HH Umapati Swami

February 27, 2007

>From Sri Mayapur Candrodaya Mandir!

February 23, 2007

Verse: Srimad Bhagavatam 3.1.24

Speaker: HH Umapati Swami

tatas tv ativrajya surastram rddham

sauvira-matsyan kurujangalams ca

kalena tavad yamunam upetya

tatroddhavam bhagavatam dadarsa

TRANSLATION: Thereafter he passed through very wealthy provinces like Surat,

Sauvira and Matsya and through western India, known as Kurujangala. At last

he reached the bank of the Yamuna, where he happened to meet Uddhava, the

great devotee of Lord Krsna.

PURPORT: The tract of land comprising about one hundred square miles from

modern Delhi to the Mathura district in Uttar Pradesh, including a portion

of the Gurgaon district in Punjab (East India), is considered to be the

topmost place of pilgrimage in all of India. This land is sacred because

Lord Krsna traveled through it many times. From the very beginning of His

appearance, He was at Mathura in the house of His maternal uncle Kamsa, and

He was reared by His foster father Maharaja Nanda at Vrndavana. There are

still many devotees of the Lord lingering there in ecstasy in search of

Krsna and His childhood associates, the gopis. It is not that such devotees

meet Krsna face to face in that tract of land, but a devotee's eagerly

searching after Krsna is as good as his seeing Him personally. How this is

so cannot be explained, but it is factually realized by those who are pure

devotees of the Lord. Philosophically, one can understand that Lord Krsna

and His remembrance are on the absolute plane and that the very idea of

searching for Him at Vrndavana in pure God consciousness gives more pleasure

to the devotee than seeing Him face to face. Such devotees of the Lord see

Him face to face at every moment, as confirmed in the Brahma-samhita (5.38):

premanjana-cchurita-bhakti-vilocanena

santah sadaiva hrdayesu vilokayanti

yam syamasundaram acintya-guna-svarüpam

govindam adi-purusam tam aham bhajami

"Those who are in ecstasy of love with the Supreme Personality of Godhead,

Lord Syamasundara [Krsna], see Him always in their hearts due to love and

devotional service rendered to the Lord." Both Vidura and Uddhava were such

elevated devotees, and therefore they both came to the bank of

the Yamuna and met each other. [End of purport]

Umapati Swami: So from Delhi to Uttar Pradesh, that is considered the

topmost place of pilgrimage because Lord Krsna traveled through this area

many, many times to Hastinapura, which is about in the region of New Delhi,

then to Mathura, where he was king, and so on. So the great devotee Vidura

also wandered through this area and came to the bank of the Yamuna where he

happened to meet Uddhava, also a very great devotee of Lord Krsna.

As we know, Vidura is Yamaraja, one of the twelve great authorities on Krsna

consciousness in this universe. He was cursed to take birth in the womb of a

sudrani so he took birth as the son of a maidservant. Most of us know that

story. He wandered there in search of Krsna. Prabhupada points out here that

searching after Krsna is as good as seeing him face to face.

This is a very important point because just as our Bhakti Dhira Damodara

Maharaja pointed out yesterday, that even if one attains great devotion to

Lord Krsna, he is not ostentatious about it: "Look at me, I'm a

rasika-bhakta. Look at me, I'm a maha-bhagavata." No, just as a chaste woman

does not show her body in public, a devotee does not make a display so that

everyone can see him therefore he can be very prestigious. There are

devotees who chant in a solitary place so that they can be worshipped by

innocent people.

But actually looking after Krsna is as good as meeting him. In some cases,

it is said that it is even better than meeting him. Lord Caitanya worshipped

Krsna in feelings of separation. The six Goswamis also worshipped Krsna in

separation. Prabhupada says they never were found Krsna. They were always

looking, "Where is Krsna? Where is Krsna?" Prabhupada says they never found

him. They never met him. Yet they are such great devotees.

What is nice about this is that we're not all so privileged that we can just

go up and meet Krsna face to face and dance with him, but we can all look

for Krsna. That is available to everyone. This Krsna consciousness is

available to everyone.

I remember a story, only a few devotees had gone to India, it was still a

very special thing. Well it still is a special thing, but in those days, not

everybody was coming to India. So there was a Canadian devotee named Hanuman

who had been to India. At that time, Mother Malati, on the GBC, her daughter

was only a little girl, just a few years old. So he was telling us about

some Mayavadi, some impersonalist. Somebody asked, "Did you defeat him?"

Hanuman said, "Oh, you can't defeat them. They have studied Sanskrit since

they were five years old." He said, "But Sarasvati defeated him because when

we started kirtan and he saw this little girl dancing, he burst into tears."

