Guest guest Posted February 11, 2004 Report Share Posted February 11, 2004 Live from Sri Mayapur Candrodaya Mandir February 11, 2004 -- Appearance day of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur Verse: Srimad Bhagavatam 1.3.20 Speaker: HH Jayapatak Swami __ avatare sodasame pasyan brahma-druho nrpan trih-sapta-krtvah kupito nih-ksatram akaron mahim TRANSLATION: In the sixteenth incarnation of the Godhead, the Lord [as Bhrgupati] annihilated the administrative class [ksatriyas] twenty-one times, being angry with them because of their rebellion against the brahmanas [the intelligent class]. PURPORT: The ksatriyas, or the administrative class of men, are expected to rule the planet by the direction of the intelligent class of men, who give direction to the rulers in terms of the standard sastras, or the books of revealed knowledge. The rulers carry on the administration according to that direction. Whenever there is disobedience on the part of the ksatriyas, or the administrative class, against the orders of the learned and intelligent brahmanas, the administrators are removed by force from the posts, and arrangement is made for better administration. Thus ends the Bhaktivedanta Swami translation and purport to the First Canto, Third Chapter, 20th verse, in the matter that Krsna is the source of all incarnations. So there are different ways of preaching Krsna consciousness. Parasurama, he had a very heavy way and the ksatriyas were not following, they were disrespecting the brahmanas--he annihilated them, and he annihilate them again. He did this 21 times. Prabhupada told us that at this time many ksatriyas fled Inda and went to the North, to the West, to the East, and that’s how you have the Indo-European languages because they came from India. That’s not what modern archaeologists would tell you; they like to say everybody comes from Europe. But we know that everybody came from India, that’s why the languages have similarities in the different directions. The point though was to establish a God conscious world, to establish a proper rule that followed the sastras. I was driving with Srila Prabhupada once in a car in Calcutta by the High Court and we went right in front of the legislative assembly, it’s like the parliament for the state of Bengal. And then Prabhupada looked and I don’t know exactly how the topic came up, but he said ‘Oh, legislative assembly, all the representatives in the parliament or assembly, they should all be this intelligent class of people, they should all be following strict moral codes. If they are different religions that’s all right but they should be strictly following their religions. This kind of people should be in the parliament, legislative assembly.' Prabhupada’s vision was that eventually the world would be governed by Krsna conscious leaders and guided by Krsna conscious brahmanas. We have a long way to go. I was talking with Gopal Bhatta Prabhu and he was talking about strategic planning in ISKCON, one of the techniques you can use is management by objectives. Prabhupada gave us such high objectives to achieve. To make a Krsna conscious world. I remember one time he told His Holiness Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja, encouraged him to try to make money for a Krsna conscious state. Many different places he told, in Mauritius he said make it a Krsna conscious country. I don’t know how many other places he said that. He definitely wanted us to achieve high standards in our Krsna conscious preaching. He had a vision, in fact one time--I forget if it was in Mayapur or Calcutta--but he mentioned that he could take over the whole world in 18 days if his followers would actually follow him. If somebody asks ‘why not’, well obviously we’re not following him purely enough to be able to implement. Prabhupada had a vision and that vision was to implement the vision of Caitanya Mahaprabhu, and to implement the vision of His Divine Grace Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur. I have here a lecture from the appearance day of His Divine Grace Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Goswami from February 21 1976, given by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. I thought it would be nice to read a little excerpt, get purified by some more Prabhupada nectar. Prabhupada says: ‘Today, the auspicious day of our predecessor spiritual master, Om Visnupada Paramahamsa Parivrajakacarya Astottara-sata Srimad Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura Prabhupada. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura's mission... Apart from his life, we are especially stressing on the mission of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura. This place, Mayapur, was formerly known as Miyapura. Mostly it is inhabited by the Muhammadans. Some way or other it converted into the name of Miyapura instead of Mayapur. Still, people are very much doubtful where is the birth site of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. And Bhaktivinoda Thakura was researching to find out the actual place. So under the direction of Jagannatha dasa Babaji Maharaja, this present Yogapitha was ascertained to be the birth site of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. So Bhaktivinoda Thakura in the beginning wanted to develop this place very gloriously, befitting the holy name of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. So he started this movement of developing Mayapur. He could not finish it, so it was handed down to Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura. So under his effort, assisted by his disciples, this place has gradually developed, and our attempt is also to develop this place. Therefore we have named this temple Mayapur Chandrodaya.’ You all know the meaning of Mayapur Candrodaya? ‘Udaya’ means rising, so Chandrodaya means the rising moon of Mayapur Dham. Mayapur Chandra, or Lord Caitanya, He is rising. Prabhupada continues here: ‘We have got great ambition to develop this place nicely and gloriously, and fortunately we are now connected with foreign countries, especially with the Americans. Bhaktivinoda Thakura's great desire was that the Americans would come here and develop this place and they would chant and dance along with the Indians. So his dream as well as Caitanya Mahaprabhu's foretelling was, prthivite ache yata nagaradi grama sarvatra pracara haibe mora nama 'So Caitanya Mahaprabhu desired that all Indians take part. bharata bhumite manusya-janma haila yara janma sarthaka kari' kara para-upakara. [Cc. Adi 9.41] 'This is Caitanya Mahaprabhu's mission, para-upakara. Para-upakara means to do good to others. Of course, in the human society there are many different branches of doing good to others-welfare societies-but more or less... Why more or less? Almost completely they think that this body is our self and to do some good to the body is welfare activities. But actually that is not welfare activities because in the Bhagavad-gita we understand very clearly, antavanta ime dehah nityasyoktah saririnah. This body is antavat. Anta means it will be finished. Everyone knows his body is not permanent; it will be finished.’ So like this Srila Prabhupada was lecturing. In those days our festival was mainly attended by Americans, the North Americans were mainly of course others would also attend, but nowadays more than Americans, Russians are the biggest group. It was unthinkable in those days of the Soviet Union. Prabhupada continued later on: ‘So from this place Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu started this movement, Krsna consciousness movement, throughout whole India, and He desired that prthivite ache yata nagaradi grama: "So as many towns and villages are there, this Krsna consciousness movement should be spread." So this Krsna consciousness movement is now in your hand. Of course, in 1922 Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, he wanted me to do something in this connection. He wanted from his, all his disciples. Especially he stressed many times that "You do this. Whatever you have learned, you try to expand in English language." 'And in 1933, when he was in Radha-kunda, I was at that time Bombay in connection with my business life. So I came to see him, and one friend wanted to give some land in Bombay for starting Bombay Gaudiya Matha. He's my friend. So that's a long story, but I wish to narrate this, the Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Gosvami's mission. So at that time one of my Godbrother was also present. He reminded me about my friend's donation, and Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura Prabhupada immediately took up the land. He continued that "There is no need of establishing many temples. Better we publish some books." He said like that. He said that "We started our, this Gaudiya Matha in Ultadanga. The rent was very small, and if we could gather 2 to 250 rupees, it was very nice, going on. But since this J.B. Datta has given us this stone, marble stone Thakurabari, our competition between the disciples have increased, so I don't like anymore. Rather, I would prefer to take out the marble stone and sell it and publish some books." 