How Can We Prepare Our Hearts for Him to Appear There?

Today is the adhivas-tithi (preliminary function) when we cleanse our hearts so that Lord Rāmachandra appears here tomorrow.  Tomorrow is Maryādā Puruṣottama Lord Rāmachandra's Appearance Day as well as Lila Puruṣottama, Lord Kṛṣṇa's devotee, Śrīla Gurudev's appearance. The holy tithis are harmoniously coinciding. We all know that the whole world adores and respects our Gurudev. Śrī Rāmachandra is glorious as Maryādā Puruṣottama who lived an ideal life and never broke any rules of the scriptures and so also in the same way our Gurudev is equally glorious and in no regard less than Śrī Rāmachandra.

Sattvaṁ viśuddhaṁ vasudeva-śabditam: We seat the Supreme Lord within our hearts. A heart that is completely pure is called vasudeva. It is not a person's name. The Supreme Lord is called Vasudeva because He is the son of Vasudeva.  But the term vasudeva has existed from time immemorial, as evidenced in the satya-yuga mantra: Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya. In his commentary, Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura said, “One who sits within the heart is called Vasudeva.”  Where will we welcome Śrī Rāmachandra to sit tomorrow, in the temple?  

In his kirtan, Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura wrote: tomāra hṛdoye sadā govinda-viśrām
govinda kohena-mora vaiṣṇava parāṇ. It means that Lord Govinda resides in the heart of a pure devotee and that vaiṣṇavas reside in the Lord’s heart.

Even if there is a huge temple and a lot of opulence is there, if there is no devotion, then the Supreme Lord will not live in such a temple. In the life of Śrīla Lokanātha Gosvāmī, Supreme Lord appeared in Kiśorī kuṇḍa to give His service to Lokanātha Gosvāmī. Lokanātha Gosvāmī kept the deity of Śrī Rādhāvinod in a cloth bag and this cloth bag became the temple of the Supreme Lord.  Where there is no faith, no exclusive one-pointed devotion, then the Supreme Lord will not reside there.  So we have to cleanse our hearts. We cannot do it with a broom and soap. 

So what is the way? Paraṁ vijāyate śrī-kṛṣṇa-saṅkīrtanam; By the process of Śrī Kṛṣṇa saṅkīrtana, the heart can be cleansed, there is no other way.  Śrī Kṛṣṇa saṅkīrtana means the process of devotion. Calling out the name of the Lord in itself is bhakti-yoga. By any other processes like fruitive activities or pursuing knowledge, you cannot clean the heart.  

In the scriptures many ways are prescribed like taking a dip in the Ganges, going to Kumbha-melā and taking bath, and bathing at Ganga Sagar. While these activities may cleanse us of our previous sins,  it does not eradicate the tendency to commit sin. Will a bottle of wine become pure if you take it around to all the pilgrimage places and give it dips in the holy Ganga, Yamuna, etc.?  No, because there is wine inside.  Whatever your efforts may be, the inner content cannot be cleaned. Therefore one who is a non-devotee who has turned away from Supreme Lord, no matter how many fruitive activities he performs and however much pilgrimage he does, he cannot cleanse his heart just as the wine bottle cannot be cleaned.  Harināma-saṅkīrtana is the way in which the heart can be cleansed. But there is a method of performing harināma-saṅkīrtana also.  

If someone is misrepresenting the teachings of Mahāprabhu, then everyone will be misdirected. When Gurudev gave us harināma, did he not tell us the rules? He told us about the four regulative principles to be followed. Harināma is not an ordinary sound, it is the Supreme Lord Himself dancing on the tongue.  On whose tongue will He dance? Only on sevonmukhe hi jihvādau, the tongue which is inclined to service. By gross senses, the name cannot be chanted.  Nāma Prabhu will descend to a service-inclined tongue. Harināma can transform our hearts.  Like the Supreme Lord is All-powerful, the Holy Name is also All-powerful.  The Lord has invested all His powers in His Holy Names;  it can change and transform the nature which we have imbibed going through millions of lives.  But how is it that we are chanting and our nature is not changing? 

When Mahāprabhu was passing through the Jharkhand forest singing and dancing performing saṅkīrtana, many wild animals joined Him and danced along with Him.  I had been to that place where there are footprints of Mahāprabhu and also the animals on the stones. The stones are hard and rigid by nature, but in this place, they transformed and became soft. That is the power of harināma which can even melt a stone. So our hearts can also change. He transformed inert stones into living things by softening them through harināma-saṅkīrtana. So certainly harināma can transform living entities.  Animals such as lions and deer forgot their opposing nature and participate in the saṅkīrtana and their instinct decreases and their nature was transformed.  Our hearts can also be changed and purified.  That is the power of the Supreme Lord's name, but why our heart is not purified, or transformed?  

