It’s helpful to be relentless in your practice of devotional service, and it’s quite natural to be unsteady in the beginning. Part of being relentless means you have to be willing to continue, even if you feel that you’re not making that much progress.

That requires evaṁ buddheḥ paraṁ buddhvā. You have to be situated in your intelligence at that point, because you may not have as much taste as you might need—and you get a lot of credit for staying a long time. In fact, my godbrother Puṣkar Prabhu was just telling me the other day: Śrīla Prabhupāda once commented when devotees were asking these types of questions (and they were brand new), he said, "Wait 50–60 years in your practice."

He commented and said, "See who’s still around in 50–60 years." Many people shoot up, and they may have various motives, and then they’re huge—and then all of a sudden they’re not there. But who’s there in 50–60 years?

One thing is to make a determination to continue no matter what. That’s very important, because a "big shot" is just a "little shot" who kept on shooting. That’s the case in almost all areas of discipline: somebody who just stuck with it. It’s like, "That guy? How’d he get in here?" It’s like, "he kept doing it. You guys quit." So, we have to keep going.

sva-pāda-mūlaṁ bhajataḥ priyasya

tyaktānya-bhāvasya hariḥ pareśaḥ

vikarma yac cotpatitaṁ kathañcid

dhunoti sarvaṁ hṛdi sanniviṣṭaḥ

(SB 11.5.42)

Kṛṣṇa favors those who continue. This verse says that if you just keep going—even though you keep doing stupid stuff and you think, "Why am I doing that?"—it’s because you’re still "stupid," but you’re smart enough to keep going. That is a sign of sincerity.

The sign of sincerity is that you keep going. Have you ever seen a little animal or a kid who’s totally inept at something, or maybe they’re even deformed or injured or whatever but they just keep trying? Everyone runs to them and says, "Help them! Help that one over there, they can't walk." You see people all the time; they adopt a little beagle that has no back legs, and then they’ll get a skateboard and hook it up because they want to help them out. So Kṛṣṇa is like that. If we keep going, even though we’re the worst of the worst, if you just keep going, then there’s magic that happens from chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. We have to remember that Kṛṣṇa is all-powerful.

nāma cintāmaṇiḥ kṛṣṇaś caitanya-rasa-vigrahaḥ

pūrṇaḥ śuddho nitya-mukto 'bhinnatvān nāma-nāminoḥ

There’s no difference between Kṛṣṇa and His name. And He’s transformative; He’s cintāmaṇi. If you remember this, it’s like: "I don't like the way my life is." All right, how about let's change it? What do you think? Yeah, good idea. How are you going to change it? Try YouTube? No—try chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa.

If you just keep trying it, because Kṛṣṇa and His name are non-different, you go to the reservoir and you just drink, and you don’t have to do anything else. That’s why:

vāsudeve bhagavati bhakti-yogaḥ prayojitaḥ

janayaty āśu vairāgyaṁ jñānaṁ ca yad ahaitukam

It happens quickly when you chant—do something direct. Chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, it is transformative. So, keep going to that reservoir that changes everything. Who changes everything? It’s Kṛṣṇa. He’s the cintāmaṇi stone. Don’t give up on it.

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Chaitanya Mahāprabhu gave a condensed list of the great benefits of chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, and one of them—śreyaḥ-kairava—is poetical. It is the "blooming of the lotus. What kind of lotus? Śreyaḥ?" It is, as we translate it, the White Lotus of Good Fortune.

This word "fortune"—the tune part—comes from the word ten like in the word tendon which means to connect. It connects the bones and the muscles in the body; it holds together. It also means to stretch towards something. And the "for" part refers to wealth, good luck, and everything everyone is looking for in the world.

I dare say why everyone is working hard: to come to a situation in which they have everything. Oftentimes, on book distribution, when I meet people and they ask why they should take the book, I say, "It’ll bring you good fortune." And then I ask them, "Do you know where good fortune comes from?"

Before they can answer—and usually they don’t, because they hadn’t thought about it—I say: "Well, it doesn’t come from working harder, because some people work two or three jobs and they still don’t have anything." I say "It comes from Kṛṣṇa, from the spiritual realm. These books connect you to that realm of good fortune."

