20151229 Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Disappearance Day Lecture

Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Disappearance Day Lecture 

Date:

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Collection:

Inspiration series - 2015

Audio player:

20151229_Bhakti_Siddhanta_Sarasvati_Thakura_Dis.Appearance_Day_Lecture_Perth_Australia Gurumaharaj: Today is the anniversary of going back to the spiritual world. On days like this Prabhupada would have the pictures of guru placed on the vyasasan and he would sit by the side and give his lecture. Well the vyasa puja or the appearance of the guru is much focussed on the guru himself. The disappearance tended to be not only on the person but also on the legacy he left behind. So I remember one day in December, this disappearance festival of Bhaktisiddhantha Swaraswait Thakur and he put a big picture of his guru on the vyasa asana and he sat down beside him and gave lecture. So he was commenting how every guru in the line, they had done something to glorify an serve Mayapur Dham, that Bhaktivinod Thakur had see the spiritual life coming from the birth place of Lord Caitanya, and he went there and saw that there was a hillock all filled with tulasi plant and some Islamic they complained, this land is useless, whatever we grow eggplants, tomatoes, valuable crops...all that comes out is Tulasi. (laughter) That would indicate to us that it was a very sacred place. When Bhaktisiddhantha Saraswati Thakur got his guru Jagannath Das babaji, who was over a hundred years old and he was in a basket, and Bhaktivinod thakur carried him over his head. At that even to keep his eyes open he had matcsticks. So Bhaktivinod thakur was carrying Srila Jagannath Das Babaji across the tulasi patch. At one point he jumped up, Hari Bo! Hari Bol! Hari Bol! And he was a person who couldn’t keep his eyes open without matchsticks, and suddenly here he was jumping like anything and dancing saying Hari Bol, So then they found out that as the birth place of Lord Caitanya, and then Bhaktivinod thakur begged one rupee maximum from each person and amassed 30,000 rupees to build a small temple and ashram at the birthplace. Then one entrepreneur who had amassed fortune by making ink pills, in those days people used fountain pens, so you put ink in the water, it will dissolve and then dip in your fountain pen, and you would write, so that was the hig-tech. (laughter) So, that person decided to give every last cent he had, to build the temple for Lord Caitanya and he took babaji, and he was one of the two people that Bhaktisiddhantha Saraswati Thakur gave Babaji to, and he gave him the name Sakhi Charan Das Babaji. So that’s the birth place temple that’s in Maypur. So Prabhupada as mentioning that how each acharya had done something in Mayapur dham and he very humbly said, that I am trying to do something to glorify Mayapur dham. He said that he was very grateful to all the devotees who were helping and then he choked and started crying. So this was very very important to Srila Prabhupada to do something following in the footsteps of the previous acaryas and the Mayapur temple of Vedic Planeterium was conceived by Srila Prabhupada. He said there will be a city which would hold 50,000 devotees. So when I started there in 1970, there were five devotees and now there are 5000. (Hari bol) But we still have 45,000 to go. (laughter) So we happy that we have large communities from different parts of the world. Of course India, Russia, China, and all over Europe, Australasia, and all over the world. So Bhaktisiddhantha Saraswati Thakur announced two to three years before his departure that one of my disples will go to the Western world and preach and people from the Western in the world will come and participate in the Nabadwip parikrama and there will be people who will participate in the Nabadwip parikrama from all over the world, and there will be chanting together, “Jay Sachinandana, Jay Sachinandana”, and they will be embracing their Indian brothers, and they will be no prejudice regarding caste, colour, creed. That was 1912 maybe. So your peons were thinking themselves to be very exalted and... the eastern people were primitive although the history would show otherwise that culture, spirituality this things came from India, China and they went to the West that they would present how Aryan culture was Western and that it came to India for which there is nothing to back that up. So like this Bhaktisiddhntha Saraswati Thakur, was a very dynamic preacher. He he had to mix with some Kings and Lord’s, he wore a long coat, and when he had to mix with the babajis in Radhakunda he would go barefoot and just wear the skimpy clothes of a sanyasi. His English was very pristine. In fact many people would find it difficult to read his English, he was such an erudite scholar. So in different circumstance he could preach in different ways. So he told Prabhupada Bhaktivedanta Swami, that time he was a grihastha, he said that if you preach in the West, it will be very spiritually good for you and for all those who will help you. So how many of you would like to help Srila Prabhupada? Haribol....Jay So you have a great opportunity to disseminate the knowledge of Gita and Bhagavatam. Human beings are meant to understand these secrets of wisdom and now we see that people are walking around with their handheld mobile phones. They don’t talk each other. (laughter) but still the problems of life exist, birth, old age, disease and death and those have not been solved by the mobile phones neither are they solved by the notepads or the notebooks. So they are solved by bhaktiyoga, so we are very glad that you are all becoming well-versed in bhakti-yoga, and on this day of the anniversary of the disappearance of Bhaktisiddantha Saraswati Thakur we pray that he gives his blessings to all of us. In India, they celebrate the Gobardhan Puja by making a mountain of rice, that’s called Annakut, and that they distribute to thousands of people but in this case in north Calcutta they had annakut and they offered that to Krishna, but then a dog came and ate from that, and so everybody went wh...