#SoulFood#- Srimad Bhagavatam 5.5.3

Sep 23 2016- Friday

1. How to develop love for Krsna?

- Increase attachment to the lord by engaging in his service. Accept the favorable and reject the unfavorable.

- Keep conpany of those who pursue this goal and avoid those who are materially motivated.

2. How do purified householders behave?

-They perceive home, wife, children and wealth to be Krsna's property. Hence they deal with them as caretakers and not as sole owners.

3. Does this mean they fail in their duties?

- No.
Realising that all of this belongs to Krsna, they perform their duties with utmost care and concern.

4. Their main focus is self upliftment and Family upliftment through devotional service. To keep this going, they work and collect money.

5. Money and other comforts are never accumulated independent of Krsna's pleasure

- Amarnath Dasa

Srimad bhagavatam 5.5.2

1. Serve Advanced Devotees to get liberated from material bondage

2. How do we recognise Advanced devotees?

- Principle of Equality
- Never agitated by changes
- Peaceful ALWAYS
- Engaged in Devotional service to Sri Krsna
-Free from Anger
- Live simply for others
- No abominable act performed ever

3. How does this service work?

Path 1:Serve them, please them humbly, they will shower profuse heartfelt blessings by which Devotional service will rise, Rise in Devotion leads to fall in material attachment

Path 2: Devotee association leads to Devotional habits.
By their association, knowledge and renunciation would rise leading to auspiciousness

4. What happens to those who dont seek their association?
- Material enjoyment will devour them
Women hunters and Sex mongers eventually go to hell as lust is one of the doors of hellish life

Your servant
Amarnath Dasa

Srimad bhagavatam 5.5.1

1. Only Humans can fully engage themselves and utilise their birth in the lord's service. Other 8 million species cannot, even if they desire.

2. Even stray animals which eat dirt, get sleep and sex. Hence Humans should not make sex as one's goal of life. GOAL IS ONE- DEVOTIONAL SERVICE TO KRSNA

3. How to achieve this goal? Strive with austerity. Material happiness may distract but tolerate and keep practising.

4. Devotional service grants Divine bliss. The bliss that is beyond mere things, the bliss that never ends!

Author: AmarnathDas

BhagavadGita Chapters in 1 line

1. Wrong thinking is the only problem in life.
2. Right Knowledge is the ultimate solution to all our problems.
3. Selflessness is the only way to progress and prosperity.
4. Every act can be an act of prayer.
5. Renounce the ego of individuality & rejoice in the bliss of infinity.
6. Connect to the Higher Consciousness daily.
7. Live what you learn.
8. Never give up on yourself.
9. Value your blessings.
10. See Divinity all around.
11. Have enough surrender to see the truth as it is.
12. Absorb your mind and heart in the supreme lord.
13. Detach from maya and attach to Divine.
14. Live a lifestyle that matches your vision.
15. Give priority to Divinity.
16. Being good is a reward in itself.
17. Choosing the right over the pleasant is a sign of power.
18. Let's go let's move to union with GOD.

If a person comes to Krishna bhakthi and stops adding bad karma, will he be punished for past karma?

COUNSELLING:

A devotee (Name hidden by me) asked like this:

Hare Krishna. My question is if someone has done bad karma before coming to Krishna Consciousness and after that he takes KC very seriously,and tries to never commit mistakes done previously, do he will get reactions of bad karma after this life?

REPLY:

My reply is: Not an immediate YES as clean chit, but, a conditional YES.

What condition?

I will repeat this thousand times in any forum: “Unless we desert all our material attachments, we can not get the suspension of the reactions of our negative karma, and we can not enter into the kingdom of Lord”

So, if we need to get the suspension of the reactions for all our past karma, we should do the following:

1. Chant Hare Krishna as much as possible and try to remain in the thoughts of Krishna all the time. Mechanical chanting rushed to complete the rounds will not help immediately, but, you need to wait till you come to the stage of sincere chanting and thoughts of Krishna.

2. Offer food to Lord and honour them only. Avoid karmic food from outside.

3. Surrender to a guru and offer your respects to him. Be sincere to follow the instructions given by a guru. If your guru is displeased, you can not get excuse from karma. Though you accept a diksha guru, unless you chant and follow all the devotional rules, you can not get excuse from karma and can not go back to Lord.

4. COMPULSORILY follow all the wonderful four regulative principles. If not, no excuse from past sins and can not go back to Lord with indiscipline.
5. Get as much blessings as possible from vaishnavas by offering all the respects and honours to every vaishnava. This will also redduce the severity of reactions of karma.

6. Visit Krishna temples as much as possible and associate more with vaishnavas and do possible services in the temple.

If you follow the above steps for a considerable period of time, say, few years, you should come to the stage of Prema. In this stage, you will see Krishna in everything and everyone and hence you will not have any material attachments. That means, you will not like to grab any material for your pleasure, but, you will use every material in the service of Krishna.

Since you have deserted your material attachments, the karma network can not give you any reactions because, only through the materials and material relations, the Karma network gives punishments and gifts. When we see everything as Krishna and work only for Krishna, then, karma network will be unable to give you any punishments. So, you will get excuse from all your past karma.

