Vaisnava Relationships

The modes of ignorance is actually affecting our behaviour and it is very difficult in the association of the vaisnavas to learn how to behave properly. But this is exactly what we have to learn. We have to truly become favourably disposed to it's everyone. So that is when we see great personalities – that is their nature. They are favourably disposed to it's everyone, and you see someone like Prabhupada – even he could chastise someone, but they still felt that actually he is very very merciful and kind, because underneath it he was totally favourably disposed. So this is a great point in spiritual life.

As the years go by – this becomes more and more prominent – vaisnava relationships. Day by day it becomes more important. Everyday in our spiritual life, the importance of vaisnava relationships is just slowly dawning upon us - little by little. As we are coming to the end of our life and realise that; " Actually my main fault is that I didn't do very well in the relationships of the vaisnavas. I have offended many".

And it says that a saintly person at the end of his life is inclined to ask forgiveness. Srila Prabhupada also did. He asked several of his god brothers for forgiveness.

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Melbourne, October 2010)

 

 

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to KKS Blog using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

 

 

 

 

 

 

Better Safe Than Sorry (part 2)

This morning Kadamba Kanana Swami gave a talk on transcending bodily conceptions and then there was a very interesting question and answer session with the Chowpatty devotees. Radhanattha Maharaja came in the afternoon and the both Maharajas enthused everyone at the Sunday Feast programme. As the pic shows, it was fully packed!!!

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Chowpatty, 11th Dec 2010)

The life of a devotee who is living in this highly contaminated age, when all around us so many things are going on and we see so much contamination, we must be careful. Therefore accepting service is risking in general, of course as a teacher you may sometimes accept service, Brahmanas accept service from those who are their students, like they bring some rice, Vaishnava's also accept service when they act in the role of a teacher. But one must be very powerful to absorb sinful karma - it is not a light thing.
Srila Prabhupada was sometimes very liberal. In one case, there was a family which was not completely vegetarian but the lady in the house, she was herself vegetarian but her husband was forcing her to cook meat, so she once cooked a preparation for Prabhupada and it was offered to Prabhupada and then the devotees explained the situation.
Prabhupada said: "What can we do? If I don't accept, How will she make spiritual advancement?"
So Prabhupada accepted, but one must be very pure to be able to do such a thing otherwise one certainly becomes overwhelmed by all these sinful reactions. Therefore we are strict - better safe than sorry because so many lifetimeS, since time immemorial in the material world.,,


Some devotees go to bhrigu readers to find out who they were in the past. Usually they were some prince somewhere, or some sanyassi or a vaishnava who was not quite successful in his past life, that's a little suspicious to me because never there is someone who was a dog outside the temple who was fed Prasadam. So, it sounds that the bhrigu readers are reading something in between the scrolls - we might consider that if we were vaishnava's in our past life than that simply indicates we failed and that we were not successful. Because a vaishnava is meant to return back to Godhead. A vaishnava has no other aim, no other objective in life and the "additional bring in a hand luggage in and what you want to bring some rings and get married that's fine but all within the confines of the scriptures , and beyond one cannot do anything that risks returning back to Godhead this very life time - that is our aim.
Some devotees may be fanatic, some devotees may be relaxed, some devotees may be strict, some may be loose. Whatever we are, ultimately the criterion is to go back to Godhead. If one becomes fanatic then there is a risk in the cause of service that one becomes insensitive to other vaishnavas and then one might inadvertedley commit vaishnava aparada - because fanaticism is insensitive. Fanaticism is not good and being too loose is also not good - too liberal is also not good. One must be careful, therefore when I am speaking I am not speaking in a fanatic mood or an overly strict mood when I am saying that the purpose of our life is going back to Godhead.
What else are we here for and if that hasn't become our priority yet then it simply means that we are covered by ignorance.
Then we are still sink in the forgetfulness of the goal of life, then we are bound up in the material energy and then we may fail this lifetime. It is a very high goal to attain perfection in devotional service not easily to attain at all, it takes a very serious endeavour and that we cannot ignore and one cannot say:
"May be I will take a few life times, maybe it's too difficult to do it in one, I guess I choose for a few" - What is the guarantee it's going to be few. It may very easily at the end get covered over and we may stay in the material for such a long time. So, we cannot take the risk, we have to go back to Godhead this life time.... (cont'd in part 3)

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Chowpatty, 11th Dec 2010)

 

 

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to KKS Blog using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

 

 

 

 

 

 

The spiritual world within the material world

This land of Lord Krsna is His great and causeless mercy upon us because if we contemplate for a moment then what an amazing gift this is! The living beings have since time immemorial, anadir bahir mukhe, have turned away from Krsna for such a long time. Although Krsna is known as atmarama, He is known as one who is satisfied within and He is not dependent on anything else for satisfaction but we are always dependent; never can we be satisfied independently. But Krsna, He can be satisfied independently and yet still Krsna is feeling something lacking when some of the living beings have turned away from Him and have not joined His eternal pleasure pastimes. So Krsna thought to Himself, "let Me give them some mercy," as anyone one would do. What would we do if our son who's grown up would leave home and become totally degraded, somewhere in Mumbai or some place like that? Totally degraded and what can we do? He will not listen to anyone is such a state but we are always remaining his well wisher and we want to do something to give him some mercy. Krsna, in the same way, was thinking, "let me give some mercy, something…" Then He thought, "why something? I will not give them something, I will give them everything!" and then He manifested the entire spiritual world, within the material word. This is where we are! This Vrndavana is the spiritual world!

