issue no.
128 Jan 18, 2022
The guideline for all devotees
What is the mindset of a person who only performs bhakti and
has given up relying on any other type of spiritual practice? We
find the answer in a famous verse from the Çrémad-Bhägavatam
(10.14.8) which Çréla Prabhupäda highlighted as the guideline for
all devotees:
“My dear Lord, one who earnestly waits for You to bestow Your
causeless mercy upon them, all the while patiently suffering the
reactions of their past misdeeds and offering You respectful obeisances
with their heart, words and body, is surely eligible for liberation, for it
has become their rightful claim.”
This statement made by Brahmä provides us with important
principles on how to manage your own life in Kåñëa consciousness
while still being here in the material world, and dealing with mäyä,
the illusory potency of the Lord. The devotee is advised here to
patiently tolerate difficulties such as being ill or struggling with
mind patterns such as enviousness or anxiousness, or an overly
competitive spirit, while at the same time using the gift of God, the
human body, the mind and speech in the processes of bhakti. And
while he or she does this, they should await Kåñëa’s mercy, feeling
“O! Kåñëa, O! Kåñëa, my life is not yet ideal, I experience sufferings,
but please, if You wish, give me Your mercy and show me the right
path.”
This is a spiritual practice, a sädhana: as your karma – pleasant
or difficult – washes over you, you turn to Kåñëa, and you expect
photo © Ananta Vrindavan
Çaraëägatí – Teachings, Realizations and Inspirations from Çacénandana Swami, page 1
the Lord’s mercy. This is also a mindset, and whether you have
it or not will determine your experience of life. It will determine
whether you are happy or miserable. The devotee understands:
“Right now, I’m experiencing the results of my previously performed
activities, therefore”, he or she concludes, “I don’t need to be attached
to those results, this is just the material energy working on me and
on my life. Instead, I will be very attached to something else. I will be
attached to using this human life, to dedicating my body, voice and
mind to Kåñëa’s service”.
As one enters this attitude of tolerance, one becomes very
productive in one’s devotional life.
Çréla Çrédhara Swami, in this commentary to the above verse, points
out the outcome – which is attaining liberation and then shelter
at Kåñëa’s lotus feet – is as sure as a wealthy man’s son getting
the inheritance of his father, simply by staying alive. We may ask
“What does it mean to stay alive?”. Jéva Goswami replies: you need
to become a faithful follower of Kåñëa, a faithful devotee of Kåñëa,
which means you need to regularly engage in the activities of
bhakti. However, there is something we need to be cautious about,
Jéva Goswami adds: we should avoid ‘harshness of the intellect’ and
similar such bad habits. It is about meaningless criticism. This is
the only thing we must be careful about, and criticism starts in the
mind! It is in the mind where you start walking down the road of
negativity, which is a dangerous path. But if you don’t do this and
engage yourself in bhakti, then you are in a good position.
I want to address the topic of difficult experiences from an
additional angle. Do we not often learn the most from our most
difficult experiences? If you agree, try to agree with me on a second
statement: when there is a difficult experience, we should try to not
see it as negative, but instead try to see it as our greatest teacher
in life. These difficult experiences shape our character. They make
you become more alive and they make those talents, which are still
dormant because you have not used them all, blossom. So, when
stumbling blocks roll onto your path, don’t stop moving forward;
use them to build a beautiful staircase on which you can move
up in your spiritual life. If you do this instead of lamenting, the
wounds you receive often turn to wisdom.
From yet another angle I want to say: be patient. There are things
in our life which we just can’t figure out in our current state. The
author Rainer Maria Rilke has expressed this point so nicely:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the
questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now
written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which
cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And
the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you
will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day
into the answer.”
Çréla Prabhupäda:
In True Color
Material desires in the mind are the trash of material
contamination. By such contamination, the living being is
faced with so many compatible and incompatible things
that discourage the very existence of spiritual identity.
Birth after birth the conditioned soul is entrapped with
so many pleasing and displeasing elements, which are all
false and temporary. They accumulate due to our reactions
to material desires, but when we get in touch with the
transcendental Lord in His variegated energies by devotional
service, the naked forms of all material desires become
manifest, and the intelligence of the living being is pacified
in its true color. As soon as Arjuna turned his attention
towards the instructions of the Lord, as they are inculcated
in the Bhagavad-gétä, his true color of eternal association
with the Lord became manifest, and thus he felt freed from
all material contaminations.
From Çréla Prabhupäda’s commentary on
Çrémad-Bhägavatam, 1.15.29.

It is the questions that are important. Actually, the higher order

solution to all questions is: no individual plan for yourself, not
focussing on what you like and what you dislike, but instead:
surrendering fully. But which of us is always ready to do this?
It is a rare level of higher faith and purification of the heart. So
naturally, there are these ‘locked rooms’ in our life. The key to
opening these locked rooms, these unresolved questions in your
life is: be patient.

Understand, “This situation has come to me, because of my karma” –

or, if you are more advanced in Kåñëa consciousness – “because of
when I did something wrong to the devotees or the Holy Name or to my
sevä. It is now there, but I cannot yet understand it. Let me therefore,
as I’m patiently tolerating these difficulties, use my facilities – my
body, my heart (where my faith resides) and my words – in bhakti and
pray for and await Kåñëa’s mercy.”
From a lecture by Çacénandana Swami, on July 23, 2021, in Kiental,
Switzerland.

Çaraëägatí – Teachings, Realizations and Inspirations from Çacénandana Swami, page 2