Kusum Sarovar meditation – Cherishing the culture rich with spiritual stimuli

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
This shloka is actually spoken in a mood of separation from Krishna. Bhagavatam speaks of time when Krishna has departed from the world.
The Srijas are feeling separation from Krishna. And that same mood when the Gopis are feeling separation from Krishna is talked about in the Gopi Gita. And the Gopis are saying in this verse, My dear Lord, when you go out every day to graze the cows, When you go out to graze the cows, and you can’t see your beautiful face for a whole day, at that time, even one moment appears to be like It appears to be like a millennium, it appears like a yuga.
It appears like a millennium, it appears like a yuga. And even when you come back and we are able to see you, unfortunately at that time also there is no union. Because our eyelids blink.
And the blinking of the eyelids deprives those of your association. So while here at Kusum Sarovar, we are seeing that how there is such a beautiful legacy of devotion that is available for us to relish. Here, inside this post we have beautiful art which depicts the important incarnations of Krishna, intricately done.
And it signifies how there is a whole culture of devotion where hundreds, thousands of artists came together to make magnificent works of art like this. Here we see the Kusum Sarovar, and even 500 years after it was made, it is still of a majestic beauty. Most of us, we have to stay not so close.
It is difficult for us to stay close to Krishna and his holy abode of Vrindavan. The Gopis, they feel separated from Krishna when Krishna goes away. In our case, Krishna doesn’t go away, we have to go away.
We have so many of our worldly obligations because of which we can’t see Krishna. We can’t be there where Krishna is. And even more unfortunate is, just as for the Gopis, their eyelids blink and they can’t see Krishna, the eyelids blinking is simply an involuntary action.
But for us, actually, if we conceive our mind as having lids, even when we are Krishna, our mind lids keep blinking. That means, even when we are beholding Krishna, our mind doesn’t think of Krishna. Even when we are in front of the deities, we are thinking of so many other things.
We are thinking, I didn’t get enough sleep, we are thinking bad, it’s so hot, we are so crowded. So, actually, we desperately need more than the emotion of bhakti, the process of bhakti. The emotion of bhakti will come and it will go.
At our sadhata stage, that is not so steady. But it is the process of bhakti which will gradually make the emotion enriched. Bhakti Samritsindhu and thereafter Ujjwal Neelamani, which are two very important devotional books, written by Shri Rupa Goswami, there he describes that there is something called Uddhipan.
Uddhipan means spiritual stimulus. So, that way stimulates us to remember Krishna, just as we have material sense objects, which stimulate our remembrance of sense objects or sense pleasures. So, like that there are spiritual sense objects.
And that is called Uddhipan. So, anything that stimulates our remembrance of Krishna. And we need to have in our life as many Uddhipan as possible.
So, when we come to holy places like Vrindavan, when we come here to Kishen Sarovar, at that time, this is the Uddhipan. It stimulates our thoughts towards Krishna. And Krishna Prabhupada’s great mercy that he and his followers have built temples and have created a whole cultural arrangement where there are so many Uddhipans all over the world.
And we can feel Krishna’s remembrance. We can feel stimulated to feel his remembrance wherever we are in the world. What Shri Prabhupada has provided collectively, we have to cherish individually.
We have to find out what is the Uddhipan that stimulates our remembrance of Krishna. It may be spiritual words, it may be cute words, it may be some darshan of Krishna, some picture which we may see. It may be a particular devotee’s association, their classes, their example.
It may be the holy name of Krishna. It may be a particular song about Krishna. So, whatever is the Uddhipan that stimulates our remembrance of Krishna, we should see that Krishna is manifesting his mercy, his all-attractiveness through that.
So, for me personally, this Krishna Sarovar is a very potent spiritual stimulus. So, I am grateful to be here. I am grateful to Krishna Prabhupada and the previous Acharyas that their mercy, the message of mercy, and that the opportunity to come to know of Krishna, just from a small extent.
I just try to serve him in some small way.