9th October 2008

KKS Daily 10 min + Nectar 09/10/04 Nectar of Instruction vs4 – Last Part (Part 4)

bhajan is more like you get absorbed in hearing and chanting and in a devotional mood. If that’s not there in your day, know that day is burning up reserves, there are many days when we are forced to burn up reserves, what can you do, just getting busy in external circumstances, job and you have to work overtime and next day you are going to be paying for it, there goes your morning programme and your kid has measles and you have a long flight and it’s the only cheaper one and you have to take it and it’s full and it’s crammed in and

it’s difficult to be really chanting when you are surrounded by people who all have there little TV screen in front of them each with a different movie and there’s forty different movies going on simultaneously and wherever you look there’s a movie and it’s pretty intense and of course you can look up at the ceiling but how long can you chant like that (mumbling tone) : “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare pause mumble –Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama….Ra..” someone gets shot some screen over there,

a love affair going on, some knights are storming around on horses ….and now there’s some stupid movie about the British Queen, God, it is a stupid movie, Huh, I’ve already seen it ten times now because it’s all around the plane everywhere , oh goshso ….yes… Everyone has his external overwhelming circumstance that push us in our situation where we have to go to our reserves so we just have to note it that this is my reserve, I better do something to charge up the batteries or they are going down. We may have some batteries that will last us for a little while so maybe we can afford a few days of not real serious hearing and chanting but know that you are depleting your batteries and you have to do some serious recharging, so maybe start planning a serious ekadasi, next ekadasi going somewhere and chant or whatever opportunity I have, next Sunday I’m going to lock myself with teeth on the door, this door bites and just read, right, something, we have to keep an eye on the situation. So normal healthy bhajan should be there everyday that’s our standard but overwhelming circumstances they force us to go into our reserves and we have to recharge otherwise it’s a kind of, if everyday we are overwhelmed by the circumstances and it becomes a way of life we become

spiritually ill, depleted. You say it’s not possible, when you have a little baby cries all the time what you going to do, one mother wrote to me and I said to her, “well I’ll check with some other mothers because I don’t know about this” so I asked some other mothers they said, “no, you can train the child, you can train them when they are very small, just train them you don’t always have to jump up every time they cry, you have to train them, you have to let them cry a little sometimes like that, try get more regulation, they get used to regulation, that way you will have time.” Sounded like..erm.. made sense to me and I said why not teach these kids some regulation from the beginning it will only help them, they will need it anyway, how else will they ever control their senses and mind. If they never learn to control their senses and the mind and they get everything every whim get what they want, of course within reason, everything within reason, but that means are the circumstances really so overwhelming? We have to do something to organise time for these things, its some sort of idea that we have I have to do all these things… I guess we have to make adjustments make plans on how to improve, how to everyday do good chanting and preaching, ok, Prabhupada said first health, after you are healthy and you are

physically well then good sadhana, then preaching. But the most important is preaching, then bhajan and then our health but if we have to get to work we have to make sure our health is ok, mentally peaceful, and then good bhajan good sadhana, then we can do something to preach. I don’t think there is an easy solution, because we all live in the world and the world is not favourable, the world is not giving us support, so everyone has to struggle somehow or other, but that’s what we have to do by keeping the balance we have to make good endevour and a good plan …so we have to make a plan, then all these things become feasible. Just like there are some people who say they can not chant sixteen rounds, I usually think this is due to bad time management, I don’t think it’s a spiritual defect. I think it’s a material defect, poor organization of their life. So I think often times it’s not that they really don’t want to …it’s just that they don’t organize their life sufficiently. Some cases there maybe, it’s a lack of desire to chant but in many cases it’s just that people get really overwhelmed and if they would just learn to make a plan to chant sixteen rounds, then they will chant sixteen rounds. If I chant less than ten, personally for me, if I chant less than ten

rounds in the morning than sixteen rounds becomes a stress that day…that’s my minimum ten, I don’t do it very often, I normally chant more, I chant sixteen but that’s my minimum in the morning. If I am below that I know that this day I have to make a special arrangement to chant somewhere or I’ll get into big trouble, so then it’s got to do with what time I go to bed because some people say I can’t get up in the morning, my answer to that is no, it’s not that you can’t get up, you can’t get in bed at night, that’s your problem…if you go to bed early you can’t sleep anymore early in the morning you just wake up. If you go to bed very early and you wake up very early and then you will have lots of time to chant in the morning so it’s not that your problem is getting up… your problem is going to bed late at night and that’s just a matter of organising things, sorry, I’m going to bed now...but it’s only eight o’clock…that’s it, yep that’s it everybody gets used to it. When I was temple president in Vrndavan the whole temple was always, you live at work, so the whole temple wanted to come all the time…so I trained people up don’t come to me during japa…in hostile mood “GRRRAAHHH!” There’s a problem “GGRRAAHHH! Come at 9.30

GRRRAAHHH! my japa”

I’m

chanting

so everyone knew he’s really touchy about it, his japa,…after a while after some time the temple was trained up don’t disturb him during his japa he doesn’t like it. Good, very good, if necessary come after 9.30 after breakfast… yeah.. that starts to make sense… But if I wouldn’t have growled then it would have spoiled my japa everyday, always something going on always, so I think one has to defend his japa, what do you think? I want some feedback, working people…huh..is it practical? Is it feasible, easy to say for me, is it practical? Some devotee speaks-Maharaja in conversation: Then you have to chant at night, tell your wife when you come home..sorry..I still have to chant four rounds, right, and she wants to know everything you have done, throughout the whole day and talk about it and say you never share anything with me and you say you want to chant your last four rounds and she just doesn’t care and she just talks anyway and your last round you started at 9.45pm, right, if you’re lucky and because you’re tired you finish at 10.30 and the next day you’re tired again and then you get in a rut…I know all about it.

I’ve been there,Yeah I went through all kinds of things in this regards, late night fights and what not, yeah sometimes I would want to sleep in the office. Devotees speak and banter is going on Maharaja: In the spiritual world we have, somehow or other, relationships there , it’s very difficult to figure out, you know, how it works, this thing about that we are eternally in the spiritual world; that we are now sort of in the forgotten stage, that we are returning there which you find in the ..scripture.. Swarup returns and then he’s back and Krishna receives him and so on, then what happens in the relationships you make in the material world with the vaishnavas, how do they integrate because, you maybe in different corners of the spiritual world or in different roles in different rasa, different, even if your both in madhurya still different connections to Radha Krishna, so how will it all work? I don’t know, I guess that’s the adventure, some adventure has to be made and can not know everything in advance, here just, philosophising,….something has to be saved, otherwise what will be the fun of going to the spiritual world, but we will all meet there, let’s see what it will be like, any other topic? ….ok.