Guru maharaj: One question at a time. We try to dovetail our material desire with Krishna’s service. Say we want to eat nice food, offer to Krishna nice food, take the prasadam. Say we want a nice house, so plan it that part of the house you can use for preaching. Many disciples in the Middle East, they build their house in India and they kept the garage or some part of the house for preaching. In this, you should also see that the preaching part is separate from the living part. The family should have its privacy, at the same time, the preaching should also go on. So in that way some of the people may design the house in such a way that it has a preaching facility, at the same time there is privacy for family. But if wants to eat cow meat, that cannot be dovetailed. So normal material desire may be dovetailed, but not sinful ones.
Regarding the 108, 108 is the numerical equivalent of the Absolute Truth. Astotharashata. So 108 therefore is a special number. In fact, in front of the guru’s name sometimes 108 is mentioned. In Kumbha mela you find different mayawadis or, acharyas, some put 108 some put 1008, some put 10008, 100,0008 and so on. I million eight! Ha! So, they call themselves jagat guru. Prabhupad said that they are in charge of one village ashram, and they call themselves worldwide guru, jagat guru. Prabhupad he was a real Jagatguru. But since the Jagatguru name had been so cheapened he said, please don’t call me Jagatguru. Alright, thank you very much! I will go here and meet the devotees, behind the glass.
HH JAYAPATAKA SWAMI
9th February 2019
Chennai, India