Skip to main content

GETTING OUR ATTITUDES RIGHT

"Our altitude in life depends not on our aptitude but our attitude in life."

A few days ago was the appearance day of Sri Advait Acharya. Advaita Acharya is non different from Lord Vishnu and appeared as one of the most confidential associates of Lord Chaitanya. His life is filled with great lessons for all devotees in the line of Lord Chaitanya. Here are two most prominent and crucial lessons from His life that is very very important for devotees to understand.

RIGHT ATTITUDE OF A PREACHER
Advaita Acharya even though was Lord Vishnu Himself, still seeing the suffering condition of the human society, prayed to Lord Krishna to personally descend. Why? Because He thought, He was powerless to transform the hearts of the living entities. Just see, He Himself is the powerful Lord but still felt incapable. This is a true quality of a powerful preacher - he considers himself powerless and thus seeks and prays to access powers, higher than himself. By His earnest prayers, Lord Krishna appeared as Lord Chaitanya to inaugurate the Sankirtan movement. This mood is found in the lives of every great preacher - they never even consider that they can preach and transform the hearts of people, they always feel powerless to preach and thus they attract higher powers to act through them.

Srila Prabhupada, the Founder Acharya of ISKCON also felt that he wasn't capable of preaching in the Western countries and thus with utter humility, he prayed to his Guru and to Lord Krishna to give him the power to preach. While on the ship to America he wrote this famous poem and song, pouring out his heart and feeling to the world. In this song - "Boro Krpa Koile Krsna", he writes a stanza which says -

ki ko're bujhabo katha baro sei cahi
khudra ami dina hina kono sakti nahi

"How will I make them understand this message of Krishna consciousness? I am very unfortunate, unqualified and the most fallen. Therefore I am seeking Your benediction so that I can convince them, for I am powerless to do so on my own."

No wonder, Lord Krishna made Srila Prabhupada a huge success and fulfilled all his desires.

RIGHT ATTITUDE OF A DEVOTEE
Lord Chaitanya always respected and worshiped Advaita Acharya because of His age and seniority. But Advaita Acharya didn't like this, in fact the respect He got gave Him pain. He preferred and longed to hear Him being called Lord Chaitanya's servant than His superior. So, one day, He made a drama of preaching Impersonal philosophy that the form of Lord Krishna is an illusion and that we are all God. When this news reached Lord Chaitanya, He became furious and came running to the house of Advaita Acharya and dragged Him from the elevated seat on which He was sitting and preaching this bogus philosophy into the courtyard and in front of so many people He started to kick Advaita with His leg repeatedly. All the devotees were shocked to see this unprecedented anger of Lord Chaitanya but Advaita Acharya was in bliss, in ecstasy because this is what He wanted - to be treated like a servant. Finally, His desire was fulfilled - Lord Chaitanya forgot all the respect He had for Him and treated Him like a servant.

Advaita Acharya is teaching us that the greatest joy of a devotee is not when he is respected and worshiped but when he gets to act in his constitutional position as servant of the Lord. True joy is when we become a servant of God and not a master because we can never be a master anyway.

Let us follow in the footsteps of Sri Advaita Acharya and try to meditate, understand, assimilate and apply these invaluable lessons in our life and make our life valuable.

- Achyut Gopal Das

Comments

  1. Tirthapada das18 February 2021 at 20:22

    Right attitude of a devotee and preacher. Wonderful example from the life of Sri Advaitya Aachar ya.thank you very much Prji.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE JOURNEY OF EXCELLENCE TO EXCELLENCE

" We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. "   - Aristotle I generally don't like to speak about myself, I am a very shy person in that sense. But here, I would like to share a small story from my life just to make an important point. You see, most lessons we need to learn are stored in our past, we just need to visit it once in a while to refresh the lessons learnt without getting caught up in it. THE EXPERIENCE OF EXCELLENCE I started chanting 16 rounds of the Hare Krishna Maha-mantra and became committed to spiritual life, towards the end of my 11th std. This was way back in 1999. During this time, there were few dozen devotees in ISKCON, all over Goa. When I entered 12th std, I decided to focus fully on my studies and top the college. I thought, this would be the best way to preach to all my friends - by showing them how spiritual life helps one achieve success in life. And, it was also the best way to protect my spiritual life ami...
Post a Comment
Read more

TWO DECADES OF HARE KRISHNA

"Sometimes the longest journey we make is the sixteen inches from our heads to our hearts." -  Elena Avila Coming December 2019 marks 20 years of my consistent and daily chanting of 16 rounds of the Hare Krishna Maha-mantra, one of the prerequisite for a committed practitioner of Krishna consciousness. I started, chanting 16 rounds in December of 1999 and now, 20 years have passed by so quickly. One thing that helps me, be focused in spiritual life is watching the passing of the imperceptible time. How weeks turn into months, how months turn into years and how years turn into decades is a great wonder of life. This article is in no way to glorify my two decades of chanting Hare Krishna but it is just meant to share my little thoughts and my little experiences in my spiritual life at this junction in life. I feel so grateful to Krishna and His wonderful devotees who have been extremely kind to me by showering their grace...
Post a Comment
Read more

SIMPLE LIVING & HIGH THINKING or SIMPLY LIVING & HARDLY THINKING

I came to stay in our ISKCON Vasco ashram for a while. I bought only one pair of dhoti - kurta other than what I was wearing thinking that I will keep going back and forth to our Panjim ashram, where I usually stay. But, it so happened that I didn't get any chance of going to Panjim for the last 20 days and somehow, I didn't find the need for it too. I guess, I have learnt to happily manage with just two pairs of dhoti - kurta. It was quite a revelation for me - that it is possible to be happy with less. Life is actually so simple but we unnecessarily complicate it with "unnecessary wants" which we think are "necessary needs ". Simple instances like this, makes us realize the meaning of the above statement. Many years ago, I had heard a saying which goes like this - reduce your wants and feel like a King or increase your wants and feel like a beggar . Isn't it so true and meaningful? Life is meant to be lived in such a way that our material necessitie...
Post a Comment
Read more