199605 Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 3.15.21

The following is a morning class given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami in May of 1996, at New Tālavana farm in Carrier, Missisipi. The class was given during the glorious month of Mādhava and begins with a reading from the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, 3^rd Canto, 15th Chapter, 21^st verse.

śrī rūpiṇī kvaṇayatī caraṇāravindaṁ
līlāmbujena hari-sadmani mukta-doṣā
saṁlakṣyate sphaṭika-kuḍya upeta-hemni
sammārjatīva yad-anugrahaṇe 'nya-yatnaḥ

Translation: The ladies in the Vaikuṇṭha planets are as beautiful as the goddess of fortune herself. Such transcendentally beautiful ladies, their hands playing with lotuses and their leg bangles tinkling, are sometimes seen sweeping the marble walls, which are bedecked at intervals with golden borders, in order to receive the grace of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

Purport: In the Brahma-saṁhitā it is stated that the Supreme Lord, Govinda, is always served in His abode by many, many millions of goddesses of fortune. Lakṣmī-sahasra-śata-sambhrama-sevyamānam (Bs. 5.29). These millions and trillions of goddesses of fortune who reside in the Vaikuṇṭha planets are not exactly consorts of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but are the wives of the devotees of the Lord and also engage in the service of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. It is stated here that in the Vaikuṇṭha planets the houses are made of marble. Similarly, in the Brahma-saṁhitā it is stated that the ground on the Vaikuṇṭha planets is made of touchstone. Thus there is no need to sweep the stone in Vaikuṇṭha, for there is hardly any dust on it, but still, in order to satisfy the Lord, the ladies there always engage in dusting the marble walls. Why? The reason is that they are eager to achieve the grace of the Lord by doing so.

It is also stated here that in the Vaikuṇṭha planets the goddesses of fortune are faultless. Generally the goddess of fortune does not remain steadily in one place. Her name is Cañcalā, which means "one who is not steady." We find, therefore, that a man who is very rich may become the poorest of the poor. Another example is Rāvaṇa. Rāvaṇa took away Lakṣmī, Sītājī, to his kingdom, and instead of being happy by the grace of Lakṣmī, his family and his kingdom were vanquished. Thus Lakṣmī in the house of Rāvaṇa is Cañcalā, or unsteady. Men of Rāvaṇa's class want Lakṣmī only, without her husband, Nārāyaṇa; therefore they become unsteady due to Lakṣmījī. Materialistic persons find fault on the part of Lakṣmī, but in Vaikuṇṭha Lakṣmījī is fixed in the service of the Lord. In spite of her being the goddess of fortune, she cannot be happy without the grace of the Lord. Even the goddess of fortune needs the Lord's grace in order to be happy, yet in the material world even Brahmā, the highest created being, seeks the favor of Lakṣmī for happiness.

Thus ends the Bhaktivedanta Swami translation and purport of the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, 3rd Canto, 15th Chapter, 21st verse, in the matter of description of the Kingdom of God.

Oṁ Tat Sat!

Jayapatākā Swami: So here is very beautiful verse, very similar to the verse of Brahmā-saṁhitā. Lakṣmī sahashra sata sambrama sevaya manam. (Bs. 5.29) The Goddesses of fortune are sweeping. If you are a very wealthy person you don’t sweep, you have maids, isn’t it? You have cleaners. Very wealthy people, they don’t need to do their own cleaning. It’s the middle class that have the vacuum cleaners, and the poor people that use the brooms and things. I guess even poor people in America use vacuum cleaners, I don’t know... everybody, they had to do their cleaning, but the really rich people, they have a some maid from the Philippines or somebody. So here we are talking about goddesses of fortune or ladies in Vaikuṇṭha planet who are as beautiful as the goddess of fortune, and they are sweeping. So why do they sweep? What is the need for them to engage in such a menial service? Even in the Brahma-saṁhitā, it’s said that goddess of fortune is doing such work. Because they want, yad-anugrahaṇe 'nya-yatnaḥ They want to get the grace of the Supreme Lord. In our Samsara prayers also, in the third verse śrī-vigrahārādhana-nitya-nānā-sṛṅgāra-tan-mandira-mārjanādau... mandira-mārjanādau, mārjana word is also there in this verse, sammārjatīva is sweeping, cleaning. This way sammārjana is cleaning and sammārjatī means someone who does the cleaning, iva is like a sweeper, like a cleaner. From that verse, sammārjana, mandira-mārjana. Sammārjana and mārjana is similar, same basic word. But the guru is very happy to see the devotees to engage in mandira-mārjanādi. Ādi means etc. and so on. So mandira-mārjana means cleaning the temple and other such type of services to the deity.

