20181025 Evening Talk

Nama Om…

Mukham karoti…

Today the Damodar puja continues. We offer our lamps to Radha Madhav and Radha Krishna, to Pancha Tattva, to Nrsimha, to Prahlad Nrsimhadev and to Krishna and His cowherd friends, and to the previous acharyas and various devotees. So this is a very auspicious. Today I heard how our Publications groups already toured Medinipur. They found 18 Sripaats and took photos and made brief history at each Sripaat. This is for the Gaura Mandala Bhumi book. Lord Caitanya predicted prithvi che aache joto nagar aadi graam, sarvatra prachaara hoibe mora naam. In every town, village of the world of the world His name will be preached. So there are 90,000 villages in West Bengal and today I heard that already there were some namahattas established. Do you know how many namahattas? So these are 30, 40, 50 groups that come together, chant Hare Krishna and hear Gita and Bhagavatam. So they told me that there were 23,000 groups under the Mayapur namahatta. That is already one fourth of the 90,000 where there are formal namahattas. So I was astonished how our simple effort has increased so much! It was encouraging that in Maharashtra they ascertained that for village preaching, namahatta is the way to go! So we have Bhakti Vriksha in the cities and namahatta in the villages. Some of our Tamil devotees said they would try to establish the namahatta in Tamil Nadu. So we know that Bhakti Purushottam Swami is establishing namahatta amongst the tribals in West Bengal, in Bihar, Jharkhand, in Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and in many other places. So in this way the people feel very proud to be connected with Lord Caitanya’s sankirtan movement. And they chant and dance in ecstasy. When I went to Bangladesh some 30-40 years ago, at that time I showed some Hare Krishna film and the villagers came to me and said, you saved our lives, you saved our lives, YOU SAVED OUR LIVES!! (Say with the same spirit – guru maharaj told Shyam Madhusudhan das prabhu, the repeater). Ha! Because they had been told that Mohammad Ali, the boxer, was the president of the United States, that the whole world had converted to Islam, and that they were the only ones holding on and that they should convert now. But after seeing the film we understand Lord Caitanya’s movement is reaching far and wide. So you have saved our lives! We respect all religions but this conversion by lying and falsehood, we are not so much inclined towards. We let people choose whatever path they want to, because there is only one God and you can worship Him in various ways. So Prabhupad also told some of the Mohammedan villagers that they can attend our arati programs in our temples and that they can also do their namaaz in our temple. So Prabhupad was very broad minded. Some of the visitors said something about Jesus to Prabhupad. How he is the son of God. Prabhupad said, we are all the children of God but Lord Jesus Christ was a good son, we are not so good. So Prabhupad was very respectful to all religions. Lord Jesus gave the ten Commandments, the first commandment to love God with all your heart, soul and mind. But how to do that? They never told you. Bhakti yoga gives a systematic way to awaken our dormant love of God. This is what people need around the world, bhakti yoga. In Malaysia they made a law that everyone had to speak the Malay language that all book should be printed in Malay or something like that. The Christians wrote a book about religion. So where it is God in the English book they put Allah because that is the Malay word for God. The Muslims objected you cannot use the world Allah but there was a law. We should just accept that God has many names, Allah has many names. As the Hindus say. So in the Krishna consciousness movement we accept that God has unlimited names and unlimited pastimes, unlimited forms. In this month of Damodar, one of the forms is Ananta rupam, unlimited forms. So the Lord is not limited as we are. The Lord is unlimited. He has unlimited names, unlimited forms, unlimited qualities. He is unlimited. So we are very fortunate to have this knowledge revealed to us by His Divine Grace Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad. So when he was establishing Iskcon, he said International Society for Krishna Consciousness. But somebody said it is should be the international society for God consciousness. But Prabhupad said we are personalists, so let us call him by one of His personal name. So then he stuck to International Society for Krishna consciousness. Srila Prabhupad ki jai!

So in this Damodar month we can do some direct devotional service to our Lord. Offering a lamp, singing a song and in this way we can feel unlimited bliss of serving the Lord. In the group that went to Medinipur they said that we should take our safari to the 18 Sripaats. That you could still feel the transcendental vibration of the associates of Lord Caitanya. Although 500 years have passed by still the transcendental vibrations are there. There is the place where Basu Ghosh sang that He is Lord Jagannath is Lord Krishna and is Lord Gauranga. There Basu Ghosh was making a Samadhi tomb in front of the deities for himself, he was feeling such separation. He entered into the tomb and told the devotees to cover Him up with dirt. But the deity spoke, you can’t do this! Your life is not yours to take and you have to see that I am served properly. So by so many words the deity prevented Basu Ghosh from entering into Samadhi. So that Samadhi and those deities are still there. It is only 20 miles or 30 kilometres from Remuna. So Remuna is where the Gaura Mandala Bhoomi and Sri Kshetra meet. So there is the Samadhi of Madhavendra Puri and the deities of Kshir Chora Gopinath. That was also where Shyamananda and Rasikananda stayed. Rasikananda was the disciple of Shyamananda but Rasikananda had received instructions from Shyamananda to give initiation in his presence. Rasikananda was brushing his teeth with a neem twig when some disciples came and told him there is a yogi flying on a stick. He said that is not important. The other disciples said, he is flying, HE IS FLYING! And so many disciples came and said the yogi is flying. Then Rasikananda took his wooden toothbrush, put it under his legs and started flying!! He said, I told you it is not important! They said they wanted to bring out this book before Gaura Purnima and also the book on Srila Prabhupad. So we hope that they can finish, they have a drone which can take photos of each Sripaat. So many exciting things are going on. I am still astonished that we have 23,000 namahattas! People should understand that if we do this village preaching through namahatta then the whole of India and the whole world can become Krishna conscious like Lord Caitanya predicted. Prithvi che aache joto nagar aadi graam, sarvatra prachar hoibe mora naam. In every town and village My holy name will be preached. Thus spoke Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. Any questions?

Question from Maadhurya Kadambini dd: 1. Can we give spiritual names to animals like cows, dogs, rats, goats, etc. or is it only for cows? If yes, do we need to name them as per the thithi of their birthday?

Guru maharaj: I have no reference of calling a rat or some other animal by a spiritual name. If there is any previous acharya who did so, we can follow his example. I have a leg infection and there were five leeches which would suck out the bad blood. They would then put turmeric on the leeches and they would vomit out the bad blood. The next day he would be sucking all over again. Some devotees wanted to give the leeches spiritual names but unless there is a precedent, we don’t want to create a new precedent. Hare Krishna!