199605 Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.15.20

199605 Srimad Bhagavatam 3.15.20 New Talavan

Book:

Srimad Bhagavatam (SB)

Collection:

Enlightenment 7

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199605_Srimad_Bhagavatam.3.15.20_New_Talavan

The following is a morning class given by His Holiness Jayaptaka Swami in May of 1996 in New Talaban firm, in Carrier, Missipi. The class begins with a reading from the Srimad Bhagavatam, 3rd Canto, 15th Chapter, 20th verse. Vrindaya Tulasi Devaya Priyaya Kesavashya cha Krishna Bhakti Pratidevi Satyavati Namoh Namah Vancha Kalpa taru vyascha kripa sindhu va eva cha Patitanam pavanevhyo Vaisnavevyo Namo Namah Shri Krishna Prabhu Nityananda, Sriadvaitya, Gadadhara, Srivasadi, Gaura Bhakta Vrinda,

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare

JPS: Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya

Devotees: Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya

JPS: Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya

Devotees: Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya

JPS: Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya

Devotees: Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya

JPS: Narayanam namaskrirtyam naranchaivya narottamam

Devotees: Narayanam namaskrirtyam naranchaivya narottamam JPS: Deivim Saraswatim Vyasam Devotees: Deivim Saraswatim Vyasam JPS: tato jaya mudireyet Devotees: tato jaya mudireyet JPS: mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅgur laṅghayate girim yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande Sri gurum dina tarinam paramānanda-mādhavam Shri Caitanya Isvaram Chapter 15, verse 20 JPS: yat saṅkulaṁ hari-padānati-mātra-dṛṣṭair Devotees: yat saṅkulaṁ hari-padānati-mātra-dṛṣṭair JPS:  vaidūrya-mārakata-hema-mayair vimānaiḥ Devotees:  vaidūrya-mārakata-hema-mayair vimānaiḥ JPS: yeṣāṁ bṛhat-kaṭi-taṭāḥ smita-śobhi-mukhyaḥ Devotees: yeṣāṁ bṛhat-kaṭi-taṭāḥ smita-śobhi-mukhyaḥ JPS: kṛṣṇātmanāṁ na raja ādadhur utsmayādyaiḥ Devotees: 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.