Prabhupāda said that when you clean the temple, you clean your heart. Example is the pastime of Lord Caitanya in the Guṇḍicā Mārjana, where all the devotees go together and clean the temple of Guṇḍicā. For one year the temple is lying practically unused, so then when Jagannātha is about to go there, they need to clean the temple. So, after one year of lying vacant, the temple is in need of a major cleaning. So, there’s twigs and leaves and pebbles, sand there, there is all kinds of dirt and dust. So, Lord Caitanya went through a systematic cleaning, first taking all the big items like leaves and things, pebbles and twigs, leaves and they took all those out, put in a pile, said let’s have a competition who can clean the most. Put your piles, combine everything, you put everything separately and we will see how much you are cleaning. Then after having cleaned the twigs and things out, the next level was sweeping the little pieces of sand and dust and getting those in a pile. Things which that were too small to conveniently pick up by your hand. And those were taken out, and put in the pile. Lord Caitanya’s pile was so big that it was larger than all the other piles combined. He was so enthusiastic for cleaning the Lord’s temple. Then after that level, then they brought water and they started to pour the water, cleaning the whole temple by pouring the water until the temple became very... it was like rivers of water coming out just flowing from the temple, and hundreds of people bringing this big… they didn’t have steel buckets but they had big clay pots of water that they were getting. How many of you have been to see the Guṇḍicā temple in Jagannātha Purī? It’s two devotees, three devotees. Next to the Guṇḍicā temple is the Indradyumna Kuṇḍa, there is a very big kuṇḍa called the Indradyumna Kuṇḍa and that is there from our previous yuga. So the devotees, they take very big steps when they are going down. So the devotees were going down the steps, getting the water, passing it up like a bucket brigade. So sometimes in passing it from one to the next, some or two buckets, where two of those clay containers would hit each other and smash. It was like everybody was working on it top speed, to get all the buckets of water, all the big containers of water. Each of these big clay pots must hold about 3-4 buckets full. They are very heavy actually, they are carrying so much water for the Lord, so much water was being provided, when in the meantime somebody took some water and was splashing it to Lord Caitanya’s lotus feet, people were stealing the water, washing it and drinking it. Then one brāhmaṇa right in front of Lord Caitanya, washed His feet and drank the water. That was like too much ok... that sneaking was one thing but right in front of Him. He said, “What is this!? In the temple washing my feet and drinking! It is right in the temple, altar room cleaning. So then He called Svarūpa Dāmodara, “What is your Bengali devotee doing, he has committed this offence, I am going to go to hell, washing my feet inside of the altar area and taking the water?” So then Svarūpa Dāmodara grabbed him by the neck and then threw him out of the Guṇḍicā temple, “What have you done? Shouldn’t do all these things.” He got caught. So many little sub instructions are being given. So then after, the whole temple was washed, cleaned. They’re throwing on the walls, and the ceiling, was just cool and sparkling. You’d normally think, , the temple is clean. But then afterwards, Lord Caitanya took like little twigs and went... these are not like highly polished stone marble temple but this is a granite temple, so the... in between the joints, there is a little gap, maybe eight inch of a gap, 16 inch gap, so they are scraping. Even the little gaps between the stones and getting out the last bit of dirt, which would have been caught inside the crevices of those stones, then that was finally taken and thrown out.