What Chaitanya Mahāprabhu is saying regarding the chanting of the Holy Name, śreyaḥ-kairava-candrikā-vitaraṇam, is that if you want to have good fortune in your life, then chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, because it is Kṛṣṇa directly.

Prabhupāda used to say, and has written, that wherever Kṛṣṇa is, the Goddess of Fortune is there automatically. He told us: "If you want the Goddess of Fortune, you should always worship Kṛṣṇa." You cannot do it independently or try to have the Goddess of Fortune without Kṛṣṇa. Rāvaṇa tried that; it didn’t work out very well.

The way the mind works to find "good fortune"—thinking there must be something somewhere that will make me happy, where I’ll have abundance and so forth—those are all futile attempts and vain searches. We are instead brought right to the very source of everything; in this case, good fortune itself. And that is being with Kṛṣṇa.

One other thought I heard this morning while I was getting ready: Prabhupāda was talking about how Kṛṣṇa reciprocates with everyone. He said, "If you want something other than Kṛṣṇa, He’ll accommodate you. But if you only want Kṛṣṇa, then He’ll also reciprocate in that way."

While chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, we have the opportunity of expressing our desire. Even if it is a small desire—it doesn’t matter small or big, it's the same. The desire is: "Kṛṣṇa, I only want You." In that mood of chanting, if the mind wanders and thinks maybe there is something better somewhere else, because the chanting seems repetitious or boring, one can remember that the Holy Name is the source of everything. Everything the mind wants to "shop for" elsewhere comes from the Holy Name anyway, so I might as well stay here and be fully absorbed.

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First, I offer my respectful obeisances to Śrīla Prabhupāda, and note that this is an historic event. Hopefully, there will be plenty of photographic evidence, because Gurudāsa Prabhu was here to open the first San Francisco temple, and now here he is again. Many devotees—Mālatī, Śyāmasundara, Mukunda, Jānakī Devī—they all asked again and again: "When would the San Francisco temple re-open?"

Thank you, first to Navīna-nirada Prabhu, the intrepid, who came here and struggled through four or five years trying to get established here. Then our great hero, Ananta Caitanya Prabhu, came with great determination, imagination, and devotion, and has brought us all together. So, we’re greatly indebted to you for your endeavors and to all the members of Bhakti SF who are holding space here for the pleasure of Śrīla Prabhupāda and Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu.

Today, we re-inaugurate this temple with deep thanks to Kent Prabhu who, during the pandemic, was interested in: "Where’s the kīrtana? Who cares about a little virus?" He indicated—and it was the same mood that Ananta Caitanya was in—"Virus? What virus?" Therefore, he kept the center open, and he kept chanting. Kent came here and had a vision that we should be established well here in San Francisco; Kent painstakingly looked for a place and then made this happen. So, thank you very much to Kent.

Today is Narasiṃha Caturdaśī. We mark it that Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu had worshiped Lord Narasiṃhadeva in His pastimes. But very importantly, in Navadvīpa Dhāma, Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura—who wanted to discover the original birthplace of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu—had noted that each morning he saw a cloud of dust coming from Narasiṃhapallī to where the birthplace of Lord Caitanya has been established. And he noted that it was the Lord Narasiṃhadeva coming every day to maṅgala-ārati to worship at the place of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu.

So today, we hope Lord Narasiṃhadeva is pleased with this reopening of the San Francisco temple, for Bhakti SF, holding space here for spreading Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s message all over San Francisco.

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We have a special treat, which is a bhajan written by Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, five prayers to Nṛsiṁhadeva in Navadvīpa. In a very revealing way. Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura mentions that by his worship of Nṛsiṁhadeva, ostensibly in Nṛsiṁha Palli, and by rolling in the courtyard in ecstasy there at NṛsiṁhaPalli, the place where Nṛsiṁhadeva himself gives 24-hour darśana (the temple is never closed, because even if you go there and the door is closed, there's still a grid; you can look in and see Nṛsiṁhadeva), and of course, Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura had a close relationship with Nṛsiṁhadeva in that Lord Narahari Deva had helped to reveal the actual birthplace of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu.

