unconditional love?

What is forgiveness? What is the question? Vaishnavs are always forgiving, they do not take any offence. We make many offences, but Gurudev and Vaishnavs are merciful, they do not accept our offences, rather they always remove them. At least that is our hope. One thing we must careful about is 'truti-yukta seva' (ত্রুটিযুক্ত সেবা, faulty, or deficient, service). We must try to do our service without any faults. If we do our service wrong, with mistakes, day after day, then everything has its limit—even Gurudev's tolerance has its limit. So, try not to make any offences. It is very important. If you think you can make the same offence day after day and, as Gurudev is merciful, he will forgive all offences, it is not good. We must try to serve Gurudev without any offence. Sometimes, some offence can happen by mistake, in that case Krishna and Gurudev are merciful, they will remove our offence.

As for unconditional love, our Gurudev and Vaishnavs always give us unconditional love, but what we see here in this material world is karma-misra bhakti—conditional devotion, condition love.

One time, in Srila Sridhar Maharaj's time, one man came from Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaj's ISKCON mission and gave Srila Sridhar Maharaj very much money (four lakhs [four hundred thousand] rupees). Srila Sridhar Maharaj took the money and immediately gave it to Gurudev. At that time, Gurudev wore white clothes, he was in householder life, and that man did not like that Srila Sridhar Maharaj had given the money directly to Srila Govinda Maharaj. Unhappy, he complained about it to somebody, and when he later again came to Srila Sridhar Maharaj to ask him for sannyas, Srila Sridhar Maharaj called our Gurudev and said, "Give that money back to him. He wants to buy sannyas with this money, it is impossible."

Srila Sridhar Maharaj said that, in Srila Prabhupad's words, we always try to turn our Guru and the Lord into bribe-takers (ghuskhor, ঘুষখোর)—we come to worship the Lord and in lieu of that we want to get our material problems solved. Both here in India and in the West, although mostly here, people pay obeisance to the Lord and think, "Oh, take care of my health!", "Take care of my wife's health!", "Take care of my son's health!", "May my son find a good job!", "May You send a baby to my daughter!" and so on. People always ask the Lord for something, but it means that they turn Krishna into their menial servant, they make business with Krishna. This is what conditional love is, and unconditional love is the opposite.

Devotee: In the West, they also go to the church every week and pray for the sins be forgiven for their sins, and after that they again sin the next week.

It is one of the Nama-aparadhas. "Nama bole papachar. To sin and chant." It is like selling ghee mixed with dalda (adulterated with some cheap vegetable oil). You think, "No problem! I can commit sins the whole day and I will chant some Holy Names in the evening—all the sins will be removed!" This is called "Nama bole papachar. To sin and chant."

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