(4/8) No Shortcuts

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Preaching programme, 18 April 2019, part 4
Translated from Bengali

Practise Krishna consciousness properly. Do not forget it. Do not forget Krishna! Do not forget the Lord! If you do, you will have to be demoted.

You think that you will go to heaven and enjoy a happy life there – if you do pious activities, you will go to heaven, yes, but when that pious credit expires, you will have to again come back from there. This is said in both Srimad Bhagavad-gita and Srimad Bhagavatam. When your pious merit is exhausted, you will have to come back from heaven and become demoted again and again. And this demotion does not mean getting a human birth. If somebody came to you and said, 'Come with me, you can be born as a pig,' would you go with this person? Of course, you would not. You would refuse, 'Why must I go with you? Why must I be born as a pig? I do not want this!' But the main point is that even if you do not want to go, you will have to. You may think, 'I do not want to be born again at all,' but devotees never want even that – they do not want liberation. Devotees put their legs on Liberation's head and go to the eternal domain of the Lord. How do they get there? By always chanting the Holy Name of the Lord in the association of His devotees (sadhu-sanga).

The Lord is also crying for you all. This is loving search for the lost servant. You, I, all of us are God's lost children. When parents lose their child, they give announcement in the newspapers, on TV, they go to the police, they put up posters with the information about their missing child. In the same way, the Lord is also worrying about us, 'When will My children come home? I sent them in this human birth and have sent My sadhus, who are non-different from Me, to them to tell them about Me!'

তব নিজ-জন কোন মহাজনে
পাঠাইয়া দিলে তুমি ॥
এক বর দয়া করি' মোরে পতিত দেখিয়া
কহিল আমারে গিয়া ।
ওহে দীনজন শুন ভাল কথা
উল্লসিত হবে হিয়া ॥
তোমারে তারিতে শ্রীকৃষ্ণচৈতন্য
নবদ্বীপে অবতার

tava nija-jana kona mahajane
pathaiya dile tumi
(ek bar) daya kari' more patita dekhiya
kahila amare giya
ohe dina-jana suna bhala katha
ullasita ha'be hiya
tomare tarite sri krsna-chaitanya
navadvipe avatara

'You have sent a great soul, Your associate (to rescue me). Seeing me so fallen and being merciful, he came to me and said, "O humble soul, listen to this wonderful message and your heart will rejoice. Sri Krishna Chaitanya has appeared in Nabadwip to deliver you."'

(Saranagati, Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur)

Who comes to tell us about this? Sadhus come and tell us that Gauranga Mahaprabhu appeared in Nabadwip – in this Age of Kali, the Lord appears as the combined form of Sri Sri Radha-Krishna – and went door to door approaching everybody:

জীব জাগ, জীব জাগ, গোরাচাঁদ বলে ।
কত নিদ্রা যাও মায়া-পিশাচীর কোলে ॥

jiva jago, jiva jago, gorachanda bale
kata nidra yao maya-pisachira kole

'Sri Gorachand says, "Wake up, souls! Wake up! How much longer will you sleep in the lap of the witch Maya?"'

(Sri Gitavali, Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur)

'O soul! Wake up!' What does 'wake up' mean? When somebody is asleep for real, you must come and shake them to get them to wake up. And if somebody is not really sleeping but just zoned out, you can call them and they will wake up. We are also like that. Although we are awake, we are actually asleep. Sadhus come and keep calling us, 'Come with me. Krsna bala, sange chala, ei matra bhiksa chai (কৃষ্ণ বল, সঙ্গে চল, এই মাত্র ভিক্ষা চাই). I am begging you for one thing only – come with Me and chant the Holy Name of Krishna! This is all I am asking you for. I do not want your house, wealth, money – nothing! Only come with me and chant the Lord's Holy Names!'

