(6/10) Fight for Your Aspiration

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Disappearance festival, Tarakeshwar
16 April 2019, evening, part 6
Translated from Bengali

We must live as Vaishnavs, but: '"Ami ta vaisnava" e buddhi haile amani na ha'ba ami ('আমি ত বৈষ্ণব' এ বুদ্ধি হইলে অমানী না হ'ব আমি). If I think, "I am a Vaishnav," then I will never stop expecting honour from others.' If we start considering ourselves devotees (that we have become devotees of Krishna), then we can never be devotees. Always remember this. We have not yet been able to become servants of Vaishnavs. You can never in your life become a Vaishnav without service to Vaishnavs. How do you think you can recognise a Vaishnav? Even Lord Brahma cannot recognise one!

Therefore, it is my prayer to you all: you have come to observe the festival, so please practise spiritual life faithfully following your guru. Chant the Lord's Names and glories, serve the Lord. Take shelter of a bona fide guru and practise Krishna consciousness in his shelter. If any of you have not come to this line yet – if various obstacles and dangers are still preventing you from embarking on this path; if Maya Devi does not let you go – you must keep trying, you must keep fighting. You must fight against Maya Devi, 'I must practise real spiritual life! I must come to this line!' To do that, you have to give up small things. If you want to get something great, you have to give up small matters. Always remember this.

What we mostly cannot give up is our greed for food. Some of you want to take initiation, you feel this desire in your hearts, but this inability to give up fish and meat is stopping you. That is the problem with the Bengali people. You can see how much raw fish cats eat. You can see that when a cow dies, dogs and jackals come to fight over its dead body.

শ্মশানে শরীর মম পড়িয়া রহিবে ।
বিহঙ্গ পতঙ্গ তায় বিহার করিবে ॥

smasane sarira mama padiya rahibe
bihanga patanga taya bihara karibe

'My body will be left at a crematorium, and birds and insects will heartily enjoy it.'

(Sri Kalyan-kalpataru, Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur)

Now, when a mosquito comes close to you, you kill it, but when your body is taken to the crematorium, so many worms and insects will enter our eyes, nose and ears – nobody will even think of stopping them. When there was an earthquake in Gujrat, thousands and thousands of people died – how many people leave this world! In some places, boats sink. When a boat was recently returning from Midnapore, it capsized and dozens of people died – they recovered only a few corpses, and the rest was missing. Missing means that some crocodiles must have eaten them happily. People lose their lives all the time in one way or another. We have got this body, but one day we must lose it...

We have got our bodies from our parents (if you compare your blood with the blood of your parents, you can see that it is the same blood), but our parents did not create us. We come from the Lord, but forgetting the Lord, we live deluding ourselves, 'This is my son', 'This is my husband', 'This is my daughter', 'This is my father' – just like cows, goats, cats and pigs, we spend our lives entangled in the bondage of this material 'family' life. We are not telling you to leave your families! What we are telling you to give up is attachment to your material life and family.

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)

You must not be attached. With a detached mood keep connection with the Lord. You must know your relationship with the Lord. What is the relationship between our souls and the Lord? The Lord is the Supersoul (Paramatma), and we are souls. Each soul is a part of the Supersoul. The Supersoul is great consciousness (brhat-chaitanya), and the soul is small particle of consciousness (anu-chaitanya). Every ant, cow, goat, human and all other living entities have a soul, and every time all entities want to have some body, so they keep changing their bodies. If you do not want to suffer from birth, death, old age and disease anymore, you must think how you can get out of it.

I told you earlier today that death is actually much more fearsome than birth. Every time we are born, we have to suffer very much – as humans, we spend ten months and ten days in the wombs of our mothers suffering a hellish life, and then we come out having promised to the Lord to serve Him, but once we get into material bondage, we forget everything and begin to serve Maya. This is how we end up living in Maya consciousness – we serve and worship Maya, illusion. A hundred out of a hundred people live like that. We must think about it. We must think, 'How can I come to the Lord?', 'How can I practise genuine Krishna consciousness?', 'How can I come to Lord Govinda?', 'How can I reach Him?' It is possible to do that if we find a bona fide guru and practise spiritual life in his shelter.

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Length: 96 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Chaste Submission Is Key
2) Busy Yourself with Service
3) Value of Chastity
4) Plan Your Journey
5) Avoid Religious Hypocrisy
6) Fight for Your Aspiration
7) Guru's Care
8) Learning the Ropes
9) Run behind the Lord
10) Gurudev's Abundant Blessing