199605 Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.15.20

The following is a morning class given by His Holiness Jayapātāka Swami in May of 1996 in New Tālavana farm, in Carrier, Mississippi. The class begins with a reading from the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, 3rd Canto, 15th Chapter, 20th verse.

vṛndāyai tulasī-devyai
priyāyai keśavasya ca
kṛṣṇa-bhakti-prade devi
satyavatyai namo namaḥ

vāñchā-kalpatarubhyaś ca kṛpā-sindhubhya eva ca
patitānāṁ pāvenebhyo vaiṣṇavebhyo namo namaḥ

śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya-prabhu-nityānanda
śrī-advaita gadādhara śrīvāsādi-gaura-bhakta-vṛnda

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare,
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

nārāyaṇaṁ namaskṛtya
naraṁ caiva narottamam
devīṁ sarasvatīṁ vyāsaṁ
tato jayam udīrayet

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-gurum dīna-tāranam
paramānanda mādhavaṁ śrī caitanya īśvaraṁ

Text 20

yat saṅkulaṁ hari-padānati-mātra-dṛṣṭair
vaidūrya-mārakata-hema-mayair vimānaiḥ
yeṣāṁ bṛhat-kaṭi-taṭāḥ smita-śobhi-mukhyaḥ
kṛṣṇātmanāṁ na raja ādadhur utsmayādyaiḥ

Translation: The inhabitants of Vaikuṇṭha travel in their airplanes made of lapis lazuli, emerald and gold. Although crowded by their consorts, who have large hips and beautiful smiling faces, they cannot be stimulated to passion by their mirth and beautiful charms.

*repetition*

Purport (by His Divine Grace Śrīla Prabhupāda): In the material world, opulences are achieved by materialistic persons by dint of their labor. One cannot enjoy material prosperity unless he works very hard to achieve it. But the devotees of the Lord who are residents of Vaikuṇṭha have the opportunity to enjoy a transcendental situation of jewels and emeralds. Ornaments made of gold bedecked with jewels are achieved not by working hard but by the benediction of the Lord. In other words, devotees in the Vaikuṇṭha world, or even in this material world, cannot be poverty-stricken, as is sometimes supposed. They have ample opulences for enjoyment, but they need not labor to achieve them. It is also stated that in the Vaikuṇṭha world the consorts of the residents are many, many times more beautiful than we can find in this material world, even in the higher planets. It is specifically mentioned here that a woman's large hips are very attractive and they stimulate man's passion, but the wonderful feature of Vaikuṇṭha is that although the women have large hips and beautiful faces and are decorated with ornaments of emeralds and jewels, the men are so absorbed in Kṛṣṇa consciousness that the beautiful bodies of the women cannot attract them. In other words, there is enjoyment of the association of the opposite sex, but there is no sexual relationship. The residents of Vaikuṇṭha have a better standard of pleasure, so there is no need of sex pleasure.

Thus end the Bhaktivedanta Swami translation and purport to the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, Canto 3, Chapter 15, Text 20.

Oṁ tat sat!

Jayapatākā Swami: This is the matter of description of the kingdom of God. So the four Kumāras were making a visit to the kingdom of God and it is recorded what they saw. Every theistic religion has some concept of a divine or higher area, and the theistic ones have a concept of a spiritual kingdom of God. Even in the Koran it mentions two levels of heaven. One lower heaven and one is the higher, which is the kingdom of God where Allah stays. So this way just as the Vedas explain that the higher planets in the material world are places of advanced material enjoyment, but beyond the material world there are spiritual planets. Actually, in the Koran, it mentions that the kingdom of God is known as the abode of peace. It’s interesting because Vaikuṇṭha means… kuṇṭha means anxiety and vai means not, no anxiety, no suffering. So, peace, you can define in one way as a place where there is no suffering. When you are suffering, you are not peaceful. So this way we find that there is a talk about such a spiritual abode, but does not really give many details, apart from.... I mean the Bible says there is a kingdom of God, I don’t even know if it says there is an abode of peace. Does anyone know what it says in the Bible about Kingdom of God, other than God lives there? In the Koran it says that it is an abode of peace and He is very beautiful and merciful. So some basic description is there.

