199605 Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 3.15.21

199605 Srimad Bhagavatam 3.15.21

Type Of Talk:

Morning Class

Book:

Srimad Bhagavatam (SB)

Collection:

Enlightenment 7

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199605_Srimad_Bhagavatam.3.15.21_New_Talavan

 

The following is morning class given by His Holiness Jayapataka Swami in May of 1996 at New Talaban firm in Carrier, Missipi. The class was given during the glories month of Madhav and begins with a reading from the Srimad Bhagavatam, 3rd Canto, 15th Chapter, 21st verse. 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.

 

Translation with repetition: JPS: The ladies in the Vaikuṇṭha planets Devotees: The ladies in the Vaikuṇṭha planets JPS: are as beautiful as the goddess of fortune herself. Devotees: are as beautiful as the goddess of fortune herself. JPS: Such transcendentally beautiful ladies Devotees: Such transcendentally beautiful ladies JPS: their hands playing with lotuses Devotees: their hands playing with lotuses JPS: and their leg bangles tinkling Devotees: and their leg bangles tinkling JPS: are sometimes seen sweeping the marble walls Devotees: are sometimes seen sweeping the marble walls JPS: which are bedecked at intervals with golden borders Devotees: which are bedecked at intervals with golden borders JPS: in order to receive the grace Devotees: in order to receive the grace JPS: of the Supreme Devotees: of the Supreme JPS: Personality of Godhead. Devotees: 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. 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 marblestone. 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 is...are... the goddesses of fortune are faultless. Generally the god...the goddess of fortune does not remain steadily in one place. Her name is Cañcalā, which means quote... one who is not steady. Unqote. 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 purport of the Srimad Bhagavatam, 3rd Canto, 15th Chapter, 21st verse, in the matter of description of the Kingdome of God. Om Tat Sat.

 

So here is very beautiful verse, very similar to the verse of ah... Brahma Samhita. Lakshmi sahashra sata sambrama sevaya manam

 

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 Vaikuntha planet who are as beautiful as the goddess of fortune and they are sweeping. Why do they sweep? What is the need for them to engage in such a menial service?

 

Even in the Brahma Samhita, it’s said that Goddess of fortune are doing such work. Because they want, yat anugrahane, nayatna, they want to get the grace of the Supreme Lord. In our Samsara prayers also, in the third verse- Srivigrahara dhana nitya nana, sringara tana mana mandira marjanadau, mandir marjanadau... mandir marjanadau, marjana word is also there in this verse, samarjitiva is sweeping, cleaning and this way samarjan is cleaning and samarjati means someone who does the cleaning, eva is like a sweeper, like a cleaner. From that verse, samarjan, mandir marjana. Samarjana and marjana is similar, same basic word, but the guru is very happy to see the devotees to engage in mandir marjanadi. Adi means etc and so on. So mandir marjan, cleaning the temple and other such type of services to the deity. Prabhupada said that when you clean the temple, you clean your heart.

 

Example is the pastime of Lord Caitanya in the Gundicha Marjana where all the devotees go together and ah... clean the temple of Gundicha. For one year the temple is lying practically unused, so then when Jagannath is about to go there, they need to clean the temple. So after one year of lying vacant the temple is ah...in need of a major cleaning. So there is twigs and leaves and pebbles, sand there, there is all kinds of dirt, dust. So Lord Caitany went through a systematic cleaning, first taking all the big items like leaves and things, pebbles and ah... twigs, leaves and they took all those out, put in a pile, let’s have a competition who can clean the most? Put your piles in ah... one... 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, put in a pile.