This is the reality. Material attachments is called CONTAMINATION or IMPURITY. So, we can not enter into the world of Krishna with contaminations/ impurities and pending karma.

So, everyone of us should aim for material detachments through more attachments with Krishna.

I request all of you to keep this post separately and read many times and store. Because, this is the real and ultimate advice to stop the reactions of our karma. Kindly do not expect any relaxations from this. Because karma network is very powerful and it requires sincere spiritual advancement to succeed this powerful karma network. Only the total surrender to krishna and His prema can do this.

Please keep this in mind and start to take steps for still more development in your spiritual sadhanas and realizations.

All the best.

Handle ur mind

4 kinds of attitude you can develop to handle your own mind:
1) Friendliness: Be friendly with people who are happy. If you are not friendly with happy people, you will be jealous. This is because you think that your enemy is happy, and you cannot tolerate your enemy being happy. So, shake hands with happy people. Such an attitude does a lot of good to your mind.
2) Compassion: Do not be friendly with people who are miserable, instead, have compassion for them. If you are friendly with unhappy people you will become unhappy. And if you become unhappy, you can never help them to come out of their misery. Many people have gotten into trouble by being friendly with unhappy people; both become miserable. It is like a doctor going to a patient who is sick, and the doctor also becomes sick. If the doctor also thinks, ‘How can I alone be healthy? Let me also share the patient’s misery’, then who will help the patient then?So, what should be the attitude with people who are miserable? Compassion, not pity.
3) Happiness: For people who are doing good work or who are successful in the world, you should feel happy as though you are doing it.For example, someone is a good singer, singing and bringing joy to everybody, seeing him you should think, ‘I feel so happy that this person is singing so well, and making everyone happy.’If someone is a good entertainer and he entertains everybody you should feel happy about it. If someone is a great architect and builds beautiful buildings you should feel happy about it. Whenever someone does a good job, share that happiness with them; we need to have this attitude.
4) Indifference: For people who are doing horrible things in the society, destroying themselves, we usually get angry at them. When you are angry, your mind suffers a huge loss. You lose so much energy, you lose your mood, and your enthusiasm. When energy and enthusiasm goes away from you, you become angry and are no better than the other person. You do not know what you are doing. So, what should you do in such a situation? Have a sort of indifference in your mind.For example, there are thieves in the world, they are there, what can you do about them? First accept, be indifferent. However, this does not mean you do not take any action. Your mind is indifferent (unaffected), but you act on it.These are the four attitudes that will help us to save our mind. This is what we need to do, save our mind at all costs.
Sri Sri

Why doesn't Krishna protect us from falling into the material world?

Srila Prabhupada - ” So, even in the Vaikuntha, if I desire that ‘Why shall I serve Krishna? Why not become Krishna?’ I immediately fall down. That is natural. A servant is serving the master, but sometimes he may think that, “If I could be come the master.” They are thinking like that; they are trying to become God. That is delusion. You cannot become God. That is not possible. But he’s wrongly thinking”.

Vipina Purandara - “Why doesn’t Krishna protect us from that desire?

Srila Prabhupada - “He’s protecting. He says, “You rascal, don’t desire. Surrender unto Me.” But you are rascal; you do not do this”.

Vipina Purandara - “Why doesn’t He save me from thinking like that?

Srila Prabhupada - “That means you lose your independence. That is force, in Bengali it is said, ‘If you catch one girl or boy, ‘You love me, you love me, you love me.’ ” Is it love? “You love me, otherwise I will kill you!’ Is that love? So Krishna does not want to become a lover like that, on the point of revolver. ‘You love me, otherwise I shall kill you!’ That is not love; that is threatening. Love is reciprocal, voluntary, good exchange of feeling. Then there is love. Not by force; that is rape. Why one is called lover, another is called rape?” July 8, 1976 in Washington, D.C

The following Conversation took place in Melbourne, Australia June 25, 1974 between Srila Prabhupada and his disciples.

Devotee – “When we are in the spiritual sky and serving Krishna, we have a perfect relationship with Krishna, what causes us to fall down in the material world, because we’re already serving Krishna?”

Srila Prabhupada – “Because you desire to fall down. Here it is explained that “Don’t fall down.”

Devotee – “Srila Prabhupada, I can’t understand why we should have an impure desire when we are already serving…”

Srila Prabhupada – “Because you have got little freedom. Why one is not coming here and going to the liquor shop? It is his desire.

Devotee – “In the Srimad-Bhagavatam, it says that Krishna did not want us to come to this material world. If Krishna did not want us to come, why are we here?”

Srila Prabhupada – “Yes. You forced Krishna to allow you to come. Just like sometimes a child forces his father. Father says, “My dear son, do not do this. Do not go there.” But he insists, “Oh, I must go. I must go.” “All right, you go at your risk. That’s all. And you suffer. What can be done?” Because you are Son of God you have got independence, full independence, almighty—therefore you have acquired the quality of your father. You have got little independence. So God does not interfere with your little independence. If you persist that “I must go and enjoy independently,” so God says, “All right, you can go.” This is the position. You have to take sanction. That is a fact. But when you persist, God sanctions. And you come and enjoy”.