No Need To Visit The Babajis - Letter from Narayan Maharaj

Not ever having worshipped once the dust
that sprinkles from Srimati’s lotus feet;
not having taken shelter even once
of Vraja Dham, marked with her dainty tread;
not ever having spoken with the souls
so laden with a weighty love for her,
how foolish they who think that they can plunge
into the secret sea of nectar that is Shyama!

tatra parama-haMsA nAma saMvartaKarunI zvetaketu durvAsa RbhU nidAgha jaDa-bharata dattAtreya raivataka prabhRtayaH, avyaktaliGgaH avyaktAcArAH anunmattA unmattavad Acarantas tridaNDaM kamaNDaluM zikyaM pAtraM jalapavitraM zikhAM yAjJopavItaM ca ity etat sarvaM bhUsvAhety apsu parityajyAtmAnam anvicchet.

SaMvartaka, AruNi, Zvetaketu, DurvAsa, Rbhu, NidAgha, JaDa-bharata, DattAtreya, Raivataka and others are paramahaMsas. They are of unmanifest natures, of unmanifested ways of life, seen (to others) to behave like mad men though they are in no way mad. They renounce tridaNDa, kamaNDalu, tuft of hair and sacred thread and all that in water with the words bhU svAhA and seek to know the Self.

O Vaishnava Thakur! Please give me your mercy, that through knowing my relationship with the Lord and constantly doing bhajan, my false ego will disappear.

If I think “I am a Vaishnava,” then I will never become humble. My heart will become contaminated with the hope of receiving honor from others, and I will surely go to hell.

Give me the mercy that I can renounce the false conception of my being guru and can be your servant. Let me accept without duplicity your remnants, the dust of your feet and the water that has washed them.

By thinking that I am superior and giving my remnants to others, I will become increasingly egotistical. Let me always remain in the mood of a disciple and never accept any worship or praise from others.

In this way I can renounce the desire for honor for myself and can offer respect to others. Weeping sincerely at your lotus feet and rolling on the ground, I pray that you will give me the ability to purely chant the Holy Name.

As a strong lion defeats many elephants
and then becomes further nourished
and strengthened by feeding on them,
so too does sacred love, when exceedingly great,
conquer all obstacles placed before it,
whether they come from this world or the next,
from enemies or from family members,
from one’s own body or the things connected to it,
or even from that dearest one
who is the object of the love itself.

Even if such obstacles should be as vast
as the immeasurable Mount Meru,
sacred love will conquer them and,
having conquered, become stronger and more vital.

Speak the truth and speak the pleasant. But speak neither unpleasant truths, nor palatable lies. This is the eternal path of righteousness.

The world situation is such that you should only speak the truth if it is palatable. And if it is unpalatable, then you should not. But this convention cannot be maintained when you are preaching the spiritual life. In such matters we cannot cheat, but must declared [the truth] of spiritual life very frankly. (681020LE.SEA)

…It may be very unpalatable, but these are the facts. satyaM brUyAt priyaM brUyat na brUyAt satyam apriyam. According to social conventions, if you want to speak truth, you must limit yourself to truths that are palatable and flattering. Don't speak unpalatable truths. But we are not meant to merely follow social conventions. We are preachers and servants of God. We must speak the real truth. You may or may not like hearing that a godless civilization cannot be happy in any stage, but it is a fact. Therefore we have started this Krishna consciousness movement to awaken this godless civilization, so that everyone will try to love God. (770103RC.BOM) (Both quotes edited by me.)

• It is rare that we know everything about a situation, so we should be careful about our subjective assumptions. It may be permitted to be candid about such feelings in limited circles, but it is dangerous to go on a mission.
• Circumstances change. Not only may the person we criticize have once been good and only become corrupt, he may have been corrupt and changed for the better. In either case, it behooves us to always remember the good.
• In the same vein, we are also subject to hypocrisy, which often puts us in the same position as the person we criticize. The pot calling the kettle black syndrome.

Do not disrupt the minds of the ignorant by telling them to renounce the responsibilities with which they are comfortable. Rather, you should encourage them to engage in those activities, while similarly being engaged in one's own prescribed duties in a disciplined fashion.(Gita 3.26)

1. A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones. If I say to you: "Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan," it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if I say: " Be an agnostic or be Christian," it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your belief.

2. Next, if I say to you: " Choose between going out with your umbrella or without it," I do not offer you a genuine option, for it is not forced. You can easily avoid it by not going out at all. Similarly, if I say, " Either love me or hate me," " Either call my theory true or call it false," your option is avoidable. You may remain indifferent to me, neither loving nor hating, and you may decline to offer any judgment as to my theory. But if I say, " Either accept this truth or go without it," I put on you a forced option, for there is no standing place outside of the alternative. Every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing, is an option of this forced kind.

3. Finally, if I were Dr. Nansen and proposed to you to join my North Pole expedition, your option would be momentous; for this would probably be your only similar opportunity, and your choice now would either exclude you from the North Pole sort of immortality altogether or put at least the chance of it into your hands. He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed. Per contra, the option is trivial when the opportunity is not unique, when the stake is insignificant, or when the decision is reversible if it later prove unwise. Such trivial options abound in the scientific life. A chemist finds an hypothesis live enough to spend a year in its verification: he believes in it to that extent. But if his experiments prove inconclusive either way, he is quit for his loss of time, no vital harm being done.