(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 2004)

I always tell devotees that we should understand that Vrindavan or Mayapur is our home! This is where we live, and now at one point when we go from here to some foreign country, then we are like tourists – we are only visitors there! Whether it's New Zealand or Spain…. I don't know where you are all from…Denmark…UK and so on.

Wherever we maybe, in all of these places, we should know that we are tourists. We live in Vrindavan or Mayapur…we live in the dham. It doesn't matter if you are only one day in a year in the dham – still that's home…that's where we belong, and this is the right consciousness! It says that:

"One should live in the dham or at least desire to live in the dham and mentally live in the dham".

So a devotee at least should mentally live in the dham………………………So here the mercy is very accessible and very available. Therefore when we come here to these holy dhams – we very quickly get the mercy!

Srila Prabhupada also made that point that devotees should go every year to the holy dham. That's why he started the Mayapur and Vrindavan dham festival, because he wanted all of the devotees to go to the dham. He said:

"To become purified of the possible contamination that one might get from the Western world".

There you see that although it is non different, but here the spiritual energy of the spiritual world is very manifest…very much manifest. One can very very quickly relate to it, and we are all experiencing that!

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Stockholm, June 2011)

A devotee is never desiring liberation.  A devotee is simply desiring devotional service and he is just praying, (Sanskrit) "Life after life, please engage me in your devotional service."

Still, Krsna takes him back to Godhead.  Because in his heart of hearts, he has a natural desire to be with Krsna, and therefore to be placed as an atom at the Lotus Feet of Krsna.  He has a natural desire to be in the association of Krsna.  He is so attracted to Krsna, how could he not desire to be in the association of Krsna?

And then Lord Caitanya is saying that, as that desire emerges out of his heart, he says, "But I am not qualified to be in the association of Krsna!  I am so fallen!  So what to do?  But I still desire it so much!  Then let me just pray to be an atom, to take the most insignificant position.  I must pray to be in his association … I cannot avoid it … I am desiring it so much in my heart, but I can only ask for the lowest position – an atom at His Lotus Feet."

So it's very deep and very nice.  We see on the one hand that there is a desire to just serve Krsna, but then because of the attraction to Krsna, the devotee still desires to go back to Godhead, and be in the association of Krsna.

But he is not going to desire that, 'I want to be a gopi or I want to be this or that …no, an atom!'
"I'm so fallen, I'm so insignificant. I just pray to be an atom at Your Lotus Feet."