So then the temple was so spotlessly clean, just by seeing it you felt good, by seeing it you got purified. So it’s clean and pure as Lord Caitanya’s heart. So in this regard, this is how we should cleanse our heart, the big twigs and leaves are like the different anarthas of the bad... the weeds, those kind of weeds, breaking the regulative principles, extramarital sex, meat-eating, intoxication, gambling, different kinds of grosser offenses. So those are first that are cleared out, then you have the more subtle dirts and others. These are the subtle kind of desire for fame, distinction, adoration and desire for profit. I have served Kṛṣṇa for so many years, what did I get out of it? What did I get out of it means what material benefits did I get out of it. Did I get a car, did I get a color TV Of course some devotees have given up their TV’s now because there is too much distraction. So some people they try to measure their fruits of devotional service in terms of their material acquisition. I mean if somebody wants material acquisitions, Kṛṣṇa can give it in due course. Kṛṣṇa doesn’t work on our timeline. He has his own timeline. If you want to turn in all your credits for serving Him to get some material benefits, He can give you a birth in the heavenly planets. You don’t need to... you don’t need to watch TV there. Life is so beautiful, so much sense gratification. And if you really want to see Star Wars then the demons will come and attack eventually, and you can fight with them in outer space and you can fly around the whole universe, because you have mystic powers. I mean if you want to enjoy in the higher level of material life, and that’s what you want to trade in for, that can easily be achieved by devotional service. But the devotees don’t want anything material, what to speak of things in this world which are available just by working a little hard. They don’t want material things at all, they want transcendental blessings from the Lord.

The goddesses of fortune that are pictured here are the ladies of Vaikuṇṭha who are as beautiful as goddesses of fortune. They are not serving the Lord because they want something material. They don’t want anything material. They are already in the spiritual world. But they are serving because serving itself gives one transcendental pleasure. Because when you are pleasing the Lord, we naturally feel happy because we are part of the Lord, we are His energies. But this is done in a very personal, reciprocal way. Even little service is done, can save us from the greatest dangers, , from Bhagavad-gītā (Bg 2.40) - svalpam apy asya dharmasya mahato trāyate bhayāt. There was a case... just like certain months of the year have certain features. Everybody knows that the Dāmodara month is very special, right? When we do the Dāmodara light offering, we know that actually things done in that month have a special effect. There are other months which have other effects. Another month which is very important for bathing, for offering flowers to the Lord is the month of Māgha which is two months after the month of Dāmodara, and many glories are there. We told the story last year about the King who offered the caṁpaka flower in the month of Māgha. You heard that pastime? You don’t remember the king offered the caṁpaka flower to Kṛṣṇa by accident in the month of Māgha?

Well, there was a so-called king, he was a king, he inherited the throne and he was in some previous era, many thousands of years ago. Another yuga maybe. Must have been another yuga because it is in the Purāṇa, so it is not this yuga. Purāṇas are written before this yuga. And he was not a good king. Kṣatriya means to protect and a kṣatriya is supposed to run the kingdom like a person runs his family, like a very pious man would run his family. The citizens or his subjects are his prajā. In Sanskrit prajā is… like prajāpati.. it’s like one’s offspring. You are supposed to take care of them like they were your children. That was the way that monarchy used to work, but this king was not a good king. He was not fulfilling his duty. He was a cheat and he was exploiting the citizens. He was misusing the money. He was not engaging in pious activity, he was a atheistic kind of person. Not fully atheistic, but he was a very sinful person, he just neglected totally anything spiritual, except maybe to showoff, he put a show on sometimes, but not really good, sincerely. Even it’s said that as a king sometimes, he would have to arbitrate disputes, and he would take sides. He would accept bribes, and take the side that would bribe him and things like that. He was like a really bad person. So the citizens hated him. Didn’t know he was a cheat, he was exploiting the kingdom, he was not a good king. So there was kind of a rebellion fomenting against him. Something that we have heard lot of past centuries here in this Kali-yuga.