 

Lord Chaitanya’s pile was so big that it was larger than all the other piles combined. He was so enthusiastic for cleaning 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 a ocea...like rivers of water coming out just flowing from the temple and hundreds of people bringing this big ah... 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 Gundicha temple in Jagannath Puri? It’s two devotees, three devotees, next to the Gundicha temple is the Indradumnya kunda, there is a very big kunda called the Indradyumna Kunda and that is there from our previous yuga. So the devotees they... and 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 ah... some or two buckets, where two of those clay containers would hit each other bh... and smash, it was like,..11.53... everybody was working on it top speed, to get all the buckets of water, all the big containers of water. Each of this big clay pots must hold about 2-4 buckets 12.10 , 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 Chaitanya’s lotus feet, people were stealing the water, washing it and drinking it. Then one Brahmana right in front of Lord Caitanya spr... washed His feet and drank the water, that was like too much ok... that sneaking was one thing but right infront 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 ah... He called Swarup Damodar, what is you Bengali devotee doing, he has committed this offence, I am going to go to hell, washing my feet inside of the altar and 12.58..area and taking the water.

 

So then Swarup Damodar grabbed him by the neck and then threw him out of the Gundicha temple, “what have you done, shouldn’t do all this things.” He got caught. So many little sub instructions are being given. So then after the whole temple was washed, cleaned and throwing on the walls, and the ceiling, was just cool and sparkling, you know... then you normally think you know the temple is clean. But then afterwards Lord Caitanya took like little twig and went...and this are not like highly polished stone ah... 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 scrapping even the little gaps between the stones and getting out the last bit of dirt which would have been caught inside the premises 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 ah... the bad... the weeds, those kind of weeds, breaking the regulative principles ah... extra marital sex, meat eating, intoxication, gambling, different kinds of ah... grosser offenses, so those are first that are cleared out, then you have the more subtle dirts and other ...., this are the subtle kind of desire for fame, distinction, adoration and desire for profit, I have served Krishna for so many years what did I get from 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 colour T.V, for some devotee they give up their T.V’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, Krishna can give it in due course, Krishna 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 planet. You don’t need to... you don’t need to watch T.V there. Life is so beautiful, so much sense gratification, and if you really want to see star wars and... 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 Vaikuntha 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 services is done, can save us from the greatest dangers, you know, from Bhagavat Gita- Svalpamapasya dharmasya, mahato trayato bhayat. There was a case ah... just like certain months of the year have certain ah... features, everybody knows that the Damodar month is very special, right? We do the Damodar light offering, we know that actually things done in that month have a special effect. There are other months which have other effects, and another months which are very important for bathing, for offering flowers to the Lord, this is a month of maga which is two months after the month of Damodar and many glories are there, we told the story last year about the King who offered the Champak flower in the month of Mag. You heard that pastime?

 

You don’t remember the King offered the champak flower to Krishna by accident in the month of Maga? Well, there was a so called king, he was a king, he inherited the throne and he was in some previous ah...era, many thousands of years ago, another yuga maybe and must have been a yuga because it is in the Purana’s, so it is not in this yuga, Purana’s are written before this yuga and he was not a good king. Ksatriya means to protect and a ksatriya is supposed to run the kingdom like a person runs his family, like a very pious man would run his family. The citizens are his subjects are his praja,means praja like prajapati, it’s like his offspring’s, you are supposed to take care of them like they were your children. Ah...that was the way that monarchy used to work, but ah...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 something but not really good..sincerely. Even it’s said that ah...as a king sometimes he would have to .....abri...abri...arbitrate disputes, and he would take the sides, he will take...accept bribes, and take the side that would bribe him and things like that....he was like a really ah... bad person.

 

So the citizen’s 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 girlfried, she was a some kind of a call girl and ah... went to visit this ah... this prostitute, she had a little gardenhouse, went to the little garden house and ah...they were talking and enjoying together and after sometime they are sitting on the bed together and ah... somehow in the courtyard there is a Champak tree and Champak tree... Golok Champak is a special, what they call 22.30-33 ?