Translation with repetition: JPS: The inhabitants of Vaikuṇṭha Devotees: The inhabitants of Vaikuṇṭha JPS: travel in their airplanes Devotees: travel in their airplanes JPS: made of lapis lazuli, Devotees: made of lapis lazuli, JPS: emerald and gold. Devotees: emerald and gold. JPS: Although crowded by their consorts Devotees: Although crowded by their consorts JPS: who have large hips and beautiful smiling faces Devotees: who have large hips and beautiful smiling faces JPS: they cannot be stimulated to passion Devotees: they cannot be stimulated to passion JPS: by their mirth and beautiful charms. Devotees: by their mirth and beautiful charms. Purport by His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada: 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 labour 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 purport to Srimad Bhagavatam, Canto 3, Chapter 15,Text 20. Om tat sat. This is the matter of description of the kingdom of God. So the four kumaras who were making a visit to the kingdom of God, and it is recorded what they saw. Every religion has...every theistic religion has some concept of a... every religion has some concept of divine or higher area, and all the theistic ones have a concept of a... a spiritual kingdom of God. Even in the Koran, it mentioned the.. two levels of heaven, one lower heaven and one is the higher which is the kigdom 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 ah.... the kingdom of God is known as the abode of peace. It’s interesting because Vaikuntha means... Kuntha 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 Puranas 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 09.04-07 to run on some kind of expendable fuel. The people can naturally fly around a little... 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 Vaikuntha, 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 on 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 are both very attractive, but they have not stimulated to sex desire because they are fully absorbed in serving Krishna. So this is described in Bhagavat Gita, Param dristva nivartante That one should develop a higher taste. There is higher standard of happiness. That the material happiness... and that happiness can be developed by cultivation of Krishna consciousness. To achieve that kind of happiness one needs to have certain degree of absorption or emersion 11.18 into the spiritual environment. If one can get absorbed in spiritual consciousness, then one can start experiencing what is spiritual happiness. Therefore Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s process is a very compelling and absorbing process. If one is going to perform it correctly, it’s a process that begins ah... from the moment we wake up to when we take our rest, even in our sleep we can be dreaming about Krishna if we maintain our constant remembrance of Krishna, we chant Krishna’s name, we think about how to serve Krshna through the spiritual master, you know that by serving Krishna through the... his devotee, Krishna is more pleased, so try to serve the guru in order to please Krishna. So by the combination of different practices of devotional service and the constant looking up with Krishna, that we start to develop, we start to get purified from the three modes of nature and 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 Krishna consciousness and from the level of faith we decide to associate more intimately with devotees and we hear from devotees about Krishna consciousness, and then from there we decide to actually get ourselves more absorbed in actually practicing devotional service. So we got Sraddha... Sradha, satsanga, bhajana Kriya, that by practicing the bhajana kriya, devotional services we start to drive and get rid of the obstacles and different bad habits we have, it’s anartha nivritti, and then there after we get freed from various bad habits, we become nistha, 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 Krishna, that becomes ashakti, and from there when it becomes more condensed it becomes bhava, or ecstatic love for Krishna. The devotional service is something that is meant to be realized. There is jnana and vijnana, jnana is a theoretical knowledge or the conceptual knowledge and Vijnana is the applied, realized knowledge. In the modern Hindi and Bengali, they translate Vijnana as science...science. When they say... but the word they use for science is Vijnana. Science is like experimenting and proving, that’s the colloquial modern but in the traditional Sanskrit, realized knowledge, so it said.. you can see that science is something you experiment and prove it, then that’s 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 anyone to absorb themselves although you can trick them sometimes. Like you have a big festival and people come and then without knowing it there is all kinds of ah... things which ah...like you got a big ratha yatra in Los Angeles or sometimes ah... maybe to some extent Pani Hati festival or like in Mayapur festival. So many things are going even if a person goes to see, they unadvertedly get absorbed in hearing and chanting, and seeing devotional things, when you come to Mayapur cant see anything else but Krishna conscious activities going on. Hear the holy name everywhere. So people start to come in ah... they become changed and they can help us chant Hare Krishna. Maybe in some cases like that there is such a... an intense environment that people are inclined to or they just automatically they are compelled to think about Krishna. But unless... it is unless compelling, unless involving environment, it requires one to take personal initiative to develop that kind of a taste. That...it’s already... the potential is there in every man and woman to have a full experience for love of Krishna, 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 to so 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 