But the Vedas here, specially the Purāṇas gives us descriptions about the Kingdom of God. It’s quite a bit of detail. Here we find that in the kingdom of God, people have their own personal airplanes. You see… airplanes don’t need to run on some kind of expendable fuel. The people can naturally fly around a kind of flying chariots or something, flying vehicles. So one can easily go from one place to the next. That the people are very beautiful there, everything is very opulent in Vaikuṇṭha, everyone is very attractive. People are experiencing a spiritual happiness because of serving the Lord. Because of that spiritual happiness, everyone is self-satisfied, and there is no desire for some kind of sense gratification. All the happiness is based upon serving the Lord. People are enjoying a loving service to the Lord, and that is the standard of enjoyment. This is graphically explained here, that how even the husband and wives in the spiritual world are both very attractive, but they have not stimulated to sex desire because they are fully absorbed in serving Kṛṣṇa.

So this is described in Bhāgavad-gītā (2.59), paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartate, that one should develop a higher taste. There is higher standard of happiness than the material happiness and that happiness can be developed by cultivation of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. To achieve that kind of happiness one needs to have certain degree of absorption or immersion into the spiritual environment. If one can get absorbed in spiritual consciousness, then one can start experiencing what is spiritual happiness. Therefore, Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s process is a very compelling and absorbing process, if one is going to perform it correctly. It’s a process that begins from the moment we wake up to the moment we take our rest. Even in our sleep we can be dreaming about Kṛṣṇa. If we maintain a constant remembrance of Kṛṣṇa, we chant Kṛṣṇa’s name, we think about how to serve Kṛṣṇa through the spiritual master. You know that by serving Kṛṣṇa through his devotee, Kṛṣṇa is more pleased. So we try to serve the guru in order to please Kṛṣṇa. So by the combination of different practices of devotional service and the constant linking up with Kṛṣṇa, then we start to develop, we start to get purified from the three modes of nature and we start to relish spiritual taste. Thus the different levels of devotional service which first begins with faith. We have a little faith and we hear about Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and from the level of faith we decide to associate more intimately with devotees and we hear from devotees about Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And then from there, we decide to actually get ourselves more absorbed in actually practicing devotional service. So we got śraddhā, satsaṅga, bhajana-kriyā. By practicing the bhajana-kriyā, devotional services, we start to try and get rid of the obstacles and different bad habits we have, it’s anartha-nivṛtti. And after we get freed from various bad habits, we become niṣṭḥā, become fixed in our devotional service. After being fixed in devotional service, then we become... we develop a taste for the devotional service which is ruci. And as the ruci becomes more condensed, we become attached deeply to Kṛṣṇa, that becomes āsakti. And from there, when it becomes more condensed, it becomes bhāva or ecstatic love for Kṛṣṇa.

The devotional service is something that is meant to be realized. There is jñāna and vijñāna. Jñāna is a theoretical knowledge or the conceptual knowledge and vijñāna is the applied, realized knowledge. In the modern Hindi and Bengali, they translate vijñāna as science. The word they use for science is vijñāna. Science is like experimenting and proving. That’s the colloquial modern. But in the traditional Sanskrit, it is realized knowledge. So in essence you can see that science is something you experiment and prove it, then you can take it as a fact, where the theory is just the knowledge. The same way devotional service is meant to be realized. And can’t force anybody to absorb themselves, although you can trick them sometimes. Like you have a big festival and people come and then without knowing it there’s all kinds of things which... like you got a big Ratha-yātrā in Los Angeles or sometimes, maybe to some extent the Pānihāṭī festival or like in Māyāpur festival. So many things are going that even if a person goes to see, they inadvertently get absorbed in hearing and chanting, and seeing devotional things. When you come to Māyāpur, you can’t see anything else but Kṛṣṇa conscious activities going on. Hear the holy name everywhere. So people start to come in and they become changed and they can’t help but chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. Maybe in some cases like that, there is such an intense environment that people are inclined to, or they just automatically… they are compelled to think about Kṛṣṇa. But in a less compelling, less involving environment, it requires one to take personal initiative to develop that kind of a taste. The potential is there in every man and woman to have a full experience of love for Kṛṣṇa, to have this highest standard of happiness. But to awaken that when we already in a conditioned state, when we just gradually worked our way up through many animal births and lower human births, and now we are in this human form of life. If we really want to experience that higher standard of pleasure than we have to be absorbed.