 

It’s a very dear tree to the Lord... Narayana, Lord Krishna, you will see here in one of the previous verses that was describing about the spiritual world, and it says here Mandara kunda kura bora utpala champakarana Champaka is one of the trees in the spiritual world. Gokula, Lilies, Lotus, Parijatas, Bokul tree. I told the story about ah... Lord Nityananda’s bokul tree. So this is trees which are... of course we don’t know what a spiritual world champak 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 puja to Lord Krishna. So one of this trees was in her house, it is quite a common tree in tropical countries and ah... and they offer them in Hawai when you go there. There everyone gets a lay, usually made out of the champak 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 24.00 the King just offered, just said....” eso puspa narayana namah”, Oh Lord Narayana, I offer You this flower. That was a joke sitting with his girlfriend, you know it’s like the story about the puffed rice that blows in the air and then the king, the gopal says Urai koi govindai namah, O puffies flying in the air I offer you to Narayana. Once the puffy has hit the ground, they are not going to, yuo 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, when it has touched the ground, you say it's ok. “Flying puppies, I offer you to Narayana.” Something like this you know, what is the meaning of the champak falling down and you say, “OK flying Champak I offer you to the... to Narayana.” Ah...No sooner that he say that... meanwhile this rebellion group... the revolutionists, they had their... their own like the IRA or something. They figured out that he was there in the ah... house of this girl, maybe she was a plan, maybe she was a spy, who knows. Ah...could have been, the whole thing could have been set up, but...25.28-30...in going through all the details but somehow they... they found out that he was there. It just so happened,no sooner than he said Narayana Namoh, ah... smashed the door in ah.........and they shot him right in the heart with a arrown, 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. Hare Krisha. Sorry. Haridev. That was instant justice right? But ...so the yamadutas they came to pick up the tyrant atma, he was a sinner, he was a...they were just waiting, this guy is not a pious king that is going to Vaikuntha, to the heavenly planets, but he is a great sinner. Then come 26.24 take him, and they find that the Visnudutas are there, they said, “what you are doing, this is one of the...this is our candidate, I mean, how can you take him?” “Well, the last thing he did is he said Narayana Namoh and he offered ah... champak to Narayana, so Narayana was pleased with him, so we are taking him back to Vaikuntha.

 

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 Narayana Namoh, and he... he...you are going to take him back to Vaikuntha?” 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. 27.15-18... and sometimes it seems...it seems that quite often on the yamadutas and the Visnudutas meet up you know over the yugas they have not that often actually but enough that ah... quite a few time in the scriptures it is mentioned. So then they take ah...the king atma back to Vaikuntha and ah...he sees Narayana and he pays his obeisances, but Narayana picks him up, “My dear” it was with a open arm, “ my dear devotee... dear devotee.” “I... I...I... am not a very good devotee, I..I done so many offences” Of course the King sees all these yamadutas coming ready to you know telling how they going to really give him the screw and ah...you know, 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 he is...instead he is being taken back to the spiritual world and Narayana is welcoming him with open arms, and he said what did I do to deserve this and I don’t belong ... I am really a sinner, I am a very fallen person.

 

He said, “No you have offered my favourite flower, Champaka in my dear month of Maga. Anyone who offers me Champak flower in Maga, they certainly come to me, and the very last thing you did before you left your body you chanted my name. You said Narayanaya Namah. So you are my dear devotee and the king said, “ wow, with the Lord like this ...he just realized that I am never going to get a better break like this, so he surrendered an became a devotee and a...so even a little service at the right time, in the right place ah...can go a long way. “ Of course if he is going to time it, “Ok I am going to have my champak flower there”, and you know, just at moment you know...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 Champak 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, Krishna can’t be cheated, but this just a kind of happened automatically. So like that each month has got...not every month is like that, the three months... the top month is the damodar for... the dearest month for the Lord you can say, for spiritual activity specially, then maga is a very special month, then ah...we were observing all this... I told this yesterday how we observed the Chandan yatra in Mayapur. Chandan Yatra in Mayapur in the month of ah... April, mid April to mid May is ah... you can say the whole month of April, it was very hot, it’s like 39, 40 degree centrigate, that’s like almost a 100, 90 to 100 degrees plus 30.35 it’s quite hot in the daytime, in the night it cools down in Mayapur because we have open fields in the Ganges, and if it is storm it cooled down in a second too like 75 or few hours, then it gets hot again, but... so that’s a month that we.... for the deities you make sandalwood pulp and you cover the whole deity of Krishna with sandalwood. So we cover Madhava, there is a picture... there is a picture.... we cover Madhava, we cover Lord Narashingdeva, we cover the small Madhava and we cover Lord Jagannath, completely with chandan. Those are full size deities, you saw the picture last, Madhava is 6... almost 6 feet tall, there is a lot of sandalwood and everyday they cover Madhava, they remove the sandalwood, then cover again. The other diety like Narasinghdev, so many 31.35 and things, so many weapons, that is too much to remove it everyday, so they put the chandan on...take it on it... after month that it 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 Mangala Arati, even some during Mangala Arati, they are grinding sandalwood, and the kids are all grinding...little kids, big kids, youth, everybody is...it’s a whole community comes out and everybody spends some time...you got 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 ah... you can see throughout the day and night making sandalwood pulp and it’s all, you don’t...it’s not like a electrical grinder nh... I mean you just grind a stone, kind of lot to get a little rubbing. While you grinding put in a little camphor, other scented things and ah...then that’s put on the 32.58

