| “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 one’s 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 Krsna’s 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.  |
| Change your life…completely 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 I’m 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, everything…completely. 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)  |
We are always looking for the shelter, the shelter of the Vaisnavas. But not only are these Vaisnavas there to bring us inspiration in the form of wonderful experience that brings great feeling that emerge from our heart, but also that the Vaisnava has come and will show us the way.