Read entire transcript

 

 

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to KKS Blog using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

 

 

 

 

 

 

Better Be Safe Than Sorry (part 1)

Kadamba Kanana Swami and I left Mayapur and arrived at Chowpatty temple at 7pm last night. This morning Maharaja led the Kirtan and then lots of enthused devotees came to the temple for the Srimad Bhagavatam class and question and answer session.
Stay Tuned for more transcripts of the class!

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Chowpatty, 11th Dec 2010)
In the human form of life one is responsible for one's actions therefore the king was responsible for acting in this way although somehow or other he was cursed by a great sage.
It is a fact we see that in the description of Ajamila, the Yamaduttas are about to take Ajamila and the Vishnuduttas stopped the Yamuduttas from doing so because Ajamila had chanted the Holy Name.
Therefore the Vishnuduttas ascertained that Ajamila was sinless and subsequently the actions of the Yamuduttas was highly inappropriate - in due course of time Yamaraja personally came and begged pardon for the actions of his servants - because one is responsible for the actions of his servants and even if one's servants are not acting appropriately then one has to take reactions.
Saudasa had servants. When you have servants then there is the risk that you become involved in all kinds of possible reactions even although you, yourself have no intentions to act in such a way, you get the actions of the degraded actions of your servants.
In this case a somewhat extreme case, a servant starts to feed human flesh to a sage like Vaisista and that's not something that happens probably every-day! But the risk is there that the servant will misbehave - Therefore one who wants to have comforts in life has to also be prepared to take risk of having the reactions. So many people have servants - it's common also here in Mumbai we don't have to go quite far to find servants who have some function - some are in the kitchen, they are cooking. But even if they don't add human flesh to whatever they cook still if it is not offered to Krishna, then it is simply only sin...


It is only that which is offered to the Lord, that's what is required, that can free us from sinful reactions. Therefore a devotee is very careful in who is cooking and will not just take anything from anywhere, knowing very well that one becomes contaminated by eating food stuffs by a person who is impure…
We can see also in the Mahabharata, the situation where Bhishma was in the assembly of the Kurus and it was that time when Draupadi was mistreated and Dushasana tried to disrobe Draupadi and - Bhishmadeva, the upholder of Dharma, the best, the topmost of the Kshatriyas, one who was completely the defender of Dharma didn't do anything to protect Draupadi.
How was it possible? The explanation is offered that, Bhishmadeva was also been given some contaminated food stuff and his consciousness became effected. So it's very interesting that we may eat here and there, eat this and that, what can be done. Hungry, hungry!!!. When the need arises then we go for it, but such things have an effect on our consciousness. One may read the labels and it says the ingredients are all vegetarian -but it is not the best.
One of our life members had a chips factory and he had insisted once on taking me to the factory. There was the production line, there was a truck coming in with the potatoes and that was going into some big bins and there it was sprayed and cleaned and then the potatoes went on to the conveyor belts they were going over roles, they were pealed and next moment they were dried and sliced, then the slices went under hot air and next moment into a hot dip and spices were blown by hot air and then fresh spicy chips and then ………..there were the workers crunch… crunch.. crunch eating those chips!
Next we are going to offer them to Krishna!
What if someone walks in the kitchen and sticks his gruby fingers in the preparations that we are trying to prepare for the Lord, and just puts it in his mouth, what will he do with it. We can't offer it to Krishna, it's un-offerable, we throw it to the dogs, isn't it - but chips we offer it every-time. So in this way we must be very conscious of our activities not only in the field of eating but in general we must be very careful and diligent to secure that we are safe on the spiritual platform.... (contd in part 2)


(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Chowpatty, 11th Dec 2010)

 

 

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to KKS Blog using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

 

 

 

 

 

 

Devotees Also Have The Right To Exist

A story about a wolf who went to the stream to drink the water, and this little lamb also came to the stream to drink some water. So the wolf said;

" Hey you dirty little lamb! What are you doing?! How dare you stick your filthy snout in my drinking water!" (laughter).

"No…..no Mr Wolf! I'm drinking from down stream from you so the water that I'm drinking is not at all contaminating your water."

"Now listen. First of all you stick your filthy snout in my water and the next thing you give me lip as well…and you did the same thing last year!"


" No Mr wolf. I wasn't born last year"

"Now that's enough - for this nonsense I will eat you!"

So, we see how envy includes the fact that we don't let someone exist. You can be here in the temple – but you cannot exist: You cannot be your self: You have to be an exact copy of me… but in a more humble version (laughter). And in this way you have to behave exactly according to my world, because I am senior and I won't let you exist. So a lot of people in relationships do not let others exist. They impose so much upon them with their ideas. As a result they oppress others, but in the vedic culture there is the concept of prajās – that one which has taken birth has the right to exist!

Just like we have a field with grains – and the birds they come to eat. And of course some farmers stand there with their guns……..mimicking " You birds you come close to my grains. You better watch out right!"

So the birds they fly away at a distance …….and make fun of the farmer, and they will get their grains anyway. But the birds have a right to grains. The birds can take grains. It maybe that the farmer can make some arrangements to chase them away a little bit. He can put one of those scarecrows. You know with the scarecrows it's already clear that the crows already sits on one of those (laughter). So it's not very impressive. But it's a comfortable sort of landing from where you can survey the grains (laughter) "Which one shall I have first?"

So we don't have a right to kill the birds or chase away the birds. The birds have the right to exist. Devotees also have the right to exist, that's even more difficult than birds right? Other devotees in the temple they have the right to exist.


(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Melbourne, October 2010)

 

 

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to KKS Blog using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites