(3) Grow Up

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Preaching programme in Hooghly district,
26 February 2019, evening, part 3
Translated from Bengali

Whenever we come to any god, be it Durga, Laksmi, Kali, Ganesh or anybody else, we always pray to them, 'Please give me money', 'Please help me get a house', 'Please give my son a good job', 'Please help my daughter get married.' We always cry to the Lord, asking Him for all this. In essence, we come and say, 'Do this for me.' It means that we turn the Lord into our servant. Devotees never behave like this.

Not only do we turn the Lord into our servant, we also turn Him into a bribe-taker. As you must have heard, if you give some money to the party people or some minister, you can get a well-paid job in the government or a well-paid teacher's job. What do we call such ministers who take bribes? We call them corrupted bribe-takers. So, when we come to worshippable gods (Durga, Kali, Laksmi, Saraswati, anyone), we do the same. Just recently there was Saraswati Puja, and everybody prayed:

ওঁ সরস্বতি মহাভাগে বিদ্যে কমললোচনে ।
বিদ্যারূপে বিশালাক্ষি বিদ্যাং দেহি নমোহস্তু তে ॥

om sarasvati mahabhage vidye kamalalochane
visvarupe visalaksi vidyam dehi namostute

'O great Goddess Saraswati, the personified knowledge possessing large lotus eyes! I offer obeisance to you, please give me knowledge.'

People ask, 'Give me knowledge!' and in lieu of that, they give Saraswati Devi some money, rice, bananas, fruit and other things. This is how instead of serving the worshippable Lord, we turn the Lord into a bribe-taker. This is not a sign of devotion. Devotion must come from the heart.

It is necessary to practise every day with heart and soul. It is not like you can do some service for one day only. Waving some incense and ringing the bell in front of a Deity is not devotion. Devotion means that you spend every single day of your lives in the association of devotees, engaging yourselves in sravan (listening about the Lord) and kirtan (chanting the Lord's Names and qualities). If you do not have such association, then you can sit in front of the Lord and practise on your own then.

Do not waste your time; do not sit at tea stalls gossiping and telling each other stories. Wake up early in the morning, offer arati to the Lord, make a bhog offering, chant kirtans; after that, you can go out if you work. Even if you run a business, do farming, have an office job or do any other job, you can still live spiritually. Living a family life means you must live a Krishna-centred life – you must live as members of Krishna's family. Do everything for Lord Krishna. What is the problem if you live like that?

The problem is that we cannot give up small, trifle things, we cannot give up the cravings of our tongues. Small children do not understand anything, so they eat fish and meat without thinking; and you are all adults now, you have some intelligence, but still you cannot understand the main basic things. Why are you wasting your time? There are some sahajiya gurus in your town who say, 'Oh, you can never give up your guru.' I told you yesterday about Bali Maharaj. Bali Maharaj rejected his guru, Sukracharya, because his guru was giving him bad advice – he told him to ensure his own enjoyment instead of serving the Lord. Bali Maharaj renounced him. This story is described in Srimad Bhagavatam. Therefore, it is prescribed in the scriptures that if a guru takes you down a wrong path (down the path of material activities) and cannot guide you down the real path, such a guru is to be renounced.

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