(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)
