19960128 Krishna Contest for Kids Award Ceremony

Krishna Contest for Kids Award Ceremony

Type Of Talk:

Other

Date:

Sunday, January 28, 1996

Collection:

Enlightenment 7

Audio player:

19960128 Krishna Contest for Kids Award Ceremony Bangalore India Literal Version The following is a class given by His Holiness Jayapataka Swami on January 28, 1996 in Bangalore, India. JPS: I offer my respectful obeisance’s on the ISKCON founder Acharya, His Divine Grace SrilaAbhaycharanBhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, to Sri Sri Krishna Balaram, Sri SriNitai Gaur Saligram and with ah… regards to His Holiness Bhanu Swami to all of the assembled ISKCON devotees, the award winning students, their parents and ISKCON devotees and life members. Very grad to be here again this year. Last year I could be here on this occasion for the distribution of the different awards of recognition for the ah…. students out of a massive field of ah… over 10,000 applicants. Here we have… how many students are here for awards, about 75, so that’s what… how many percent is that of 10,000, less than 10%, the top 99%, the top 1%, so less or less than 1%. So this is a very special students. I am sure ah… they have tried very hard or they have some special blessings from Krishna, may be from their previous lives they also have got some memory of this things. We heard from Bhanu Swami, how previously the students would be going to gurukul, today in the secular government of India, secular country, although we have a few gurukuls but ah… here in Bangalore normally everyone is going to the different public and private institutions and they are not giving spiritual education although are some are, I don’t have the… may be that’s not the main curriculum, some are giving, but by and large you see the majority of the ah… responsibility for the education on spiritual matters and religious and cultural matters, it comes under family and the community. In the Bhagavatam it says that for someone to be ah… a guru or a king or a parent or a mother or a father, or to be teacher, they should be able to see that their disciple, their praja, their citizens, their subject, their student or their child is liberated from the cycle of punarjanma, of the cycle of birth and death at the end of the life. Vedas gives us that kind of responsibility. It’s easy enough to bring some one in the world, but we want to see as maharaj has given us the graphic explanation how we go through all life, again we take rebirth again, being a human being no one should take rebirth again. Our founder Acharya he said that the purpose of ISKCON is that we want the people in general to be happy. Every one hindu, muslim, Cristian, everyone, the whole world, we want everyone to be happy. We want that the people should get free from the contamination of material life. They should be perfect human beings as much it is possible and they should have the qualification that at the end of this life they can go back to God, back to Bhagavan, to the spiritual world, and not have to take birth again. How many of you… is it good that everyone should be happy, they should be freed from the contaminations of the material life and they should be qualified at the end of life to get moksha, to go back to the spiritual world, this is our purpose. How many of the parents and the children here agree to that this is a good purpose for this movement? Any of you like this purpose? People should be happy, free from contamination? At least the children, any of the parents like it? Very good, ok. We know that any of the children are here, the parents are also the award winners, we are having such nice children. So there are so many exams in life, you go through the exams every year in the school and then you go through the exams ah… for the leaving primary school, then secondary school, finally coming into the college entrance, then your bachelor’s degree, may be someone goes on, post graduate, masters, phd., so many different exams. The life itself is also an examination. Krishna is examining us, how do we do in life. If we pass the exam, then he will take us back to him. It is upto us how good we can do. Now most people in life they want to accumulate money because we know, dharma, artha, kama, moksha. From dharma we get, we do good works we get money, from money we can get sense gratification and then finally we get moksha. But there are two kinds of…. We have to see life in our parallel, there is the material life and there is money. Used for Krishna is very good. There is a material life where you have all the material things, and then there is the spiritual life where we develop our relationship with God. Now our param-guru, the guru of SrilaPrabhupada, he told a story once, you know in the old days, before they ah… many hundreds of years ago they were using conchshell’s as ah… as the, what was called kuri, what you call it… kauri shell, little one’s. You have ever heard of that, that before the coins they were using this small conch-shells… kauri. So in Karnataka, they are using that at one time, historically? You have not seen, I have not also. I have seen on the beach, in ah… Oman they showed me some of those shells, they were very rare shells. So they would be gathered from some distant place and that was used as a small coin for the smallest things to purchase. One penny could buy so much. No inflation, now one paisa can hardly buy anything, even I don’t think there is a one paisa coin anymore in the circulation. So this kauri used to be able to buy things, but once the kauri got broken then it was considered useless. So long as it was ah… whole then you could use that to buy things, candies, cross the river by the ferry, something like that you could buy with this small kauris. Now there was this one man and he was collecting all kinds of broken kauris, he had a whole big pile. So he thought that he was very rich because he had