Kadamba Kanana Swami gave an ecstatic talk this morning at Vrndavana and in the talk Maharaja inspired the devotees and gave everyone confidence to do something extraordinary for Krishna. Below are a couple of excerpts from the talk and more will be on the blog soon!Kadamba Kanana Swami:
Here we find a description of Maharaja Uttanapada, who was extremely exalted, extremely pious and yet inspite of all his good qualities became excessively attached by enjoyment and paticularly favoured his younger beautiful queen - The result was that when she was behaving inappropriately in relationship to Dhruva (Dhruva wanted to join his brother who was seated on the lap of the King ,then Dhruva was denied by his stepmother and the king at that time didn’t object – afraid to lose the favour of his younger queen) -
So this is the nature of a man who has become controlled by the desires of material enjoyment. One should avoid it and avoid association of such man - If such qualities are within us we should rise above – we should put the interest of Krishna before any other interest...
We may have our material desires - material desires are so intricate and so deep and so subtle and others are gross. So these material desires are so strong that they may be present in a devotee even at very advanced stages of devotional service. But whatever may be - one must take a a vow to commit himself to the higher path of prescribed duty - devotional service. So we are preparing and we have to make that commitment, commitment to the Lotus feet of the Spiritual master whose committed to pure devotional service to Krishna, and in that way we place devotional service before anything!
There is an interesting verse it says : “ Whether you have material desires or whether you don’t have material desires you should engage full force in pure devotional service”
So one might wonder how can one engage in pure devotional service if one has material desires; ‘Isn’t it that for pure devotional service one has to be free from material desires?”
– so what is meant by this?
It is meant that even if one is still under the influence of material desire that he should make a commitment to unflinchingly engage in the pure process of devotional service – it is devotional service that is pure. The purity is referring to devotional service – not that the devotee may be pure but is situated in pure devotional service and thus is protected from the lower nature.
Human nature is there and is used in the process of bhakti, human nature is not denied – that would be impersonalism, that would diminish our service because the Lord has empowered every devotee with particular talents and therefore they are to be used in the service of the Lord.
It is said that one should simply engage things in connection to the Supreme Lord – so we are not trying to supress our natures but express them within the culture of bhakti and in that way there is ample room and ample protection - therefore even if there are material desires, even within bhakti - if there are the ways to enjoy the senses and it is always connected to Krishna – that way even the sense enjoyment become purified – for example by taking Krishna Prasadam - Krishna Prasadam is transcendental but if we are not transcendental we may not take it in a transcendental way:
“You may be more interested in Cream than in Krishna! …”
So in this way initially we may be attracted by cream and eventually we will be more attracted to Krishna than our cream! That is the nature of taking prasadam.
So devotional service is a natural process but we simply have to make commitments.
(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 27th October 2010, Vrndavana)