Sometimes Kṛṣṇa puts us in situations where we get compelled to surrender to Him, and when you take the shelter of Him more fully then we start to experience the higher happiness. At first we experienced in Māyāpur that, sometimes Prabhupāda gave us so much service to do. We are working double shifts and we have very little facility to do all the service of constructing the Māyāpur project. So we have to go in jeeps and get stone chips and woods and so many things. Deal with people who are trying to cheat us at every step. So many ways they are trying to cheat us. Even the engineers you would hire to check whether people were cheating us were also paid off and were also trying to cheat us. It’s like only way we could get a deal was we had to check at every step that we are getting the right deal. Even one time we were going and brought the first shipment of steel rods to build the lotus building. I remember when Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Maharājā, myself and one other devotee, we rode on top of the steel trucks to make sure they didn’t steal any of the steel. On the way the driver said he wanted to stop for a cup of tea, and they invited and said, “Sir please come and have a cup of milk.” So late, it was night time, and so they invited us in to have a cup of milk on this road side restaurant. And someone came and told me, because I was the only one that spoke Bengali, that the helpers of the drivers are unloading your steel and throwing it into the ditch. We ran and sure enough, the whole thing was a scam to distract us and they threw off a hundred kilos, which is a 250 pounds of steel from each truck. We would have hardly notice it out of ten tons. and there wasn’t a weigh-bridge along the way. Later on they could pick it up and three-four trucks would be a ton of steel, which means they could make a few thousands of rupees. So every step there were so many thefts going on, dishonesty, but in doing the service, gradually one was compelled either to parachute out or just surrender. And in surrendering, well one could experience a kind of a spiritual pleasure knowing that this it was very pleasing to Prabhupāda and pleasing to the previous ācāryas. Somehow one gets purified if one takes an extra effort of preaching, or of serving, even under very difficult situations.

Of course, one might get the mercy just by the Lord’s favorable glance. If he wants, He can give us spiritual happiness in a moment. We know the story of Haridāsa Ṭhākura, how he was able to tolerate the attractions of the prostitute Hīrā, who came to seduce him, and then in the end converted her into Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Afterwards she became a great preacher and many people took up Kṛṣṇa consciousness by her association. So there are many examples like that. The apsarās from heavenly planets were sent by Indra to attract Nara-Nārāyaṇa, but then when they approached Nara-Nārāyaṇa, Nara-Nārāyaṇa started to produce Vaikuṇṭha energies, damsels from their body, and they were much more beautiful than the residents of the heavenly planets. So therefore the heavenly damsels became ashamed by their attempt. Sometimes the devas get worried, and the people perform too many austerities and become very powerful, then by the dint of their austerities and their spiritual power, they might, after this life, take the position of devas and replace them. Kind of like in the political sphere, if there is an up and coming politician, the older politicians sometimes would do numbers on them to keep them from getting too powerful and threatening their own position. So even you have the situation where the devas may do these things if they think it’s is a problem for some reason. Or they might just be in the material world smaller kind of devas who are envious that you are becoming so powerful. You may not know that you are becoming powerful by performing devotional service, but they know it. So they may come in subtle ways try to disturb one. So there’s a lot of disturbances one may face. Just the disturbance from our own body is enough. Disturbance from other material human beings is enough. And then you some subtle entities or sometimes different kinds of spirits. There are all kinds of people that try to disturb one. Or then you have demons who want to control people. So, a very difficult situation but all this obstacle are tests. If we actually remember Kṛṣṇa all the time and keep surrendered to Him, we can cross over them. And even if there is sometimes some stumbles, but if we keep our commitment to serve Kṛṣṇa and get up again and keep trying, then Kṛṣṇa becomes very grateful to the devotee for his service, and this way one can gradually develop a higher taste to transcend these things.

The associates of the Lord, they naturally experience such a spiritual happiness. Kolaveca Śrīdhara was a poor man but he was experiencing so much happiness in serving the Ganges and serving Lord Caitanya, that actually he was fully satisfied, chanting

Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Hare Hare
Hare Rāma  Hare Rāma  Rāma  Rāma  Hare Hare

So when Lord Caitanya asked him what benediction did he want? He said he didn’t need any benediction; he was happy chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. Then Lord Caitanya offered that I can make you a king. In those days kings had some value. But he said, “No, I don’t care to be a king, I am happy just to serve you.”

