(2/13) Land of Religions?

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Kolkata (Jatragachhi), 8 February 2021, part 2

One can ask, ‘Why is there so much devotion to God in your country? In our country, there is only Christianity, but when I was in West Bengal, I saw that some people worship Kali, some people worship Durga, some people worship Ganesh, some people worship Lokanath, some people worship Harichand Thakur. Why is it like this? Why are there so many religions?’

The reason is this. Everybody hears things in their own way, so all disciples are not the same. Brahma took initiation from Krishna, but he did not listen to the guidance spoken by Lord Krishna perfectly – he heard it in his own way and he created this whole world based on what he had heard and how he had heard it. That is why somebody ends up worshipping Kali, somebody ends up worshipping Durga, Ganesh, and so on. People do so many kinds of worship. If you go to Bombay, you will see that people worship Ganesh there. If you go to Bihar, you will see that people worship Suryadev (the Sun God) there. If you go to Tamil Nadu, they worship somebody else there. There are so many kinds of worship even here in Bengal: somebody worships Kali, somebody worships Durga, Ganesh, Laksmi, Saraswati, Jagannath, Nitai-Gaura, and so on. But the scriptures do not tell us to do this. What does Srimad Bhagavatam say?

পৃথিবীতে যত কথা ধর্ম্মনামে-চলে ।
ভাগবত কহে সব পরিপূর্ণ ছলে ॥

prthivite yata katha dharma-name-chale
bhagavata kahe taha paripurna chhale

’Bhagavatam says that whatever is going on in this world in the name of religion is complete cheating.’

(Based on Srimad Bhagavatam, 1.1.2)

Bhagavatam says that all these ‘religions’ are cheating, illusion. They are all created by Maya.

Brahma creates the world – you know that Vishnu is the maintainer, Brahma is the creator, and Siva is the destroyer. So, when Brahma received an order from Lord Krishna, he created this universe, and did it according to the way how he had heard the Lord’s instruction.

Sri Guru gives the same guidance to everyone, ‘Do this’, ‘Live in this way,’ but does everyone do it? Somebody hears it and thinks, ‘Oh, I know much, I have become a Vaishnav.’ You think that you put tilak marks, wear kanthi-mala, and this is it – you have become a sadhu. You go to Vrindavan, wear an uttaria, and start saying, ‘Radhe! Radhe!’ (or you go to Ekachakra Dham and start saying, ‘Jay Nitai! Jay Nitai!’). Have you not heard what happened the other year? There was a man who felt very happy when he heard others say, ‘Jay Nitai! Jay Nitai!’ One day, Muslim dacoits came and knocked at his door, saying, ‘Jay Nitai! Jay Nitai!’ Hearing ‘Jay Nitai!’, the man got excited, thinking, ‘Oh, some devotees have come!’ When he opened the door, the dacoits got into his house and robbed him. So, if you say, ‘Jay Nitai’ and come to steal, it is bad. In Vrindavan, they always say, ‘Radhe! Radhe!’ – but they say it only to get food for themselves.

There are many kinds of devotion. There is karma-misra bhakti (devotion mixed with material desires), jnana-misra bhakti (devotion mixed with the desire to know something), jnana-sunya suddha bhakti (pure devotion devoid of any pursuit of knowledge). Somebody can be worshipping the Lord and turning Him into a bribe-taker. People come and ask the Deity, ‘O God, I am giving You this rice and bananas, please give me a son’, ‘O Kali, I am giving this to you, please help my son find a job’, ‘O Durga, I am giving this to you, please help my daughter get a good husband’, and so on. People ask God for all these things. You must have heard that in some places you can get a job by giving money to an official. If you do it, you become a briber and the person who takes the money becomes a bribe-taker. Both are criminals. Both those who do wrong and those who overlook it are offenders. We turn God into our menial servant by asking Him, ‘God, give me this’, ‘God, give me that.’

Our devotion must not be like that. This is not what the devotion of the residents of Vraja is like. The devotion of Vraja gopis is the highest worship. They never think about their own happiness. One time, when Krishna was showing that He was ill, He said that only foot dust of His devotees could cure Him, and Vraja gopis gave the dust from their feet just to serve their Lord. If you were in their place, would you not think, ‘Oh, if I do this, it will be a sin’? Laskmi thought so. Siva thought so. Narad thought so. Brahma thought so. Everybody thought it was a sin, but Vraja gopis did not think about it. ‘Will we be committing a sin? Will we go to hell because of it? Whatever! Even if our legs burn or become afflicted with leprosy, whatever! As long as our Krishna is happy, we do not care about anything.’ This is what devotion must be like.

‘What can I do for the Lord to make Him happy? How can I serve the Lord’s devotees?’ We must always be alert of this and make sure so that no difficulty, no austerity comes to the Lord’s devotees.

— : • : —

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Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Practise Devotion
2) Land of Religions
3) Seva Vidya
4) Conditioned Souls' Inaptitude
5) Choose Your Association
6) Lost and Languid Souls
7) "Make the Teachings of Sri Guru Non-Different from Your Heart"
8) Price of Independence
9) "Come Back to Your Home"
10) Fighting Misconceptions
11) Goloka at Your Home
12) Ekadasi: Devotional Practice
13) Stay Connected