Your language will go to your mother. Jiva Goswami Prabhu has given this hope. You may be a three-month-old baby, or a one-month-old baby, but through your expression of crying or something your mother will understand whether you are hungry or not.
Question: How can we know whether we are successful or not?
Srila Gurudev: When you eat how do you know that your hunger has gone? When you take food satisfaction will come and your hunger will go. This is in Srimad Bhagavatam.
bhaktiḥ pareśānubhavo viraktir
anyatra chaiṣa trika eka-kālaḥ
prapadyamānasya yathāśnataḥ syus
tuṣṭiḥ puṣṭiḥ kṣud-apāyo ’nu-ghāsam
Satisfaction will come, you will become stronger, and your attachment with the material world will disappear. You can stay within everything, but you will have no attachment.
Vedavyas has given so much to us [chuckles]. Rsi Vedavyas composed the eighteen Puranas, the Mahabharata, the Vedanta-darshan, and so on. He presented so much knowledge in this material world, and he also gave the gist of that knowledge in the Bhagavad-gita and Srimad Bhagavatam. More recently Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu found the book Brahma-samhita: it is very short but the whole conception of Mahaprabhu is there in gist form. This will all give some association to us; when direct sadhu-sanga is not possible, the holy books will give us some association. We are so fortunate that we have got so many books.
Question: What is the meaning of “without offence”?
Srila Gurudev: Ten kinds of offences are written in the scriptures, in the Padma-purana. When we are giving Harinam-diksa, initiation, to someone then we are giving them a book listing those offences. Everyone should try to memorise and avoid those offences, and chant the Holy Name.
Offences means obstacles. Srila Jiva Goswami Prabhu, who is the next-generation-leader of the Goswamis, has given a very hopeful assurance, quoting from the scriptures,
nāmāparādha-yuktānāṁ nāmāny eva haranty agham
(Padma-purāṇa: Svarga-khaṇḍa, 48.49)
Harinam will remove the offences of whoever is making Namaparadha, offences to Harinam. For that reason the scriptures say, “Try to chant continuously as much as possible.” We are saying sixteen rounds, or four rounds, or sixty-four rounds, but actually the scriptures say, “Chant as much as possible, with beads or without beads.”
Your language will go to your mother. Jiva Goswami Prabhu has given this hope. You may be a three-month-old baby, or a one-month-old baby, but through your expression of crying or something your mother will understand whether you are hungry or not. If a baby is crying the mother will understand, “Now she is hungry or he is hungry. Or, his belly is double full, and for that he is crying.” The feelings of the mother always give nourishment to the baby, and the Lord is also like that. When we chant the Holy Name of the Lord, He will understand that we cannot avoid offences, and so He Himself will give His divine help to us, and our offences will go through chanting.
This post is a continuation of Cleaning the mirror of the heart.
Spoken by Srila Gurudev in Italy, September 2000, during his Sixteenth World Tour.
Further reading:
Srila Gurudev’s poetic rendering of the ten offences
This advice is for everyone, not only for this Vaisnava society. We can see some indication of chanting the Holy Name of the Lord in all religions. The Muslims are chanting their Lord’s name, “Allah, Allah, Allah” and we have seen that they also do japa. The Christians also do japa. Everywhere they are chanting the Holy Name of the Lord. They know at least the transcendental vibration form of the Holy Name and they are chanting that, and it is very properly and efficiently revealed in this Vaisnava society. Vaisnava means, Visnur devata yasya sa Vaisnava: who is feeling that the Supreme Personality of Godhead is Krishna is a Vaisnava. He is not brahman, he is not sudra, he is not Australian, he is not American, he is not Indian, but he is a servitor of the Lord. That is his identity. He will chant the Hare Krishna mahamantra and he will get back his own identity.