That is, that from the vantage point in Godrumadvīpa (which some of you may have visited), there's a balcony on the house of Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, or where he and Śrīla Bhaktsiddanta Saraswati Ṭhākura resided together and did many of their writings. Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura would look out and, curiously, in the morning time, just before maṅgala-āratī, he would see a cloud of dust coming from Nṛsiṁha Palli all the way to the place where the Yoga Pīṭha, or the appearance place of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, is. And that was one of the ways that he triangulated to come to understand that Nṛsiṁhadeva himself was coming for the maṅgala-āratīk of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu in that place.

We find that Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva, although sometimes people may say or opine that, "Well, he's a Vaikuṇṭha deity. What are you worshiping him for? Our destination is Goloka Vṛndāvana and vraja-prema." But you'll see in this next bhajan, after the Daśāvatāra Stotra, that Nṛsiṁhadeva was actually prevalent, ubiquitous almost, in the pastimes of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. He appears in various places, not the least of which is one of the first pastimes when the saṅkīrtana movement starts and Nṛsiṁhadeva personally comes and chastises the Kazi. The Kazi had tried to stop the saṅkīrtana, and Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva woke him up at night and put his nails into his chest and said, "Don't do that." And of course, there's Nṛsiṁhānanda Brahmacārī and other appearances of Lord Narahari Deva.

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Here at Govardhan Hill, many people come to ask your Girirāj for anything. In fact, in this Śrī Īśopaniṣad (Mantra 8), it is said:

sa paryagāc chukram akāyam avraṇam

asnāviraḿ śuddham apāpa-viddham

kavir manīṣī paribhūḥ svayambhūr

yāthātathyato ’rthān vyadadhāch śāśvatībhyaḥ samābhyaḥ

Kṛṣṇa is the one who has been fulfilling everyone’s desires since time immemorial. So, whatever we have now is a result of our previous requests and our various desires. Now is the lifetime when we can be completely on track and only ask Kṛṣṇa for pure devotional service:

na dhanaṁ na janaṁ na sundarīṁ

kavitāṁ vā jagad-īśa kāmaye

mama janmani janmanīśvare

bhavatād bhaktir ahaitukī tvayi

When Lord Narasiṁhadeva was tearing out the heart of Hiraṇyakaśipu, he commented, "How is it that you’ve allowed so many unwanted things to accumulate in your heart?" He was asking His devotee, so we can ask ourselves the same thing: How have these things come into our hearts? One way or the other is the answer. The solution is to ask Lord Narasiṁhadeva now: "Please tear them out and let me get on with my real life of pure devotional service." Lord Narasiṁhadeva kī jaya! Śrī Prahlāda Mahārāja kī jaya!

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When you are chanting, be aware that you pronounce the mantra and then let your mind follow each syllable carefully. Keep it in your heart that you are addressing a person, and let there be an underlying intention of service and connection.

That’s very technical. Once, when a Malaysian Airlines flight went off course, nobody could find the airplane because the transponder in the airplane was not working. So it was just lost; still not found to this day. I was in a little bit of despair after hearing about it, thinking what those people might have felt like to be off course and untraceable.

At the time, I was chanting japa, and I realized that my chanting was a transponder. It’s the ‘black box’ letting Kṛṣṇa know not just where I am, but what my intention is. Practically, people misinterpret our intentions all the time; or people don’t have the wherewithal to know what our real intentions are, or we may hide our intentions. Kṛṣṇa is the one person who knows all of our intentions, and this is a good time to align them in japa.

It’s one of the ways to be fully focused: to use your intention to call out to Kṛṣṇa and just say, "I’m lost. I don’t know where I am in this material world. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know how to hold everything together, although I do my very best to do that." You can let it all come down at Kṛṣṇa’s lotus feet through chanting the Holy Name, and just be very aware that Kṛṣṇa is the only one that can help us. So, concentrate that you're chanting; put yourself in a vulnerable position and call out to Kṛṣṇa.