So anyway to make a longer story short, he one day he went and visited one... he had a girlfriend, she was some kind of a call-girl and went to visit this prostitute. She had a little garden house. He went to the little garden house and they were talking and enjoying together, and after sometime they are sitting on the bed together and somehow in the courtyard there is a caṁpaka tree and caṁpaka tree... goloka-caṁpā is a special, what they Firangipani. It’s a very dear tree to the Lord... Nārāyaṇa, Lord Kṛṣṇa. You will see here in one of the previous verses that was describing about the spiritual world, and it says here mandāra-kunda-kurabotpala-campakārṇa (ŚB. 3.15.19) Caṁpaka is one of the trees in the spiritual world. Bakula, lilies, lotus, pārijātas, bakula tree. I told the story about Lord Nityānanda’s bakula tree. Of course we don’t know what a spiritual world caṁpaka tree looks like but there is replica, representation of the material world. It’s a very dear tree to the Lord. It’s used in pūjā to Lord Kṛṣṇa. So one of this trees was in her house, it is quite a common tree in tropical countries and and they offer them in Hawaii, when you go there. There everyone gets a (?) usually made out of the caṁpaka flower, highly scented, doesn’t last very long. After a few hours it starts to wilt but it’s very beautiful and soft and fragrant while it lasts. So one flower started falling from the tree, and they are very light. So they take a few seconds to fall down and the King just offered, just said “eṣa puṣpaḥ nārāyaṇāya namaḥ”, Oh Lord Nārāyaṇa, I offer You this flower. That was a joke, sitting with his girlfriend. … it’s like the story about the puffed rice that blows in the air and then the king Gopāla says “ūrāya khai govindāya namaḥ”, "O puffies flying in the air, I offer you to Nārāyaṇa." Once the puffy has hit the ground, they are not going to, you are always going to pick up a bunch of puffies mixed with all kind of dirts,  and it’s like gone to the wind, gone with the wind. So anyway while it is still in the air it is offerable. Hasn’t touched the ground yet so it's okay. “Flying puffies, I offer you to Nārāyaṇa.” Something like that. What is the meaning of the caṁpaka falling down and you say, “Okay flying caṁpaka I offer you to Nārāyaṇa.” No sooner did he say that... meanwhile this rebellion group, the revolutionaries, they are like the IRA or something, they figured out that he was there in the house of this girl, maybe she was a plan, maybe she was a spy, who knows? The whole thing could have been set up, but śāstra doesn’t go into all the details. But somehow they found out that he was there. It just so happened, no sooner than he said “nārāyaṇa namaḥ”, *BAM!* They just smashed the door in and “AARRRGHHHH”, they shot him right in the heart with a arrow. They tampered him with arrows, came in and like chopped his head off and then had a big celebration. “The king, the tyrant is dead.” That was instant justice right? So the Yamadūtas, they came to pick up the tyrant ātmā. He was a sinner. They were just waiting, this guy is not a pious king that is going to Vaikuṇṭha, to the heavenly planets, but he is a great sinner. They come, they’re all ready to take him, and they find that the Viṣṇudūtas are there. They said, “What you are doing, this is our candidate, how can you take him?”

“Well, the last thing he did is he said ‘nārāyaṇa namaḥ’ and he offered a caṁpaka to Nārāyaṇa, so Nārāyaṇa was pleased with him, so we are taking him back to Vaikuṇṭha.”

They said, “This is ridiculous! The whole life this person has been a sinner and due to the last... accidentally, just practically... he just says ‘nārāyaṇa namaḥ’, and you are going to take him back to Vaikuṇṭha?”

“So well, if you want to please the Lord that’s all it takes and he pleased the Lord with that statement. Whoever remembers the Lord at the end of life, they go back to Godhead, and follow what you may, that’s what happened.”

It seems that quite often the Yamadūtas and the Viṣṇudūtas meet up, , over the yugas, they have not that often actually but enough that… quite a few time in the scriptures it is mentioned. So then they take king ātmā back to Vaikuṇṭha and he sees Nārāyaṇa and he pays his obeisances. But Nārāyaṇa picks him up, “My dear!” It was with an open arm. “My dear devotee!”

“Dear devotee? I... I... am not a very good devotee. I’ve done so many offenses.” Of course the King sees all these Yamadūtas coming, telling how they going to really give him the screw, and , they take him and stretch him out, pierce him and all kinds of far out things. So he knew what was going to happen and somehow instead he is being taken back to the spiritual world and Nārāyaṇa is welcoming him with open arms, and he said, “What did I do to deserve this? I don’t belong, I am really a sinner, I am a very fallen person.”

