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Friday, April 5, 2013

Appreciating Capacity - CHAD - Chapter 8 until 5 May 2013



Dear Devotees,

Please accept our most humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupad!  
In his recent  Caitanya Caritamrita reading session, HG Vaisesika Prabhu read, “ The Lord’s pastimes are differentiated according to the appreciating capacity of the different types of bodies of the living entities. The Supreme Lord bestows the most merciful benediction upon human society when He appears in His human form. It is then that humanity gets the opportunity to engage in different kinds of eternal service to the Lord.”(CC Ādi 4.34 purport)

Most often we present a list of material requests and complaints before the Lord and He answers our prayers and fulfills our petty petitions. It is His merciful nature to help those who cry out to Him. Unfortunately, we take this attribute of the Lord for granted and we never take the time to understand and appreciate all the wonderful works He has performed in our lives. We are very busy adding more items to our daily prayer petition list. The problem with this type of worship is that, no matter how many abundant  blessings we receive from the Lord we will continue to remain empty in our hearts and never taste the nectar of unalloyed devotional service.

Being an ocean of mercy, the benevolent Lord Krishna appreciates our devotion even if we are motivated by selfish desires (BG 7.18), but he also encourages us to rise to the higher platform of selfless loving devotion. For this purpose, Lord descends and gives us knowledge about Himself, His devotees, and His abode  through his instructions to Arjuna in Bhagavata-Gita.  When we recognize and relish His message, and positively appreciate His compassionate nature, then we become eligible to receive a much greater gift: Krishna Himself. 

Tomorrow is the all-auspicious Ekadashi day, per our CHAD plan, we will be reading Bhagavad Gita  Chapter 8, until  May 4th, 2013. In this chapter titled, ‘Attaining the Supreme’, Lord Krishna explains how by remembering Him in devotion throughout one’s life, and especially at the time of death, one can attain to His supreme abode, beyond the material world. Attached is the chapter in the convenient CHAD format. 

In the Gita Mahatmiya, Lord Siva explains to Parvati  how the devotee named Bhavasharma pleased Lord Vishnu by continuously chanting half a verse of the eighth chapter of the Bhagavad-gita. If only half a verse has so much potency, imagine the pleasure that Lord will derive if we recite the entire  chapter!

Simply by spending 7 minutes every day to recite one chapter of Bhagavad-gita, with the beginners mind, we can tremendously increase our appreciating capacity. As Vaisesika Prabhu often points out, a big shot is a small shot that keeps shooting!





With Gratitude,
Your servant,

Gandharvika Radha,
On Behalf of ISV CHAD Team,
chad.isv@gmail.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Chapter_a_day/join

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