(5/7) Sri Ekachakra Festival: Beyond Imagination

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Kolkata—Worldwide, 28 February 2021, part 5

In the end, our big festival lasted four days – ekadasi, dvadasi, trayodasi and chaturdasi. Everybody started coming one day before ekadasi. It is very difficult to handle so many people. One thousand kilograms of rice (a tonne) was cooked on Nityananda-trayodasi. Prasad was served beginning from twelve o’clock until six o’clock in the evening, and many people came again late in the evening. People came from many areas all over Bengal and from Jharkhand, also five–six hundred people came from Siliguri. Mostly devotees and disciples of Gurudev joined this festival and stayed at the temple.

Srila Ashram Maharaj: How many kg rice did you distribute?

The total amount for this festival was 2,500 kg of rice, and we distributed 1,000 kg on Nityananda Prabhu’s day. I left Ekachakra yesterday in the morning, and there were still about two hundred people staying there. Some of them left yesterday after lunch, and some of them left today. This year devotees had to buy a special train ticket with reservation. They could not buy tickets at the station as before [because of the pandemic].

Now the cows in Ekachakra are very happy and live much more comfortably. There are many more cows now, and the old goshala was getting too crowded for them, so I expanded it using the land that I had purchased some years ago, to the south of the guesthouse, in the direction of the Pandav Tala. Actually, it is hard to understand now where is what because so many people are buying the nearby land and start to live there. The temple used to stand alone, surrounded by vacant land, but now all the land is getting covered – people are building many houses and starting to live there. People want to stay near our temple, and the town is becoming more like a tourist place. When people go to Tarapith and other places, they come to our temple on the way to pay their obeisance. Ekachakra is getting quite crowded now.

If you read Sri Nityananda-mahimamrita (The Nectarean Glories of Sri Nityananda Prabhu), you can find there the descriptions of so many pastimes from Nityananda Prabhu’s life and also many very nice songs written by Srila Lochan Das Thakur, Srila Kanu Ram Thakur, Srila Vrindavan Das Thakur. You can see there how much mercy Nityananda Prabhu distributed in Gauda-mandal, Gauda-desh.

When Mahaprabhu took sannyas, He told Nityananda Prabhu to preach Krishna consciousness, but Nityananda Prabhu liked to preach about Gauranga Mahaprabhu:

ভজ গৌরাঙ্গ, কহ গৌরাঙ্গ, লহ গৌরাঙ্গের নাম রে
যে জন গৌরাঙ্গ ভজে, সেই আমার প্রাণ রে

bhaja gauranga, kaha gauranga, laha gaurangera nama re
ye jana gauranga bhaje, sei amara prana re

‘Worship Gauranga! Say Gauranga! Take Gauranga’s Name! Those who worship Gauranga are My heart and soul!’

(Sri Nityananda Prabhu)

Nityananda Prabhu bestowed His mercy on us, fallen souls. If you read the lectures of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, Srila Guru Maharaj and Srila Gurudev, if you read what they said about Sri Nityananda Prabhu, you will see that they always stress that we cannot enter Vrindavan without Sri Nityananda Prabhu’s mercy. His mercy is the main thing for us. Without Nityananda Prabhu’s mercy, we cannot enter devotional life.

First, it is necessary to understand that Nityananda Prabhu is non-different from guru-tattva.

আশ্রয় লইয়া ভজে, তারে কৃষ্ণ নাহি ত্যজে,
আর সব মরে অকারণ ॥

asraya laiya bhaje, tare krsna nahi tyaje,
ara saba mare akarane

‘Krishna never leaves those who have taken shelter in His devotees and serve them; everyone else simply dies in vain.’

(Srila Narottam Das Thakur)

It is necessary to first surrender (saranagati) and to have faith (sraddha, visvas). Faith is the main thing. It is necessary to have the strongest faith and proper chastity. If you do not have proper chastity, you will not be able to understand Nityananda Prabhu (you will not be able to understand who Nitai is) because His behaviour, and everything about Him, is inconceivable. Only those who have proper simple-hearted sukriti can understand Nityananda Prabhu.

