How can we make our heart into a temple?

From Sundar Murari Prabhu

You were explaining bringing the altar from temple to home to Heart. We have set up altar at home and worship. What are the steps involved in bringing the altar to the heart?

Answer Podcast:

Transcript

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It will also become clearer. Question from Sundar Murari Prabhu.
How can we bring the Lord from the temple to the home, to the heart? What does it mean to make the heart into an altar? Answer. The progression of devotion is what is being emphasized over here. We cannot bring about internal change and certainly we cannot sustain internal change without external change.
So when we visit a temple, our consciousness becomes spiritualized. But when we come out of the temple, then again our consciousness gets caught in worldly things. But if we come to a home and we have an altar at home, then again we feel spiritual because of the presence of the altar and because of praying, offering obeisances to the altar.
And further, the purpose of all this is to invoke the presence of the Lord in our heart. So the Lord is present in our heart but at present His presence is not manifest to us. It is not perceivable or accessible to us.
And because of that, we repeatedly need to have external places where His presence is perceivable and relishable for us. So gradually, by repeatedly exposing ourselves to such devotional stimuli, the presence of the Lord within us will become manifest. Now the presence of the Lord becoming manifest means that He becomes our primary object of attachment.
When we say that we make the heart into altar, that means that we consider the Lord the most important person and we enthrone Him in our heart. So right now, if we introspect, we may find that some attachment, maybe wealth or maybe some form of sense gratification or maybe something like that, that has a prominent place in our heart. Still, if we keep practicing bhakti seriously, over time we will realize that the presence, our remembrance of the Lord will become more steady, more natural and we can especially try to see how we can individually best connect with the Lord.
That means the more we are able to connect with the Lord in loving remembrance, the more we will be able to remember Him easily, constantly. Constantly may take a long time right now. We may seem to be far away from us, but as regularly as possible.
Even if we can’t be consistent, we can be resilient. Consistent means doing something constantly, but resilient means even if we are knocked down, even if we get deviated, we bring ourselves back on course. So by finding out in what manifestation we can connect more strongly with the Lord, it may be through kirtans, it may be through shloka memorization and recitation, it may be through hearings and classes, it may be through singing the holy names, whatever or chanting the holy names, whatever it may be.
We find the way in which we can connect most intensely with the Lord and we focus on that connection and thus invoke more and more of His presence in our heart. So, mamumana mandire, as the Arjuna Ram says, Lord, let my mind become a temple for you. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu says, moramana vrindavan, that my mind, here by mind He is referring to the heart, the consciousness.
He says, it is vrindavan, Krishna is manifesting over there. So, Radhakrishna pranamora jugalakishor, jivane marane gati aranahimor. So, Radhakrishna, we want them to become our life and soul.
Just as whatever we are attached to, that occupies center stage in our heart, by the practice of bhakti, diligently, our consciousness will be redirected from the world towards the Lord and our attachments will also big shift from the world to the Lord and as the Lord becomes the strongest object of attachment, then our heart will become transformed into a temple, where the Lord will be enthroned on the altar of our heart. Thank you. Great, Radhakrishna.