Upadesa: Song 18

(1) ki ar bolibo tore mana? mukhe bolo "prema prema" bastutah tyajiya hema, sunya-grantha ancale bandhana (2) abhysiya asrupata, lampha jhamph akasmat, murccha-pray thakaha padiya e loka bancite ranga, pracariya asat-sanga, kamini-kancana labha giya (3) premer sadhana-"bhakti", ta'te noila anurakti, suddha prema kenome milibe? dasa-aparadha tyaji', nirantara nama bhaji', krpa hale su-prema paibe (4) na manile su-bhajana, sadhu-sange sankirtana, na korile nirjane smarana na uthiya brksopari, tanatani phal dhori', dusta-phal korile arjana (5) akaitaba krsna-prema, jena su-bimala hema, ei phal nrloke durlabha kaitabe bancana-matra, hao age jogya-patra, tabe prema hoibe sulabha (6) kame-preme dekho bhai, laksanaete bheda nai, tabu kama 'prema' nahi hoy tumi to' barile kama, mithya tahe 'prema' nama, aropile kise subha hoy?

(1) What more shall I say to you, my dear mind? You are expert at giving lip-service by always speaking of "love for Krishna, love for Krishna", but the real fact is that you are renouncing the real gold simply to tie an empty knot in the border of your cloth. (In other words, you lose the substance to grasp at something false). (2) Well-practiced in artificially shedding tears and in suddenly leaping here and there, you like to fall on the ground and pretend to be unconscious in ecstatic love for Krishna. You perform such mischievous pranks only to cheat the innocent public and thereby broadcast and popularize your own wicked association. This is all such nonsense just so you can attract women and money. (3) The means for attaining pure, ecstatic love for Godhead is called "devotional service". If you have no inclination or attachment to this pure devotional process, then how do you expect to factually come into contact with pure love for Krishna? Carefully avoiding the ten offences in chanting the holy name, just worship that name incessantly, and you will attain the highest quality of pure ecstatic love when the mercy comes to you. (4) But your idea, dear mind, is to neglect the best and most auspicious process of worshiping Krishna, namely the congregational chanting of His holy names in the association of purified devotees. And you don't even bother to try to remember Him in a lonely place. This is just like trying to pick fruits forcibly from a tree by jumping at them from the ground. Instead of climbing the tree to properly pick the sweet, ripened fruits from the top of the tree, you will simply get the sour, unripe fruits by such a jumping process. (5) Ecstatic love for Krishna which is completely freed from the propensity to cheat is just like spotlessly pure gold, and the fruits of such pure love are rarely found in this world. However, my dear mind, your cheating process of imitation so-called love is simply a fraud. To get the real pure love, you have to first make yourself a fit candidate, and then true transcendental love will become very easily obtainable for you. (6) My dear brother, just compare the characteristics of your bogus lust with the characteristics of true love for Krishna, there is practically no difference at all in the external symptoms of both. Nevertheless, this artificial lust is definitely not true love at all. You are completely covered with lust, but you lie and falsely call it "prema". Therefore how will you be blest with real spiritual well-being?