Krishna puts us in situations where we are 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 they experienced in Mayapur that, sometimes Prabhupada gave us one service to do, we are working double shifts and we have very little facility to the service of constructing the Mayapur project. So we have to go in Jeeps and get stone, chips and woods and so many things that deal with people who are trying to cheat us at every step. So many ways they are trying to teach us from... even the engineers even hired to check whether people were cheating us were also paid of, and were also trying to cheat us..., it’s like only we get a deal, if we have to check at every step to check that we are getting the right deal. Even one time we were going out on a walk, the first shipment of steel rods to build the lotus building. I remember when Tamal Krishna Maharaj, myself and one other devotee, we rode on the top of the steel trucks to make sure they didn’t steel any of the steel. On the way the driver said 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 ah... so they invited us to have a cup of milk on this road side restaurant and ah... someone came and told me, 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 of a hundred kilos which is a 250 pounds of steel from each truck, we would have hardly noticed out of ten trucks, and there wasn’t a way... a bridge along the way. Later one they could pick it up, three, four trucks would be a ton of steel, which they can make 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 Prabhupada and pleasing to the previous acharyas. Somehow one gets purified if one takes a extra effort of preaching or of serving even under very difficult situations. Of course one might get the mercy just by the Lord’s favourable glance. If he wants He can give us spiritual happiness in a moment. We know the story of Haridas Thakur how he was able to tolerate the attractions of the prostitute ah... Hira who came to seduce him and then in the end converted her into Krishna consciousness. Afterwards she became a great preacher and many people took up Krishna consciousness by her association. So there are many examples ah... like that. The apsaras from heavenly planets were sent by Indra to attract Naranarayana, but then when they approached Naranarayana, Naranarayana started to produce Vaikuntha 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 22.10 after this life take the position of devas and replace them. Kind of like, in the political sphere if there is a up and coming and politician the older politicians sometimes 22.25 numbers on them to keep them from getting too powerful and threatening their own position. So even you have the situation where the politicians...where the devas may 22.38 if they think it is a problem for some reason or they might just be in the material world smaller kind of a... 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 are a lot of disturbances one may face. Just to disturb us from our own body is enough, disturb us from other material human beings is enough, if you some subtle entities or sometimes have 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 obstacles are tests. If we actually remember Krishna all the time and keep surrender to Him, we can cross over them and even if there is sometimes some stumbles but if we keep our commitment to serve Krishna and get up again and keep trying, then Krishna becomes very grateful to the devotee for his service and this way one can gradually develop a higher taste to transcend this things. The associates of the Lord, they naturally experience such a spiritual happiness. Kolavecha Sridar 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 Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare. So when Lord Caitanya asked him what benediction did he want? He said that he didn’t need any benediction, he was happy chanting Hare Krishna. Then Lord Caitanya offered that I can make you a king. In those... 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 Vaikuntha people can fly, through mystic powers you can fly, you can do anything you want. But kolavecha Sridhar he didn’t want the mystic power. He 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 that you want” He said, “ All I want is that if I can see the beautiful face, the smiling face of the young brahmana Nimai. Eternally that will make me very happy. If I can provide all your vegetables, fruits, 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 that, “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 Krishna, Krishnaprema” Nitai Gaur Premanande Hari Hari Bol. Everybody there began to just become wild in ecstasy. They are like cooling their head because they realised, here is a man just like if you go to a flee 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 Kolavecha Sridhar was, he was just sitting in a kind of a public market selling bananas and figs and fruits, but he was 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 Brahmana who goes 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 could be so self-sufficient, but in the city shopping is like one of the activities. Even Lord Chaitanaya went shopping. He went into the market to get... buy his vegetables. He could have brought it from anybody but he went shopping from His devotees, he bypassed everybody else and He went to His devotee. If I had to go shopping I will buy it from my devotee. Kolavecha Sridhar was His pure devotee, of course He gave him a hard time. He would take the banana and say, “how much is this?” he said, “You know, I already charged the price which is the market price, even for you I will use it. So this is ah... 60 little conchshells for that big a bunch.” “Ohh... you are trying to teach me, you are taking double the price, what is this, taking four times what you should. You are just trying to cheat a poor brahmana, how can you do that. I will give you only 8 conchshells.” Then