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Medicine is something that everyone's vitally interested in. I have anecdotal proof every time I get something. For instance, when I was just in the UK, I was supposed to speak at an event called Rise. It was on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I didn't speak on Saturday or Sunday; only a little bit on Monday. The last sound that came from my mouth was on Friday night, and the next morning, I couldn't say a word. My voice was locked up. For over two days due to the very kind-hearted nature of devotees, I had a little shelf in my hotel room with no less than twelve different kinds of medicine that were run up. Everybody said, "You take this; it'll knock it out in an hour." Of course, I'm never ever sure—if I take all of them—if it was a combination, or one of the other combinations or permutations, or if it was none at all and I just would have got better myself anyway.

But the idea of medicine—auṣadhi or rasāyana—is very appealing. The root word of medicine, med, is Latin; it means "to take appropriate measures." Everyone feels that if I can just adjust a little bit, if I just have the right kind of "goop," then maybe I'll feel better about myself. Some people take analgesics to the extreme because they feel it's really hard to feel good in this world, so they take chemical substances to feel better all the time. But then that doesn't work out because there's a limit to how much you can take; and then you don't get the same effect, and after a while, you just become addicted to it.

So, this is a conundrum. In the 1980s, there was a famous musician from San Francisco—so I could talk about him—his name was Huey Lewis. Huey wrote some famous songs. We met Huey once while we were waiting in line for an airplane. Unfortunately, he got a disease where he couldn't hear properly, so he can't sing anymore. But in his day, he wrote many hit songs, and one of them was entitled, "I Need a New Drug." In the song, the lyrics bemoan the fact that there are all these different kinds of cures and drugs—mostly drugs that have severe side effects. The kinds of advertisements we see for pharmaceuticals these days, even though there are billions of dollars put into the research, always have a disclaimer and a warning at the end. In fact, if it's a 60-second advertisement, 10 seconds talks about how good you're going to look after you take this, and the next 50 seconds is about how you might have bleeding ulcers from it and it could cause death.

This is a problem. 'Duḥkhauṣadham tad api duḥkham atad-dhiyāham.' Prahlāda Mahārāja says the medicine you get here in the material world is often worse than the disease itself. But in taking the rasāyana-kathā—the topics about Kṛṣṇa—into the ear, it very gently enters the heart.

satāṁ prasaṅgām mama vīrya-saṁvido

bhavanti hṛt-karṇa-rasāyanāḥ kathāḥ

Hṛt means the heart and karṇa means the ear. So you take the medicine here (the ear) and it ends up here (the heart). Taj-joṣaṇād āśv apavarga-vartmani—this means that very quickly, you're going to be on a different path in life.

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In our lives, the phenomenon is there that when we don't have a clear idea, a clear goal, then we tend to tip over. Somebody will come along with an idea; we’ll run off in one, or another direction. What's more, there's this feeling of urgency for all kinds of things—they all fall in the same category. You just have one little bowl, and you throw everything in there, and the marking on the side of the bowl says 'Urgent.' Every little thing can wake you up in the middle of the night saying, 'Urgent!' You forgot to write an email to such-and-such, and you think, "Well, they must hate me by now," and that becomes a burning cinder in your mind. We have to deal with the issue of balance in our life by becoming introspective and also working on our clarity of purpose, vision, and goals. This is a great time of year for it because we're in the first quarter. That means we've got three quarters left; that's exciting!

I took this phrase from Seven Habits: 'Start with the end in mind.' What do you want it to do? Where do you want whatever you're doing to end up? What will it look like when you get there? Once you have that in mind, then set your goals.

It's an antidote to the sense of disturbance. If we don't have a clear idea, then whatever comes up will be very disturbing. But you may notice that if you're intensely focused on doing something or going somewhere, even if there are disturbances, you might barely even notice them.

There's an example given about this in the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, great literature on Bhakti Yoga. There was once an arrow maker who was sitting in his shop. He would hone the tips of the arrows and then use some special instruments to make sure they were perfectly straight. He was famous for his arrows; people used to purchase from him all the time because they were so perfectly balanced.

One day, while he was in his shop, the King came through the city and passed by the arrow maker's shop. When a King goes by, there is fanfare: there were dancers, jugglers, flame-swallowers, music, bands. He went by in a palanquin carried by ornately dressed bearers; there were elephants—what a tumult! It took an hour to pass. Soon afterwards, the son of the arrow maker came running through the shop and said, "Did you see the King? Did you see the King?"