 

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 ah... glories of Chandan Yatra, I couldn’t find anything on Chandan Yatra in... in the Hari Bhakti Vilasa specifically, but it turns out that the whole month which is the month of Vaisakha, month of Madhava is considered to be the most important month of the year. I couldn’t really understand the difference between the dearest month to Lord Visnu and most important month but ah... I think that there is a difference. Anyway it was ah... a hundred times more potent than the month of mag, or maybe it is a hundred, maybe it was a hundred thousand times, it is very, I didn’t even know that was like next to Damodar, that was like the most important month. It starts off from the, you probably see it on your calendar every year, it says the Akhoy tithiya. Anybody here knows what Akhay tithi is ? You seen it in you calendar, Akhay Tithiya? Akshaya trithiya? Trithiya 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 or that special or that begins on that day, somehow that’s the day when Satya yuga begins, 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, I didn’t know why, why is everybody handing me money you know, that’s like people, there was a... one life member waited up, I was working late in the office, in Mayapur sometimes I don’t get rest either, because there was backlog, I just arrived the day before, I just get back headed to my room, while 11’0 clock at night and going up to the top floor where I stay, on the... there is a guest house where I stay in, the guest was waiting on the third floor where the whole family paying obeisances and so that I wanted to be sure to give you this donation on today (laughter), he said... he gave me thousand rupees, which is you know pretty good just for getting in India, that’s a pretty decent donation that somebody hand 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, unlimited result, all anything you do, auspicious on that day, bathing in the holy river, worshipping the deities, so like people I wanted to ....why it so packed, so here it is like people... they are not able to do everyday then they pick out, “Okay if I cant worship everyday, if I cant do everything on everyday, 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 ah... or the...they are not always in the devotional service, so they pick out, atleast this are days I am going to really, you don’t want to miss this days, if you miss this days then you are really missed it, you know it’s like... once I wrote to Srila Prabhupada about this and he said, “you see you are regular customer, you get everyday”, we are doing everyday, so for the people that are practice everyday all the rounds and all the pujas and everthing, it’s like for a pujari, it’s like everyday they are getting all the months, 12 months a year, but if there is someone who is not able to do it everyday, then for them it is like ah..., this is the track, the not regular customers, so at least they come on those days, ah... so there were so many glories to Akhay trithiya, 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 Akshay Tithi.”, so alright then I got interested, say this is a interesting month, let me find out more about this month, then I said the whole month of Madhava, is so...it’s a very important, and the whole month anything...any donation you has 100,000 times benefit. Everything you do is multiplied. So I said, this is pretty amazing, and in that month it starts off with Akshay tithi. Tithi is like ah... the big day, Chandan Yatra is there where the deity is ah... goes on a floating ah... nauka vilas, boat festival in that month.

 

Then there is the... Ganga comes out from the ear of Jahnu Muni, and then finally it kind of end of the month, the big highlight is the Narasingha Caturdashi which we discussed about yesterday, and activities are performed in that month have a very special effect, like one the glories described in the Hari Bhakti Vilas is that, there was one... the things you do on that month make you... if you do the right things on that month, if you do conscious activities on that month than you become invisible to Yamadutas. In this way then said the story, that Yamaraja is sending Yamaduta’s out to get one king who name was ah Mundika... something like that, the son of, if I am hundred percent sure in the name , so I just read the pastimes once, and ah... something like Mundika or something and Mundala A, son of Aswinie.

