serving the truth

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A chanter of the Kirtan of Hari is necessarily the uncompromising enemy of

wordliness and hypocrisy. As chanter of the Kirtan of Hari, it is the

constant function to dispell all misconceptions by the preaching of the

truth in the most unambiguous form without any respect of person, place or

time. That form is to be adopted which is least likely to be misunderstood.

It is his bounden duty to oppose clearly and frankly any person who tries to

deceive and harm himself and other people by misrepresenting the Truth due

to malice or bonafide misunderstanding. This will be possible if the chanter

of Kirtan is always prepared to submit to be trodden by thoughtless people

if any discomfort to himself will enable him to do good to his persecutors

by chanting the Truth in the most unambiguous manner. If he is unwilling or

afraid of considerations of self-respect or personal discomfort to chant the

Kirtan under all circumstances he is unfit to be a preacher of the Absolute

Truth. Humility implies perfect submission to the Truth and no sympathy for

untruth. A person who entertains any partiality for untruth is unfit to

chant the kirtan of Hari. Any clinging to untruth is opposed to the

principle of humility born of absolute submission to the truth.

 

Those who serve the Truth at all time, by means of all their faculties, and

have no hankering for the trivialities of this world, are always necessarily

free from malice born of competing worldliness and are, therefore, fit to

admonish those who are actively engaged in harming themselves and others by

the method of opposing or misrepresenting the Truth in order to attain

rewards of such policy in the shape of a perpetuation of the state of misery

and ignorance. The method which is employed by the servant of the good

preceptor for preventing such misrepresentation of the truth is a part and

parcel of the truth itself. It may not always be pleasing to the diseased

susceptibilities of deluded minds and may even be denounced by them as a

malicious act with which they are only too familiar, but the words of truth

from the lips of a loyal and humble servant of Hari possess such beneficent

power that all effort to suppress or obstruct them only serves to vindicate

to impartial minds the necessity of complete submission to the Absolute

Truth as the only cure of the disease of wordliness. Humility that is

employed in the unambiguous service of the Truth is necessarily and

qualitatively different from its perverted prototype which is practised by

the cunning people of this world for gaining their worldly ends. The

professors of pseudo-humility have reason to be afraid of the preachings of

the servants of Hari -- one of whose duties is to expose the enormous

possibility of mischief that is possessed by the forms of so-called

spiritual conduct -- when they are taken to task for serving the untruth.

>From the Great Favor, a Harmonist article, by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta

Sarasvati Thakura