Even a little girl, a little child can practice Krsna consciousness.

Certainly all of us can work hard to acquire this desire to find Krsna,

looking for Krsna. Actually in all our devotional service, we are looking

for Krsna, trying to please him. When I was looking on the Folio the other

day in response to some of the devotees who have left ISKCON to take shelter

somewhere else--actually I consider them quite foolish, especially now they

have this parikrama, thousands of devotees all blissfully chanting. Why go

somewhere else? What are you going to find?

But I came across, it said the easiest way to attain the Supreme Personality

of Godhead is to save the fallen souls. So why should we go for the hard

way? Anybody working in ISKCON is a preacher. Prabhupada gave the example

that many years ago in India, in the railway office, there was a poster that

said "Keep the wheels rolling," but he said the people who work in the

office don't drive the trains, but the trains won't run without their work.

So in the same way, anybody who works in ISKCON, in whatever capacity, is

actually a preacher because the preaching in ISKCON depends very much on

their work also.

I was also thinking because the place where I preach has been invaded by

some of these runaways, that they go outside of ISKCON to take shelter of

someone. When that person departs this world, they will all go and open up

their own little Math. And what will they do? Find ten disciples, fifteen

disciples, not going to save the world that way. Prabhupada wanted united

ISKCON because united we can save the whole world. Because we are united we

can get thousands of devotees here. What other Math gets thousands of

devotees for Gaura Purnima? Because we are united as one, not everybody

going off and opening his own little Math here and own little Math there,

because we work in a united ISKCON, therefore we can save the world.

I got in trouble some years back when I gave a class and I said that when

Lord Krsna is not satisfied in the spiritual world in spite of thousands of

gopis and surabhi cows, when Krsna wants a little more pleasure because he

wonders why Radharani has more pleasure than he does, so what does Krsna do

when he wants more pleasure? Does he create more gopis or more surabhi cows?

No, Krsna comes into this world as Lord Caitanya. He chants Hare Krsna and

he joins ISKCON. Because what is ISKCON? ISKCON is Lord Caitanya's movement.

Who else? Lord Caitanya said that in Kali-yuga, the Holy Name of Lord Krsna

will be heard in every town and village throughout the world, but who is

doing that? That is happening now, parts of the world where you would never,

ever expect, that is happening.

Somebody told a story many, many years ago that some devotees had gone to

New Guinea. Of course New Guinea, well now there's a city there, but if you

go out to the villages, people are very primitive. They go naked, they've

got bones through their noses, things like that. He went to one village. The

chief saw him and said wait a minute. He ran into his house and he came out

with a copy of Krsna book! [Chuckles] So some book distributor had actually

gotten up there. So who is doing this? ISKCON, because ISKCON is united. It

is united, everybody working together. Everybody working together preaching.

And everybody can attain the state of looking for Krsna. Doesn't matter if

you're already a great maha-bhagavata or you're just a little

kanistha-adhikari or whatever. Makes no difference. You can look for Krsna:

"Where is Krsna? Why can't I see Krsna? Maybe if I do more devotional

service, maybe if I chant more." Because this looking for Krsna is another

way of seeing him.

That's why when the . . . . [Coughs] Everybody's coughing. I'm catching on.

At least I'm not the only one. Misery loves company. So I hear all the other

people coughing, I feel very happy. [Laughs.]

We have to give up these ideas. In fact, I told this story before but I'm

going to tell it again because I realized the purport of the story. In the

early days in 1966, Hayagriva had bought a set of the Bhagavatams that

Prabhupada had brought from India. He and I were sitting and we were looking

at the dust cover. There's Goloka and then there are the rays of light. Then

there are all these other planets and there are little bubbles. There was

one bubble that really caught our eye. I said, "I like this one."

Hayagriva said, "Yeah, me, too."

I said, "Yeah, far out man. Yeah, yeah, this is really cool, baby. Yeah, I

wanna go there. Yeah, that's where I wanna go." So I was on my way

somewhere, but I told Hayagriva, Hayagriva was going to the temple, I said,

"Ask the Swami." We called Prabhupada "the Swami". "Ask the Swami what that

bubble is because that's where I want to go."

Then I came back later and Hayagriva was there. I asked, "Did you ask the

Swami what that bubble was?"

He said, "Yeah, he said it's the material world."

[Laughter]

But I was thinking about it and thinking why was I so attracted to it?

Because it looked mystical. Couldn't figure out what was happening. There

was somebody lying down and a snake with many heads and a lotus flower and

somebody sitting there. It looked very mystical.