 

So they go out looking and they... they can’t find, they can’t see the King anywhere and then they find a rishi called Mundak, and he is there meditating in the Ashram, all of a sudden he says... he is meditating, all of a sudden Yamaduta’s come out and rip his subtle body out of his gross body and drag him off, and he say, “What the...what’s going on, what did I do, why am I being taken to hell?” and he see... goes the whole...hairy you know heavy dudes, the yamadutas and the dogs and everything that goes, and he is there in Yamaraja’s court and this is one of the rare descriptions of Yamaraja’s court, and I have never seen such a description before, the all the personified diseases were there ready to serve Yamaraja, piles...personified piles I mean, I can’t imagine what they look like, and I really don’t want to see, but the description is there, the T.B... Tuberculosis, Piles,Cancer, I mean there were so many they mentioned about 12 different diseases you know that axima, this that you know, all kind of...they were just there in some personified form that yama...that give this one this diseases and then ph... they just dive in and gives the person the wammy.

 

Then there were all kinds of ah...different other kinds of creatures, there was ah... intelligent types of animals, and combination of humanoid and animal was tigers and lions, blood with blood...it seems like they just finished ripping someone up and they were all eager, they were just waiting you know...ok you know which one is going to get sicked on this person and there were like other kinds of entities, you know 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 you know, what a team, and there were all the Yamaduta’s and he was being held by a few Yamaduta’s, so then he says in the centre of the whole ah... team, this whole assembly, there was a raised seat which was empty with Yama, when Yamaraja comes out, sits on the seat, looks at... and he starts shaking his head and talks to his Yamadutas, “this is the wrong one.”

 

Everyone is like, “wrong one” you know, happy...42.28 when you really wanna be the wrong one......this is not the Mundaka you suppose to bring....Mundaka, the son of Aswini, when we looked we couldn’t find anybody like that description, we couldn’t see anybody, and he had the same name, we thought must have been him, he was staying next door you know. And then Yamaraja went a little bit in meditation and said, “Oho, you see... that King had performed this kind of spiritual activities in the month of Madhava, and because of that he has become invisible to you and the rishi was riding down, you know, in the month of Madhava.....he came back and told everybody, “this is, this is the month to do this things, if you don’t want to see what I saw”, you know, so that .....43.25 in Hari Bhakti Vilas, ...... Gosvami, mentions, 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 Damodar and the Madhava, those two months, the people who are non-veg, atleast that month, it’s good because when you preach to people, then maybe they are Hindus and they are not vegetarian, then you say, “look, you should do it, you know next about six months apart, one is April, then you got May, June, July, August and then September is Damodar month comes, so you have like, so atleast you can got a few, why don’t you try it in coming Damodar, 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 and 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 to believe in the Vedas, to...to take up things just by observing this months. So those are the two months when specially 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 everyday.

 

In Vaikuntha 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 what...while doing devotional service everyday, how much spiritual benefit you know, someday we might end up you know there in Yamaraja’s place, then come and see the whole scene, this is the wrong one right, because he was doing Mangala Arati 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 clear the people and also the effect seen in 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 for a little cloud over everything, specially those who are worshipping the deities, very important that day, they would be strict.