Kolavecha grabbed the bananas back, no it is not worth it, you are cheating, you are charging too...giving me too less.” Then Lord Caitanya said, “What you are doing? You are grabbing away from a brahmana, you think I won’t pay you... what you think”, he grabbed it back. Threw out his ten conchshells, and said, “here you take this, always trying to cheat the brahmana and go off” Everyday they will have different little arguments and bargaining and thing, and people tell Kolavecha, “Why you take it from that Nimai, He undercharges you and treats you so badly” But Kolavecha Sridhar 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 Nimai 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 heaving exchange, and the person is actually completely absorbed in the love of Krishna or at least ecstatic love for Krishna at that point, he doesn’t really know what’s happening or why but he knows that there is something very special, he just wants to... he looks forward, when is Nimai is going to come in the next few days. He knows Nimai likes to have this kind of argument and something, so he plays the game, even if He loses in the end He doesn’t mind. So the relationship with Krishna is little different from the relationship here in Vaikuntha. In Vaikuntha everything is very opulent and formal, and even there everyone is serving the Lord in great transcendental pleasure, but in Golok Vrindavana even people donot know Krishna is God, they don’t know Lord Caitanya, they just know that He is their friend or their master or their friend or their son or their loved ones. If they just serve Krishna spontaneously out of love, so that is the perfectional platform. We can get that if we chant everyday and if we follow, then we just try out of our own initiative to do... that which is pleasing to Krishna. If you have to do it because if we were told to do it, if we have to... 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 Krishna. Krishna has done everything for us, what can I do for Krishna, what can I do for the guru, what can I do for the devotees of Krishna? 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 31.00 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 Namhattas called Namhatta Bhakti branches or cell groups and every member of the group is told they are preacher and they are all... invite friends and people to join in other groups, 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 sometime many devotees who join the temple they stop preaching. Of course here people are in the community or 32.57 they are always getting the opportunity to do seva. There are two things- seva and preaching. So we went to the temple of Natwara this year with 50 devotees, and that temple really impressed me. With any devotee 33.14 would be... you were with me, wasnt’t that impressive ? when you go Natwara temple from the mangala arati, and so many people crowding in, waiting to get just like, hundreds of people just like waiting to go to mangala arati and they have of course... they take rest early, so they get up very early and ah...they are waiting, and when they open the door they told that if you have any tape recorders, if you have you know by mistake, you better leave it outside somewhere. We didn’t understand why because the whole room for darshan 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 mangala arati, and then, you just go like whoo... swept along. When you are inside the temple, everyone just, everyone just wants to take and see the darshan of the arati and new people trying are trying to squeeze in, but no one trying to go out. So there is like this... this tremendous crush going on, you know, even if you had a tape recorder on your waist or something it will become mushed (laughter), and you will become...you feel like you are a human 34.51, you almost wonder whether you going to break a rib or some, but it’s so organically crushed, that you have one section on the front for woman and one in the back for men, so that there is no gender conflict there. And you have...you just like a...35.05-35.10; After a certain point one new person comes in and it’s...there is no more capacity for anybody, and so in the others end somebody pops out and it gets knocked out and there is a door on the other side and in... and in in... 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, I wanted to stay and watch the rest of the arati but my...my ah... companion secretary he was like worried and was like too much of a crush or some... I don’t know, he pulled me into the flow, once you pulled into the flow, ah...there is nothing you do oh...ah...out you go, you know you are just out. Then the flow of people coming in, I was just in a advantage point, then I got so upset, “why didn’t...I wanted to see that..., why didn’t you?”...made some excuse, I ran around the other side, flew into the ...the incoming flow again, and then ah... again had a opportunity, and ah... as you come up after the arati is over, people came up... there are all this people standing there with their pockets saying milk, milk 36.27-29 what’s going on, 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 litre, and then I walked off, and then somebody told me that what they do, they offer, they get the milk for you, and give it...