So these ideas that we have of what realization is and so on, these are a

part of the material world also. When I looked at Goloka, people are sitting

there, there was Krsna and the gopis are sitting there, it looked very

ordinary, but the material world looked very mystical. So we have to get rid

of these ideas that we already have.

Just as Lord Caitanya says, "When will my eyes be decorated with tears of

love?" When I was in Taiwan not so long ago, I met a very nice Indian lady.

She is Narasimha Maharaja's disciple. She asked me, "Well, isn't he looking

for ecstasy because we're not supposed to want ecstasy as a reward for

devotional service?"

So that was a tough question. I had to think about this. So he is not

looking for ecstasy. He is wondering, "When will I love Krsna so much that I

will get tears in my eyes just by saying his name?" It's not like, "OK, I've

been chanting Hare Krsna, when am I going to fall on the ground?" The

ecstasy becomes a goal in itself, like you get from taking a drug. You don't

love the drug, you love the ecstasy, what it gives you. Lord Caitanya's

desire is, "When will I love Krsna so much that if I just say his name, I

get tears in my eyes. When will I love Krsna so much that just when I say

his name my voice will get choked up?" He wants to love Krsna.

That is what we should all be after: "When can I love Krsna?" But of course

one never feels that he loves Krsna. I remember Prabhupada telling us that

Lord Caitanya used to say, "I don't love Krsna. If I loved Krsna, I couldn't

spend one more second in this world." We should always think of ourselves,

or want to think of ourselves as little beginners in Krsna consciousness. In

fact, Prabhupada said, "Better always to remain a foolish disciple at the

feet of the spiritual master."

Sometimes we hear people say, "Prabhupada said don't do that, but we were

beginners then. Now we are advanced, so we can do that."

But Prabhupada said, "Better always to remain a foolish disciple at the feet

of the spiritual master."

If the spiritual master asks you to do something, say, "We've got people

coming, can you clean the toilet?"

And you think, "Well, I'm a brahmana. Will I advance by doing that?"

So the question, "Will I advance", Prabhupada said that's also a material

consideration. We should just absorb ourselves in our devotional service so

much that we forget about all these other things, just so absorbed in your

service. In this way you will then find out that the service is also a way

of seeing Krsna. Of course the Deity, we have the Deities. We can see the

beautiful form of the Lord, but if we don't have that service attitude we'll

only see a piece of marble, that we see the Deity as Krsna by the mercy of

the spiritual master. Otherwise, people come in the temple and you say,

"Here's God."

And they'll say, "What? That's only a statue. It's a statue of God."

Well we call them Deities because Prabhupada would not hear of calling them

statues. He said, "They are not statues. We don't worship statues." We call

them Deities because it is actually Krsna himself, but it is through our

worship and through our service that we are able to see this. So we should

always have this very humble. . . . Of course I say we should be humble,

then we start thinking I am humble, but we should always take this attitude

of being a lowly worshipper, "a foolish disciple at the feet of the

spiritual master", and render devotional service. In this way, we can also

be looking for Krsna, which is as good as seeing Krsna.

So you got any questions, comments, opposition?

Question: [inaudible]

Umapati Maharaja: The question is: I quoted Prabhupada as saying that the

easiest way to attain Godhead is to save the conditioned souls, but then it

is also said that if we don't save ourselves, we can't save anybody else.

Therefore Prabhupada has given us this very complete process, we save

ourselves by chanting Hare Krsna, we save ourselves by worshipping the

deity. By engaging our efforts in saving the conditioned souls, along with

these other things, we are simultaneously saving ourselves because Krsna

says that the preacher of Krsna consciousness is the best servant. There is

no servant more dear to me than he, nor will there ever be one more dear.

So if we follow this caution, we build a beautiful temple, Prabhupada says

we don't need a beautiful temple, we can sit by the Ganga and chant, but who

will come? So by building the beautiful temple, by the gorgeous deity

worship, and by the distribution of books, Prabhupada says, distribute my

books, what good will your five minutes of preaching do? Of course there are

many, many stories about somebody who bought a book on the street and later

became a devotee by looking at the book.

I know one devotee, he was . . . . In America you can do your laundry at the

self-service laundry. There are a bunch of machines. You put a coin in the

machine and then you put a coin in the dryer to dry your clothes. So he was

washing his clothes in this automatic laundry and he was eating a

watermelon, and spitting the seeds in a garbage can. Then the watermelon

fell in the garbage can. When he reached in to pick out the watermelon, he

pulled out a Bhagavad-gita As It Is. [Chuckles] Obviously somebody bought it

on the street, decided he didn't like it, and threw it in this garbage can.

