94 The Nectar of Devotion

the Lord, and so the brahmana was doing this. When he had fixed the
form of the Lord in his mind, he began to imagine in his meditations
that he was dressing the Lord very nicely in costly clothing, with
ornaments, helmets and other paraphernalia. Then he offered his re-
spectful obeisances by bowing down before the Lord. After finishing
the dressing he began to imagine that he was cleaning the temple very
nicely. After cleansing the temple, he imagined that he had many
water jugs made of gold and silver, and he took all those jugs to the
river and filled them with the holy water. Not only did he collect
water from Godavari, but he collected from the Ganges, Yamuna,
Narmada and Kaveri. Generally a Vaisnava, while worshiping the
Lord, collects water from all these rivers by mantra chanting. This
brahmana, instead of chanting some mantra, imagined that he was
physically securing water from all these rivers in golden and silver
water pots. Then he collected all kinds of worshipful paraphernalia—
flowers, fruits, incense and sandalwood pulp. He collected everything
to place before the Deity. All these waters, flowers and scented arti-
cles were then very nicely offered to the Deities to Their satisfaction.
Then he offered dratrika, and with the regulative principles he
finished all these activities in the correct worshiping method.

He would daily execute similar performances as his routine work,
and he continued to do so for many, many years. Then one day the
brahmana imagined in his meditations that he had prepared some
sweet rice with milk and sugar and offered the preparation to the
Deity. However, he was not very satisfied with the offering because
the sweet rice had been prepared recently and it was still very hot.
(This preparation, sweet rice, should not be taken hot. The cooler
the sweet rice, the better its taste.) So because the sweet rice was pre-
pared by the brahmana very recently, he wanted to touch it so that
he could know whether it was fit for eating by the Lord. As soon as
he touched the sweet rice pot with his finger, he immediately was
burnt by the heat of the pot. In this way, his meditation broke. Now,
when he looked at his finger, he saw that it was burnt, and he was
wondering in astonishment how this could have happened. Because
he was simply meditating on touching the hot sweet rice, he never
thought that his finger would actually become burnt.