(laughter) ....Oh haram He didn’t know what to do, they asked Bhaktisiddhantha Saraswati Thakur, he said is this the place?, is this the very place where the dog ate? “Yes, yes, this is very place from where the dog ate? “Yes, Yes. From there he took it and ate it.” (laughter) So, like that he was a very dynamic preacher and ah... he...although he was very great scholar he had a book called, “The examples of Bhaktisiddhantha Saraswati Thakur.” So it would be in the sutra form, there was a land-lord, he had hired a priest to maintain the worship of the temple, but the priest was actually an atheist, but he learned from his father how to do the priestly duties. So he did the job just for the money, he didn’t actually believe it. So somebody gave a bag of peanuts in the shell, he loved peanuts, peanuts were his favourite food. (laughter). He was drooling the peanuts, he couldn’t wait, he closed the door, no one was around. He took his worshippable saligram shila out of the altar, it’s stone, what a stone is used for, cracking peanuts, but this is a sacred stone, no one uses that for cracking peanuts, but this priest he was an atheist, so he started cracking the peanuts. Meanwhile the landlord came up, saw that the temple door was closed, but he looked through the window, and couldn’t believe it that the priest was taking the sacred saligram and breaking peanuts. He started crying out, you atheist, you heretic, you demon He kicked the door open, grabbed the guy and threw him out. So that story became known by the sutra, “saligram diya badam bhanga.” “breaking the peanuts by the sacred saligram.” So in the 1920’s or whatever he brought a car to preach. So that was a big thing, people would see and watch it, go oh!, but these sanyasis were going into the town, to get some medicine pills. So he told him “saligram diya badam bhanga.” “you are taking Krishna’s valuable things and using it for your ordinary sense gratification. You want to get medicine you go by bicycle, and when you go preaching you take the car.” (laughter) So there is a whole book of these stories, ...28.34-28.36...a plan to make bhagavan into a ghost. “ghache kathal gope tel” “jackfruit on the tree, oil on you moustache” (laughter) Too humorous about apologues but behind that there is big story, and that story would express what a person would should or shouldn’t do, so which one do you want to hear? Last one...last one. Wanna hear the jackfruit on the tree. Yes. (laughter) You know what a jackfruit is here? Yes.... I was shown some photos of our farm in Malaysia, our farm And they have jackfruit, sweet jackfruit, in South India there is lot of jackfruit, some jackfruits are small, some are big, they grow in the branch of the tree, some are on the trunk of the tree, knowing as kathal which was on the top of the tree. That was huge and that was ripe, and when it is ripe it has a very sweet smell. Although durian is in the same family (laughter) it doesn’t have a sweet smell. (laughter).... So I couldn’t resist. Not fair... (laughter) So he thought if I take the jackfruit, it will get stuck in my moustache, so I need to oil up my moustache. So he went and put his 5 paisa down and got some oil, he climbed up the tree and he smelled jackfruit, so sweet, that’s the region...reach, reach, reach...the branch that he was standing on broke. Ah....(laughter) Oh I broke my arm and his screaming was heard by the orchard guard, he came running with the stick, “ha...jackfruit thief, jackfruit thief, beat him” So meanwhile, he is in the ground getting beaten and the kathals on tree, and the moustaches all greased up. (laughter). That’s the story of gache kathal gope tel. What does it mean, and he lectured one week on that, that some people, they think I will reach all my spiritual perfection without guru, so this man if he had just paid for the jackfruit he could have got it. Instead he wanted to steal it, and all he got was he was a broken arm, beaten, got the moustache oiled up. (laughter) So someone wants to get the spiritual perfection but doesn’t want to go through the guru parampara, this is like the man who wanted to steal the jackfruit, he was so confident, he was so sure of himself, I mean you know anyone like that, always confident, always sure but wrong. Do you know anyone? (laughter) So you see these stories are very interesting. So if haven’t offered puspanjali today you should do so, that means offering your pranams and flowers three times, I did that, are there any questions? Q: To one person we tried to explain about guru parampara, and he is already having his own guruparampara, but not from our guruparamapara, told so many instructions to him and he is still not coming, so what should we do with that person, should we still explain to him? Gurumaharaj: What’s the status of that guruparampara Devotee: He has no guruparampara, but he has a guru. Gurumaharaj: He was a mayavadi? Devotee: I think so, he is a mayavadi. Gurumaharaj: In some cases we have to research the guru, in other cases we may know that the guru is not properly situated, but if the devotee engages in service they will be able to understand in due course. We will only reject talking to that person if he is contaminating other persons. We had a person like that in Guwahati, he was a mayavadi(impersonalist) but he liked to do service to the devotees. So Prabhupada said engage him in service. There is no use long time discussing and in due course the person said, “Oh, now I think understand.” I was personally preaching and I told him that in the last verse of the 14th chapter Krishna says that he is the basis of the impersonal braham, brahmano hi pratistaham. No... No... He was effective, next day I saw him he was happy. (...jay) No....Not Jay. He said he talked to some head of the Sanskrit in the university there, and the head of the Sanskrit said that the verse means the basis of the four headed brahma, in which Prabhupada particularly mentions in the purport that it doesn’t mean this but he was a short-circuit, so we try to help people wherever they are. Some people can understand philosophy, some have their own short circuit philosophy but they like to serve, so by doing service to the deities and to the devotees they get sukriti and in due course they can understand the personal form of the Lord. The personal form is sac-cid-ananda, eternity, knowledge and bliss, and the impersonal is just sat, just eternal, no knowledge, no bliss. But people who have heard a lot of sankaracharya they are very confused. How Lord Caitanya He would convince people. It’s mentioned how he was able to talk to the Varanasi sanyasis and bring them over to Krishna consciousness. (Applause)

Transcribed by – Sadananda Krishnaprem Das Date – 26-01-2016