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Home > Sound Bhakti > Assimilate What You Have | SB 1.5. 15,16 | HG Vaisesika Dasa | POTH, 22 Feb 2026
Podcast: Sound Bhakti
Episode:

Assimilate What You Have | SB 1.5. 15,16 | HG Vaisesika Dasa | POTH, 22 Feb 2026
Category: Religion & Spirituality
Duration: 01:00:24
Publish Date: 2026-03-19 14:00:38
Description: My point is: you should assimilate what you have first. We already have so much, and it’s highly assimilatable—but not many people have assimilated it. Who has fully assimilated the Śrī Īśopaniṣad? What is assimilation? What does it look like? Assimilation means you spend some time going deeply within the book: researching it, learning all the verses, and knowing the purports backwards and forwards—learning the verses backwards and forwards. We did that with 'Divinity and Divine Service.' In order to get full credit, you had to be able to recite the chapter forwards and backwards. That’s the very beginning of assimilation. Hanuman Presaka Swami, one of the great thinkers and scholars in our movement—I just remember when he was frequenting ISV. He always kept a little pouch around his neck. What was in that pouch? The Upadeśāmṛta. But not just the Upadeśāmṛta; it was in Spanish. He wanted to challenge himself doubly, because that’s how his brain works. He speaks Spanish, and he wanted to practice reading in Spanish. But everywhere he went, he would have that around his neck, and he’d read it and read it. When you assimilate a book, you’ll find out how—or at least, when you attempt to assimilate one book, you start to realize—how deep it is and how much is really there. Generally, people get involved in things because they want to 'strike it rich quick.' That’s why so many people live in California. In 1849, the world changed because there was a discovery of gold in the mountains of California. And actually, the world wealth situation dramatically increased at that time because so much natural gold was discovered. People came from all over the world, and they wanted to strike it rich. There’s still the impulse in each person in the world that they want some way to get rich quick. In a business I once had, I was training people how to do business, and I noticed that people would come in, and then as soon as they had to make a few phone calls—which is actually work—they would quit and say, "I’m going to find another business that’s easier." There’s a tendency to do that in spiritual life also. Instead of reading the whole Bhagavad-gītā 108 times, or as Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta said, "You should read Prahlāda Mahārāja a hundred times and Dhruva Mahārāja a hundred times." Did you know it’s mentioned in one of the commentaries that the gopīs used to read Dhruva Mahārāja and Prahlāda Mahārāja? They would weep reading those accounts of those little boys doing such austerities and so forth. Assimilate the Bhagavad-gītā. I know very few people who have actually gone deeply within the Bhagavad-gītā who can sit and discourse. I mean, Caitanya Caraṇa—he comments on it every day. He reads it deeply and thinks about it when he’s sleeping at night; he’s thinking about what he’s going to present the next day, how to bring out topical points in the world and connect them to the Bhagavad-gītā. Ask him if he’s assimilated the Bhagavad-gītā. What will he tell you? The more he’s going into it, the more he’s seeing how deep it is. What about the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam? Have you ever in your school days, or even now when you’re in school, ever noticed the phenomenon where you finish a course and then realize you absorbed about 2% of what was in the textbook? I used to save all my textbooks. My garage was full of....
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