“What do you want? I will give you mystic powers. Just like in Vaikuṇṭha people can fly, through mystic powers you can fly, you can do anything you want. But Kolāveca Śrīdhara, he didn’t want the mystic power. He (the Lord) said, “What do you want? I will give liberation; you can merge into the Brahmajyoti and be liberated.

He said, “I certainly don’t want that.”

“So what is it that you want?”

He said, “All I want is that if I can see the beautiful face, the smiling face of the young brāhmaṇa Nimāi eternally, that will make me very happy. If I can provide all your vegetable-fruit requirements in every incarnation, that will make me very happy. If I’m not able to, if I am not qualified to get that blessing, then please allow me to be born in the family of your devotees, because there I will get the opportunity to serve you.”

Lord Caitanya was so pleased with him that then He said, “So I will give you what even the great devas desire but are not easily able to obtain. I will give you pure love for Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa-prema”

Nitāi-Gaura premānande Hari Hari Bol!!

Everybody there began to just become wild in ecstasy. They are like pulling their hair! Because they realized, “Here is a man…”, just like if you go to a flea market, you see somebody sitting there with a basket of bananas or tomatoes, or eggplants or something. That was the social status, that’s what Kolaveca Śrīdhara was. He was just sitting in a kind of a public market selling bananas and things. And fruits. But whatever he earned, he was spending half on worshipping the Ganges, and Lord Caitanya would always go to him and discuss with him as a young brāhmaṇa who’d go shopping for his mother in the city. It is interesting because... how many of you ever gone shopping in your lives? Anybody has ever gone shopping? Everybody goes shopping right? In the West you know, especially in the city, you have to go shopping. Even here in the country people go for shopping although eventually you we could be so self-sufficient. But in the city shopping is like one of the activities. Even Lord Caitanya went shopping. He went into the market to buy his vegetables. He could have brought it from anybody, but he went shopping from His devotee. He bypassed everybody else and He went to His devotee. If I had to go shopping, I will buy it from my devotee. Kolaveca Śrīdhara was His pure devotee. Of course He gave him a hard time. He would take the banana and say, “How much is this?”

He (Śrīdhara) said, “You know, I already charged the price which is the market price. Even for you I reduce it. So this is 60 little conch shells for that big a bunch.”

“Oh! You are trying to cheat me? You are taking double the price, what is this? You are taking four times what you should! You are just trying to cheat a poor brāhmaṇa, how can you do that? I will give you only 8 conch shells.”

Then Kolavechā grabbed the bananas back, “No! It’s not worth it. You are cheating, you are giving me too less.”

Then Lord Caitanya said, “What you are doing? You are grabbing away from a brāhmaṇa. You think I won’t pay you? What you think?” He grabbed it back. Threw out his ten conch shells, and said, “Here you take this. Always trying to cheat a brāhmaṇa.”, and go off.

Every day they have different little arguments and bargaining and things, and people tell Kolaveca, “Why you take it from that Nimāi? He underpays you and treats you so badly.” But Kolaveca Śrīdhara said, “I don’t know what happens! Whenever I see His face, my heart just melts. I feel for Him something very special in my heart.” Here Nimāi is coming into the market, He was buying from a little hawker. The hawker is feeling spontaneous love for Lord Caitanya. He doesn’t know what it is, and Lord Caitanya is going there and having exchange, and the person is actually completely absorbed in the love of Kṛṣṇa or at least ecstatic love for Kṛṣṇa at that point. He doesn’t really know what’s happening or why but he knows that there is something very special. He just looks forward, when is Nimāi is going to come in the next day. He knows that Nimāi likes to have this kind of argument or something, so he plays the game. Even if He loses in the end, He doesn’t mind. So the relationship with Kṛṣṇa is little different than the relationship here in Vaikuṇṭha. In Vaikuṇṭha everything is very opulent and formal, and even there everyone is serving the Lord in great transcendental pleasure, but in Goloka Vṛndāvana, even people don’t know Kṛṣṇa is God, they don’t know Lord Caitanya, they just know that He is their friend or their master or their son or their loved one and they just serve Kṛṣṇa spontaneously out of love. So that is the perfectional platform. We can get that if we chant every day and if we follow and we really just try out of our own initiative to do that which is pleasing to Kṛṣṇa. If you have to do it because if we are told to do it, then it is all like a rule and regulation platform. But if we really try to do it on our own initiative, you try to think what we can do for Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa has done everything for us, what can I do for Kṛṣṇa? What can I do for the guru? What can I do for the devotees of Kṛṣṇa? Then that is something which is very very pleasing to the Lord, and that helps us to get a taste quicker.