a whole pile of broken kauris but that had no value. It’s like if you have in India you know, a ripped note. You ever tried to spend a ripped note, it’s very hard. Anyone should go back to reserve bank and wait for days and days in line and then finally you can change it in. So it is like that, he had all ripped notes, he was saving all the ripped notes, you can take it like that, all the broken kauris. So like that he was a lakh-pati but it was all broken ones. So he couldn’t buy anything with that but he could only feel that I am very rich. So in this world whatever good fortune we get in material things that cannot buy us anything in the spiritual world on itself. If we use the material things we have in Krishna’s service, if we use that in a proper way, then they become valuable, both materially and spiritually. If we simply use them only for the temporary happiness and don’t think using anything for our spiritual wellbeing, we don’t use anything in Krishna’s service, we don’t eat Krishna prasadam or we don’t ah… read any or buy any holy books or do anything good with our money, then ultimately in the eyes of Krishna, in the eye’s of God are all like counterfeit. With that we can’t buy anything spiritually, but even the material things if we use that properly some of it for Krishna’s service then everything becomes valid and with all things that we use in Krishna’s service we can buy into the spiritual world. You have all been reading about the Krishna for Krishna Janmasthami. In Bhagavat Gita Lord Krishna says, bhakta mam abhijati, only the devotees can know me, you see there are many people they have their different paths of jnana, karma, yoga, this are good and pious paths but ultimately in order to reach Krishna one needs to take the path of bhakti. Now this is the centennial year of our founder Acharya, His Divine GraceSrilaA.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami SrilaPrabhupada who seated there, …12.45… he is giving his jnana mudra. Everyone knows how he travelled all over the world spreading sanatana dharma, how he has inspired the building of this Bangalore Project but do you know about his childhood ?, anyone knows about Prabhupada’s childhood. He was also a child like you. He was five years old, then eight years old, then ten years old, then 15 years old, he went through all those ages, like everyone. So when he was about six years old, he asked his father… yea, when he was five years old he asked his father, his father was a devotee of Krishna and used to worship Radha and Krishna deity, and he said father I want my own deity, can I have or can I worship Radha and Krishna also, now he could go into the altar and worship the main deity. So the father gave him small deity and Prabhupada as a child was daily doing worship, he would offer all his food to the deity, he would daily bathe his deity and offer his flower garland and prayer, I think every child, actually they want to play, play as a natural part for specially the smaller children. So Prabhupada his natural …14.22… he asked his parent, “I want to have my own deity” So he would daily do worship to the Krishna deity imitating his father who was worshipping in his altar. How many of you have your own personal deity? Something to ask for pujas or something from your parents, …14.42-44… and Prabhupada he would invite holy people to come and visit the house and he would always ask, “Please bless my son that he can have Radharani’s mercy.” Prabhupada said that one of the reasons of my success in spiritual life is due to my parents, they are always so kind to me and blessing me and seeing towards my spiritual progress. As we grow older the responsibility for our spiritual life comes more and more on us, but when we are very small we don’t know anything very well, that time our parents how much they give us spiritual life that is their opportunity. So Prabhupada had very spiritual parents who were always caring for his materially and spiritually. When he was a small child he saw the Rathayatra like we had yesterday, he became very inspired, he said I want my own Rathayatra. The father said, “how can I give you rathayatra.” “No, no daddy I want rathayatra, I want rathayatra. Please Please.” Little children. “Okay, okay now! It just so happened his father came across, one lady had a little cart that was ah… old, so he was… the father was not so rich but ah… he got it at a very discount price, it was old, had it…. All the children came and painted it up, fixed it up, and they did… they took the small deities of Jagannath, Krishna on the street they organized the kirtan and then little AbhayCharan was Prabhupada’s name, he took as a child with all his friends they had a kirtan, they put the ratham, there is big ratham going, he is pulling this small ratha, “see I have ratham also.” This little things of serving the Lord is very fun, very much enlivening but it’s very spiritually uplifting. So Prabhupada he had a childhood like everyone but his childhood had many spiritually high points, and we hope that all of the children who have also in their life many spiritual high points and that the parents who are able to share these moments. You see if one child somehow or another, if the parent can get one of the children to go back to the spiritual world, then all the parents, grandparents, great parents, great greatgrand parents, upto seven generations before and seven generations children, grandchildren, great grand children so on, fourteen generations also get free ticket out of the material world because Krishna knows that child… so much a child owes to the parents and those parents owe so much to their parents and so like that Krishna… if one person can get moksha and go back to the spiritual world as a devotee then fourteen generations they all get the ticket. So even if the parent think, “I will never be able to get back.” If you are able to get one of your children to get