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, you know...I don’t know... they are offering the flower, and what the flowers are for, you buy the flowers, and take them, and there is another window and offer the flowers. So 37.07-09 , but these are actually salesman, who are selling the flowers, they are... they are merchants, the flower salesmen they come, so first we bought a basket for 30 rupees. Later on we saw, after an hour selling for 5 rupees, just like when there were less people, that was in the end. 37.22-25 you don’t know, 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 vegetable, 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 bullock...by a bull...by... was a buffalo bull with loaded with firewood, and then what’s going on here? Then the guy who brings in the firewood in this courtyard, just in front of the temple and he piles up... just pulls a rope rrrh... the wood falls down and just yells “Seva” and then everybody looks and then “Seva- here is your chance, do the seva”, and what 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 had to admit that I was 38.37-39 I wanted to do the service and also wanted to see what the kitchen looks like, that was the only way I could get in, but ah... everyone else is doing with a pure motive, the... my motive to see the kitchen wasn’t for sense gratification, I wanted to see if there was any good idea for Mayapur and ah... so they had this... this whole system where everybody is doing seva for the deity of different kinds. That ah... that was very interesting, so you see that if you have a temple community and people are in a temple, if you not going to preach, you should be doing seva. So they had this whole system where everybody is doing seva 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 seva or do seva and preach but thats really.39.37-39..preaching. They wouldn’t even let us have chant Hare Krishna 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 acharya and complain because somebody stopped me from chanting Hare Krishna, but ah...other than that they give us a very good darshan and let us ah...do seva, they have people, they have a regular well of ghee. People donate ghee into this port, 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 everyday, everyday they have a gigantic wells of ghee like a big storage chamber, some people donate 23 tons of ghee at a time.4.30.-36. You can donate any amount of ghee you want and then you see people scooping it out, heating it up in special big quardants and taking it on their head, bringing it in the kitchen. They said that daily ah... they are using more than half a ton a day, 600 kilos, they have... they said, they have another ah... warehouse, this is called expenditure warehouse, this is called utilization warehouse, you can call.41.05-07 godown, utilization, 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 prasadam, they cook all kinds of ladoos and ah...burfis and ah...and different kinds of ah... 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 pounds, like blocks of cheek pea flower cooked out, in a big blocks, like little blocks and ah... or condensed milk cooked out and different preparations, and then afterwards they don’t give the pujaris, anybody, they just give them prasadam, so they get certain amount of the sweet Prasad and thus they sell that to maintain their families, so you can get from the temple give a donation to get prasadam... you can get a token prasadam, but if want to get a good amount for you money, go outside, wait to the pujaris, the agents go out there, come out with baskets of this prasadam. There was one old pujari, he had a big basket and there he had this blogs of prasadam. He had different kinds of prasad, so there was one... was a little raita made of yogurt and ah...vegetables, and he said this has an expiry date of one hour, you can have this for you. Because he was more ready to close shop, then he told me that, “this one, this is some special like a big packing that was all cooked real hard, I don’t how to eat it, it was so hard. “this has expiry date of six months.” Just like you have you know expiry dates.42.50-55.....this one has a two months expiry date, this prasadam is one month, this is two weeks, this is one week and this one is one day, so it was like interesting, they had you know, you can take, so if you want to take prasadam back to America... so I took some prasadam to bring it back to Mayapur, all the way, everyone was ah... testing the expiry dates (laughter) didn’t last very long. It is interesting, they have a whole culture of prasadam and you can get everyone knows that you can get plenty of prasadam and so much service, I saw that, that’s how Mayapur or any of our farm communities, they should have that kind of a service attitude for the deity. On the one hand the seva part of it, this is like one of the best temples I have seen for service because it involved everyone, not just the pujaris, but everyone in the community was involved in someway 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, and it was infact 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, 44.40-45 to our temple....... And that’s, that’s the aspect of it. Then naturally anybody comes to that environment. And that’s how like when you hear about Jayananda, or hear... or you go 4.55 temples, the biggest thing that attracts people is the devotees. What is so attractive? here four kumaras haven’t seen Narayana 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 pujaris in Jagannath Puri, can you imagine, everybody is called pujari. Pujari means not only the one who do the arati, they got like a union, like they got like in the Teamstars union or something, you got...one person works in this thing, one thing like in the assembly line you got different. So there it’s all like divided, one person, that he... only that person is allowed to make the garlands, nobody else... and his family can only can make garlands, that seva is garland seva, somebody can only do, and I can 45.53 this in particular, 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 offererd, somebody may only offer it, another person may only do the dressing, like that they have got a whole....so they can divided it up... all the services in so many categories so they have inner services, and outer services and then like cleaning service, which are the...there are A class pujaris, B class, C class, so maybe the C class are not even brahmanas, or the brahamansa not even 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 indirect..., 