NECTAR OF INSTRUCTION VS 4 02/2007

KKSWAMI

DAILY TEN MINUTE NECTAR+

06/10/08The first part of this transcript includes part 1 +2 ( previous

transcripts)- Taking real shelter of the vaishnavas +

Giving ourselves in charity.

Srila Rupa Goswami Nectar of instruction vs 4

“ Offering gifts in charity, accepting charitable gifts, revealing one’s mind

in confidence, enquiring confidentially, accepting prasadam and offering

prasadam are the six symptoms of love shared by one devotee and another”

So it’s not that a devotee is alone with Krishna, but rather the devotee becomes very close and intimate with the vaishnavas, much more so than generally is the case in the material relationships that exists in this world where everyone has his privacy, where everyone has his fence, where everyone has his privacy circles, his limits, his borders and ‘sorry I don’t know you, so you can not talk to me’ kind of mood. Book distributors they ignore that, they step right through these privacy lines, the people are shocked, this can’t be happening, this is not possible, it shocks them.

Among the vaishnvas we see that relationships are meant to be of a different nature, they are meant to be close and intimate but may not be so in our present spiritual movement because we are not prema bhaktas, but if we could be, if we would be devotees on the level of prema, then really such open positive non envious exchange could be there. Now in our present state we are associating in the material world and we are all at different levels of advancement.

Srila Prabhupada sometimes said that our movement ISKCON is like a hospital and actually all are patients, some are in a better condition than the others and they are helping the others, but somehow or other it is a hospital full of patients where patients help patients. Because devotees at different levels of advancement may help, of course nityasidha devotees are of a different nature or sadhana sidha, those who are sidha bhakta devotees who are fully at the platform of perfection, alright they may not be considered as patients but otherwise patients are helping patients and therefore we can not expect our

relationships to be completely fully developed. So we should not be disappointed when the relationships amongst vaishnavas are not one of like real complete love and trust. When we see in our movement not yet that full love and trust is realised, then we should not think it is just because we have socially failed rather it is that simply the spiritual world has not fully manifest amongst us.

Srila Prabhupada says ‘Ghuyam…sanskrit’ experienced devotees explain and an inexperienced devotee learns from him Guhyam means what is hidden ‘ ….sanskrit..’ that will be shared once intimate hidden feelings, experiences are being shared., because a vaishnava has to rise above the platform of duplicity. Duplicity is something required in the material world but from the spiritual plane duplicity is a real problem, it is actually one of the activities that can really block our spiritual advancement and it’s important that a vaishnava is not only truthful in what he says and that he doesn’t speak any lies but that he’s just truthful about what he is experiencing because then one

can actually take shelter of the vaishnavas, if we are on the platform of pretending, always playing a part for everyone, then we are very alone because we never share our real self with anybody else, so we have to come to the point where we just share wherever we are, whatever we are going through with other vaishnavas because then we get the shelter of the vaishnavas.So this ‘Guhyam…sanskrit’ is very important because without taking shelter of the vaishnavas, it is not possible. Srila Krsnadas Kaviraja Maharaja is saying ‘sanskrit’ he said my path is very difficult my feet are slipping again and again, therefore with the stick of the mercy of the vaishnava for my support I can carry on this path.

So…err…interesting that he is saying my feet are slipping again and again and who can say that he has a perfect track record, this is very rare, never a slip never a moment of weakness,…never?

That’s very rare. Some may slip again and again then ok there are what may be no gross slips that one is not slipping with the four regulative principles but then we slip in so many other ways, we make so many mistakes on the path, more subtle mistakes then again we come under the influence of the lower nature so all these things are taking us away from the path of pure devotion, pure devotional service. So by taking shelter of the vaishnavas we automatically get our true position in the association of the vaishnavas. If we are trying to act that we are quite advanced and we are not, then we are not getting the proper mercy that we require, we are just cutting ourselves off, so this taking shelter is an essential element. Giving charity to the devotees is also important, that is always just give and share with the devotees

because by doing that we can somehow or other overcome our deep rooted material attachment. We just give, we must learn to give than rather than to take, justlike Jayananada.

Jayananda was Prabhupada’s dear disciple who had done so

many wonderful things and Jayananda he joined in Sanfranscisco and somehow or other Jayananada was ten yrs older than everybody else and Jayananda was having a profession, he was driving a taxi and he was making good money. So Jayananada would buy the devotees whatever they needed, he would buy them clothes and give it to them as a gift, whatever they would need Jayanananda would be there and give. For himself he would not buy anything, he would not spend money on himself, he would buy clothes from the salvation army, pair of pants for one dollar and something like that, because he didn’t want to spend money on himself. There’s a story that they told him to go and you have to buy some descent clothes, you can not just buy these one dollar pants any longer, so they sent him to a shop and he put on these pants and he saw like the price and thought “God, how can I spend so much money on myself I can’t do it”. So he just put his old pants over the new pants and tried to walk out of the shop and he got caught and anyway the whole thing came to court, quite fast in America. A few weeks later he was in court and in the court he explained the whole story and he explained to the judge how he was a monk and how he has given his whole life and how they forced him and he just couldn’t tolerate to spend so

much money and the way he explained it was so sincere and so feelingly that the shop detective who had arrested him was there as a witness that he said, “my honour I will pay for these pants”

and in that way he didn’t get convicted and somehow or other Jayananada was such a devotee who gave himself completely. Giving in charity means really giving, we must give ourselves in charity, giving things in charity, the fruits of our labour in charity is one thing but still the greater gift is to give ourselves in charity, to dedicate our life to the well being of others and not be so concerned, what, what’s going to become of me what will I achieve, I have my plans, I want to do so many things, if I become servant of everyone else then there will be no time left for me to do my things, sometimes we have to do my things, little

something we have to do, that is true, but the principle is giving in charity the highest and greatest thing is to give ourselves….I thought myself how to have a balanced life, balanced spiritual life- and I thought we should have a, a balanced spiritual life between three factors. One is our personal bhajan or our personal practice, another one is our health and our peace of mind and the third is our preaching mission, to do something for the preaching mission and these three must be there and if we are not doing those three then how can we be satisfied, how can we be complete, then we are not complete. Somehow or other the bhajan, our personal well being and the mission, these three, these three interests must be there in our lives, we must somehow or other think how to look after them and it means that you can not always look after all three simultaneously, it will mean that we sometimes put energy in bhajan, sometimes we put energy in the body sometimes in peace of mind, sometimes we put energy in our preaching, that is the nature of giving ourselves in charity, not just, you know, just give yourself then nothing left, these three considerations must be there. So, we must look after our personal well being but not at the expense of ourselves. Anyway the nature of trying to be balanced is that one regularly gets imbalanced and then one has

to recover the balance, that is ones nature of being balanced. There is no such thing as always being perfectly balanced, it doesn’t exist, one who thinks he’ll always be perfectly balanced is a dreamer, that is not reality, to be balanced means to try to be balanced and adjust and you notice “oh now I,ve gone bit too far in this direction” and now a bit on the other side, balanced equilibrium. Yeah, but it is a matter of like on a bicycle when you are riding on a bicycle sometimes you lean a little this way sometimes you lean a little the other way, if you look at bicycles carefully, you see they are not like all the time like this but they go like this and like that.

Yeah, Krishna is the balancing factor, It is Krishna who keeps us in balance, without Krishna there is no balance that’s all, without Krishna everything gets upside down, slowly in the beginning without Krishna life is going on nicely and then you think I’ve got it all under control but it is not like that, I compare life to an elephant and I say sometimes the elephant is top of you.

contd…tomo