Sri Ekachakra Dham is non-different from Sri Dham Vrindavan. There is Sivji Maharaj (Ekachakreshwar Sivji Maharaj) here, who is worshipped by Sri Hadai Pandit, Nityananda Prabhu’s father. There is also Lord Jagannath, Baladev and Subhadra… You know, this year our parikrama managed to go inside Nityananda Prabhu’s birthplace (‘Nitai bari’) with the loud speaker. This year they did not stop us. Actually, the situation at that temple is not so good now because the babaji from the temple died of coronavirus. There was no virus in Ekachakra, nobody had it there, but that babaji somehow got it and died of it. So, the temple went through this bad experience. Before, they used to impose too many restrictions every year, stopping our microphones and kirtan. But this time they did not stop us. I was very surprised to see it.

During the festival, I did not answer so many phone calls because my schedule was very busy. I gave classes two times a day, many people came to take initiation, I had to manage everything and also preach. I had to handle so much. Some foreign devotees helped with the decoration – mainly, Kamalendu Prabhu and Sudevi Didi. Sripad Sajjan Maharaj and Krishna Sundari Didi sold many books this festival. Sripad Sajjan Maharaj had brought six hundred copies of Original Source, and all of them were sold during the festival. Many bigger books were sold too, including Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, Sri Chaitanya-bhagavata and Sri Nityananda-mahimamrita. This is brihad-mridanga preaching. Krishna Sundari Didi was at the bookshop, and Sripad Sajjan Maharaj was preaching and distributing brochures and books in front of the temple to all the people who came. Jharkhand and many other devotees helped distribute prasad. Twenty cooks worked day and night. Twenty-five people continuously cut vegetables in shifts, working twenty-four hours a day. This is how the festival went. We brought only cabbage, cauliflower, pumpkin, eggplant, beans, tomatoes and potatoes. So many people came to take prasad that all our wood finished. We had to bring more. All our vegetables finished. We had to bring more two–three times. Everything was finishing all the time. Our idea of the scope of this festival proved a failure.

Actually, so many people are coming as the result of preaching. If I had not been preaching, these people would not have joined Krishna consciousness. We preach because Srila Prabhupad said, ‘Prana achhe yara, sei hetu prachara. You must preach for as long as you are alive. Go door to door.’

People worry about coronavirus, but you see that two of my disciples had taken the vaccine and are now sick. They say that they were feeling well before, but when they went for the vaccine, they became sick. Whether you take the vaccine or not, what does it change? You can get vaccinated against coronavirus and some other disease will come. You are always thinking about the vaccine, but you cannot think about Nityananda Prabhu. You always think, ‘Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine! When will the vaccine come?’ It is not necessary to wait for the vaccine – wait for service! We should be anxious, ‘When will service come to me?’ We must wait for service!

আর কবে নিতাইচাঁদ করুণা করিবে ।
সংসার-বাসনা মোর কবে তুচ্ছ হ’বে ॥

ara kabe nitaichand karuna karibe
samsara-vasana mora kabe tuchchha ha’be

‘When will Nitaichand give me His mercy? When will my material desires lose their appeal and become trifle?’

(Srila Narottam Das Thakur)

বিষয় ছাড়িয়া কবে শুদ্ধ হ’বে মন ।
কবে হাম হেরব শ্রীবৃন্দাবন ॥

visaya chhadiya kabe suddha ha’be mana
kabe hama heriba sri-vrndavana

‘When will my mind reject this material world and everything in it and become pure? When will I behold Sri Vrindavan?’

(Prarthana, Srila Narottam Das Thakur)

কবে নিত্যানন্দ, মোরে করি’ দয়া,
ছাড়াইবে মোর বিষয়ের মায়া ।

kabe nityananda, more kari’ daya,
chhadaibe mora visayera maya

‘When will Nityananda be merciful to me and make me leave all material attachment?’

(Saranagati, Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur)

‘When will Nityananda Prabhu give His mercy to me? When will my family attachment go far away?’ This is what we must be always thinking about. Kabe habe bala se dina amara? When will that day be mine?

আর কবে নিতাইচাঁদ করুণা করিবে ।
সংসার-বাসনা মোর কবে তুচ্ছ হ’বে ॥

ara kabe nitaichand karuna karibe
samsara-vasana mora kabe tuchchha ha’be

‘When will Nitaichand give me His mercy? When will my material desires lose their appeal and become trifle?’

(Srila Narottam Das Thakur)

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Length: 46 min
Language: English

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Overflowing and Grand Festival
2) Mission in Sri Ekachakra Dham
3) Sriman Nityananda Prabhu's Line
4) Sriman Nityananda Prabhu: Ocean of Mercy
5) Sri Ekachakra Festival: Beyond Imagination
6) Real Family Life
7) "My Life Is for My Gurudev"