My devotee never perishes
Posted: 27 May 2011 02:55 PM PDT


(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Durban – South Africa, April 2011)
In the association of Vaisnavas, especially advanced Vaisnavas, we become
uplifted, beyond our normal limitations of holding on to material security
and hesitating about jumping forward in spiritual life.  Krsna will catch
us!  Krsna will provide!  Krsna always protects His devotee.
Always?  But some devotees die, in not good ways.  Where was Krsna then?
Is He not protecting?  Does He protect some devotees and not others?  Does
it depend on the degree of ones Krsna Consciousness?  Does He only protect
the very advanced devotees and the less advanced ones, like us, not so much?
Na me bhaktah pranasyati My devotee will never perish!  What does it
mean?  It means exactly what Krsna says: My devotee will never perish!
There is no doubt about it!  As long as we understand in the broader sense
what it means.  It means that the body, Krsna may or may not protect.  But
the destination of the soul, Krsna will surely protect.  Without a doubt!
That is very certain!  If somehow or another our time or our mission in
this world is not yet fulfilled, Krsna may protect our body so many times I
myself, have slipped out of  extremely dangerous situations many times cat
with nine lives and that kind of story!  Yes, and there was no doubt, no
doubt that Krsna interfered.  It is not possible that by any other means I
would have survived.
But that is not ultimately what is the meaning of na me bhaktah
pranasyati.  It means that a devotee, a devotee will come closer and closer
to Krsna, and once we have made steps in Krsnas direction, Krsna will
surely protect our devotional service.  That is what it means na me bhaktah
pranasyati.  Krsna will protect our devotional service.  Therefore, there
is no fear.  We just take shelter of devotional service.  And other
things,  they come, they go.  Some hardships sometimes may come, may go,
but it will not really faze us.  And our devotional service will continue
and continue and in the association of devotees we become uplifted again
and again.

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Change your lifecompletely
Posted: 27 May 2011 03:00 AM PDT

In our modern times Srila Prabhupad is the big famous acharya, who by his
extraordinary devotional service was able to spread Krishna consciousness
all over the world and convinced westerners to take up this way of life
which is not so easy. It is easy to say Im doing yoga, it is easy to say
I'm belonging to this baba or that baba, and not make any change in your
life, but what Prabhupada was asking was not just say that you belong, no
Prabhupada was asking  completely change your life, cent per cent,
everything has to change, everything, everythingcompletely. So they say,
Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur told us, he said it is a complete
revolution – Krishna consciousness – complete. Yeah, but isn't that a
little too extreme? Can't we add Krishna consciousness to all the good that
we already have? We can begin like that. It begins like that but it cannot
stay like that, because little by little we realize that all the good that
we have is not good enough. Even the best in this world how good is it
really? Is it unadulterated? Is it pure goodness? In this world everything
is mixed, everything is tinged with imperfection. And therefore as one is
advancing in Krishna consciousness gradually there is no more room, no more
room for imperfection. When Krishna is there who is fully perfect and who
has unlimited qualities and pastimes and so on, why preoccupy ourselves
with anything else? Why look at the beautiful sunrise? In the early days of
the Hare Krishna movement Prabhupad was preaching in New York and New York
is one of those places where it's hard to see the sky, due to these
skyscrapers, when you're actually down in the street, down in Manhattan,
you don't get the view of the sky. That's just how it is – New York City.
So Prabhupad was preaching there in this small storefront – Matchless Gifts
storefront and one day they had an excursion to doctor Misra's country
asram and it is said that it was summer and several of the city boys were
sleeping outside. Well, that was amazing, I mean for a New Yorker, and they
were waking up in the morning and they saw the sun rising and Hayagriva who
was a bit of a poet got really into it and started to say it was as if a
painter from his palette hah placed red streaks in the sky and in this way
decorated it with a great variety of different shades of beauty. A poet, as
you can hear And Prabhupad was totally sober in his response and said that
"Actually we are not so interested with the beauty of the creation. We are
interested with the beauty of its maker."
(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Stockholm 2011)