The other thing is that everybody can preach. Somehow the devotees in temples are busy in many cases in preaching. As I am doing the congregational ministry around the world, and I see so many congregational members. And in some places like even in the middle east we are organizing special Nāmahaṭṭas called Nāmahaṭṭa bhakti-branches or cell groups, and every member of the group is told they are preacher and they all invite friends and people to join in on the group. If you come as a guest for four times, you can become an official member of the group. In this way they joined in small groups and the groups grow. Everybody is engaged in preaching, and they are getting so much ecstasy from preaching that sometimes many devotees who join the temple, they stop preaching. Of course, here people are in the community, they are always getting the opportunity to do sevā. There are two things - sevā and preaching.

So we went to the temple of Natha-dvāra this year with 50 devotees, and that temple really impressed me. When you go Natha-dvāra temple, from the maṅgala-ārati so many people crowding in. Hundreds of people just like waiting to go to maṅgala-ārati. They all take rest early, so they get up very early and they are waiting. And when they opened the door, they told that if you have any tape recorders, you better leave it outside somewhere. We didn’t understand why because the whole room for darśana is maybe not big as this temple, maybe a little narrower than this temple, by 10 feet or 8 feet. But they cram in there, maybe 2000 people, because thousands of people waiting to come. So what happens, as soon as they open the door, everyone just runs to get the vantage point to see the maṅgala-ārati, and then, you just get like (*woosh*), swept along. When you are inside the temple, everyone wants to see the darśana of the ārati and new people trying are trying to squeeze in, but nobody wants to go out! So there is like this tremendous crush going on, you know. Even if you had a tape recorder on your waist or something it will become mush. (laughter) You feel like you are a human sardine. You almost wonder whether you going to break a rib or something, but it’s so organically crushed. They have one section on the front for woman and one in the back for the men so that there is no gender conflict there. After a certain point, one new person comes in and there is no more capacity for anybody. And other end, somebody pops out and gets knocked out. There is a door on the other side. And what happens is that gradually with new people pushing their way in, people are getting pushed out of the other side, a kind of a flow starts to create. And so I saw the flow coming behind me. I didn’t want to get into it because I wanted to stay and watch the rest of the ārati but my companion, secretary, he was like worried that it was like too much of a crush or something. I don’t know, he pulled me into the flow. Once you pulled into the flow, arghhhh! There is nothing you do. Arghhh, out you go! You know you are just out. I was just in a vantage point. I got so upset, “Why didn’t... I wanted to see that! Why didn’t you!?” He made some excuse. I ran around the other side, flew into the incoming flow again (laughter), and then again had an opportunity.

After the ārati was over, people came up. There are all these people standing there with packets saying, “Milk! Milk!” What’s going on here? I didn’t understand, so I gave somebody ten rupees, you know. Didn’t really know what was going on.... I said “Buy some milk, five rupees a liter.”, and then I walked off. Then somebody told me that what they do, they get the milk for you, and bring it back to you. You take the milk up to a little window and you offer the milk to the deity. It’s like everybody is offering their service to the deity. Then you go out of the front door, and there is people that are selling flowers. And what the flowers are for? You buy the flowers, and take them, and there is another window and offer the flowers. But actually these are just salesmen, who are selling the flowers. They are merchants. So first we bought a basket for 30 rupees. Later on we saw, after an hour, they are selling it for 5 rupees. Because there are less people, that was in the end. First comers, you don’t know all the ropes. You could have got more flowers; you save money by waiting. Then there is a whole area where they are selling fruits and vegetables. Few making garlands, few people sowing, there will be few people cutting vegetables, everybody volunteers to do some service for the deities. The whole town is dedicated to serving the deities. At least may be not the whole town, it’s a big town. There is enough people in the town that, there is like a big competition to who can do the service. Then we came out, and here I almost got ran over by a by a bull. It was a buffalo bull loaded with firewood. What’s going on here? Then the guy brings in the firewood in this courtyard, just in front of the temple and just pulls a rope. (*wood falls off the cart*) The wood falls down and he just yells “Sevā!” And then everybody looks and then, “Sevā! Here is your chance, do the sevā.” He is offering, “Here is the firewood, pick it up and take it into the kitchen, as a seva for the deity, as a service for the deity.” So we also went there, the devotees went, we put firewood on our head and carried it. I have to admit that I wanted to do the service and also wanted to see what the kitchen looked like. (laughter) That was the only way I could get in. But everyone else is doing with a pure motive. My motive to see the kitchen wasn’t for sense gratification, I wanted to see if there was any good idea for Māyāpur. And so, they had this... this whole system where everybody is doing sevā for the deity of different kinds. That was very interesting.

So you see that if you have a temple community, and people are in a temple, if you are not going to preach, you should be doing sevā. So they had this whole system where everybody is doing sevā for the deity of different kinds. That was very interesting. So you see that if you have temple community, if people are in a temple, if you are not going to preach you should be doing sevā. Or do sevā and preach. But they wouldn’t even let us have chant Hare Kṛṣṇa right in front of the deity. I don’t know exactly why, because they were afraid that people might chant some bogus mantra or something. I want to talk to their ācāryas and complain because somebody stopped me from chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, but other than that they give us a very good darśana and let us do sevā. They have a regular well of ghee. People donate ghee into this... it’s like a big well, and they use for the cooking of the deities 600 kilos which is about one thousand four hundred pounds of ghee every day. Every day. They have gigantic wells of ghee, like a big storage chamber. Some people donate 23 tons of ghee at a time. You can donate any amount of ghee you want and then you see people scooping it out, heating it up in special big cauldrons and taking it on their head, bringing it in the kitchen. They said that daily they are using more than half a ton a day. 600 kilos. They said they have another warehouse; this is called utilization warehouse. It’s only utilized for the deity. Anything comes in here it doesn’t go anywhere except for the kitchen. And they cook so much prasādam. They cook all kinds of lāḍḍus and barfīs and different kinds of… incredible kind of sweets, I don’t even know the name of all them but just like some of the sweets weigh like three pounds, four pounds, five pound. Like blocks of chickpea flour cooked out in big blocks. Not like little lāḍḍu but blocks. Or condensed milk cooked out and different preparations. And then afterwards, they don’t give the pūjārīs any money. They just give them prasādam. So they get certain amount of the sweet prasāda and thus they sell that to maintain their families. So from the temple you give a donation to get prasādam, you can get a token prasādam. But if you want to get a good amount for your money, go outside, wait till the pūjārīs and their agents go out there and come out with baskets of this prasādam.

There was one old pūjārī, he had a big basket and there he had these blocks of prasādam. He had different kinds of prasādam. So one was a little raita made of yogurt and vegetables, and he said this has an expiry date of one hour. (laughter) You can have this free. Because he was now ready to close shop. Then he told me that, “This one...", this is some special like a big pancake that was all cooked real hard, I don’t how to eat it, it was so hard. “This has expiry date of six months.” It’s like the prasādam has expiry dates! “This one has a two months’ expiry date, this prasādam is one month, this is two weeks, this is one week and this one is one day.” So it was like interesting. You can take, if you want to take prasādam back to America. So I took some prasādam, i was going to bring it back to Māyāpur. All the way, everyone was testing the expiry dates (laughter) Didn’t last very long. (laughter) It is interesting, they have a whole culture of prasādam and everyone knows that you can get plenty of prasādam and so much service. I saw that, that’s how Māyāpur or any of our farm communities, they should have that kind of a service attitude for the deity. On the one hand, the sevā part of it, this is like one of the best temples I have seen for service, because it involved everyone. Not just the pūjārīs, but everyone in the community was involved in some way or another, bringing flowers, bringing vegetables, bringing fruits, bringing grains, bringing ghee, carrying firewood, making garlands, cutting the vegetables, something or another, everybody was doing. In fact it was sometimes a competition who could get there to do it first. And nobody was being paid, they were all doing it because of love for the deity. He said this is... this is like spiritual world. You are not even thinking you are in the material world, because you so much enthusiasm in serving the deity, it’s like you get purified. You get swept off with it. And that’s the kind of environment that our temples need to have. When the people come to the temple there is so much enthusiasm to serve the deity, people they see, they get swept off. That’s the aspect of it. Then naturally anybody comes to that environment. And that’s how like when you hear about Jayānada, or or you go temples, the biggest thing that attracts people is the devotees. What is so attractive? Here four Kumāras haven’t seen Nārāyaṇa yet, they are just seeing the devotees and they are becoming attracted because the devotees are so blissful, they are all engaged in serving the Goddess of fortune, or even sweeping the temple. Everybody is doing something.

