Shrivas Thakura – The summit of selfless service in offering everything for the Lord’s pleasure

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna on this sacred day associated with Shri Aas Thakur let us contemplate on his extraordinary position and contribution in Lord Chaitanya’s past times Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had five primary had four primary associates one of them is Shri Aas Thakur and he is such a vital associate that even the pancha-tattva pranam mantra he comes along as one of the five tattvas and he represents the jiva and he is often in the pancha-tattva riti temple in the Mayapur he is with folded hands offering his obeisances that indicates that he is absorbed in ecstasy gratefully receiving the glimpse of the ecstasy of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and gratefully assisting in whatever way he can that is also that position of folded hands ready to serve and in Lord Chaitanya’s ecstasy that is how Shri Aas Thakur actually contributes also his past times are many but perhaps the most significant of his contributions is the way he offered his house as the arena for Lord Chaitanya’s past times Chaitanya Mahaprabhu initially did not exhibit his ecstasy to people in general and so he wanted his ecstasy to be shared only among those who were able to comprehend and relish similar ecstasy or at least be in that direction of comprehending and relishing so he wanted to do his past times of kirtan in closed doors and Shri Aas Thakur offered his own house and his house is considered as a rasasthali just as raslila was performed in the forests of Inda and similarly the essence of raslila is the separation of the union of Krishna and the gopis headed by Radharani Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is in the mood of Radharani and Krishna is manifesting as the holy name and that way there is the raslila which is being reenacted in the in the house, in the courtyard of Shri Aas Thakur and Shri Aas Thakur’s totally selfless service attitude is demonstrated by how at one time when at night the kirtan was going on suddenly his son passed away and the ladies in the house started crying, such a devastating thing that happened but Shri Aas Thakur went in and he said when he heard, now naturally he loved his son and he was grief struck but he did not let those emotions overwhelm him and he thought he immediately told and he said ultimately death has to come to everyone and how fortunate it is that this child died when Lord Chaitanya himself was present in the house doing kirtan, so surely he has attained a glorious destination why are you crying? Now, it is that you cry not only is the crying in vain because the child has attained a glorious destination but also it will be a disturbance to Lord Chaitanya he is performing ecstasy and our goal should be to assist him in his ecstasy not to disturb his ecstasy so if you don’t stop crying immediately he was so upset, he said ordered them to stop crying immediately and seeing his transcendental consciousness they immediately calmed down and then as the news spread among the devotees they were shocked now they were, they looked at Shri Aas Thakur and he was so stoic, they were amazed to see his service attitude and his devotion but still they couldn’t contain themselves and they were also participating in the kirtans but the kirtans were becoming more and more strained and they were all strained and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu after a period of time noticed it and he asked what has happened and Vaishnava told Shri Aas, sun has passed today and when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu heard so long ago, he was so amazed, he said what what devotion you have, Shri Aas and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu out of a great miracle brought the sun back and let the sun speak with his father and he exhibited his omnipotence but more on the exhibition of his omnipotence, this passage then centers on the exhibition of Shri Aas Thakur’s extraordinary devotion and it is this selfless absorption in contributing to the absorption of the Lord, that is the standard of pure devotion and we are all far away from that but by meditating on the exaltedness of such devotion, at the very least we can pray that we don’t consciously or intentionally disrupt the Lord’s service we may not have the opportunity to participate in the Lord’s Sankirtan, we may not have the opportunity to participate in the Lord’s direct pastimes but we are also doing some services in the mission, we are at least doing our sadhana and if we try to do that in a mood of service, that will be a pleasure to the Lord and if we do it in a distracted way that will interfere with the Lord’s pleasure, so we can pray to Shri Aas Thakur to give us a drop of his selfless pure love and thereby we can also assist in some small way and invite the spirit of devotion Thank you Hare Krishna