On Importance of Chastity

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Kolkata—Worldwide, 7 February 2021, part 7

Question: Why is chastity to the Guru important?

I can give some very exact example. If a lady has many husbands, she cannot give her heart fully to any of them—she will think how to please everybody. However, if a lady has only one husband, she can give her heart to him fully, she can properly take care of him, she can serve her husband properly. The same applies to men—sometimes some men have many wives, but in this case they cannot give proper attention to any particular wife because they have many other women to think about. Therefore, those who have many wives or many husbands cannot fully satisfy each of the wives or husbands.

In the same way, here in Bengal people worship Durga, Kali, etc. Sometimes you go to people's altar room, and you can see so many demigods there—they make a museum of demigods! They put mother Durga, Kali, Ganesh, Kartik, Siva, Parvati, Lord Krishna, Gauranga, Nitai, everybody on their altar! It is necessary to have chastity. I asked Gurudev what chastity means, and Gurudev said that it means 'satitva' in Bengali.

You can see that even Krishna Himself says in Srimad Bhagavad-gita, "My devotees only know Me, they do not know anything or anyone else besides Me; and I too do not know anyone except My devotees." Even Krishna Himself has chastity, then why will you have no chastity? Krishna says that He is chaste to His devotees, and if you want to be a devotee of Lord Krishna, then you too must have chastity. If you want to please everybody, you cannot actually please anybody then.

'শ্রদ্ধা' শব্দে—বিস্বাস কহে সুদৃঢ় নিশ্চয় ।
কৃষ্ণে ভক্তি কৈলে সর্ব্বকর্ম্ম কৃত হয় ॥

'sraddha'-sabde—visvasa kahe sudrdha nischaya
krsne bhakti kaile sarva-karma krta haya

"Sraddha is a firm, determined faith that by service to Krishna all actions are accomplished."

(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya-lila, 22.62)

We sometimes want to please our parents, husbands, wives, but Krishna says, "If you please Me, you will please everybody." And Gurudev is non-different from Krishna—Krishna Himself comes in the form of a Guru, you know that. Even Srila Vishvanath Chakravarti Thakur also says,

সাক্ষাদ্ধরিত্বেন সমস্ত-শাস্ত্রৈ-
রুক্তস্তথা ভাব্যত এব সদ্ভিঃ ।
কিন্তু প্রভোর্যঃ প্রিয় এব তস্য
বন্দে গুরোঃ শ্রীচরণারবিন্দম্ ॥

saksadd-haritvena samasta-sastrair
uktas tatha bhavyata eva sadbhih
kintu prabhor yah priya eva tasya
vande guroh sri-charanaravindam

"I offer my obeisance unto the lotus feet of Sri Guru, who is said by all the scriptures to be the Lord Himself, and considered to be so by the sadhus, yet is also the Lord's beloved devotee."

(Sri Sri Gurvastakam, 7)

On the one hand, Gurudev is the Lord Himself, and on the other hand, Gurudev is the dearmost friend of the Lord. If you have some question to the Lord and try to send a letter directly to the Lord, you will not get any answer in this way—but if you ask your Guru, he can tell Krishna about it. Guru can also tell you what Krishna eats, where Krishna stays, what Krishna likes. You cannot know these things on your own, but the Guru can tell you all this. Gurudev knows what Krishna likes. So, if you want to serve the Lord, you must first go to Gurudev, who can actually control Krishna. Devotees can control the Lord.

মন্মনা ভব মদ্ভক্তো মদ্­যাজী মাং নমস্কুরু ।
মামেবৈষ্যসি যুক্ত্বৈবমাত্মানং মৎপরায়ণঃ ॥

man-mana bhava mad-bhakto, mad-yaji mam namaskuru
mam evaisyasi yuktvaivam, atmanam mat-parayanah

"Always think of Me, be My devotee, always worship Me and offer obeisances to Me. Thus offering yourself to Me and taking refuge in Me, you will come to Me."

(Srimad Bhagavad-gita, 9.34)

You all know this sloka from Srimad Bhagavad-gita. So, Gurudev always knows what Krishna likes, what Krishna does, where Krishna stays, where His home is. You must find the address of the Lord, and only Gurudev knows what His address is. Therefore, it is necessary to be chaste to your Guru. It is very important to understand this.