The people of this world run with bogus ideas. They host asta-prahar kirtans at homes spending much money on the arrangements and on feeding people, but it is all a waste. This is as useless as an elephant's bathing. You hire people to come and chant kirtan at your homes – they will chant kirtan and go away, but what is it to you? If you chant kirtan and the Holy Name yourselves, then you will get benefit. If you live serving the Lord, then it is worth it, but those people come and only say things with their mouths – they do not practise anything. They are hired singers, so they say, 'Oh, if you want me to sing for two hours, it will cost you 10,000 rupees. If you want me to sing for three hours, it will cost you 15,000 rupees. Each hour on top of that is extra 5,000 rupees.' That is why Srila Prabhupad said that you cannot read Bhagavatam with a fifty-rupee contract, just as you do not worship your Deity with a ten-rupee contract.

You can see 'brahmans' wandering shop to shop to put a dot on your face, and when they see a deity in some shop, they sprinkle some water, offer a flower to it, etc., and every month they collect their 'salary' from the shopkeeper – it used to be thirty rupees before, now I do not know how much they charge (must be more). And if you ever travel to Birbhum by train, you can see people begging and singing there, 'O my Golden Gaura, I will keep You in my heart and never leave You (sonara Gaura chhede deba na, hrta-majhare rakhiba ara chhede deba na).' They do not serve Gaura at home, do not do anything, but they only say it in front of others to collect money to enjoy and live their material lives.

When you hire people to chant kirtan, they take your money to run their families – this is only business. Their singing cannot bring benefit to anybody. They only chant kirtan to earn money. You invite brahmans to do puja at your homes, and they come and do this worship, that worship (Kali, Manasa, Shani, Boro Thakur, and so on), but it is said in the scriptures:

কোটি জন্ম যদি করে শ্রবণ কীর্ত্তন ।
তবু না পায় ব্রজেন্দ্রনন্দন ॥

koti janma yadi kare sravana kirtana
tabu na paya vrajendranandan

'Even if you practise hearing and chanting for millions of lives, you will not get Krishna, the Son of King of Vraja.'

হেন কৃষ্ণনাম যদি লয় বহুবার ।
তবু যদি প্রেম নহে, নহে অশ্রুধার ॥
তবে জানি, অপরাধ তাহাতে প্রচুর ।
কৃষ্ণনাম-বীজ তাহে না করে অঙ্কুর ॥

hena krnsa-nama yadi laya bahu-bara
tabu yadi prema nahe, nahe asrudhara
tabe jani, aparadha tahate prachura
krsna-nama-bija tahe na kare ankura

'If you chant this Name of Krishna many times but still there is no love, no tears streaming from your eyes, then you can know that there are too many offences and the seed of Krishna’s Name does not sprout in you.'

(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, 1.8.29–30)

Even if you listen about God and chant God's Names for millions of lives, you will still not come to the Son of King of Vraja because there are many offences. Only if you chant the Holy Name of the Lord without offences can it bring you some good result.

একবার কৃষ্ণনাম যত পাপ হারে ।
পাতকীর সাধ্য নাহি তত পাপ করে ॥

eka-bara krishna-name yata papa hare
patakira sadhya nahi tata papa kare

'A sinner cannot commit more sin than once chanting Krishna's Name can remove.'

All those hired kirtans and hired worship are nothing. Can those people bring even one person to this path? One time, I asked the famous singer Radharani from Nabadwip, who gets thousands of rupees for her singing, 'Didi, when you sing, so many people come to listen to you sing, but how many people have you brought to this path and made your disciples?' She replied, 'Not a single one. Your guru-varga cannot gather such crowds because when we chant kirtan, we do it to earn money, but your guru-varga chant kirtan so that people can come to practise Krishna consciousness – so that people can start thinking about the Lord and can start serving the Lord.'

We must understand this.

Therefore, it is my prayer to you all: always practise Krishna consciousness yourself. Practise Krishna consciousness yourself.

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Length: 42 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Life in Hari-Kirtan
2) Busy Lives
3) Your Responsibility
4) No Shortcuts
5) Sacrifice to Thrive
6) No Double Standards
7) Selfless Devotion
8) Serve with Heart and Soul