We can understand the disease by the symptom. If you are not getting the taste of chanting the holy name that means you have been performing offenses.  Even though devotion is uninterrupted and causeless, due to offenses, which are like mad elephants,  the entire garden of devotion is destroyed. Like a mad elephant can uproot a creeper, aparadh can uproot the creeper of devotion.  It is like we are taking the medicine as well as eating prohibited things, then how is our disease going to be cured?  The doctor tells us the prohibitions, what not to do, as well as to take medicines. We are not following the prohibitions but at the same time taking medicines.  That is why our heart is not being transformed.  When our nature will change then we will be able to do pure harināma, until then it is not possible.  Even if you perform kirtan for thousands of years, it will not change.  

For example, there is a marriage party traveling by boat.  In spite of rowing the boat the entire night, in the morning they find that the boat is still at the same place because they did not remove the anchor.  So if we perform harināma without any motivation, we will get the same result.  Harināma is like a desire tree; it contains all power. There is nothing that harināma cannot give. Harināma is all-powerful.  So when will we be able to perform pure harināma?  Śrīla Prabhupāda has written a kirtan called Vaiṣṇava ke: 

kanaka-kaminī,  ‘pratiṣṭhā-bāghinī",
chāḍiyāche yāre, sei ta' vaiṣṇava
sei ‘anāsakta", sei ‘śuddha bhakta",
saṇsāra tathā pāya parābhava

 Harināma is to be performed without desire for money, women, and prestige— one who can give up these desires can perform saṅkīrtana. As long as we have these desires, harināma will not be pure harināma. One who can give up material desires is a pure devotee.  

Another important point is that harināma is to be performed in the association of devotees:  

ādhu-saṅge bhāi kṛṣṇa-nāma nāhi haya
nāmākṣara bāhirāya baṭe tabu nāma kabhu naya

"Brother, the Name of Kṛṣṇa never appears in bad association:  the letters of the Name may appear, but the Name never does."

In the association of non-devotees, only offensive Holy Name can be performed. Although it may sound like the Holy Name, it is not a real name. One name of Kṛṣṇa can destroy so many sins. The pure name can cleanse the mirror of our heart, ceto-darpaṇa-mārjanaḿ. Harināma-saṅkīrtana will change our instinct and our nature.  Supreme Lord told Uddhava describing this standard of harināma:

prāyeṇa bhakti-yogena
sat-saṅgena vinoddhava
nopāyo vidyate samyak
prāyaṇaṁ hi satām aham

(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, 11.11.48)

"My dear Uddhava, I am personally the ultimate shelter and way of life for saintly liberated persons, and thus if one does not engage in My loving devotional service, which is made possible by associating with My devotees, then for all practical purposes, one possesses no effective means for escaping from material existence."

The association of devotees is the most powerful way of freeing us from material desires. 

satāṁ prasaṅgān mama vīrya-saṁvido
bhavanti hṛt-karṇa-rasāyanāḥ kathāḥ
taj-joṣaṇād āśv apavarga-vartmani
śraddhā ratir bhaktir anukramiṣyati

(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, 3.25.25) 

"In the association of pure devotees, discussion of the pastimes and activities of the Supreme Personality of Godhead is very pleasing and satisfying to the ear and the heart. By cultivating such knowledge one gradually becomes advanced on the path of liberation, and thereafter he is freed, and his attraction becomes fixed. Then real devotion and devotional service begin."

Harikathā heard from the mouth of a pure devotee, a bonafide guru, has the power to remove our material desires. While harikathā is always pure, if the medium who is speaking harikathā is not good, then it will not have any power.  Never hear harikathā from the mouth of a non-devotee. Harikathā is nectar. Milk is also like nectar; it has so much power that one can just survive on drinking milk.  However, if that milk is touched by a venomous snake it becomes poisonous.  In the same way, harikathā is like nectar, but if heard from a non-devotee or from a sense enjoyer, then it will be like a pot of poison.  This is like commercial harikathā done for the sake of wealth or prestige— do not listen to this.  

The first thing is the desire for wealth;  it is the root cause for fifteen kinds of anarthas, unwanted things like pride, deceit, etc. Our life is not for earning money.  According to our destiny and previous life karmas, we will be entitled to wealth, we need not endeavor extra for getting wealth. One who endeavors for extra wealth will only misuse it.  Whatever is in our destiny we will get it automatically.  But we wrongly think that through our extra effort, we will get more wealth.  No, you will only get what you are destined for.  You dip a bucket in a well and draw some water.  If you dip the same bucket in a pond, will you get more water?  No.  It will fetch only as much water as its capacity is.  If you put it in a river will it fetch you more water?  Or if you put it in an ocean will it fetch more water? No, it can fetch only as much as its capacity is.  As much as your destiny is that much only you will get.  Therefore endeavoring for wealth is actually wasting your life, you will simply die doing that.  

—Śrīla Bhakti Kuśala Padmanābha Mahārāj

Source: Śrīla Gurudev's 93rd Vyāsapuja streamed live on 4th Apr 2017 

Spoken in Hindi, simultaneous translation in English by Śrī Naveen Kṛṣṇa Das