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 the services. So that concept, I mean it is kind of a challenge to the... to the village 46.56-47.00, 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 47.20 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 Bhagavat Purana, but the whole padma purana is dedicated what I have seen of it to telling about the glories of different kinds of devotional service. So the basic literature, then Hari Bhakti Vilasa, we recently did the Narasingha Caturdashi, and then I was ah... looking in the Hari Bhakti Vilasa to see what are the glories of Narasingha Caturdasi. And we just had lot of big festivals in Mayapur, we have Chandan Yatra, 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 Narasingha Caturdasi, it mentions the glories of Narasingha Caturdasi, how if anyone serves this, they get all the obstacles removed from devotional service, they get ah...devotion for the Lord or they get so much material obstacles removed, people... mothers who are childless can have children, people who are poverty stricken become free from that, all kinds of you know mundane benefits are given, that all kinds of spiritual benefits that one gets. And it is said that if one doesn’t observe Narasingha Caturdasi 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 the worship the Lord on that day, it’s like ah...being a devotee, especially taking initiation, means now I have joined the union, now you have to play by the rules and ah... of course for a new bhaktas they don’t know anything, they get so much benefit, even just by visiting a temple, but if you are initiated, if you don’t visit the temple, you are like... you are in trouble, say... it’s a big responsibility actually to say that my life is now dedicated to serve Krishna and then subsequently you don’t serve Krishna, just like as much as if a wife after being married starts to go off with other men .49.37-38...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 Krishna, but then things are there, sometimes we don’t know that, I mean I was surpised you see, that those both sides, not only one side, people don’t know about the other side. I just mentioned there is another side. But in Hari Bhakti Vilas it is mentioned that according to the Padma Purana that ah..that Prahlad, he asked Narashinga Dev, “What if, 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 Narasinghadev ah... since He was asked by Prahalada He explained that once many yugas ago, there was a brahmana called Satyadeva. Satyadeva... Satyadeva Atmadeva, right now I am hazy, 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. Like to go out and womanise , visit prostitutes, was a disgrace for the family, everyone else was very Krishna conscious, very God conscious, worshipping the Lord, but the youngest son was ah...horrible, so Narayana...Narasinghadev, He said, “Well, the youngest son, I don’t remember his name,. 51.38-40. One night, one day he went to the house of his girlfriend who was like loose lady, she was considered like a prostitute and they had 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 Narasingha Caturdasi, he didn’t even know it, but you even accidentally observe the fast, on that holy day you get the benefit. So Narasingha dev said you were the youngest son, who was doing all those sinful things, and because you... you didn’t do anything else in your life, you didn’t chant japa, you didn’t attend mangala arati, you didn’t do a single thing you know voluntarily, maybe when as a child his parents had engage him but beyond that voluntarily he didn’t do anything, but accidentally he just observed Narasingha Caturdasi, because of that a total chain reaction happened leading him up to becoming Prahalada Maharaj. We don’t understand, we may engage 1% in a Nityananda Trayodasi or bring some guests here on Radhastami and it may create a whole effect, that after a x number of births you find the person is a mahan acharya, a great bhagavat, personally may liberated soul, seeing God face to face, we cannot underestimate, how much a spiritual practice can produce results in the future. That’s very humbly here Prahlad, he just thought you know, very humbling for him I am sure to hear what it means is that the Lord is so merciful even if you accidentally serve him, he gives you blessing, what to speak somebody consciously serves the Lord, tries to serve the Lord, when you see how merciful He is. Putana goes to kill the Lord with poison on her breast, and He accepts as her mother. If we actually just try little bit of service to Krishna, 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 under water on a fast day, we can always smeek and eat even if it is ekadasi, even if it is a holiday, but if we do the fast, if we do the services, we start to build up, of course it took yugas for Prabhlad to become Prahlada from that time. We can become by Lord Caitanya’s mercy, Prabhupada’s blessing, we can become fully Krishna conscious in one lifetime, we can go back to Krishna, 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, to worship the deities in their home, but in engaging them now, in actively preaching, 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 developing ah... they are advancing very systematically in their Krishna 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 neighbours and friendly people and gradually that the group builds, there is no reason we can’t have that kind of ah... preaching also, so it’s a very systematic way that’s been developed, and it works very effectively for any group, anywhere, what to speak of Krishna consciousness where you have the greatest thing to give people. So anyway we can all have the same darshan 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 so that 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 prasadam, 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. This are also fruits which produce fruits. This are like the seeds that produce the food of love for Krishna Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Any questions. Yes. JPS: Goloka is within Vaikuntha, Vaikuntha is a general, broader category. Within Vaikuntha then you have, just like within Washinton D.C you got the white House, you don’t have to, but you can say, “go to Washington” ...it includes going to the... you know going to the white house 57.40. If you want to differentiate and say okay there is a greater Washington, there is the White House, the Washington Memorial. So Goloka is the topmost area within the Vaikuntha region of the spiritual world. To differentiate, that’s the Narayana, the Vaikuntha, then you can say there is Ayodhya, then there is the Goloka, so sometimes the spiritual world is referred to in general because someone may go to Narayana or may go to Krishna. In some places it specifically mentions Goloka separately, it is mentioned in some places specifically. That there is like in Brahma Samhita where it says that Devi, Mahesha, Haridhama and Goloka Dhama, so it is mentioned specifically but in general sometime there is so many details are not given. It’s very esoteric, Goloka is a well kept secret. Not everyone knows the glories of Goloka. But it’s mentioned, I don’t think I mentioned Heuston in this class, but I am going there for their grand opening on Saturday, their 2 million dollar temple they just built and I will try to do some spiritual factfindging for you, see whatever I can. I am going to give them a seminar, now that they have finished their building ah...Tamala Krishna Maharaj wanted them to learn how to do this ah... cell program, ah...kind o.. bhakti branch preaching program so that they can all be involved in preaching, take a better care of everyone. Basically you have to...usually what they do is lot of house programs, they have a temple, or they go and visit people, Hindus are... they like to give, you have a project to built a temple, it’s not hard to collect money from Hindus, because they know that giving donation to temple building will give a lot of blessing and that’s a permanent thing. Sometimes you go to pay off your debts and things, they think it’s like a no end to it, but to build a temple it’s just like a, it’s going to be permanently a asset to their need. So if you have a permanent development project, worked out, which I am going to trying to work on for years together, to get a masterplan, and some designs worked up because it doesn’t cost much to get a design up, but it... it’s what you need before you can go and get people... to get support. Usually they are quite eager, even if they worship in another temple, they won’t be against because within the...it’s not so denominationalized yet in the Hinduism. People will go and visit any Hindu temple even if ah... it’s not like a 1.01.00 wouldn’t go to a Catholic church......it’s not like, no hard and fast rules like that. In India, people go...all over India to all the big temples, even though they may in one sampradaya, the temples are like common area for everyone even if they worship one particular sampradaya you still visit the temple and see the deity because the deity is the incarnation of the Lord. You may like one deity more than the other, so you may give more donations but just give some donations to any temple, that’s our experience, there may be some exceptions, but generally they give. So you have to have a... they came up with a good design and a project plan and they had...they made the right committee members, and they made a advisory committee and they admitted that they made a few mistakes by putting the biggest donors in the advisory committee and they found that that wasn’t necessarily the best plan because they are too busy, because they are big donors, because they are rich, they have no time. They are too busy with their business, they didn’t have the time to really plan out the fund- raising. Why you do the fund raising, you see you get the donors, some of the donors to help raise the funds from other donors, they have a more of a moral right to do that. Because I gave you should give, I give this much even though my capacity is less, you have more capacity you should give more, they approach it that way. So you have to cultivate some people to do congregation who are willing to donate for the project and get them involved to work with the devotees of the temple, to go out and approach others to give. So they followed the normal fund raising ah...schemes which ISKCON foundation has got lot of research on how to do fund raising. You don’t have to...it doesn’t hurt to have a lot of congregational preaching to cultivate people. Because that creates...that creates the environment where people will give their own very spontaneously, or if you have a project ah... well worked out they can give very easily but there are techniques of how, just like a salesman you have a, how to close the deal, there is all kind of, how to actually bring donation in, there are all kinds of techniques that ISKCON foundation is willing to provide for any ISKCON temple to raise funds for their development. Now it’s the time when we have the Prabhupada kalash program where some temples are already raising hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars paying all the mortgage, paying off, building temples, doing so many things just on the Kalash programme. Everybody will get a silver or a gold or a copper or brass, a Kalash with hundred thousand and eight of holy waters in it. So once in a lifetime opportunity, where we all bathe Srila Prabhupada. So it’s a very great program that ah... people could be involved in. Very easy to involve everyone and it is a very gratifying programme. It is a once in a lifetime programme. So there are people, there are different, all kinds of schemes, 1.04.47 scheme, the ISKCON foundation. I hope it doesn’t you know doesn’t all 10.04.53 by, everyone else is taking