What Will Your Parrot Say?

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Speaking online to the devotees in Russia
10 August 2013

I can see that through good association and because you are practising properly you are day by day increasing your Krishna consciousness mood, and I am very happy to see that.

Srila Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj said in his books, in his lectures that the mind is always fickle, it always goes here and there, but is it possible to control it? Srila Sridhar Maharaj said that it can be controlled only through practising. Bhagavan Krishna Himself also told Arjun, "You can control your mind through practising."

Srila Sridhar Maharaj says that all substance comes through good association and he gave an example: even when some rain water or some other dirty water enters the Ganges waters, it becomes holy.

When I went to Russia with Gurudev in 2000, I remember one lecture that Gurudev gave there. He told one story from Narada-pancha-ratra.

Once, there was a family: two brothers and parents, father and mother, living all together. When the parents died, the brothers moved apart and started living separately. Before that, they had two parrots in the family and when the brothers separated, the elder brother took one parrot, and the younger brother took the other one.

One day, Narad, disguised as a sannyasi, came to preach in that area. He came to the house of the elder brother house, and when the parrot that lived there saw him, it cried, "Get out! Get out!" Narad became surprised, "What is happening?"

Then he went to another house, and he saw there was also a parrot, and it looked just like the first one. It was the younger brother's house. When the younger brother's parrot saw the sannyasi, it said, "Oh, who is here? A sannyasi has come, please give some asan!" Both birds used to live together, but after they started living in different houses, their character also became different.

So, Narad said, from this story we can understand that the elder brother was not a devotee of Krishna, not a devotees of the Lord—he was a karmi and his character was not good, that is why his parrot also becomes bad. The younger brother, on the other hand, was a good man—he liked sadhus, sannyasis, he liked Krishna's devotees, that is why his parrot also become a devotee.

So, the moral is: good association is necessary for our spiritual life.

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