'So I took that point, and he also especially advised me that "If you get money, you try to publish books." So by his blessing it has become very successful by your cooperation. Now our books are being sold all over the world, and it is very satisfactory sale. So on this particular day of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura's advent, try to remember his words, that he wanted that many books should be published about our philosophy and it should be given to the English-knowing public especially, because English language is now world language. We are touring all over the world. So anywhere we speak English, it is understood, except in some places. So on this day, particular on the advent of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, I'd especially request my disciples who are cooperating with me that try to publish books as many as possible and distribute throughout the whole world. That will satisfy Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu as well as Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura. Thank you very much.' Devotees: Jaya Srila Prabhupada.’ Ki jai! So on days of the appearance of our predecessor spiritual masters, we remember their mission. And Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur’s mission, as Srila Prabhupada explains, was to carry on the mission of Bhaktivinoda Thakur, Bhaktivinod Thakur was developing Mayapur Dham, spreading the sankirtana movement, publishing books. And Srila Bhaktisiddanta Sarasvati Thakura did all those things, developed Mayapur Dham--he came out here and was chanting 100,000 names, sometimes 2300,000--he was translating the books of the Goswamis, of Krishnadas Kaviraja, putting those mainly into Bengali, distributing. Here he had a daily newspaper, the Gaudiya Patrika, and he was telling his devotees to daily go out and sell it. People were amazed how he had a daily newspaper about spiritual mattters. He said, ‘Well, this material world is eka-pada vibhuti, it’s only 1/4th energy, and the spiritual world is 3/4ths energy so we have three times more stuff to. . . so much more information to publish. Like this. If the devotees distributed a few books he was very grateful. We see how Srila Prabhupada dedicated himself to carrying out the instructions and mission of Srila Bhaktisiddanta Sarasvati Thakura. Whatever Srila Bhaktisiddanta Sarasvati Thakura indicated, Prabhupada took that order as his life and soul. So Prabhupada went first to the English-speaking countries, of course he went all over the world to all different countries. He carried out the instruction of his spiritual master to spread the Krsna conscious movement all over the world. In fact Srila Prabhupada was almost apologetic when he came back to India. He said, ‘It’s not really the order of my guru to preach here in India, I’m supposed to preach overseas. But how can we preach all over the world and tell people how wonderful Indian culture is if India is going to hell? So but we have to do something here also because nobody else is doing it. So this is my personal additional offering, it’s not my mandate, but I see it’s needed.' In this way Prabhupada also established the Indian yatra. Initially he just had Mayapur, Vrndavan, Calcutta, Bombay, and gradually things expanded here in India as time went on. The development of Mayapur Prabhuapada mentioned here. I heard many lectures where Prabhupada mentioned the same thing: the secret of success in our spiritual life is to please the previous acaryas. So Prabhupada was a success. He would take up whatever the previous acaryas wanted and he would try to implement that, and he was successful. So Srila Prabhupada’s vision for developing Mayapur is very important, an offering to the previous acaryas. He wasn’t just doing it for his own satisfaction, he was doing it for the satisfaction of all the previous acaryas. And we saw, when Prabhupada first came here, he sent us around on our first Gaura Purnima festival to invite all the people of the Gaudiya Math. And they all came here, and in fact there’s a famous photo made on Prabhupada’s request. I don’t know where that. . . there’s a photo of it. . . . Where the original Ananta-sesa was established here for the Mayapur Project, in what used to be our deer park. There was a 12 feet hole and Prabhupada crawled down and. . . . So at that time when His Godbrothers as well as his Godnephews were there, he requested that ‘Srila Bhaktisiddanta Sarasvati Thakura asked us to work together.’ Actually the final order, one of the final orders of Srila Bhaktisiddanta Sarasvati Thakura was ‘You should all cooperate together, mila mise, you should distribute and preach the message of Rupa Goswami and Raghunath, spread the message of the Six Goswamis and Caitanya Mahaprabhu’. So that instruction, of course you know there was a division of the Gaudiya Matha and everything got divided up--there are so many temples here now. So Prabhupada when he came at that time he requested everybody ‘Our guru wanted us to work together; now we’re all separate, I’ve come, I’m preaching around the world, see I have so many American and foreign devotees, disciples. I have money now. So let us work together. I’ll help you to finish your unfinished temples and guesthouses, I’ll give you preachers to go with your sankirtana parties. So let’s unify together.’ Sometimes people say that Prabhupada just kind of went on, doing his own thing, which is very offensive actually because he tried to work all along with the Gaudiya Math. And at one point there was nowhere for him to stay and they told him ‘Make your own mission’. I think Akincana Maharaja told him like that, a number of people told, so finally he had no other choice. When he successfully came back here, the first thing he tried to do was ‘let’s work together’. But they weren’t ready. So definitely also Srila Prabhupada was trying to carry that instruction. And even seven days before his disappearance he made the Bhaktivedana Swami Charity Trust and there he put one to try to unify the Sarasvata family as one of the objectives in the memorandum of the association. I’m the chairman of this Society. So one of our projects is this annual Rathayatra for Srila Bhaktisiddanta Sarasvati Thakura and annual Vyasa Puja evening programme. It’s a little something we’re trying. We’re also trying to form the Sarasvata Gaudiya Vaisnava Association where we meet to together every year and we do joint projects for protecting Mayapur Dham and different projects. So if anything is possible it’s because of Prabhupada’s vision and because of his mercy. So Prabhupada had this idea also how to work together. When they weren’t willing to work together then what he could do? Then he continued on. So now we also have to protect that movement and at the same time we would definitely like to have improved relations and cooperation with all other Gaudiya Vaisnavas, especially our own family members, because that’s what Prabhupada wanted. That’s one aspect, then of course, when Srila Bhaktisiddanta Sarasvati Thakura wrote a final letter to his disciples—I don’t have the printout with me right here but I remember, I can paraphrase it--he wrote ??? cooperate together, preach, develop Mayapur Dham because this is the birthplace of Caitanya Mahaprabhu and this purifies the world, develop the Navadvipa Dham Parikrama because by doing parikrama you’ll purify the whole world. He says, publish Vaisnava literature and distribute, then establish Nama-hatta, because when people buy the books what are you going to do with them? Then you’re going to have to make them part of your community, make them devotees, engage them. He didn’t envision that everybody was going to live in the temple as renounced sannyasis. He had mathas, he had so many grhastha disciples, so he said engage them in Nama-hatta, in congregational groups, programmes, so then they will be able to help in developing Mayapur, parikrama, book. . . into the full loop, and it starts all over, so the congregation is also engaged in this mission. So he had that final order to his disciples. I’m always very much inspired by how Srila Prabhupada dedicated himself completely to carry out the orders of his spiritual master. When people would ask him, ‘What’s the secret of your success?’, Prabhupada always gave the same reply that ‘I simply tried to carry out the instruction of my spiritual master, by his blessing everything is happening’. That was the speciality of Srila Prabhupada. One time I went to one of his Godbrothers--I won’t mention his name--and he was preaching to us how ‘it’s not important to carry out the order of your guru, it’s important to just to do what you feel is right’. And when I told him that our guru said ‘If you can’t at least try to do whatever you can to carry out the order of your guru, then better to not live'. Our whole purpose of life is to do whatever we can, at least something to further the order of guru. And when I said that he just waved me out of the room and said ‘Get out of here’--he rejected--‘You don’t have the right vision’. But I think I had the right vision in that regard. Prabhupada really wanted us to be dedicated to carrying out his mission. We can be inspired how he carried out the mission of his spiritual master for us to carry out our mission which is Prabhupada’s mission, to carry out the mission of our Founder-acarya. And we know that all the subsequent generations of devotees--some of Prabhupada’s grand-disciples are members of our GBC--we’re already an endangered species, we’re going to eventually be in extinction, all the direct initiated disciples of Srila Prabhupada. So we need to create this culture, our spiritual corporate culture. We are dedicated to carrying out the order of Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, that’s the spiritual culture we are implementing. If everybody maintains that--we know that his culture also is to fulfill the desires of the previous acaryas--then we’re completely linked up with the guru-parampara. That’s means we get the full empowerment and the full energy coming down from Krsna to