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

PRACTICAL TOOLS FOR DESIRE MANAGEMENT

“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of, so they can see that it’s not the answer.” ― Jim Carrey, American - Canadian actor Long back, I heard this analogy to explain the nature of the unlimited desires in our hearts. It is explained in this analogy that, even if all the water bodies in earth are made into ink to fill a pen whose nib is as small as an atom and the sky is made into paper to write on; the ink will get exhausted, the nib will break and the paper will run-out but our list of desires will not get over - we will still have more left. Over these years of spiritual practices, I have realized the truth behind this analogy. I have become more aware of the dynamics of desires and it's working in life. Even though our hearts are filled with unlimited desires, luckily just a few jump into awareness every now and then, just like a few fish jump out of the surface of the ocean every now and then even though the ocean is filled with u...
1 comment
Read more

SEEING THE UNSEEN HAND OF GOD

"kartum akartum anyatha kartum"  "Everything happening, not happening or otherwise happening is His happening." A few days ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a retreat for brahmacharis (monks) connected to the Radha Gopinath temple, Mumbai at the Govardhan Eco Village - the farm project of Radha Gopinath temple. Among other feelings, retreats like these always leaves you feeling a little more grounded and humble. You feel small in front of hundreds of other accomplished monks. The saying - " a big fish in a small pond becomes a small fish in a big pond " aptly summarizes the feeling one experiences in these Yatras. Another interesting experience was the experience of saving my slipper. May sound a little silly. But, it wasn't that silly given the fact that most monks have a similar kind of slipper (paduka type sandals). It was a kind of fun to try to hide my slippers in different places so that it wouldn't get interchanged with those of...
Post a Comment
Read more

THEORY OF IMPORTANCE

" When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor. " - Elon Musk Many times we look for solutions everywhere but overlook what is right below our nose. We expect that the solution to our complicated problems has to be equally complex. But many times, true solutions are counterintuitive that means complex problems could have simple and straight solutions. If we carefully observe our life, we will see that we have only those things that we consider important and those things missing in our life is because we feel they are not important. When I say important, it is not important in the general sense but the attitude that "it's important to ME." You see, once something is important to us, we will find every way to get it and overcome all the obstacles, just because "it's important to me." Another angle to see this is in when we have something in life, we are sending a signal to others saying - "so and so thin...
Post a Comment
Read more