And there are 9000 pūjārīs in Jagannātha Purī, can you imagine? Everybody is called pūjārī. Pūjārī means not only the ones who do the ārati. They got like a union. One person works in this thing, one thing like in the assembly line. So there it’s all like divided. One person, only that person is allowed to make the garlands. And his family can only can make garlands, their sevā is garland sevā. I am just saying how they do it, but it shows that somehow everybody has a service. Somebody may only cook the bhoga, somebody may only bring the bhoga to the deity to be offered, somebody may only offer it, another person may only do the dressing, like that they have got a whole… so divided it up all the services in so many categories. So they have inner services, and outer services and then like cleaning services. So there are A class pūjārīs, B class, C class. So maybe the C class are not even brāhmaṇas, or they are brāhmaṇas that don’t ever get into the deity room. So they have different kinds of services they do, but they have it all organized. Everyone there, 9000 people, are directly or indirectly, one way or another, they have some personal service to offer to the deities. Only reason I bring that up is to show that even if we have a huge community, with thousands of people, there are ways to get everyone to have an opportunity to do some service by dividing up the services. So that concept, I mean it is kind of a challenge to the village council. And in the whole community, to how to involve everyone in the service of the deity. Because that’s what makes a living in a community with the deity mean so much. The effect one gets from serving the deity, from little services is like unbelievable. The effect we get from observing the holidays and fasts.

I did not have the time to read the whole Padma Purāṇa, but the whole Padma Purāṇa is dedicated practically, what I have seen of it, to telling about the glories of different kinds of devotional service. It is an amazing literature. Then Hari Bhakti Vilāsa, we recently did the Nṛsiṁha-caturdaśī, and then I was. looking in the Hari Bhakti Vilāsa to see what are the glories of Nṛsiṁha-caturdaśī. And we just had lot of big festivals in Māyāpur. We had Candana-yātrā, the sandalwood festival. We had so many festivals, I will tell more about those maybe tomorrow because we are running out of time, but for Nṛsiṁha-caturdaśī, it mentions the glories of Nṛsiṁha-caturdaśī, how if anyone serves this, they get all the obstacles removed from devotional service. They get devotion for the Lord or they get so much material obstacles removed. Mothers who are childless can have children, people who are poverty stricken become free from that, all kinds of mundane benefits are given and all kinds of spiritual benefits that one gets. And it is said that if one doesn’t observe Nṛsiṁha-caturdaśī and they are devotee, they are initiated devotees, then all kinds of obstacles come on them. Inconceivable obstacles come on them because it’s like they have neglected to worship the Lord on that day. It’s like being a devotee, especially taking initiation, means now I have joined the union. You have to play by the rules. And of course for new bhaktas that don’t know anything, they get so much benefit even just by visiting the temple. But if you are initiated, if you don’t visit the temple, you are in trouble. It’s a big responsibility actually to say that my life is now dedicated to serve Kṛṣṇa and then subsequently you don’t serve Kṛṣṇa. Just like as much as if a wife after being married starts to go off with other men and neglects her husband, there is going to be obviously marital problems. So there is going to be devotional problems when we take the commitment and don’t follow through it. Not that fear should be our motivation, we should actually be motivated by the desire to serve Kṛṣṇa. But then things are there, sometimes we don’t know that. I mean I was surprised to see that there are both sides. People don’t know about the other side. It just mentioned the another side.

But in Hari Bhakti Vilāsa, it quoted the Padma Purāṇa that Prahlāda, he asked Nṛsiṁhadeva, “Why is that I got this mercy from You to serve You? what did I do to deserve this blessing to see you face to face and to be able to serve you?” And then Nṛsiṁhadeva, since He was asked by Prahlāda, He explained that once, many yugas ago, there was a brāhmaṇa called… I think it is Satyadeva. And he had a very chaste devotee wife. Together they had five sons who are all devotees, they were all doing service to the Lord except the youngest son. The youngest son was a rascal. The youngest son was addicted to all kind of sinful activities. Liked to go out and womanize, visit prostitutes, was a disgrace for the family. Everyone else was very Kṛṣṇa conscious, very God conscious, worshipping the Lord, but the youngest son was horrible. So Nārāyaṇa, Nṛsinghadeva, He said, “Well, the youngest son, I don’t remember his name at this moment. One day he went to the house of his girlfriend who was like a loose lady. She was considered like a prostitute, and they had an argument. The whole day they had argument, the whole night they had argument. They didn’t eat, they just were yelling at each other, criticizing this-that, fighting, whatever. Just went on and on and on, they were so upset, they were so angry. They didn’t eat the whole day and the whole night Then finally, only the next day early in the morning they got hungry, they started to eat something. So because he observed the whole day-night fast, that day happened to be Nṛsiṁha-caturdaśī. He didn’t even know it. But you even accidentally observe the fast on that holy day, you get the benefit. So Nṛsiṁhadeva said, “You were the youngest son, who was doing all those sinful things, and because you didn’t do anything else in your life, you didn’t chant japa, you didn’t attend maṅgala-ārati, you didn’t do a single thing voluntarily.” Maybe when he was a child his parents had engaged him, but beyond that, voluntarily he didn’t do anything. But accidentally he just observed Nṛsiṁha-caturdaśī. Because of that a total chain reaction happened leading him up to becoming Prahlāda Maharājā.

We don’t understand, we may engage 1% in a Nityānanda Trayodaśī or bring some guests here on Rādhāṣṭamī and it may create a whole effect, that after a x number of births you find the person is a mahā-ācārya, a great Mahā-bhāgavata, liberated soul, seeing God face to face. We cannot underestimate how much a spiritual practice can produce results in the future. So Prahlāda, very humbling for him I am sure, to hear. What it means is that the Lord is so merciful that even if you accidentally serve Him, He gives you blessing. What to speak if somebody consciously serves the Lord, tries to serve the Lord, when you see how merciful He is. Pūtanā goes to kill the Lord with poison on her breast, and He accepts as His mother. If we actually just try to do just a little bit of service to Kṛṣṇa, for His pleasure, the Lord is so pleased. It is amazing how many festivals there are, how many opportunities there are. Of course if we want, we can always drink water under water on a fast day. We can always sneak and eat even if it is Ekādaśī, even if it is a holiday. But if we do the fasts, if we do the services, we start to build up. Of course, it took yugas for Prahlāda to become Prahlāda from that time. We can become by Lord Caitanya’s mercy, Prabhupāda ’s blessing, we can become fully Kṛṣṇa conscious in one lifetime, we can go back to Kṛṣṇa. Even be in His pastimes right in this lifetime, if we just remain fixed in His service.

That’s what I was saying that, I see even congregational members who don’t have that advantage of living in a temple, who worship the deities in their home, but I am engaging them now in actively preaching and so they are bringing people into their cell groups, they are preaching, they are going to the programs, and you can actually see how they are developing a taste, they are advancing very systematically in their Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And that’s one other aspect that how all the devotees live in communities, if they can also form this type of groups and invite neighbors and friendly people and gradually that the group builds, there is no reason why we can’t have that kind of preaching going on also. So it’s a very systematic way that it’s been developed, and it works very effectively for any group, anywhere, what to speak of Kṛṣṇa consciousness where you have the greatest thing to give people. So anyway we can all have the same darśana of the kingdom of God, we can overcome all kinds of our material desires and things if we develop this taste, we can do that by service, voluntary loving service and we can do that by preaching. We can get the desire for doing service, for preaching if we cultivate, if we nurture our spiritual creeper by hearing and chanting and associating with the devotees, taking prasādam, avoiding bhoga, food cooked by non-devotees as much as we can. And this way we can develop that desire to serve and desire to preach. These are also fruits which produce fruits. This are like the seeds that produce the fruit of love for Kṛṣṇa

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma,  Hare Hare