the guru-parampara, to all of us. That’s what empowers ISKCON, our connection. Krsna consciousness, Prabhupada repeatedly said, can’t be spread simply by some material adjustment. It has to be done by being empowered: kali-kalera dharma – (krsna)-nama-sankirtana krsna-sakti vina nahi tara pravartana The kali-yuga dharma is nama-sankirtana. And ‘krsna krpa bine’, without Krsna’s mercy, ‘nahi tara pravartana’, it cannot be spread. So we’re dependent on Krsna’s mercy coming down to our spiritual masters, to Srila Prabhupada, and today remembering Srila Bhaktisiddanta Sarasvati Thakura, we need his mercy to be able to carry out the orders of Srila Prabhupada. Prabhupada once told me that ‘The spiritual grandfather is more merciful than the spiritual father. The father has to sometimes chastise the children, discipline them but you see the grandfather is giving them sweets and things, very affectionate, it’s a different role. So I know that you are all here because of my spiritual master and he is very merciful to all of you.’ Living here in Mayapur we heard many things about Srila Bhaktisiddanta Sarasvati Thakura from different people. I once had an assistant. Prabhupada talked with him. His name was Chaku Sheikh, and he was a Muslim living in the Mayapur village, he told me that when he was a nine-year-old, six-year-old boy, he used to see Srila Bhaktisiddanta Sarasvati Thakura. And he said that all of the kids in the village were just amazed to see him. He was so tall, he would wear just an uttariya, the sannyasi bib kind of thing that we wear, upper piece, and he said that his arms would go down to his knees, he was ajanu-lambhita, like Lord Caitanya. He had three lines on his waist and three lines on his neck, tri-rekha. And the kids were just looking, they were just amazed. And what he would do is he’d take a whole packet of maha-prasad sweets and give it out to all the village kids and they would run up and get the sweets from him. So he was very popular. Whenever he walked to the village all the kids would be running after him for sweets. And he made such good relations that the Muslim leaders donated him hundreds of acres of land, because his whole asrama is built from the Mayapur villagers' land which they donated to him out of respect, ‘he’s a sadhu’. That’s how good Hindu-Muslim relations were previously, before all the later politics came, the separation, division of India. Of course we know that he was the simha-guru, he was very heavy. In his preaching he was very dynamic and he very strongly presented Krsna consciousness. How in those days there was a Mission that was spreading and he was preaching actively against that Mission, but that wasn’t continued so much after his departure. And he was preaching actively against the caste goswamis having a monopoly on Vaisnavism. How he gave Vaisnavas who were born in other varnas upanayanam, along with their second initiation. He gave them them the yajnopavita, sacred thread, which caste brahmanas used to protest to, now it’s not an issue with them anymore so much. Because he was all based on philosophy that someone’s a Vaisnava, according to sastra they’re also as good as a brahmana. So in many ways he was a dynamic revolutionary establishing how Krsna consciousness had to be practiced in the new era. On one hand he was an extremely austere sadhu who was chanting 300,000 names at Radha Kunda, but when he was at some function with the king of Tripura then he would wear a saffron coat if it was summer or an overcoat if it was winter, a big turban, and patent leather shoes to appear amongst the British-oriented royalty and leadership. They were getting so much mail that three bullock carts every day were bringing the letters to him. I can’t handle the 200, 100 emails that come some days, but he was handling 3-400 letters that would come by snail mail, or more, I don’t know how much, can anyone estimate how many letters one bullock cart holds, thousands maybe. We have to experiment to figure out. He wanted to have his own post office because they had to mail all the letters and they had to take it to some far-off place, so he applied that there should be Sri Mayapur Post Office. So at the time the Navadvipa caste Goswamis objected that it shouldn’t be Sri Mayapur, that ‘You’re trying to say that this is the original Mayapur, the original birthplace of Lord Caitanya, well we are the original birthplace.’ So it became a case that was up in the High Court. So to settle this, the Viceroy, who later become the Viceroy of India, he came out to educate(?) and study the evidence. It was interesting for him. The British were actually quite amazing that they would come out to study such an issue, the birthplace of Lord Caitanya to see the historical records. So at that time guess what he wanted, he wanted some tea. So they said ‘How can we give him tea, it breaks the principles'? ‘Give him tea, give him whatever he needs’. Prabhupada used to tell us ‘utility is the principle’, we can see here how Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura was very utilitarian. This British person is coming out to define this important issue of finding the birthplace of Lord Caitanya and he need his daily tea or tobacco or whatever it is, so give someone to buy and give it to him. Get the work done for Lord Caitanya. Of course eventually he saw the evidence and historical records, how Lord Caitanya’s nocturnal kirtanas was disturbing the Chand Kazi, how Srivasangan was just a few hundred metres, or little over a hundred metres from the birthplace of Lord Caitanya, His house. And the Chand Kazi’s samadhi and his house is a historical relic undisputed by everybody, everybody accepts that that’s his house, that’s his samadhi. So it would not be possible that he heard the kirtana all the way from Navadvipa without microphone. Now we can hear because of mikes, but there were no mikes then, so it must have been in this area, so this is Sri Mayapur. And there are many other evidences. We should try to get out that original high court document for the future. At the same time Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura could preach using very simple stories, his upakhyanas, his very simple examples. He would tell a simple story getting everyone’s attention. One of the famous ones is ‘salagrama diye badam bhanga—Breaking peanuts with the Salagram Sila’. He would give a title to it and after that he wouldn’t even tell the whole story, he would just give the title. Anyway, the story was that there was an Indian landlord and he was having his own Deity and so he hired a priest to do the puja. This is common, the rich people hire a priest to do their puja. Prabhupada used to tell them that ‘You should do the puja. Get initiated and do the puja. One wealthy businessman in Calcutta. . . . So this person’s father was a brahmana so he was born in a brahmana family but he was actually an atheist he just did the priestly work because he couldn’t get another job. It was the only thing he could do it, it was his hereditary training, so he did that. Someone came up and gave him a bag of peanuts in the shell for the Deity. And this priest loved peanuts and they were already sand-cooked, ready to go, so he took the peanuts inside the Deity room closed the door and he was trying to break them, but they had a hard shell. So he the took the salagram off the altar POW! POW! POW!, smashing the peanuts with the salagrama-sila! The landlord comes and hears this smash! smash! smash! going on and he looks through the window and sees this priest taking the salagrama-sila and breaking peanuts. . . how would you feel if someone took your salagrama and started breaking peanuts? He flipped out completely ‘You demon, rascal atheist!’ He went in there and grabbed the guy by the ear and neck and threw him out. That’s the story. Then he would give an hour lecture on the purport of the story. Why using anything that was dedicated to Krsna for your sense gratification, that’s like breaking peanuts with a salagrama. If he saw anybody trying to enjoy Krsna’s property for his own sense gratification he would say ‘Salagrama diye badam bhanga—you’re breaking peanuts with the salagrama, you’re trying to enjoy Krsna’s property. You’re not using it for His service’. Over a while, all of his disciples--he would have about 50 of these stories--and everyone would know what each mantra and title of the story had its the whole purport. It’s a very interesting way of taking a very simple story and preaching with it. Today Parasurama was smashing the demoniac kings, and Bhaktisiddanta Sarasvati Thakura was smashing the demoniac concepts that were going around by his very dynamic preaching. We’re very, very insignificant followers of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur. [sorry, but there was again a problem with the very end of the recording so the lines below are paraphrased and not 100% accurate] He also established a governing body system, so we pray for his blessings for our successful GBC meetings, which we are carrying out following Srila Prabhupada’s instructions. ISKCON was Prabhupada's offering to his spiritual master. That’s who we are in ISKCON today, we’re the offering to Srila Bhaktisiddanta Sarasvati Thakura so we’re all dedicated to him. I’m very happy to be a member of this wonderful society. So we’ll go over to Srila Prabhupada’s Samadhi Mandir now to have his darshan and seek his blessings, and next to that there’s a puspanjali going on now for Srila Gour Govinda Maharaja’s puspa samadhi. . . . END. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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