He said, “No you have offered my favorite flower, caṁpaka in my dear month of Māgha. Anyone who offers me caṁpaka flower in Māgha, they certainly come to me, and the very last thing you did before you left your body was you chanted my name. You said nārāyaṇāya namaḥ. So, you are my dear devotee. And the king said, “Wow... with a Lord like this…”, he just realized that I am never going to get a better break than this, so he surrendered an became a devotee.

So even a little service at the right time, in the right place can go a long way. Of course, if you try to time it, “Ok I am going to have my caṁpaka flower there”, and , just at that moment , I am sure you will fail. (laughter) Those things don’t happen. Like you can’t sin and then think, “Ok I am sinning on the strength of offering a caṁpaka in that month.”, as if you can know for sure you are going to die in that month. Probably forget that was the leap year or something. Something would happen, Kṛṣṇa can’t be cheated. But this just kind of happened automatically. So like that each month has got… not every month is like that but the three months, the top month is the Dāmodara for the dearest month for the Lord you can say, for spiritual activity. Then Māgha is a very special month.

Then we were observing this... I told this yesterday how we observed the Candana-yātrā in Māyāpur. Candana-yātrā in Māyāpur is the month of April, mid-April to mid-May. You can say the whole month of April. It was very hot, it’s like 39-40 degrees centigrade, that’s like almost a 100. 90 to 100 degrees plus. It’s quite hot in the daytime. In the night it cools down in Māyāpur because we have all fields and the Ganges. And if it is a storm, it can cool down in a second to like 75 for a few hours, then it gets hot again. So that’s a month that for the deities you make sandalwood pulp and you cover the whole deity of Kṛṣṇa with sandalwood. So we cover Mādhava, theres pictures available, we cover Mādhava. We cover Lord Nṛsinghadeva and we cover the small Mādhava and we cover Lord Jagannātha, completely with candana. Those are full size deities, you saw the picture last time. Mādhava is almost 6 feet tall. There is a lot of sandalwood and everyday they cover Mādhava, they remove the sandalwood, then cover again. The other deity like Narasiṁhadev, so many crevices and things, so many weapons, that is too much to remove it everyday. So they put the candana on and over a month that builds up. Two weeks. So it takes about a bucket or two. Two small buckets of sandalwood a day. So all the devotees from right after maṅgala-ārati, even some during maṅgala-ārati, they are grinding sandalwood. And the kids are all grinding, little kids, big kids, youth, everybody is... the whole community comes out and everybody spends some time. You get a kind of... there is almost like a queue, waiting up, it’s about five different places where you can grind sandal, and throughout the day, specially the morning is very busy but, you can see people throughout the day and night, making sandalwood pulp and it’s all, you don’t... it’s not like a electrical grinder. You just grind a stone, kind of lot to get a little rubbing. While you grinding it, you put in a little camphor, other scented things and then that’s put on the Lord. It’s a very wonderful service that the devotee is offering. So I wanted... I was asked to give a class and I wanted to find out what was the glories of Candana-yātrā. I couldn’t find anything on Candana-yātrā in the Hari Bhakti Vilāsa specifically but it turns out that the whole month which is the month of Vaisākha, month of Mādhava, is considered to be the most important month of the year. I couldn’t really understand the difference between the dearest month to Lord Viṣṇu and most important month but I think that there is a difference. Anyway, it is hundred times more potent than the month of Māgha, or maybe it is a hundred thousand time. I didn’t even know that was like next to Dāmodara that is like the most important month. It starts off from the, you probably see it on your calendar every year, it says the Akṣaya-tritiyā. Anybody here knows what Akṣaya-tritiyā is? You seen it in you calendar, Akṣaya-tritiyā? Tritiyā means the third day of a lunar cycle. It’s on every calendar. That’s the day when Satya-yuga begins. Whenever Satya-yuga begins, somehow it always begins on that day. And that’s the day when anything you do on that day, you get infallible fruits. The result for activities, pious or spiritual activities done on that day never end, because spiritual activities never end but even pious. I had people, the whole day handing me money. (laughter) I didn’t know why, why is everybody handing me money . One life member waited up, I was working late in the office. In Māyāpur sometimes I don’t get rest either, because there was backlog. I just arrived the day before. I headed to my room, it was 11’o clock at night and going up to the top floor where I stay. There is a guest house where I stay in. The guest was waiting on the third floor with the whole family paying obeisances and said that, “I wanted to be sure to give you this donation on today.” (laughter) He gave me a thousand rupees, which is  pretty good just for getting… in India that’s a pretty decent donation that somebody hands you without any receipt or anything, just handed to you. So I looked what is that? I found that anything you do on that day, all donations you give; it’s like the fruit of that, it’s just kind of a endless tape, just like a endless… just unlimited result. Anything you do, auspicious on that day, bathing in the holy river, worshipping the deities. So like the place was packed. So here it is like for people, they are not able to do it every day then they pick out, “Okay if I can’t worship every day, if I can’t do everything every day, let me just do it on the days when you get multiple benefits.” There might be people on the road all the time, doing the sales or something, they are not able to come or they are not always in the devotional service, so they pick out, “At least these are the days I am going to really… you don’t want to miss this days, if you miss this days then you really missed it.” Of course once I wrote to Śrīla Prabhupāda about this and he said, “You see you are regular customer, you get everyday.”, We are doing every day. So for the people that are practice every day all the rounds and all the pūjās and everything, it’s like for a pujārī, it’s like every day they are getting all the months, 12 months a year. But if there is someone who is not able to do it every day, then for them it’s like this is the track, the not-regular customers. So at least they come on those days so there are so many glories to Akṣaya-tritiyā,  I mean an ISKCON fund raiser should know this. They should know. That should be on their calendar right? I mean this is the day one should work up for. Everybody save your donations. I mean in the previous month, you don’t just tell them a month ahead a time, you will be reminding them too far ahead because... he will say, “I will give it next year at Akṣaya-tritiyā.”

