(3) Do Not Take This Life for Granted

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

There is one thing I want to tell you all. What I want to say is this:

You all live in your material lives, in your family lives, so how can you practise Krishna consciousness? You are always busy with your material lives – you are always taking care of your children, husbands, wives, houses. Sometimes in your lives you have some happy times, and sometimes some unhappy times come, then again some happy times come, and so on. As you experience all this happiness and sadness, you must not forget about the Lord and you must not forget that everything that exists in this world belongs to the Lord and is related to the Lord.

Everything that was, is and will be created in this world, everything is meant for the service of the Lord. We do not know (and should not know) anything except service to the Lord. There is somebody above us who controls and manages everything – nothing is in our hands. We think, 'I can do this', 'I can do that', 'I can do so many things', but this is not so. For example, you can plant a mango tree hoping to get nice fruit, but if the Lord sends a lot of rain, what will you get then? So, who is in charge? The Lord is. Everything is in His hands. When we fall very ill, we run to seek the best medical care in Kolkata, Chennai or Kerala, but who will decide whether you recover or not? Everything is in the Lord's hands. He is taking care of everything in this world, but we live forgetting about Him.

কৃষ্ণ ভুলি' সেই জীব অনাদি-বহির্ম্মুখ ।
অতএব মায়া তারে দেয় সংসারাদি-দুঃখ ॥

krsna bhuli’ sei jiva—anadi bahirmukha
ataeva maya tare deya samsara-duhkha

‘Forgetting Krishna, the soul turned towards the external illusory world in primeval times. As the result, illusion (Maya) gives such a soul various material miseries.’

(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, 2.20.117)

Because we forgot the Lord, we suffer from the blazing agony of the threefold miseries. The only way to get relief from this suffering is to take shelter at the holy feet of the Lord. You must think about the Lord! If you live thinking about the Lord, He will provide everything – money, property, everything. He will not take your houses away! But then, what you must remember is that you are not the masters of your houses.

আসক্তিরহিত, সম্বন্ধসহিত,
বিষয়সমূহ সকলি মাধব ॥

asakti-rahita, sambandha-sahita,
visaya-samuha sakali madhava

‘When you are free from material attachment and establish relationship with the Lord, then you will see that everything around you is Lord Madhav Himself.’

(‘Vaishnav ke?’, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur Prabhupad)

You must live without attachment. You can understand this yourselves. You think that this is your house, that it belongs to you, but how long are you going to stay in it? Fifty years? Sixty years? Eighty years? A hundred years? Surely, not longer than that. Once you leave this world, you will no longer be the master of your house – when that happens, everybody will quickly carry you to the crematorium to get rid of your body. After that, your children will come to claim, 'Now this house belongs to me! It was built by my father!' When your son leaves this world, next his children will come and claim ownership over the house. In this way, all these 'masters' come and go. None of us is a master of anything. This here is not our home anyway. Whatever house we live in at present does not belong to us. We must understand this. Just as when a girl is born at a house, she lives with her parents thinking, 'This is my house,' but when she gets married and goes to live at her in-laws' house, she thinks, 'This is my house now.'

So, we worry about worldly things, but all this is temporary. When we came to this world, we did not bring anything with us, and when we leave this world, we will not be able to take anything with us either. Big buildings, houses, rooms, cars – we did not come to this world with all this, neither will we be able to take any of it with us.

কয় বার এলি কয় বার গেলি
তবু তত্ত্ব না শিখিলি ।
নিজের মাথা নিজে খাইলি
এ দোষ দিবি কারে ভাই ?

kaya bara eli kaya bara geli
tabu tattva na sikhili
nijer matha nije khaili
e dosa dibe kare bhai?

‘Coming and going, coming and going, you never learnt anything! You have been eating your own brain – who will you blame for this, brother?’

How many times have we come? How many times have we left? Before we got these human births, we had gone through countless other species. The scriptures say that we have crossed 8,400,000 species, but how do you know that you will be born as a human again? You can be born as a human now, but after that you may go down and return to all those species again. If we get this rare human birth but do not utilise it to chant the Holy Name of the Lord, we will have to be demoted and again go back to all those species. We were born eight million times as all kinds of trees, plants, insects, beasts, aquatic species, birds, and so on. There are so many creatures living on land and in water! We have been born as cows, goats, sheep, cats, dogs, jackals, snakes, frogs. We have been born so many times as pigs, eating hills of stool. The abominable stool that you pass in the bathroom is the favourite food of pigs. Having lived all those lives, we have now got this beautiful birth. We did something good in our previous lives, that is why we earned some great fortune to be born as humans now. Do not waste this opportunity! This is my earnest desire for you all.

You are born as humans, and all you know is living for your families. What species do not have a family? You had so many families before, too. When you were born as cats, you also had families – husbands, children, and so on. Dogs also have husbands and children. Pigs also have husbands and children. We have had all those families before, too. Now we are born as humans, but we still live worrying so much about our children, grandchildren, husbands, wives, and so on. We cannot remember the Lord – we cannot call out to the Lord.

I pray to you all: please do not forget about the Lord.

— : • : —

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