20181026 Evening Talk

Nama Om…

Mukham karoti…

So we are in the day of Damodar vrata and Krishna gives a special mercy to the devotees who offer lamps to Him. Or he repeats the prayer that Prabhupad had requested us to. So we hope that you all are utilizing this time to chant and be happy. The material world tries to entice us with the promise of satisfaction but ultimately one is not satisfied in material happiness. There is some pleasure but it passes very quick and therefore we have got to train our devotees to engage them in devotional service. So side by side when they finish enjoying the miseries of this material world they can taste the bliss of the spiritual world. So chanting and dancing, reading, offering service, offering some arati and prayer and to consider oneself the servant of Krishna, to become the friend of Lord Krishna, so that gradually Krishna becomes the dearest, the most dear object in our life. Without Krishna life seems to have no value. So this is a stage of nishkaama bhakti. Sakaam bhakti means that we worship Krishna but we have some material motives. Nishkaama bhakti means we simply want to please Krishna. If Krishna is pleased, since we are part of Krishna, automatically we are happy. In the spiritual world people are united because of the deep feeling of love, and this love for the Lord increases as we do advance in bhakti yoga. In the material world there is no love. People work in a job because they get paid. If there is no payment, no work. So there is not any love, it is an exchange of money. The affection the mother feels for the child is the closest thing to the love of spiritual world. In the spiritual world everyone is connected to that kind of love and Yashoda, her love for Krishna is super excellent. Once she sent Krishna for herding the cows, she sees Krishna walking a few steps and she comes from behind and she says, be careful there are thorns and bushes and they are very sharp. Krishna says, no, no, don’t worry and she gets back. And suddenly she comes again and says Krishna be careful. And like this it goes on. And then finally Krishna has to tell her, let Me go! So in the spiritual world there is an overwhelming feeling of love which we have never experienced in this material world. So in Iskcon we have devotees taking initiative to spread Krishna consciousness and encouraging people to offer lamps. So now we have different devotees offering their encouraging people to engage in Krishna’s service. So some of the mothers when their husbands go to work, they visit some apartments, they preach to the other ladies, encouraging them to host a Damodar puja or class or a namahatta. So like this, according to their ability, these devotees are engaging in service to increase the number of devotees. We are very excited that His Holiness Bhakti Purushottam Swami is doing the tribal care initiative and that was also very impressive to Narendra Modi, the PM of India. We also have a new attempt to spread Krishna consciousness in Sikkim by Madhava Kanta das establishing a centre in Gangtok. And sometimes he also comes here to help us but he is going back and forth. So Madhava Kanta prabhu, we all should be thankful to him! Haribol! Because he is attempting to open a centre in this majority Buddhist area. So like this I get news from around the world, how the different devotees are trying to use their energies and spread Krishna consciousness. So before Shyamarasika left the had said that we have this Gaura Mandala Bhumi book. So he is trying to bring out an English edition, which they have visited Midnipur first and there, there were 18 Sripaats of the associates of Lord Caitanya and there were some namahattas. At first he thought he would visit the namahattas but then he found out that there were 1200 namahattas. So he could only few visit a few. And then he found that in the whole of West Bengal there were about 23,000 namahattas. So most people don’t know how widespread the namahatta movement has gone. Lore Caitanya predicted that in every town and village His name will be preached. So we use the bhakti vriksha in the urban setting and in country we use namahattas, in the villages. So according to the government census there were 90,000 villages and some of the villages are also Muslims. So we have 23,000 villages with namahattas, that means about one fourth. So like this, if we pursue then we can gradually reach every town and villages. So better get going house to house, village to village, we would like every devotee spreading Krishna consciousness. We spoke like Prabhupad did, continent to continent, country to country and we are going city to city and some places, village to village. So in this way we can reach out and touch everyone’s heart. Hare Krishna!

One question.

Question: Hare Krishna guru maharaj. Pranam. May Krishna keep you in good health always. How can an individual devotee serve spiritual master nicely in the midst of many physical and monetary restrictions by family? Many times one has to lie to do this service. We need your guidance in this regard. Kindly help, Thank you. Anadita Jahnava devi dasi, Gurgaon, Haryana

Guru maharaj: Use every opportunity you can to spread Krishna consciousness to others. We did a brainstorming to get 2000 ways we could reach out to others and in lots of places we came out with 1000 ways because there were opportunities which came up in unexpected places. Like in the west they have laundromats. That means you put in 25 cents, put in your dirty clothes and machine cleanses it. And after half an hour you get your clean clothes. Then you put it in the dryer, put in another 25 cents and whoosh there you go! So in one way you can preach to the people who are sitting there waiting for their clothes. So like that laundromats, grocery stores, so many places, they thought they could reach out and preach to the people. So like that you should think of all the places where it is possible to preach. So you don’t tell lie, you tell you want to go and wash your clothes. Like you set that example and you can wash your clothes but you are also preaching. So like some wives they ask the husbands, why are you late? Why are you late? Then there is some cabinet, hall, a drinking place. They give some name. A nice place. He says, oh I just stopped by this nice place but that nice place was an alcohol place. So materialists use tricks and they get bad karma. So for Krishna if we use a trick that is auspicious. Hare Krishna!