So alright then I got interested. Said this is an interesting month, let me find out more about this month. Then I said the whole month of Mādhava is a very important, and the whole month anything, any donation you do has 100,000 times benefit. Everything you do is multiplied. So I said, “Well this is pretty amazing.” And in that month it starts off with Akṣaya-tritiyā, which is like a big day. Candana-yātra is there where the deity goes on a floating nauka-vilāsa, boat festival in that month. Then there is the... Gaṅgā comes out from the ear of Jahnu Muni, and then finally end of the month, the big highlight is the Nṛsinghadeva Caturdaśī, which we discussed about yesterday. And activities that are performed in that month have a very special effect. Like one the glories described in the Hari Bhakti Vilāsa is that, if you do the right things on that month, if you do your Kṛṣṇa conscious activities on that month, then you become invisible to Yamadūtas. In this way then said the story, that Yamarāja is sending Yamadūtas out to get one king who name was Muṇḍaka... something like that, son of Aśvinī. So they go out looking and they... they can’t find, they can’t see the King anywhere and then they find a ṛṣī called Muṇḍaka, and he is there meditating in the āśrama. All of a sudden the Yamadūtas come out and rip his subtle body out of his gross body and drag him off, and he says, “What the...? What’s going on, what did I do, why am I being taken to hell?” And he sees the heavy dudes, the Yamadūtas and the dogs and everything and goes, and he is there in Yamarāja’s court, and this is one of the rare descriptions of Yamarāja’s court, and I have never seen such a description before. All the personified diseases were there ready to serve Yamarāja. Piles, personified piles I mean, I can’t imagine what they look like. (laughter) And I really don’t want to see. (laughter) But the description is there, T.B... Tuberculosis, Piles, Cancer, I mean there were so many, they mentioned about 12 different diseases  that eczema, they were just there in some personified form. Give this one this diseases and they just dive in and gives the person the whammy. Then there were all kinds of creatures. There were very intelligent types of animals, and combination of humanoid and animal. There were tigers and lions with blood, it seems like they just finished ripping someone up. And they were all eager, they were just waiting. “Okay, which one is going to get sick, this person?” And there were like other kinds of entities,  it was beyond description, there were certain kind of strong, muscular creatures who are... who didn’t at all look shy... they were like biting at the bit, “Okay, this one is for us.” It was quite a frightening experience.... like a what a group here, what a team, and there were all the Yamadūtas, and he was being held by a few Yamadūtas. So then he stays in the centre of the whole team, this whole assembly. There was a raised seat which was empty and Yamarāja comes, sits on the seat and looks at him. He starts shaking his head and talks to his Yamadūtas, “This is the wrong one.” (laughter) The muni was like, “Phew! (*wipes off sweat*) Wrong one. ?” Happy. When you really wanna be the wrong one.

