(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 2 January 2013, Durban, South Africa, Srimad Bhagavatam 12.8.46)
Srila Prabhupada said, ‘Simply because you are dirty, that is why your house is infested with mice, rats, cockroaches and so on. Simply because you are not cleaning.’
That was his answer to it. I know that not every housewife or anyone in general may agree to that. It’s like well, what can we do? But I’ve been asked many times when I was the temple president, if I was allowing fumigation. I said, ‘Forget it!’
It’s like I’m not taking that on my head. It’s nice when you’re in an office and you think, ‘I’m the temple president and I’m doing all this for Krsna.’
Yeah, it’s fine but you could just pile a lot of karma on the top of your head, so forget it, no fumigation, no rat poison, just clean and catch them alive.
In Vrndavan, you have these rat traps which catch the rat alive; it’s a little box in a cage with a handle. And it goes in with whatever it catches and it goes into the box. And you can see people walking around with these traps, and they tend to carry things on their head. Sometimes you see a rat trap, with a rat inside, on his head and they walk to the other side of town and let him out. So we let our rats go on the other side of town, and the people from the other side of the town let the rats go on our side of town. This is traditional Vrndavan life! So there are always rats but anyway we are compassionate, we are not just going to kill, no way, we can’t.
So this is important that devotees develop the mode of goodness. We are a community and even if some of us are so transcendental, so Krsna conscious that they can even be transcendental to the mode of goodness, they will still benefit all the others by acting in the mode of goodness, because sometimes we look at this movement and we look at like, ‘The temple is transcendental, the Bhagavatam is transcendental, kirtan is transcendental, the deities are transcendental, the prasadam is transcendental, everything is transcendental except me!’
So this is the situation where many of us are in a transcendental environment, in a transcendental process but we are not so transcendental as yet and therefore we need the mode of goodness.
So therefore in our movement, it is very important that we cultivate and maintain the mode of goodness, so that we have a safe foundation which is transparent to transcendence and then from there we engage in devotional service!
