(3) No Rose Without a Thorn

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Uluberia, 1 April 2019, part 3
Translated from Bengali

Everybody should come and help. When I came here yesterday and saw the situation, I was not in a very good mood. I saw that the state of the land was the same as it was before, and it broke me inside. The enthusiasm I had when I was coming was crushed last night. Later, when I came to give class, I prayed to the Lord, to Gurudev, 'Gurudev, I have come to serve you, I have come to serve the Lord – I did not come here of my own accord or to fulfil any interest of my own. If it is your wish, then it will happen...' And the Lord has arranged it. This morning I managed to get many people. Even whoever came to pay their obeisances to me, I sent them to the land ('Please go there quickly!') and told them to help. Everybody came together and now the land is cleared. The construction foreman also came, they took all the measurements. Yesterday they started working on the foundation.

So, dangers and obstacles must come. If you try to do anything, you will always have to deal with difficulties. I see this everywhere, every single time I made a temple. When Gurudev was building the boundary wall around Govinda Kunda in Nabadwip, there was a lot of fighting and we had to give up some land. When I was constructing the boundary wall in Ekachakra, I had to also let go of some land. There has been so much of such fighting everywhere. When the wall was constructed in Ekachakra, the man who now supplies sand and gravel to us filed a court case against me. I had to choose to either deal with that case or to do the collection for Gaura Purnima and arrange the parikrama. It was January 2008, in Gurudev's time. I did not tell Gurudev about the court case because if he had known about this demoniac situation and fighting, it would have disturbed him very much. I stopped the works in Ekachakra and went ahead with the Gaura Purnima festival preparations. Later, I got a DM (District Magistrate) and HDO [probably, Horticulture Development Officer] to help me settle the case. After the case was dismissed, I asked the man, 'Why did you file it? What did you want to achieve by doing that?' He replied, 'Oh, please take my land.' I told him, 'You could have just told so! If you wanted to give me your land, you could have just said so and I would have taken it. Why was it necessary to file a court case?' In the end, the case was resolved and I took the land. Our outbuilding kitchen for the festival time is built on that land, in Ekachakra Dham.

There was also a lot of fighting and problems in Siliguri. The man we got the building from caused a lot of problems. Gurudev said about him, 'That man is not my disciple, he is a blood-sucking mosquito. He came to suck my blood.' When we were presented with a cow, the people started torturing it because they did not like that the cow smelt and passed urine, etc. I had to give up on that cow. Many such problems have happened... Even when I started making a temple in Tarakeswar, there were a lot of problems. At first, people did not understand it – they thought it was some business. It was like that in Nrisingha Palli and Mayapur, too. There were problems in all places.

Problems always come. When you try to do something good, obstacles and dangers must come. It is necessary to have patience, and the Lord will resolve everything. So, try to understand, and explain it to those who are not here, that this is your own place. There is always somebody who is jealous and looks for faults – what can you do? I told you earlier today that love is not something you can force on somebody. It is something of the heart.

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