0:01Do you have a question? I don't take too much time, but I just had a question in regards to a lot of the overlapping subjects you were bringing up, and specifically the one about the vulture. It was very touching to me, because I'm realizing that at some point there's the level of śaraṇāgati where you have to just surrender, you have to just give up.
0:44And as a person that's so covered in illusion, and so enthralled in all these things that I think I have to be doing, all these distractions are blocking me. But at some point, it feels like I have to just fully surrender, which feels like it'll take away from when Krishna says, do your dharma.
1:04I know I shouldn't be attached to the fruits of that. But at the same time, it feels like my mind is giving me only one way or the other. either you just give up everything over here and surrender or I feel like there's no middle path, it's so hard. It's not like that. Śrīla Bhakti-vinoda Ṭhākura explained that this is one of the obstacles in spiritual life to think that bhakti is incompatible with civilization itself. We all have to live in a cave and walk around naked, you know, because, you know, to put on clothes and build a house or something is just not surrendered, Prabhu.
1:41No. So, you see, first look at it in a different way. Let's just look at it slightly differently. And I'll come back to what you were saying. Let's say there's a devotee, and he's surrendered and also renounced everything. He's given up everything. So he's living in a temple, like a brahmachari, and he's serving from morning to night, the whole time. And he's chanting a lot as well. But he has ahaṅkāra. He has kartṛtva-abhimāna, I am the doer.
2:14You see? So as long as he's holding on to that ego, you can be so-called surrendered, right? Outwardly doing all the activities, but actually not surrendered. You're still making the tenth offense to the holy name, thinking that I'm producing the name when I speak, and I'm doing these activities of devotional service. So that person is also like, just as the vulture keeps flying out, flying out, until he's finally exhausted, there comes a point in our spiritual life where we're serving so much, serving so much, but the spiritual result is not coming, but the reason is we're doing the activities but with a ahaṅkāra, with ego, then the person becomes, and it's only when one becomes, you
2:59know, akiñcana-gocara, said the Lord is akiñcana-gocara, the Lord is the property of that person who has nothing, they're completely spent, and so then we realize that nothing we can do with If pride can capture the Lord, then we actually give up the ego and change our vision from dṛk to dṛśya, real śaraṇāgati, and ātma-nivedanam, giving the heart.
3:27So then when a person does that, when he's performing the activity, not with this mentality, stand back everyone, today you're all fortunate because I'm doing this temple service. But rather he thinks, bhakti is the vilāsa of Svarūpa-śakti and now this great fortune and opportunity has come to me that the Svarūpa-śakti can come and take my senses and it's happening to me I'm having this experience of cleaning the floor in Radha Krishna's kuñja, it's happening to me, you understand?
4:03There's a complete difference between performing activities with pride and ego and performing them with complete humility and appreciation for the divine nature of the transcendental realm. It's a totally different attitude, you see? So you can have that attitude even being in your home, you see? It's that switch of, you could so-called surrender everything, but you're actually not surrendered because the ahaṅkāra is there.
4:30But you may have your family and do some job and everything, but you can give up that, that internal, that internal ego, and then whatever small amount of devotional service you perform is one step taken towards Krishna in humility is worth more than millions of steps marching in the heavy boots of ahaṅkāra, ego, you know?
4:58So try to be like this Many of our acharyas, they were also grihasthas, Bhakti-vinoda Ṭhākura himself, he's married, he has 13 children, 2 jobs, right? How many children do you have? One more on the way, 3 3, like part-time parent compared to, compared to Śrīla Bhakti-vinoda Ṭhākura, amateur, right? So don't, don't think, so obviously you can do your activities, you know, but try to do things with, in a very humble mood, follow this is internally. And there's no, because there, you know, bhakti is called ahaituki apratihatā. That means it's unconditional. It cannot be checked by anything. So it cannot be checked by your gender, your age, your species, your āśrama, your varṇa. It's unstoppable. It's completely transcendental.
5:52So as long as you think that, you know, I am this person, I own this house, these are my kids and everything like that, as long as you're thinking like that, then yeah, you want to progress. But when it's time to do your sādhana right from the beginning, sākṣī, kālātīta, dṛśya, make the internal adjustment, and then that bhakti which is done with true humility and connection with the holy name, accepting mercy, that is the, we are not on the āroha-panthā, āroha-panthā means the ascending process where we climb up the ladder by our own power, if you're practicing bhakti but thinking you're climbing up the ladder by your own power, it's not bhakti, bhakti is avaroha-panthā, the descending process, you see, so in Bhakti-sandarbha, Jīva Gosvāmī quotes this verse, I think it's from Padma Purāṇa, it says,
7:05is very near, but for one who is ahaṅkāra-yutānāṃ hi, one who's still united, still connected with their own ego and sense of doership, then madhye parvata-rāśayaḥ, there are huge impassable mountain ranges between him and the Supreme Lord, right? So you could change so many things in your life, you could take sannyāsa even, but still have mountain ranges between you and the Supreme Lord, but today you can become very close to the Supreme Lord.
7:40by following Mahāprabhu's teaching, but it's so poetic, it's very difficult to understand, well, what does that really mean, what does that mean, and so we're spelling it out here in this discussion, exactly, psychologically and ontologically, what Tṛṇād api sunīcena means, and if someone will chant in the Tṛṇād api sunīcena, Mahāprabhu said, let me tell you the way in which the symptoms that you should have, that if you chant the holy name in this way, prema will come, right? Love will come. So it's simple, not so complicated.