The arrow maker said, "What King?"

The son said, "He just passed by, right in front of your own shop!"

He said, "I was unaware."

Why was he unaware? Because he had one single-minded purpose, which was sharpening his arrows and doing his work. Therefore, he wasn't concerned—or wasn't even aware—that the King had passed through the town. So this is what's called in the Bhagavad-gītā 'The one-pointed attention': vyavasāyātmikā buddhiḥ. The intelligence is fixed, going in one direction to achieve the ultimate goal.

Bhakti Yoga shows us how, if we're clear about the ultimate goal of life—what we are trying to get out of life, ultimately. I'm not talking just about some financial thing or a health goal we are working on—but why are we here in the first place? What does the end look like? Is there a purpose at the end for us to be focused on? If we have that in mind, we don't even note the disturbances that come to us when we're absorbed in the ultimate purpose of life. (0:28:18)

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Awareness is all important. Just be aware that you’re aware. You could do that. Try to wrap your awareness around the mantra so that it’s wrapped up tight. That’s the main job and the heavy lifting of chanting japa; it’s not moving your lips, but it’s wrapping your awareness around the mantra. So be aware that you’re aware. See what awareness is. It can go any direction, wrap it around the mantra and keep doing that. Make sure it’s wrapped tight.

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There's a story my teacher told about a person. In this case it is a man, Scott. Poor Scott, he put his money in the wrong bank account.

He was investing over many years. He was 37 years old, and had been investing since he was seven. He got a US Treasury bond and he invested that when he was a kid—he got it for his birthday, and he kept saving his whole life. When he went to make a withdrawal, he realized he had been putting his money in the wrong bank account his whole life, and there was nothing in it.

Knowing the difference between reality and illusion is really important because if you invest in illusion, first of all, there’s no compound interest. Second of all, there’s nothing there to draw upon. So, what’s the practicality of knowing the difference between yourself and your life situation? Well, that’s indicated in the next slide—'the money slide':

Take time to invest in Sat. If you're doing an experiment with this and you're setting goals, find out what’s eternal, what is always existing, and what will be there after this body is finished. I set a five-year goal that culminates in 2026, and I’m working on it right now to make sure that it happens. Those five years went by so fast; I don’t even know where they went. It’s just, all of a sudden, 2026, and I say, "Okay, this is the year."

If everyone set a five-year goal, it would go by really fast. But what if you set a 125-year goal? JM, why don’t you write down a goal that you’d like to see come to fruition in 125 years? Manu, why are you smiling when I say that? Why does that seem so funny?

Manu: "I think it just makes me think that I can write some impossible goals, also, which I think is impossible.

Well, it does bring your mind to the question: Where will I be in 125 years? Doesn’t it? It’s possible to live to 125, but okay, stretch it out to 150. Where will you be 150 years from now? For that matter, where will you be100 years from now? Where were you 100 years ago? (None of you are 100 years old now.)

So this is a consideration. We don’t know, but what the Bhagavad-gītā is telling us is that you were somewhere. You—the person you are now—you were somewhere. Not the body 'you'. Not the American, Canadian, man, woman... or for any cats listening to this program today. We do have a few cat fans that tune in; Chuck’s looking for the cat. Yeah, they listen too!

But you might not have been a cat in your last life, cats who are listening today. You could have been a dog. I hate to freak any of the cats out here today, but that’s a fact. It's because we are Sat and the body is not sat. So, invest in Sat. That’s the idea. That’s satisfying. You’re putting the money in the right bank account.

There are a couple of excuses there. Somebody did a graffiti down there at the bottom; it must have been with a spray can. It says: "But I'm too busy." And then somebody else came along with another spray paint can and said: "Busy doing what?" That’s the big question.We're always busy. This is something..(41:32)

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To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=launch2025

https://vaisesikadasayatra.blogspot.com/

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Add to your wisdom literature collection:

https://iskconsv.com/book-store/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=launch2025

https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=launch2025

https://thefourquestionsbook.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=launch2025