(4) Relief from Burden

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Preaching programme in Hooghly district,
26 February 2019, evening, part 4
Translated from Bengali

কিসের সংসার এই, ছায়াবাজী প্রায় ।
ইহাতে মমতা করি' বৃথা দিন যায় ॥

kisera samsara ei, chhayabaji praya
ihate mamata kari vrtha dina yaya

'What kind of life is this? It is only a trick, a show. I have wasted time taking this world and the people around me in it as my own.'

এদেহ পতন হ'লে কি রবে আমার ।
কেহ সুখ নাহি দিবে পুত্র পরিবার ॥

e-deha patana ha'le ki rabe amara
keha sukha nahi dibe putra paribara

'What will I have when this body drops down dead? Nobody – neither my sons nor my family – will give me any happiness.'

গর্দ্দভের মত আমি করি পরিশ্রম ।
কার লাগি' এত করি না ঘুচিল ভ্রম ॥

gardabhera mata ami kari parisrama
kara lagi' eta kari na ghuchila bhrama

'I have been toiling like a donkey. Who am I doing all this for? But I still continue deluding myself.'

(Sri Kalyan-kalpataru, Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur)

'What will I have when this body drops down dead?' One day this body will be dead. Everybody around you will be waiting for it – as soon as your body drops down dead and is quickly taken out of the house, they will start washing the house thoroughly. You are the father who has gone to great pains to build this house, but once you are dead, everybody will hurry to carry you out of the house – they will put you on a stretcher and quickly carry you to the crematorium. Nobody will care about what has happened to you after that. Yamaduts, the messangers of Lord Yamaraj, will come from Yamalay (the abode of Lord Yama) and take you away, inflicting so much pain and suffering onto you; and at that time your fathers, sons, wives and other relatives will not care – you will have to suffer the allotted result of your own actions yourself.

You have been toiling all your lives like asses. You know, donkeys carry sacks of sugar day and night, and when they taste that sugar, they do not even feel its taste – they cannot feel anything. We are like that, too. We carry around the burden of our material lives, and we cannot understand what peace and happiness are. We always want more, more and more.

In general, money (artha) is considered inauspicious (anartha), you can use money properly: use it in the service of the Lord. You can live for the service to the Lord. Do not worry, the Lord will not take away your wealth! He has so many things – He is the master of innumerable universes! For Him, whatever you may have is like a speck of dust. But if you can serve Him with whatever you have, if you can serve His devotees' holy feet with that, if you can surrender at the holy feet of His devotees and practise sravan and kirtan in good association, then you can rescue yourselves from this situation. This is the only way how you can rescue yourselves from this material world. In this Age of Kali, there is no other way.

'Who am I doing all this for? Despite my disappointment, I still continue deluding myself.' Eventually, you will wonder, 'Who am I doing all this for? What is the use of all this?' Sadhus, gurus and Vaishnavs come to your houses and keep telling you again and again, 'Come. Practise Krishna consciousness. Come to the line of devotion.' Practise genuine spiritual life through which you can attain the highest benefit for your souls. Be selfish. 'Selfish' does not mean you must think about your bodies – everybody, 100% people, in this world always think, 'What will I eat?', 'What will I wear?', 'How will I sleep?', 'Where will I stay?' Everybody thinks about this. You can even see street cats – they roam the streets at night, thinking, 'Where can I find a mouse?' You can see street dogs roam the streets, thinking, 'Where can I get something to eat?' We are also like that: early in the morning, we take a train to Kolkata, work there the whole day, and in the evening again take a train home. We are so busy with all kinds of things that we cannot understand anything. We forget He for whom we have got everything, He for whom we have got this human life. We are busy with anything and everything, but we do not care about Him, we do not think about Him.

The Lord does not need your eulogies, He does not need your dollars and cents. He only wants you to offer Him whatever you take – so that you do not think that everything around you is meant for your enjoyment. All you need to do is to offer Him whatever you take and take His prasad. 'I do not need anything great from you, I do not need fancy fruit worth of thousands of rupees, I do not need great buildings worth of millions of rupees. Wherever you live, whatever your situation is, even if you live in a solitary cottage, even if you live in a mud house, meditate upon Me, worship Me – think about Me, offer arati to Me. Even if you eat only boiled rice with potato, then offer that to Me, for My pleasure (bhog). If you eat something without offering it to Me, it is not right. It is stealing. These are My things – if you take something and do not give it to Me, you will be committing an offence, and as the result of that, you will have to continue living in this world of actions and reactions.'

The scriptures tell about this again and again. The Lord says the same thing in Srimad Bhagavad-gita and in Srimad Bhagavatam, which He created through Vyasadev:

দিন যায় মিছা কাজে নিশা নিদ্রাবশে ।
নাহি ভাবি মরণ নিকটে আছে বসে ॥

dina yaya michha kaje nisa nidra-base
nahi bhavi marana nikate achhe base

'My days pass in useless work and nights are wasted on sleep. It never occurs to me that death is there, waiting right next to me.'

(Sri Kalyan-kalpataru, Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur)

— : • : —

{ 2001  |   2002  |   2003  |   2005  |   2009  |   2010  |   2011  |   2012 }
{ 2013  |   2014  |   2015  |   2016  |   2017  |   2018  |   2019  |   2020  |   2021 }