 

Infact there was a time when Prabhupada said there was a diety, some offense happens to deity, certain kind of offenses you have to bathe the deity in milk to get purified, to get the...to be forgiven for those offenses. If everybody is the Vaikuntha mood, everybody is in the serving mood, then all the...this things don’t matter, so that’s the real point, everybody is serving all the time like in the spiritual world, then this issues are not so important. When people are not engaging in that kind of service on a regular basis, then all this ah... opportunities take much more importance, it’s good to know because we are dealing with a world where most people don’t observe this things and sometimes people know the thing 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 that ah...there are many... it is mentioned in the Hari Bhakti Vilas, the month of Damodar is mentioned in the ah...this months are also mentioned to get a little bit of a slight mention in the Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu, that there is slightly mentioned 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 Vilas 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 ah... cleaning the heart, doing some menial service, 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 this damsels of the spiritual world, they want to get the favour of the Lord. If you do anything just for the service of the Lord, Krishna 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 off often on, people really sometimes just give themselves and then they find later that the person cheats on them or 48.46 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 Krishna, that why God has let this happen, but it... 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 should really happen is that people should realize that this material world is not a place for gentleman or gentlewoman to live and therefore this things happen, and what I should really be doing is depending on Krishna, because Krishna will never let us down, He never... even a little service, even a rascal King offers a flower, even Krishna doesn’t forget that, what to speak if we give our life to Krishna, you think he will forget that.

 

If we serve Krishna 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 Krishna, He never forgets that, even if we have to suffer because of...since 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 Krishna 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 the 50.38 will do nothing.

 

And if we do everything, it’s a good chance we can get back to Godhead this lifetime. That’s Prabhupada’s promise. If we don’t...even if we don’t do everything, you still might get back by Krishna’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 lifes, but we are on a progressive road, it’s better to do something than do nothing. Whatever we do is to our benefit and that’s why when you engage to giving out food on Wheels on Wheels prasadam distribution or Harinam, every little thing that people do, we cant imagine how dynamic the effect is one their Karma, how dynamically we are effecting their future lives, their future.

 

Someone was just telling me, who was it ? was it here, someone was just telling me how they were...they had a friend who was into all this regression and things like that, I mean this is not a sastric example but this is just you know, and the pur...I waite... that someone got brought to ah...Krishna, so the person who used hypnotism to cure people’s problems and so kind of overdid it and like everyone has any problem, like 52.00 stopped smoking......that’s regression to your previous life. So one person did a regression and said, “What were you in your previous life”.....I am an insect, I got big wings, I am flying around, .......it’s never happened for me, insect to human, you know, it’s like .....52.28-30 but a insect is like a....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 ah...I flew in it and there was some statues and infront of the statues there was some fruits on a plate, and I landed on the fruit, and I was eating it, and all of a sudden I was like kh... someone smashed me and I was like 53.03 Sh...sh...sh...what does it mean..came and asked whoever was the devotee, they told me that, and figure .....53.13 some fly or bug came in and you know landed infront of some the deities and took some... some prasadam and then pujari came .....smashed it you know, and that was it, but the last thing that thing did, that eat prasadam, the next birth he became a human being.

 

So two people, both the person have realized that they got from a bug to human, and both of them came to Krishna consciousness, the bug... I mean the ex-bug and the ... so we don’t know how merciful Krishna is, we really underestimate, how fortunate we are to be in Krishna consciousness, we should actually... what is one life, if you ....to make a ditto..54.00... or we can get spun off and...and end up in any kind of weird place, the opportunity to serve Krishna is so great, that to lose that for any reason is the greatest loss and ah... if people could understand that, and... whoever is engaging people in Krishna’s service of any kind, they are doing a greatest welfare work, I mean you are doing welfare work, what to speak of saving somebody who is you know 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 Krishna can save them from so many such difficulties, which can’t imagine. That’s a greatest wel... that’s why Prabhupada 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 Krishna as much as they can. Well. Hare Krishna Any questions. I am just tellin That Gundicha temple. 55.08 the festival. Well in Jagannath Puri, it’s performed the forthnight, no it’s performed the day before rath yatra. Well they performed rath yatra according to a special tithi, this year ratha yatra falls in...in...in India in the seventeenth of July, I know because I am going to be there for the rath yatra. So 16th of July would be the gundicha Marjana, but usually what temples do is that...that 15 days before the rath yatra they have... two weeks before they have the snana yatra, then they are going to repaint Jagannath and the day before the rath yatra they do a Gundicha marjana.

