VEDIC THOUGHT

"If you cannot purify yourself by any endeavor whatsoever, then just go sit with the Vaisnavas and you will achieve all auspiciousness.".

-- Sri Ramanujacarya, Quoted in Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura's Bhaktyaloka

Baladev Vidyabhusana's commentary on Bhagavad Gita 10.11 explains Krsna’s reply to Arjuna's tacit question about how a living entity who has been covered by ignorance since time immemorial can attain true enlightenment.

Commentary -

"Krsna-bhakti is the only way to deracinate miseries from the world. You are working only for the good of the body and treating the symptoms, not the original disease. Your patchwork schemes of various social, economic, and political ideologies are like blowing on a boil, which gives but a momentary
and false sense of assuagement. The real cure is to lance the boil and squeeze out the pus. Similarly, the pus of material attachment must be excised by the sharp words of the expert devotee, the only genuine well-wisher of human society."

- Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, Excerpt from Sri Bhaktisiddhanta Vaibhava titled 'Blowing on a Boil'

[Deracinate = to terminate at that root]
[Assuagement = calming, soothing, mollifying]

On Altruism
"The thousands of karmis who have opened innumerable hospitals, old age homes, centers for the poor, and schools, and the thousands of jnanis who have undergone meditation and severe austerities, are insignificant compared to a single kanistha-adhikari Vaishnava once ringing the bell before the Lord's deity. This is not sectarianism, but plain truth. Atheists are wholly incapable of realizing this; thus they become either direct or indirect blasphemers of devotional service, or adherents to the doctrine of harmonistic all-inclusiveness.

(from "Sri Bhaktisiddhanta Vaibhava" by HH Bhakti Vikasa Swami, volume 2, p.392-3):

[A disciple of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati] Sripada Nayanananda Babaji (formerly Satprasangananda Brahmacari) related the following anecdote:

One should carefully give up attachment for material assets. People in general have spontaneous attachment for house, household paraphernalia, clothes, ornaments, wealth, wife and children's health, their own health, eatables, trees, and animals. Some people are so addicted to smoking, chewing pan, eating fish and meat, and drinking alcohol that their practice of spiritual life is obstructed. Many people do not respect the Lord's remnants out of great attachment to eating things like fish. Because of the desire to constantly smoke, many people's study of devotional scriptures, relish for hearing and chanting, and remaining long in temples is obstructed. Attachment for these things is averse to the constant practice of devotional service.

"Do not try to discover the nature of truth by the exercise of your imagination. Do not endeavor to attain the truth through experience of this world. Do not manufacture truth in order to satisfy your erring inclinations, or hastily accept anything for the reason it satisfies such inclinations. Do not regard as truth anything that has been "built up" or has the support of a majority of people like yourself, nor as truth anything that is rejected by the overwhelming majority. According to the scriptures there will be found hardly one in a crore of human beings who really worships the truth. What is proclaimed by the united voices of all the people of this world as truth may turn out to be false. Therefore, cease to confront the truth in a challenging mood.

"To make us wholly devoted devoted to Krsna's name, Sri Gaurangadeva, the combined form of Radha Govinda, came to this world. But if we disregard His teachings and show no interest in sri-nama-seva, we will never attain auspiciousness. Sri-nama-sankirtan is the best sadhana. If other sadhanas help us in krsna-sankirtana, then they deserve to called sadhana: otherwise there are simply impediments to sadhana. Sri Krsna nama sankitana is the emperor of sadhanas. It is the only infallible sadhana capaable of bringing us to siddhi. Sriman Mahaprabhu did not speak of teaching arcana, but in

In 1901 Srila Bhaktivinoda published Srimad-Bhagavatarka-marici-mala. In this important book, the Thakura presents a study of the Srimad-Bhagavatam in twenty chapters, arranging its principal verses so as to illustrate the divisions of sambandha (the soul's relationship with God), abhidheya (the means for reviving that relationship) and prayojana (the ultimate goal of life). The Sanskrit verses were accompanied by Bengali prose translations and explanations by the Thakura. The Bhagavatam is compared to the sun and each chapter is considered to be an individual ray of Bhagavata sunlight.

The world stands in no need of any reformer. The world has a very competent person guiding its minutest happenings. The person who finds that there is scope for reform of the world, himself stands in need of reform. The world goes on in its own perfect way. No person can deflect it but the breath of a hair from the course chalked out by Providence. When we perceive any change being actually effected in the course of events of this world by the agency of a particular individual, we also know that the agent possess no real power at any stage. The agent finds himself driven forward by a force belonging to a different category from himself.