Gurudev also says that if somebody has, for example, five husbands, here in Bengal we call such ladies 'prostitutes'. Krishna says, "If you think only about Me, I will also think only about you," so if you give your heart, your everything to the Guru, if you fully surrender to your Guru—if you think about the Lord, about your Master, about your Gurudev—then Gurudev will also think about you.

Sometimes, I would complain to Gurudev, "I want to follow your order, but some devotees are not happy when I do it..." Gurudev said to me, "You do not have to make everybody happy! Your only duty is to make me happy."

All right, are there any other questions?

Question: My friends and I distribute prasadam to some homeless people. How can I preach to these people who do not know what prasadam is?

You can tell them:

Sukhe duhkhe bhule nako vadane Harinam koro re: in happiness or sadness always chant the Holy Name! How did you come to this position? You made some problem before, you have some previous karma, that is why you are suffering now—you have no home now. I am bringing some prasadam to you: you think you are getting some food, but this is also the will of the Lord, the will of Krishna. You live in this world, but how are you living? How are you talking? You can see a dead body—can it talk or not? Only the body is there, but if there is no life in this body, if there is no soul in this body, the body cannot do anything on its own. Therefore, you have a soul, and you have a relationship with the Lord.

There are so many things, so many points you can tell them. If somebody does not want to understand, what can you do? You can only give them some prasadam—their jiva soul will get some benefit through that, and you also get some benefit. It is OK. Sometimes here in India also people do not like prasadam or do not understand what is prasadam, but we distribute prasadam to them. Tell them, tell, tell, and tell, and one day they can understand it.

You know, even in the case of Lord Indra it took him time to understand these things. One time, Indra's Gurudev cursed him to be born in a pig's body. When Brahma came to him to rescue him, Indra did not understand who is Brahma, who is Indra—he could not remember his previous life. It took him over twelve years to understand what Brahma was telling him. Therefore, Srila Prabhupad Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur says that if you want to turn one non-devotee, who does not believe in God or anything else, into a devotee, it is necessary to shed gallons of gallons of blood to do that. It is necessary to try very hard. It is not easy to turn one into a devotee. Those who have some sukriti, come easily, but those who have no sukriti will not come to Krishna consciousness so easily, and it is necessary to preach to them again and again...

ব্রহ্মাণ্ড ভ্রমিতে কোন ভাগ্যবান্ জীব ।
গুরু-কৃষ্ণ-প্রসাদে পায় ভক্তিলতা-বীজ ॥

brahmanda bhramite kona bhagyavan jiva
guru-krsna-prasade paya bhakti-lata-bija

"Having travelled throughout the universe and got the mercy of Guru, Krishna, a fortunate soul receives a seed of the devotional creeper."

(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya-lila, 19.151)

You must understand that it is not so easy to get this seed. Only those who have some sukriti get it. So, do not be disheartened. You must not stop your service. Try your best, that is my advice.

Even when I went village to village for collection in Gurudev's time, people would tell us not to come to their house, they would swear us, say so many bad things, sometimes they said, "Oh, you are begging house to house making business on pretext of being a saint!" They would say so many things, but we never stopped, and I am still doing this service. You know that. I still go door to door, I go to so many rice mills, I go for rice and potato collection. Sripad Sadhu Maharaj sends some photos, you can see the photos. When we do rice collection, we go door to door.

Not everybody believes in God. They have so many conceptions here in India, and especially in Bengal. Here, people are surrounded by so many demigods. In the foreign countries, there is only Christianity, and they come to Krishna consciousness after Christianity, it is OK, but here Hindu people follow so many demigods! Somebody worships Brahma, somebody Siva, somebody Ganesh, somebody worship the God of Sun, somebody the God of Moon. They worship so many things here, that is why it is very difficult to preach here in Bengal. That is why also Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur started preaching from Kolkata—he said that Kolkata means Kali, it is a place of Kali. There is so much influence of Kali here.

Abroad, it is a little easier to preach because, as Gurudev said (I heard it from his own lotus mouth), foreign devotees do not have so much attachment to their families, even householder devotees are not so much attached to their families—they can immediately divorce their wife or divorce their husband; whereas here in India, the wife can be beaten by her husband every day, but she tolerates everything and continues serving her husband. I have seen so many families in the villages—sometimes the wives tolerate so much, but when they cannot tolerate anymore they commit suicide; sometimes the husband burns his wife, sometimes the husband stifles his wife and then hangs on a fan saying, "Oh, she has committed suicide!" These things happen every day here.

So, you can try your best to preach to these people, and one day you will succeed.

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