 

That means that if you are taking Jagannath on rath yatra and for 56.00 for the day before you like to do a whole clean up of the New Orleans temple or something, or if the deities are going to come out here, I heard that point come out to New... I suggested that, It could be a festival that Lord Jagannath after rath yatra comes out two weeks or for nine days. Its customary that they go to Gundicha first, 8 days, 7 days, one day rath, seven day another rath, the return rath, but ah... so that will be a excuse for a Jagannath deities for...because you don’t have Jagannath deity here, so Jagannath goes to Radha Krishna temple...Prabhupada said that it is New Talaban, part of the Vrindaavan forest. To go for Dwaraka like you can create like a New Orleans like Dwaraka and He is coming out here for a week to ah... Vrindavana and then going back to His Dwaraka Dham, and then have a little. So that was a suggestion I made that when we are having a little festival in the city and country and Jagannath here for a week and having festivities but ah... yes Devotee:

 

JPS: No, seclusion is before rath yatra and the day before he come out of the seclusion. That’s the day you do the Gundicha Marjana, it will be open, it will be, shouldn’t be in the Radha Krishna altar but it could be where Prabhupada is, maybe Prabhupada can move over to the side, there is a small Jagannath, so could be in the Gaur Nitai Altar, something like that. Completely open, feasted, fanned, worshipped.

 

Festivities, well we do regualar Abhisekh with milk and Panchamitra right, in a few times in a year. Or may be you can...I was thinking...for the...for the sentential might be nice to have a ceremony maybe in the month of... one of the holy months coming up, have a festival of Sudarshan Chakra installation which one won’t cost much. I know nobody.... we can have built a little, ....I just had one ah... they have former feumor parlour which was ah...rebuilt and remodelled and made into a temple in North Sydney, and they wanted to purify the whole thing, so they had three days of yajna and everything, so they didn’t have ah... permission to built a big Doma but they built a little wooden kind of a little, like you know...like on the top of any building you can have a kind of a wooden thing. They made it into the shape of a little temple and a little brass kalasha on the top, so that they call it kalasha abhisekh.

 

So just like in Mayapur we had a Sudarshan Chakra installation, it’s a one day yajna, you can go off for two days, go one day. You do a abhisekh and you install the Sudarshana Chakra and it becomes a Sudarshana in the hand of the Narasinghadeva, Narsingha Sudarshana, put that, it protects the temple, the community. There is a little abhisekh and you take the sudarshana, you go and circumambulate the temple three times and then you place it on the top so that, signy... signify from a distance that people somehow even bow down to the Sudarshana Chakra, say that late for work or got up late or something, couldn’t come to the temple, they can bow down to Sudarhana Chakra and get the benefit of bowing down to the deity, things like that, not that you shouldn’t see the diety but...1.00.00

 

Haridas Thakur used to bow down to the Sudarshana Chakra at the Puri Temple 1.00.05. That would be a nice, simple thing to do, probably only a few hundred dollars could build the little thing, like a little torret1.00.14 on the top that makes it look like a temple and you can put a... or even you can just put on the same peak thing... you could also just put a kalash with a Sudar... place for a Sudarshana Chakra. It takes a few months to make Sudarshana Chakra, the best ones are made in the Banaras side or South India with a flames on it, looks very nice. That will be something , because we are not really doing anything for the centennial that I can ... that I know of here, you could something like...something, ok we have one step forward to sudarshana chakra which will be shifted whenever you will have the main temple, bigger permanent temple. I can think a few more things, but I was just worried that would be the simple thing.

 

And ah... if you want to do a Gundicha Marjana on the day of 16th of July for the temple here you could, since you don’t have to have ratha yatra, or you could do it connected to your own ratha yatra and fixing of the Jagannath temple if Jagannath comes out here, you could... the day before the ratha yatra you can clean up the temple, Maha clean up here in New Orleans and then when Jagannath, after the ratha yatra to drive Jagannath out of here for a week of festivities, 9th day he goes back.

 

You might take him 1.01.42-48 or something, you can have the return rath all the way back slide over....festivities, fun, utsav means uplifting. Thank You. Hare Krishna.

 

Transcribed by Sadananda Krishnaprem das on 3/10/2015