Janmashtami home program

Celebrating the Janmashtami festival

0:00Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Ram Hare Hare I'm very happy and honored to be with you this evening.

0:19It's a very unusual experience for me because usually we have only one Janmashtami here, but because of your mercy, I have the second one today. And it's always a very special day because in this

0:44day we celebrate the appearance in this world, the most amazing incarnation of the Lord. We all know that there are so many incarnations, Nṛsiṁhadeva is there, Varāhadeva, Kurma, Parasura.

1:01And usually what they do, they usually kill somebody. That's the main business of an avatar.

1:11Krishna himself explains this paritranaya sadhuna vinasha chadus kritam that usually when I come I protect sadhus and I kill the miscreants. But Krishna also kills every now and then. But his main business is not to kill.

1:31His main business is to teach love. And this is the most difficult business. You know how to kill, we all know. We all kill sometimes mosquitoes, sometimes cockroaches, sometimes somebody else. And when Vishnu incarnates

1:55in this world for the purpose of killing he is doing it you know with his full strength Nṛsiṁhadeva uses his nails and Vishnu is usually uses his chakra. Chakra is his main weapon.

2:15But to kill somebody by using chakra, Krishna needs only one finger. One finger is enough. When he is about to kill. But when he is about to teach how to love, he is using his ten fingers.

2:37And by using his ten fingers, by playing flute, he's explaining that it's much difficult to learn how to love, then it's m difficult to learn how to kill. Kill is not difficult.

2:52Hate we all have and we sometimes use it or misuse it. Like Maharaj mentioned that there is a war going on among people, and people are killing each other.

3:05And it's going on in Canada, we know what some people did with indigenous people. You know, people always try to harm. So it's natural in one sense for the conditioned living beings to do something harmful to others.

3:26And therefore, when Krishna wants to incarnate fully, when he wants to employ all his energies, everything which he has in his possession, he comes to teach love. There is no other way for us dull-headed people to explain what is love.

3:48And basically, while we are celebrating his janmashtami, we are celebrating the appearance of love within our heart.

3:59And if the love will appear within our heart, if really love will take over our heart, overwhelm our heart, and also will go spill out from the heart to spread this Krishna consciousness movement, then we really only celebrate Janmashtami.

4:25To celebrate Janmashtami in the real sense of the word means to have love and not only to have love but to give love to others.

Symbolic qualities of Nanda and Yasoda

4:36To give love and to give enjoyment because love is the highest enjoyment. We can see uh symbolically the names of Krishna father and mother. Father is Nanda and Nanda means joy.

4:52And he is giving joy to others by giving Krishna, bringing Krishna within this world, and therefore, uh, he is called Nanda. And Yaśodā, the meaning of the word Yaśodā means the one who gives the fame to others.

5:11Yaśodā was so generous that she gave the fame of the name of Krishna mother to Devaki. Everyone knows that Devaki is mother of Krishna, whereas we know that the real mother of Krishna is Yaśodā.

5:25It basically means that to have love within your heart,

5:30you have to have these two qualities: mother and father of Krishna, Nanda and Yaśodā symbolically represent the qualities of a human being which ensures that the love will appear within the heart.

5:45The first quality is that you want to give joy to others. You don't want to inflict pain, you want to bring some happiness to other people. You sincerely try and meditate what to do to make others happy.

6:01And another quality which you must have to ensure that the love will purify your heart completely is that you should not try to accrue fame yourself. You should not be too much into yourself, too much into your head.

6:26You should be very generous, and as Caitanya Mahāprabhu says, māna-dada, you should try to give all respect to others. If you try to give joy to others and at the same time be very respectful,

6:40very humble and very nice to other people, then Krishna will come to your heart.

Welcoming Krishna into the heart

6:48And then only Janmashtami will be the real celebration, real festival. If we only come here to take nice prasāda, that's good. But Janmashtami is not about prasāda. Janmashtami is about love coming to our heart.

7:10And for that we have to know the lessons, how Krishna comes to this world.

7:16This story about Vasudev and Devaki, the story about Nanda Yesoda is very instructive because by meditating on the stories, hearing them again and again and again, trying to understand the dynamic, the mechanism of

7:32Krishna coming to this world, we will ultimately succeed and we will bring Krishna to our heart. We will bring Krishna to Canada. Like Subhavilas Prabhu, he brought this beautiful deity Syamasundara here, Janaga.

7:50But really, this festival is about this. We come together to help each other, to explain to each other and to get into the mood to make sure that Krishna will come to our heart.

8:09And when Krishna will come to our heart, then we will become the happiest people in the world. And this is what we're all seeking. We want happiness, and happiness means to bring Krishna within our heart.

8:25And for that we know we should chant the Holy Name ourselves and we should give the Holy Name to everyone else whom we meet.

8:34Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare. Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. Being pleased with us, Krishna will definitely come to us and will make our life success. Thank you very much.