Building Up Our Sincerity

Kadamba Kanana Swami

Sincerity - the day that we come to the temple and say that from this day onward:
"My dear Lord Krsna, I will try to be your devotee"

we are not thoroughly sincere, and the days after, as we are continuing, as we are learning, we are finding that our statement of:

"Today I will be your devotee"

is not so easy.

Then we begin to realise that our sincerity was not so deep. Although we were sincere, we find that our sincerity was not that deep, because we were being confronted with many situations where we were called to surrender, but we just couldn"t do it.
So again and again we meet ourselves and we recognise that there is some insincerity in us also along with sincerity, and that we are living with both at this point.



So Kunti Devi, she is addressing this. She is saying (Sanskrit) that as long as we have attachment to our birth, in terms of the place of our birth or the position of our birth or taking pride in our birth (Sanskrit) as long as are attached to our possessions, to having things, to learning, to impress people with what we know, and by our looks, by our appearance, then it is not possible to approach Krsna with sincere feeling, fully sincere feeling - completely just give up our whole being to Krsna as His servant and just become His transparent instrument.

Therefore we realise that it's an ongoing process of gradually building up our sincerity.

And gradually we realise that by all my endeavours, I'm never going to make it. I'm just not conquering my lower nature. I'm just not overcoming this material contamination - it just seems to be so deeply ingrained. It is at this point that we begin to pray for mercy - that we become more and more aware that we just are hanging in here by mercy, we can only advance by mercy, and we just turn to the devotees for mercy, we turn to the Deities for mercy, we turn to the Holy Name for mercy, and in this way we begin to look for mercy.

Within that search we go into another level of sincerity, so in this way our spiritual life really becomes a search for sincerity.

We hope that in this life we can deepen our sincere surrender to Krsna.

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Goloka Dhama in 2006)