advantage of it. It’s worthwhile having someone to be incharge of fund raising department, and if they actually do it they should be normally be able to pay for their own maintenance but bring a significant income to the deity. Fund raising is also a type of self-sufficient programme when it involves a little set up costs, but it takes time and there is a whole system to it. One needs to learn the system, if they want it to be effective. Doesn’t take financial outlaying, or congregational members to do preaching or temple devotees to do little part time preaching to the congregation and ah... cultivate them and make them friends or make them devotees, then it is very easy to ask them to give contributions without a big infrastructure. If you want to collect for people that you are not cultivating actively and involving in temple activities, then you have to give them news-letters, 1.06.10-12 and preaching different things, because otherwise they wouldn’t feel connected, so why should they want to give a big donation. So we have to somehow or another cultivate them. They call it fund raising and friend raising, friend and fund raising, if they are not your friends they are not going to give as much fund. If they are your friends, they will be devotees, they will give their lives what to speak of funds, they will give whatever they can for a good cause, for the deity. So I am sure that in the history they would be willing to tell anybody how they did it, that they are also members of the ISKCON foundation. The information how to do everything, their you know what ....ISKCON foundation announce to the North American leaders, they say that we are getting more requests from outside of North America, we set ourselves to help the North American temples, hardly do we get asked for any North American temple to do anything, and when we do we give them our full support, we are getting swarmed with request from other countries. Because we are so much in a rut in North America that we don’t even want to get out of it. Something, I don’t know, it’s like, I think that we crossed over, now people want to get out but not taking up so spontaneously to other places, but those temples if you would give testimonials, that they have like in Alachua they were trying the old method, our old GBC ah...10.07.55 what’s his name, Balavanta Prabhu, he ah... said he tried all ways, sent out sankirtan parties, collections, worked in streets, stickers, the whole works and he was able to raise like a $100,000, burned everybody out, he didn’t know what to do, they kind of peaked out, then ah... Pranada Dasi took over the fund raising and she talked with Kalakanta Prabhu and Navin Krishna and got the whole system how to do it in the modern way of fund raising from the congregation and they approached the different congregation just to Alichua.10.08.32 area that within a few months they collected $400,000, and they finished the whole temple, they may have the figures off, what actually I remember and ah... she said that if we had followed their system we wouldn’t have got the same results. Definitely it would have made a lot easier and they said that actually this people were just giving pocket change, that actually they gave 10 times as much as they gave to the Hare Krishna temple, to their own cultural centre in Downtown 1.09.02.......10 times more, they just gave a token because we asked them, they gave. In India, in America the richest ethnic group according to the last gallapole I saw are the Indians. More than Jews, more than any other ethnic groups because they don’t let Indians come into America unless they are doctors, phd’s. So mostly Indians are the motel owners, highly paid specialist doctors, they are all in the upper income group, you know they don’t have let the Indians come in here for the other works, computer system analyst or something. There is hardly any poor Indians in America, where there are poor Jews, there are poor everything else, there are poor Chinese, poor Vietnamese 10.09.50-56 , you see an Indian pick tin cans in the park. They are all in a you know quite well to do situation, in America. So then we have a very good donor base, just from our Indian community, from our congregation, if you want to do something, but then you have to make a plan what you want to do, you have to cultivate the people, you have to follow the system and within a year you can have a well on it’s way ....1.10.22 it’s being done. Now for the Sentenial, for the Prabhupada’s Vyasa Puja is not going any further away. It’s now or never. If you do it now you can get some kalasas sponsored and you can...Touchstone is paying so much of every month for the mortgage 1.10.42....and give directly for constructing our temple. Actually I was thinking this morning how this is a... Prabhupada visited here, so this is a Sripad New Talaban, it’s a...it’s a Sripad Mandir you know, you make a temple, everyone likes to make Samadhis. Samadhi is like, when we put two, but there is another kind of temple for great devotees, and then you put a bhajan kutir and you call it a Sripad and then whenever a person comes and gives a lecture somewhere, a great saint then that place becomes sanctified, and pad means where a lecture is being given, and Sripad means a diving lecture is being given in that place by a liberated soul. Prabhupada was a liberated soul, came here, gave lecture, gave instructions, visited here, gave service, taught how to cook and so many things, so this is a Prabhupad’s Sripad. In India we go and visit, we are passed with the Lord Caitanya had visited one day, it’s called Sripad Haridaspur and we visited, and even one day he visited and it is a Sripad, so Prabhupada here for sometimes, few days, how many days was he here? Do you know? sometimes...pastimes, so this is also Sripad, you have a Sripad mandir, Prabhupad amongst other things. Hare Krishna

Transcribed by: Sadananda Krishnaprem Das