How to preach door to door?

[Guest guest]

How to preach door to door?

 

(Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur).

 

(3) Please preach the kirtana of the Supreme Lord, even if in doing so you

have to incur debt; then in order to pay off that debt, you will have to

engage more in seva. When your creditors put pressure on you, you will be

forced to beg for more alms. And as the pious householders will not give you

alms unless your character and conduct are pure, you will be forced to

preserve a pure lifestyle with great determination and care. I will not

leave a penny for you, so that in future you won't indulge in laziness and

you won't be able to give up your devotional lives full of hari-kirtana and

hari-seva.

 

The matha is the center of hari-kirtana, and hari-kirtana is life and

consciousness. To make sure that there is no place for laziness, bad

conduct, trivial thought, gossip, or vulgar desire in the matha, you have to

go from door to door, where your hari-kirtana will be tested by the public.

Then the public will think that they are the givers of alms and you are the

receivers of alms-in other words, that their status is higher than yours-and

they will criticize you in many ways, thinking you are objects of their

mercy. Perhaps some of them will also be ready to kick you out. Then, on one

hand,

 

(1) you will be able to become trnad api sunica (lower than the straw in

the street) and manada (prepared to give respect to all others), and on the

other hand,

 

(2) you will take great care to make your lives and characters pure

and exemplary.

 

(3) Furthermore, what will be beneficial for you is this: as you

will correct the mistakes of the common people by citing the message of

sadhu, sastra and guru-varga, you will not repeat those same mistakes.