“This is not the Muṇḍaka. You were supposed to bring Muṇḍaka, the son of Aśvinī.”  

“We looked everywhere. We couldn’t find anybody by that description. We couldn’t see anybody. And he had the same name, we thought must have been him, he was staying next door .”

And then Yamarājā went a little bit in meditation and said, “Oho! You see that king had performed these kinds of spiritual activities in the month of Mādhava, and because of that he has become invisible to you and the ṛṣī was writing down (laughter). He came back and told everybody, (laughter) “This is the month to do these things if you don’t want to see what I saw.” (laughter) Hari Bhakti Vilāsa by Sanātana Gosvāmī mentions this.

Like that you find that throughout the Vedas there are some special days, and special festivals, and also a few special months. So the month to be vegetarian is the Dāmodara and Mādhava, those two months. The people who are non-veg, at least that month, it’s good because sometimes when you preach to people, then maybe they are Hindus and they are not vegetarian, then you say, “Look, you should do it. About six months apart, one is April, then you got May, June, July, August and then September, Dāmodara month comes. Well why don’t you try it in coming Dāmodara, and try it for one month, you get a hundred times benefit and it is very good for you, and you can do that month.  The effect to eat meat in that month is very bad and you shouldn’t eat.” So you can preach to them like that... then once they do it for whole month, then afterwards... sometimes people say, “Well, I did it the whole month, why not just continue.” Sometimes you can meat eaters who believe in the Vedas to take up things just by observing these months. So those are the two months when especially it says that even if you cannot, those months you have to be, because you get so much benefit by... of course for the devotees we do every month, so we get special benefits. Hopefully everyone will do everything.

In Vaikuṇṭha they are doing every day. They are sweeping, they are cleaning, they are doing but in this world the people they are not inclined to spiritual life, that’s the real problem. They don’t know while doing devotional service every day, how much spiritual benefit. Someday we might end up  there in Yamarājā’s place, then come and see the whole scene, “This is the wrong one right? Because he was doing maṅgala-ārati in that month.” Doing pious activities in a holy place gets multiplied, you do sinful activities it gets multiplied. So therefore if you are going to differentiate, you should make it clear. The people and also the effect even the community. If you have a brahminical section where people are supposed to live a brahminical lifestyle, and people are living and it’s a deities area, and they are not living their lifestyle, it could affect the greater purity of the community. Put a little cloud over everything. Especially those who are worshipping the deities, very important that they would be strict. In fact there was a time when Prabhupāda said there was a deity, some offense happens to deity, certain kind of offenses you have to bathe the deity in milk to get purified, to get forgiven for those offenses. If everybody is in the Vaikuṇṭha mood, everybody is in the serving mood, then all these things, they don’t matter. So that’s the real point, everybody is serving all the time like in the spiritual world, then these issues are not so important. When people are not engaging in that kind of service on a regular basis, then all these opportunities take much more importance. So it’s good to know because we are dealing with a world where most people don’t observe these things, and sometimes if people know that this month if you chant mantras, you get 100,000 times benefit, somebody might start chanting mantras just to get the benefit. Sounds like a good deal, alright. So they are mentioned in the scriptures. It is mentioned in the Hari Bhakti Vilāsa. These months are also slightly mention in the Bhakti Rasāmṛta Sindhu. But they are elaborately described in the section on the holy months to be observed and holy days to be observed, in the Hari Bhakti Vilāsa, which gives more of the details.

