Sunday, February 9

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 25 May 2013, Simhachalam, Germany)

rivers and lakesOnce I was staying in a particular town which has a path along a river and I used to take walks along that river during the day. So, one night I was dreaming… I was on a road that was leading to the path next to the river… I was not yet so close to the river. Suddenly, I saw a huge green snake in this river, in the European river. What was a huge green snake doing in a European river?

So, I was totally out of place and an enormous boa constrictor type of snake was swimming in the water. I was just looking at it, “Wow, look at that.” There were some ducks swimming in the river and he swallowed them just like that, “Wow this snake means business!”  And next moment, this snake suddenly crawled onto the shore so I turned around and said, “Okay, time to go.” And just as I was about to go, “whoop,” I just went straight into the air. I flew up into the air and then made a landing again, and then I woke up. What a dream!

When you have a dream like that, at first you don’t know quite what to do. Then later, it started to dawn upon me, that the snake was representing lust! This all-devouring sinful enemy lust that was swimming on that river and devouring various living entities that are swimming on the river of sense enjoyment. And then, when the snake came in my direction, I flew up into the air and then I was thinking, “What did that mean?” I was thinking, “Yes, I was too light,” and I tried to remember that as I was flying up, I was sort of thinking, “I am too light.”

kks_euMost people will not have that problem, in this modern world. I was too light and most people cracked the earth wherever they walked! Then something came into my consciousness, a sudden remembrance, a faint memory appeared, “too light”. Yes, when the bhakta is “too light”, when there is not enough weight in his worship, when he has not sufficiently become absorbed, then a devotee becomes “too light”.

That is just the opposite of guru. The word guru, as we may know, the etymological word is “heavy”. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura explains that the word guru means heavy because guru is always fixed at the lotus feet of Krsna and nothing can move him from that. That heaviness comes from his worship, from his devotional service. There is bhakta-ābhāsa which is sometimes translated as the dim reflection of a devotee and nāma-ābhāsa which is a dim reflection of the holy name.

So only in the beginning, yes when the absorption is not there, one becomes pliable. Absorption must be there and that is what gives us the spiritual weight.

 

 

 

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