(4) Service Must Come From Heart

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Siliguri, 1 May 2019, evening, part 4
Translated from Bengali

We enjoy God's water, air, wind and all other facilities, but we forget Him. Every single day that we live in this world, we live at the expense of killing millions of living entities. Is there any end to such a life? When you perform any action, you must reap a reaction. When we eat rice, dal, potato, we kill all these plants. Even when we breathe or drink plain water, we kill so many living entities living in the air and water. What is the solution to such a life? The solution is only one – we must transform our lives and make them Krishna-centred.

You can do farming, you can run a business, you can cook, but you must do it for Lord Govinda. If we can engage ourselves in service to Lord Govinda at every step of our lives, then we can get supreme benefit. Otherwise, no matter what you do, you will not get anything. That is why we must always practise Krishna consciousness – we must always worship and serve Lord Krishna.

অসাধুসঙ্গে ভাই কৃষ্ণনাম নাহি হয় ।
নামাক্ষর বাহিরায় বটে তবু নাম কভু নয় ॥

asadhu-sange bhai krsna-nama nahi haya
namaksara bahiraya bate tabu nama kabhu naya

‘Brother, the Name of Krishna cannot be chanted in bad association: it may certainly sound like the letters of the Name, but it can never be the Name proper.’

(Sri Sri Prema-vivarta, 7.1, Srila Jagadananda Pandit)

Getting somebody to worship your deity for ten rupees is not Deity worship! Getting somebody to read Bhagavatam for a hundred rupees is not Bhagavatam reading! 'I will come to give a class, you must give me fifty rupees', 'I will worship your deity, but you must give me ten rupees' – this is not worship. You can see that when it comes to the time of Laksmi puja, brahmans go house to house performing a hundred or two hundred pujas a day. They think that if they can make puja ten times more, then they will earn ten times more. They come to each house, chant, 'Namah, namah' and that is it – the puja is done. They come to do it for money.

If you can worship the Lord with your own hand, you can understand yourselves how it is done. But you do not do it – you can get outside brahmans to do puja instead of you. It is a waste of time. Everybody must worship the Lord themselves. You must cook and feed the Lord with heart and soul. It does not matter whom you worship – Laksmi, Kali, Ganesh or any other god – if you can do it yourselves, it is good. Worship with your own pure hearts. Otherwise, you fast, then some outside brahman comes, chants his mantras and goes away – do not do this. Serve the Lord yourselves every day, with heart and soul.

Offer bhoga to the Lord every day, take prasad every day. Try. If you can live like this, then you will become free from materialism. ‘Prasada-seva karite haya, sakala prapancha-jaya (প্রসাদ-সেবা করিতে হয় সকল প্রপঞ্চ জয়) – the entire material world can be conquered by honouring the Lord’s prasad’ (Saranagati). 'Prapancha' means the five diseases: avidya (ignorance), asmita (false identification), raga (misdirected love), dvesa (aversion to anything that is against my enjoyment) and abhinivesa (being unable to give up unfavourable habits).

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