So we have to clean our heart and by cleaning the temple, by serving the temple or by serving the deities, that’s the way of cleaning the heart. Doing some menial service like cleaning the kitchen, cleaning the road, doing any kind of cleaning, repairing. That can help us to advance. So we should take advantage of Lord’s mercy given to us. Even these damsels of the spiritual world, they want to get the favor of the Lord. If you do anything just for the service of the Lord, Kṛṣṇa is very grateful, He never forgets. I mean this world, sometimes you give your whole life to people, right? You might look at the relationships people have, the marriage relationships that are breaking up. People really sometimes just give themselves and then they find later that the person cheats on them. So it’s a big shock right? Means, somebody gets let down like that, it’s like a emotionally a total disaster for the person. And sometimes people get angry at Kṛṣṇa, that why God has let this happen?  But we are in the material world, we have to take the karmas. Who knows what we did? Maybe we did the same thing 30 births before. I mean who knows? Such a complicated issue. Everybody has free will. What really should happen is that people should realize that this material world is not a place for gentleman or gentlewoman to live, and therefore these things happen. And what I should really be doing is depending on Kṛṣṇa, because Kṛṣṇa will never let us down. Even a little service, even a rascal king offers a flower, even Kṛṣṇa doesn’t forget that. What to speak if we give our life to Kṛṣṇa, you think he will forget that? If we serve Kṛṣṇa in so many ways, he won’t forget. I mean, I don’t know, if we do offensive things, if we take everything into consideration, where we have to pay for the mistakes we make, but also we may not. Depends. Definitely we don’t lose out on what we do for Kṛṣṇa, He never forgets that. Even if we have to suffer because of some sins we performed, whatever service we done it stays in a fixed deposit, He doesn’t forget and at the right time He will take us back to Him. That’s why it is so important that we use our human life to serve Kṛṣṇa as much as we can. It doesn’t even, it’s not even, Okay if I can’t do 16 rounds, I can’t follow all the principles, I can’t do everything then nothing. And if we do everything, it’s a good chance we can get back to Godhead this lifetime. That’s Prabhupāda’s promise. If we don’t... even if we don’t do everything, you still might get back by Kṛṣṇa’s mercy, and even if we don’t get back, if he promises us there is no loss. Next life you get a good birth, get another chance, it may take many lives, but we are on a progressive road. It’s better to do something than do nothing. Whatever we can do is to our benefit and that’s why when you engage to giving out food on wheels, prasādam distribution or harināma, every little thing that people do, we can’t imagine how dynamic the effect is on their karma, how dynamically we are effecting their future lives, their future.

Someone was just telling me how they had a friend who was into all this regression and things like that. I mean this is not a śāstric example but this is just the way that someone got brought to Kṛṣṇa. So the person used hypnotism to cure people’s problems and just kind of overdid it. Like anyone has any problem like stopping smoking or anything, “Ok lets regress to your previous life.” So one person did a regression and he said, “What were you in your previous life?”

“I am an insect. I got big wings, I am flying around.. but it’s never happened for me.”

“What did you do? What was the last thing that your remember?”

And he said, “Well, there was this big kind of a building with domes on it, and some shining top and I flew in it and there were some statues, and in front of the statues there was some fruit on a plate, and I landed on the fruit, and I was eating it, and all of a sudden I was like (*SWAT!*), someone smashed me and that was the end. (laughter) So the devotee said some fly or bug came in and  landed infront of some the deities and took some prasādam and then pujārī came and (*SWAT!*) smashed it, and that was it. But the last thing that thing did, was eat prasādam, the next birth he became a human being. So two people, both the person who realized that they got from a bug to human, and both of them came to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. The bug... I mean the ex-bug (laughter) and the... so we don’t know how merciful Kṛṣṇa is, we really underestimate. How fortunate we are to be in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We should actually... what is one life? To make a detour and miss and we could get spun off and end up in any kind of weird place.

The opportunity to serve Kṛṣṇa is so great, that to lose that for any reason is the greatest loss and if people could understand that and whoever is engaging people in Kṛṣṇa’s service of any kind, they are doing the greatest welfare work. I mean you are doing welfare work, what to speak of saving somebody who has  got some problem. You are saving them from millions of problems like that. because in the material world they are going to face so many problems and a little service in Kṛṣṇa can save them from so many such difficulties, which you can’t imagine. That’s the greatest welfare... that’s why Prabhupāda said that’s the greatest welfare work. So we thank all the devotees for the welfare work they are doing and hope that everyone takes advantage of serving Kṛṣṇa as much as they can.

Hare Kṛṣṇa!