back, so then you get a free ticket anyway, don’t worry. Of course we hope that parents and everyone can go back to the spiritual world, be happy in this life. Now there are many traditions we have you see, the… our culture here in India is very rich, so many traditions are there and behind them there is a great spiritual reasons and sometimes we don’t know the reasons, just like in science you see, I was a science student in my student life and when I came to Krishna consciousness the thing that attracted me so much about the vedas is the way that Prabhupada has presented that the vedas are scientific. You know, I find in India many people don’t think as vedas as being scientific but of all the religious books of the world the vedas have got more information about life, about science, about the universe, about so many things, than any other such religious or spiritual books. Answers to questions that the scientists are pondering day and night, they don’t the answer, they don’t know exactly where does life come from, they have many theories, they don’t know how exactly the universe is formed there, spending billions of dollars to find out. Many wonderful things are given in the vedas which the scientist haven’t even thought about investigating to. So we should take this opportunity of being educated to go also into what is this deep vedic wisdom, you see. Now sometimes we just take the thing superficially. What happens in the west is that the families go to the west, then they see the children are not in the same environment, so they asked so many questions, “Why do you do like this? Why do you do like that? Why do you wear that red mark on your forehead or the white tilak or why do you… hindus do like this or do like that, and they don’t know what to answer and so they get confused, and now in the modern day naturally people ask, why do you do? But there are reasons why everything is done, everything is done and being… coming to this Krishna consciousness movement in the west we have all these questions and Prabhupada gave all these answers. So it is very interesting. So there is a story how one time there was a small girl in old days in India, children used to get married even at the age of ten or twelve, now India law says eighteen. So there was a young girl, she was woken up, taken and ah…. she was brought into the jnana sthan, the homa for the wedding, and while the wedding was going on there was a calf outside of the yajnasala that was creating some just howlingand hissing and making a big noise. So her mother told some boys, just put that cat under a basket , it’s creating too much disturbance, so they went, got a basket, put it over the cat, so that it didn’t make anymore noise and the yajna went on without any interruption. So as a little girl, she say that the mother said, put the little cat under the basket, she didn’t know what was going on. Later she became a mother, she had her own son, there was time that the son was going married and the son was sitting there with his… his bride… and theyare going to do theyajna of the marriage and she said, “wait! Stop! When I was married, my mother had a cat put in a basket by the fire yajna, it’s our family tradition.” Now wedding can’t go on unless you have a cat, it won’t be proper. She didn’t know that the cat was just there, creating a disturbance and she just knew that there was a cat. So they said, “allright mother’s saying, must be a cat” Okay the boys… all went out looking where is the cat, you know. There was a poor… poor little cat walking along, “there is the cat”, they all grabbed him, ah… “put him there, put him under the basket” Ok now the wedding can go on. Many times some traditions come in, have no basis in the vedas, we don’t know, that’s why it is very important that every child, every parent should know what the Bhagavat Gita says, what actually do the vedas say, sometimes should be set aside for that, we know why we do the things we do. So then you will know,that nobody can introduce something which isn’t bonafide. There will be no doubts and no body can confuse you later why we are doing. So we want to see, just like Prabhupada had a nice Krishna conscious family, there are so many history, Lord Caitanya, He encouraged, “Life is fun, spiritual life is enjoyable, that Krishna conscious, Krishna bhakti is a nityamahotsava, it’s a daily festival”, just like yesterday we had a Krishna conscious festival, we had so many festivals everyday, having this Krishna bhakti in the home, having it in our life, it adds a kind of festive mood, it make everything a lot of spiritual fun and happiness, even though it is a very serious, it’s the perfection of life to develop our devotion for the Lord, it doesn’t mean that it is something that we have to suffer for, even if we suffer for achieving it but the actual process is very joyfully performed. The suffering’s is only the obstacles that we get from people standing in our way when we want to progress. So I am very grateful, I know that you must have all overcome a lot of obstacles to score high in this exam and I want to thank all of the other students, who are not here, who may or may not be here, who may not have got into the top 75 award winners, but I appreciate the effort made by everyone of them and I hope that all the parents who have encouraged them and the teachers in schools to allow this cultural edification and building here the youth here in Bangalore and in Karnataka. I want to thank the ISKCON branch here in Bangalore and all of the congregational members and devotees who have helped in this ah… program and I hope that it will go on expanding more and more and ah… be a highlight in the lives of all the participants. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna Hare Krishna KrishnaKrishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama RamaRama Hare Hare

Transcribed by Sadananda Krishnaprem Das Dibrugarh, 17-07-2016