Extent of Devotion

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Sri Nabadwip Dham
11 November 2010

I am thinking: "Visaye ye priti ebe achhaye amara (বিষয়ে যে প্রীতি এবে আছয়ে আমার)"—how much do we think about ourself and how much do we think about our Guru? You must think about it, you must calculate this percentage. Gurudev always said that somebody may be a 10% devotee, a 20% devotee, a 50% devotee, and so on. Why did Gurudev say like this?

I remember one time there was one Prabhu who stayed here with his family. When he was going back to his country Gurudev asked somebody, "How many days has he been here?" and he was told that he had been here for twenty-eight days. Gurudev immediately quoted one sloka. I asked Gurudev what the meaning of that sloka was, and Gurudev answered with an example, to teach me.

Suppose some devotee comes here, from the West or from another place in India. He immediately goes to his Guru and gives everything he has to his Guru. Later, when he is going back to Kolkata, he feels shy to ask Gurudev, "I have no money... Can you please give me some money for the train fare?" Gurudev asks his servitor, "He is not telling anything to me, but I think he has no train fare. Can you go and ask him if he has money for the train fare?" The servitor goes to that Prabhu and asks, "Prabhu, you are going to Kolkata, do you have the train fare?" The devotee replies, "If you give me something, it will be good..." Gurudev then asks what the devotee had answered, and says, "Yes, I knew he was shy to tell me... Give him 20 rupees to go to Kolkata."

Then Gurudev said there is another kind of a devotee. Some devotee comes here and spends money on many things, buying this, this, this, and when they are going back they give something to their Gurudev.

This is what Gurudev said when I asked him what that sloka meant...

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