Bhagavatam-daily 232 – 11.11.38 – The desire to become bigger keeps us a beggar

Mantra mantra mantra mantra mantra mantra mantra mantra mantra faithfully establish the holy places for my worship and in the Puranas often there is profuse glorification given of the abundant fruits that await those who build temples for the lord and often such fruits are talked about in both material and spiritual terms they are talked about in terms of how much that is the benefit somebody will attain heaven somebody will attain heavenly opulence somebody will attain long long life but these are like the initial free samples that a saintly person may give so as to attract attention of customers and to make them habitual customers so like that certain material benefits are talked about in the scripture for establishing the places of worship for him material benefits are talked about primarily to allure people and then as we start practicing bhakti somehow or the other fix the mind on Krishna so when we fix the mind on him by that we slowly start realizing that Krishna is all interactive Krishna is our top most benefactor he is our ultimate lover and thus we want to devote ourselves more and more to him and as we become more and more devoted to him our heart becomes more and more enriched and then we no longer care much about material improvement that i should have a bigger car, bigger house, bigger job these things don’t matter when our devotion becomes bigger because we understand that in material life the desire to become bigger keeps us a beggar a beggar is a person who is always craving for what one does not have and often the beggar also usually does not have the power to get what one does not have it is not that beggars have a right to demand give me food the beggars have to beg and if no one shows them some mercy then they may not get any alms and they may have to starve similarly the desire to become bigger makes us a beggar before the world why? because we start thinking that i can’t live without a bigger job without a bigger house without a bigger car and we may say unlike beggars i am working hard, i have the talents with my talents i will improve my situation and thus i will rejoice in attaining bigger things but actually the results that we get in this world are not functions of our talent alone they depend on various other factors that are not in our control and thus the desire for worldly things makes us often mortifyingly dependent on the world because no matter how sincerely we desire no matter how diligently we work in this world things can go wrong and we may not get the result that we think we deserve and thus we may get devastated by the unexpected failure so a devotee needs to have shraddha the faith that there can be no lasting treasure in this world as jesus said don’t store your treasure in this world store it in the kingdom of god so when we build temples for the lord here essentially by building a house for him here we build a house for ourselves in his abode we build a house for ourselves in his heart krishna said oh this devotee he is ready to sacrifice so much for me this devotee is so sincere, so dedicated, so committed let me reward this devotee and krishna may initially reward by giving something material and the devotee if the devotion is weak the devotee may be attracted by the material thing and give up devotion but if the devotion is serious then the devotee will say oh krishna is even more facilitated to serve him, so kind krishna, let me serve him more and more so rather than the material being a distraction in the transcendental for the serious devotee the material becomes the accelerator in approaching the spiritual because often the more temptations we resist in trying to serve krishna and the more service we offer to krishna with greater resources then the more we please him by the intent of serious devotion and thus we move closer to him so by putting our faith not in this world and its promises of pleasure and trying to build homes in this world instead we build with faith in the lord a home for him in this world in the form of temples and other arrangements necessary for worshipping him here and by thus serving him we advance in love and he naturally, we advance in our love for him and he by his great mercy propels us onwards and upwards towards him