(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 17 January 2012, Radhadesh, Belgium, Srimad Bhagavatam 5.18.9)
The movement of Lord Caitanya is accommodating all kinds of people but that is not an excuse to stay how we are. We bring all this negative stuff with us, in our hand luggage… just like how when you fly on Ryanair, you put on a coat with big pockets and stuff each possible pocket because you not going to let them cheat you out of your money for that extra little kilo. No way! There are devotees who have special vests with special pockets; like a forty kilo vest. Anyway, that is going on and at one point we say, “Do we really need that much luggage?”
If you are a regular traveller and every time you have some extra kilos, you got to cheat! You put your suitcase on the scale for it to be weighed and meanwhile you keep the end hanging over a little bit and with your foot you lift the suitcase… and there five kilos saved, just like that! And if you are strong, then even more. There are so many tricks being employed when boarding a plane when we want to bring on extra luggage.
That is what we are doing here in this movement also, in our spiritual life – we are just bringing on this extra luggage which is causing lots of extra dead weight. So in our movement, there is a lot of dead weight. I know people who are perfect in saying, “Haribol, jaya, nectar, bliss prabhu!” And who can offer the flowers at exactly the right moment but they are not chanting sixteen rounds. That is ballast, dead weight, and that kind of association makes our movement heavy. When we are living in a community and there are lots of people who are not very much into actively cultivating the spiritual activities then that creates a burden on the community and weighs down the community.
