(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 25 December 2014, Cape Town, South Africa, Srimad Bhagavatam 9.19.25)
Question: You explained about the necessity of stretching ourselves and raising the bar of our devotion. How can we know if we are stretching too much or too little?
We must begin to accept some of the practices of devotional service and fix ourselves. That is the beginning – in fixing ourselves in chanting, in service, in ashram, in brahminical qualities… Once we have been fixed in a particular situation for a while, then we can raise the bar and fix ourselves on that level. So we keep it for a while and then again – raise the bar. Abhyasa yoga means practice, but practice translates to fixing ourselves. However, as you raise the bar, you have to do more to maintain it.
I remember, we used to do some retreats in Drakensberg (South Africa) and we made everyone work quite hard to make really special darshans of the Deities. One year, Indradyumna Maharaj came upon my request and I asked him to introduce his Deities to the devotees. He explained about his Deities and he got so fired up about sharing his Deities with the devotees that the next morning he also shared his puja with the devotees; around three-hundred devotees were all part of his puja!
Well, it was interesting because everybody knows that Swami is into his puja for a long, long time and it is of a very high standard. I was checking it all out and I noticed that he was playing a soundtrack where there was a whole sequence of going through guru, going through associates of Lord Caitanya, going through Lord Nityananda and all the mahajans, sort of slowly, slowly bringing it to Vrindavan, step-by-step. It was very interesting! Then I said, ‘Maharaj, that was like two hours! How are you doing that every day?!’
He replied, ‘Well, I got to do something! I got to do something to be Krsna conscious!’ That is the point! You do not get it for nothing. You cannot be Indradyumna Maharaj for nothing! There is a price to pay!
