(5) Floundering Existence

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Kadigachha, festive morning programme,
6 March 2019, part 5
Translated from Bengali

One day we will have to leave everything. I told you yesterday:

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?’

Your wives, husbands, sons, daughters, friends, relatives – nobody will be able to keep you here. When the time comes for you to leave – when the Lord takes you away from this world – your body will be burnt, and only God knows what kind of body you will get after that. You only keep coming and going to this world like this, nothing else. Do you understand it?? 'Nitai-charana na bhajila asa-yaoyar sara haila (নিতাইচরণ না ভজিল আসা-যাওয়ার সার হইল). If you did not worship Nitai's holy feet, then the summum bonum of your life was only to come and go.' Coming and going – this is the cyclic order of this world. We keep roaming this universe, getting sometimes a human body, a cow's body, a monkey's body, a goat's body, a snake's body or any other body. All species flounder in the ocean of material life.

সংসার সংসার করি মিছে গেল কাল ।
লাভ না হইল কিছু ঘটিল জঞ্জাল ॥
কিসের সংসার এই, ছায়াবাজী প্রায় ।
ইহাতে মমতা করি বৃথা দিন যায় ॥

samsara samsara kari michhe gela kala
labha na haila kichhu ghatila janjala
kisera samsara ei, chhayabaji praya
ihate mamata kari vrtha dina yaya

‘I have wasted all my time on material life and family and have got nothing but garbage as the result. 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.’

(Sri Kalyan-Kalpataru, Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur)

When you light a firework, you light a kind of a bomb, then there is a big explosive sound, and it soars into the sky showing you something pretty and then disappears. This is what our material life is like.

I am not saying that you must leave your material families and lives (leave your wives, husbands and children) and come to live at the temple. What I am saying is that you must live as members of Krishna's family. Do not live as members of Maya's family, but live as members of Krishna's family. Do not live as members of a ghosts' family, some wild forest-dwelling family, a pig's family or a dog's family. Dogs also have their babies that they care for dearly; pigs also have children that they cherish and take care of. Pigs eat stool, and you eat rice or fish, meat and onions – what is the difference? The problem is that you forget the Lord! You can see foreign devotees sitting with us here – they used to eat cow's meat, pig's meat, snake's meat, dog's meat, cat's meat; but now they have come to this path and chant the Holy Name. They became vegetarian and fast on ekadasis. They chant the Holy Name, they have temples in their countries.

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

krsna bhuli’ sei jiva—anadi bahirmukha
ataeva maya tare deya samsaradi-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 forget the Lord we are suffering from the blazing agony of the threefold miseries: adhibhautik, adhidaivik, adhyatmik (আধিভৌতিক, আধিদৈবিক, আধ্যাত্মিক) – miseries caused by other souls, by the nature or gods and by our own bodies and minds. You may think that you are poor and have no money, but others have millions of rupees and they cannot sleep at night – they suffer mentally and often commit suicide. People say that people commit suicide because of money, but it is not so – people commit suicide when they suffer too much mentally. For example, women often commit suicide because they are harassed by their husbands and in-laws. But suicide is a big sin, and when you commit suicide, you suffer even more. Remember this. When one commits suicide, they do not get another body immediately – they roam around and then get a dog's body, a snake's body, a frog's body, a cow's body or any other body.

If somebody is fortunate (if they have heard some Hari-katha and associated with sadhus), they may be born as humans in the next life and become devotees. When a dog lives at a devotee's house, it takes prasad and it may be born as a human in its next life. We could have been cows in our previous lives, and if somebody used our milk for the service to Lord Govinda, then we acquired some sukriti as the result of which we became humans and got an opportunity to chant the Holy Name of the Lord. We could have been some flower trees in our previous lives, and somebody used our flowers for the service of Lord Govinda, and we could have become humans as the result of that, getting an opportunity to serve the Lord ourselves now.

You are listening to Hari-katha, and even after hearing it you still do not come to this path – even after having heard about all this, you still cannot give up dirty things: you continue eating dead fish, dead dogs, dead cats, dead snakes, dead frogs and living anyhow. You are born again and again, and each time you are born, you have to live at the expense of killing millions of living entities. With every breath you take, so many living entities enter your bodies and die. When you drink water, so many souls also die. When you eat muri or rice, so many rice paddy plants have to die for you to get that rice. When we walk on the street, we kill so many ants and other insects under our feet. How can we stop this? The only solution is to do everything for Krishna. For example, this morning we went to the village – what for? To chant the Holy Names of the Lord, to preach about the Lord. When you cook, do not cook for yourselves, your husbands, your wives, your children or your in-laws – you must cook for the Master, for Lord Govinda. You can build a house, but how long will you stay in that house? You say that you are the owner of the house; after you, your children will say that they are the owners; and after them, your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will claim ownership. But are any of you masters? Everybody has to leave one day. Who is the Master? Who is the Owner? The Lord. We do not do anything – He does everything, He manages and controls everything in this world, but we forget about Him. Forgetting Him, we end up floundering in this ocean of material existence...

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