Parikrama: More Than Pilgrimage (3)

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Evening class, Sri Nrisingha Palli
3 March 2020, part 4, translated from Bengali

You must not imitate the behaviour of the Guru and Vaishnavs. Maharaj told one story when we went for preaching, I am remembering it now. It happened in Champahatti, at the Gaura-Gadadhar Math.

The Gaura-Gadadhar Math is the temple of the Deities of Gaura Gadadhar installed by Dvija Vaninath in the time of Mahaprabhu. After Mahaprabhu, this temple ended up in an unbelievable condition: it was covered by jungle, and the Deities stayed there sometimes fasting, sometimes some offering came. Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur went there and restored the service. Then, his disciple Sripad Nayanabhiram Prabhu (later, he took sannyas and his name became Sripad Bhakti Vivek Bharati Maharaj).

So, there was class, kirtan, Hari-katha running every day at the temple, and one time a big scholar started coming there. He would come there thinking, "Oh, devotees come and pay obeisance to them..." He became jealous, "How come nobody pays obeisance to me? Nobody has so much faith in me!" Then, he decided, "OK, I will behave the way these sadhus behave then!" So, one day, he dressed as a sadhu, came in front of the Deities, and fell on the ground thinking everybody would be impressed by him and, thinking he was a great saint overwhelmed by ecstasy, give him much honour. So, he fell on the ground and remained lying there quietly pretending he was unconscious. What happened then? There were some wood ants in that place, and suddenly the ants bit his thigh. Not being able to tolerate the pain, he slowly, slowly began to scratch his thigh. Seeing this, everybody thought, "What is this man doing?! He is crazy!" Ashamed, that man went away. Later on, before his death he came there again and asked them for forgiveness, "I did wrong, I made an offence at the feet of Vaishnavs, please forgive me." He explained why he did it and repented. Actually, he had been suffering from some disease because of what he had done...

There are such people in our country. Such aul, baul, kartabhaja, neda, etc. people chant kirtan showing ecstasy, they do so many things, but true saints (sadhus) do not behave in this way. I have told you many times that you can find many gurus in this world, but you will not find so many genuine gurus in this world. There are kaulik gurus, laukik gurus, karmi gurus, jnani gurus, yogi gurus. But those who follow the proper process will wake you up in the middle of your sleep and announce in the microphone, "Wake up! Take bath, we are going for the parikrama!"—they take you for the parikrama, arrange prasadam for you, etc. You must think about this yourself.

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