(8/8) Regulated Life

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Basirhat, noon programme, 28 February 2021, part 8
Translated from Bengali

[Distracted by something, His Divine Grace comments] People are so worried about the vaccine now. Some disease comes, they create a vaccine. Another disease comes, they again have to create another vaccine. People spend their entire lives only talking and thinking about vaccines, vaccines, vaccines; but you will not hear ‘Hare Krishna’ come out of their mouths even once…

দৈন্য, আত্মনিবেদন, গোপ্তৃত্বে বরণ ।
‘অবশ্য রক্ষিবে কৃষ্ণ’—বিশ্বাস পালন ॥
ভক্তি-অনুকূল মাত্র কার্য্যের স্বীকার ।
ভক্তি-প্রতিকূল ভাব-বর্জ্জনাঙ্গীকার ॥

dainya, atma-nivedana, goptrtve varana
‘avasya raksibe krsna’—visvasa palana
bhakti-anukula matra karyera svikara
bhakti-pratikula bhava—varjanangikara

‘(1) Humility, (2) self-submission, (3) accepting that the Lord is your maintainer, (4) keeping faith that “Krishna will certainly protect”, (5) engaging only in what is favourable to devotion, (6) rejecting what is unfavourable to devotion.’

(Saranagati, Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur)

We must do that which is favourable to devotion.

Listen carefully. If you listen once nicely and remember it, you will get a good result.

What do you usually do? You do what is favourable to devotion, and at the same time, you also do what is unfavourable to devotion. People say, ‘I will eat meat, and I will just chant the Holy Name!’ It is the same as saying, ‘I will drink liquor, and I will take medicine!’ Will your disease be cured like that? It will not. Suppose you have a problem with bloating (gas) in your stomach. If you continue eating spicy food, chilli and other unfavourable things, thinking, ‘It is OK, I will just take the medicine,’ will you get rid of your illness like that? Suppose you have blood sugar. You take the medicine, and you also eat sweets and potato. Will that help you? It will not. So, when the doctor tells you, ‘Do not eat this, do not do this, this and this,’ you must follow the doctor’s advice and take the medicine, then you will be cured. Our medicine is chanting the Holy Name, and alongside that, we must also follow a wholesome, healthy ‘diet’. You think that you can chant the Holy Name and eat meat, but:

অসাধুসঙ্গে ভাই কৃষ্ণনাম নাহি হয় ।
নামাক্ষর বাহিরায় বটে তবু নাম কভু নয় ॥

asadhu-sange bhai krsna-nama nahi haya
namaksara bahiraya bate tabu nama kabhu naya

‘Brother, the Name of Krishna cannot be chanted in bad association: it may certainly sound like the letters of the Name, but it can never be the Name proper.’

(Sri Sri Prema-vivarta, 7.1, Sri Jagadananda Pandit)

What you chant may sound like ‘Hare Krishna’, but it is not the Holy Name proper. It is said in the scriptures that we must do that which is favourable to devotion and we must reject that which is unfavourable to devotion.

When you come to a doctor, the doctor will tell you, ‘Do not eat this.’ Depending on your disease, the doctor will give you recommendations and prescribe some medicine. If you have blood sugar, the doctor will prescribe you one medicine; if you have some other disease, the doctor will prescribe you another medicine, and so on. Why do people these days have a heart attack at a very young age? They eat much oily, fried food, too much paneer and other unhealthy foods that increase their cholesterol. People do not walk, do not exercise, do not work hard. This is how cholesterol increases and people end up having a stroke or a heart attack… So, if you come to a doctor, the doctor gives you some recommendations and prescribes some medicine, but if you do not follow all the recommendations properly – if you do not understand the importance of following what the doctor says – you will end up doing both what is favourable and what is unfavourable. Suppose you are doing a yajna – you put some ghee into the fire, and then you put some water into the fire. You will not be able to do any yajna like this. So, you think, ‘I will eat everything,’ but you all know that every action has an equal opposite reaction – that which you are eating in this birth will later come to eat you.

I have told this to you all before.

If I were to come here, to Basirhat, and tell everyone, ‘Eat whatever your soul wants! Drink liquor! Smoke ganja! Do whatever you want!’ you will see that so many people will come to take initiation. There is a system, and it is necessary to follow this system. The scriptures say that when such do-whatever-you-like gurus take disciples, both the guru and the disciples go to hell. This is written Srimad Bhagavatam. Such gurus clear your path to hell. This is what is called sahajiya.

— : • : —

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Length: 40 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Be Serious
2) Quality Is Not Cheap
3) Tie Your Mind
4) Ask Your Heart
5) Tired of Struggling?
6) Proper Worship
7) Watch the Road
8) Regulated Life