Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Bhagvatam” one should, with love, offer food prepared with ghee to the Deity of the Supreme Personality of Godhead and then offer the prasada to a suitable person—a Vaishnava or brahmana considering every living being a part and parcel of the Supreme Lord,4th July

Bhagvatam” one should, with love, offer food prepared with ghee to the Deity of the Supreme Personality of Godhead and then offer the prasada to a suitable person—a Vaishnava or brahmana considering every living being a part and parcel of the Supreme Lord


TRANSLATION
When one gets the opportunity of a suitable auspicious time and place, one should, with love, offer food prepared with ghee to the Deity of the Supreme Personality of Godhead and then offer the prasada to a suitable person—a Vaishnava or brahmana. This will be the cause of everlasting prosperity.

TRANSLATION
One should offer prasada to the demigods, the saintly persons, one's forefathers, the people in general, one's family members, one's relatives and one's friends, seeing them all as devotees of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

PURPORT
As mentioned above, it is recommended that everyone distribute prasada, considering every living being a part and parcel of the Supreme Lord. Even in feeding the poor, one should distribute prasada. In Kali-yuga there is a scarcity of food almost every year, and thus philanthropists spend lavishly to feed the poor. 

For this they invent the term daridra-narayana-seva. This is prohibited. One should distribute sumptuous prasada, considering everyone a part of the Supreme Lord, but one should not juggle words to make a poor man Narayana. Everyone is related to the Supreme Lord, but one should not mistakenly think that because one is related to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he has become the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Narayana. 

Such a Mayavada philosophy is extremely dangerous, especially for a devotee. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu has therefore strictly forbidden us to associate with Mayavadi philosophers. 

Mayavadi-bhashya sunile haya sarva-nasa: if one associates with the Mayavada philosophy, his devotional life is doomed.

TRANSLATION
A person fully aware of religious principles should never offer anything like meat, eggs or fish in the sraddha ceremony, and even if one is a kshatriya, he himself should not eat such things. When suitable food prepared with ghee is offered to saintly persons, the function is pleasing to the forefathers and the Supreme Lord, who are never pleased when animals are killed in the name of sacrifice.