Re: Atheists are most unfortunate

Dear devotees,

     Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna! A little bit more on serving the Lord...

     We are all unique and owing to our own unique set of cirumstances we have our own unique skills, talents and limitations. Therefore when we serve the Lord or the devotees it is always best when we serve Him with whatever talents we have. Someone may be a gardener, another a cook, a driver, an accountant, an editor, a therapist, a musician, an accomplished speaker, etc....anything. However these personal services must never be identified as the universal standard for all to follow. Then people will only blindly imitate. They will only remember the skill and forget the Lord. The only universal standard is the SERVICE ATTITUDE and NAAMA SANKIRTANA and not the type of skill one has. An individual's speciality should not be blindly copied by others. What will we do if everyone was just a gardener or everyone just knew how to drive a car or if everyone wanted to do only one other work? 

       Actually the humble sweeper in the temple is no way inferior to the book publisher or the public speaker on the absolute level and so it is meaningless to ask, "Which service is better?" Actually it is, "Whose attitude is better?" Therefore while I do say that professional musicians can put their vast talent to serve the Lord, one must remember that it is the mood of service and not artistry that actually counts. Beginners please note that down.

        This story narrated by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati warns about blind imitation :

A Fallacy of Custom

   Every morning some brahmanas would take their bath in the Ganges and offer their daily prescribed prayers to the Lord. All of them were taking their own copper vessels for offering water to the Lord. But through oversight, all the copper vessels invariably changed hands everyday.

   Finally an elderly brahmana, in order to differentiate his own copper vessel from others, put a lump of sand on his own copper vessel and went to take a bath. Observing this practice, all the other brahmanas assumed that this must be a holy custom and imitated the said elderly brahmana by putting the a lump of sand on their vessels.

   After taking bath, the elderly brahmana came out of the river and found that it was impossible to identify his own copper vessel, because each and every vessel had a lump sand on it. At this, the elderly brahmana said to himself, �How over-attached to rituals these fellows are! Without realising the real purpose of anything, they just imitate others. If they had applied their common sense, they would not have marked their copper vessels in the same way.�

      This should make everything clear....

PS : Could this and the previous two replies including Hadai prabhu's post be shifted to the Jay Radha Madhava posted by Hadai Prabhu? It was accidentally posted on the wrong thread.

Daaso'smi,
Srinath

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