Eventually, he became a devotee.

Many stories, somebody gets a book in the airport. By doing this, we also

please Srila Prabhupada and disciples of Srila Prabhupada, whether you are

Prabhupada disciple or a disciple of a disciple. Normally I cannot tell the

difference. I don't see any difference between the direct disciples of

Prabhupada and the second generation of disciples except that the second

generation is often too young to be a direct disciple. I take it to mean

that Srila Prabhupada's mercy is being accurately transmitted because the

second generation is exactly the same as the first generation. So when we do

these things, we are simultaneously saving others and saving ourselves. Just

as Prabhupada said, "Don't only distribute the books, but read them too."

In fact, I'm going to add a little commentary to what my Godbrother

Makhanlal was saying yesterday about Prabhupada's books. There is no mistake

in Prabhupada's books. There is something deceptive about Prabhupada's

books, and that is, the books are written in very simple language. So we

tend to think they are not on the highest intellectual level. Prabhupada

said that one of the signs of Kali-yuga is that one is accepted as a great

scholar if he speaks in a way nobody can understand, right?

I remember, before I met Prabhupada, I was friends with Hayagriva. I had

stopped reading books years ago, but Hayagriva was a big intellectual. He

had a whole wall covered with books. Sometimes he would take a book and

start reading it and I wouldn't understand anything. One of these

intellectual writers, then Hayagriva would say, "What he means is . . ." and

he would give a purport.

I thought, "Gee, I could never be a writer because I don't know how to write

in this language that nobody understands." But Prabhupada's books are

written in very clear, simple language. So then you get the thing that

Prabhupada was teaching for the mass, someone else teaches for the class.

But the fact is, Prabhupada said, "If you understand something, then you can

explain it." Prabhupada's books talk about the highest things. Who can tell

me that the jewel on Radharani's forehead is her shyness and that she takes

her bath three times a day in the water of youthful luster? Are you going to

tell me that's not the highest teaching? That it's something for the

ignorant masses? It's all there in Prabhupada's books, but explained in very

simple language.

But there are no mistakes. Because sometimes I hear people say, and it

seesm, unfortunately, to be becoming a fashion, that Prabhupada knew all

about the spiritual world but he didn't quite understand the material world.

Prabhupada's views on society, men and women, social setup, and so on, these

are nineteenth century views.

I think this is a very great offense. Because to say that Prabhupada's views

are the views of a nineteenth century Bengali is to say that Prabhupada is

under the influence of the modes of nature.

Then you're saying that Prabhupada is actually under the influence of the

modes of nature. Then you say, "OK, Prabhupada's a maha-bhagavata, all

right, but he still has nineteenth century ideas." So this means a

maha-bhagavata is still under the influence of the modes of material nature.

Then what's the use of Krsna consciousness? If one who attains the topmost

position cannot transcend the modes of nature, then what's the use of Krsna

consciousness?

Comment: There's one verse that Srila Prabhupada would quote quite often,

I'm not recalling the Sanskrit, that one who knows Krsna knows everything.

Maharaja: Yes, that brings up the point of omniscience because there's the

talk of omniscient maha-bhagavatas. Prabhupada said omniscience means you

know everything the spiritual master has taught you. It doesn't mean that a

devotee is supposed to know how many grasshoppers there are in Bengal. It

means you know what the spiritual master has taught you. That is the real

meaning of omniscience. It's not that you know everything like Krsna. That

is not possible.

If there's anybody here who's an expert in the writings of Bhaktisiddhanta

Saraswati, I read something once, but I can't remember what book it was in

that a devotee does not want to be omniscient because if I want to be

omniscient, I want to be as good as Krsna. But I don't remember what book

that's in.

Prabhupada knows all about the principles on which this world runs and what

is proper and needed in human society and what is not. Of that there is no

mistake. I never asked Prabhupada, "Do you know how many buildings are there

in New York?" I would never ask such a question. Nor did Prabhupada ever say

that he knows that. But what Prabhupada said he knows, he knows. And he

knows what is the need of human society because the needs of the human

beings have not changed since Krsna's time, so certainly not since the

nineteenth century.

We are still trapped in the material world in the cycle of birth and death.

We struggle so hard to make it through this life and then we die and take

birth again, and have to start all over again: going to school and

adolescence, all that, assuming we have a human birth, and struggling for

the family, and then we die, and then we're born, and then we have start all

over again, struggling. It goes on forever. There's no end to this. We'll

take one birth after another and struggle through it forever. Whatever

you've accomplished in one birth will be lost at the time of death. You

won't even remember.

Do you remember who your parents were in your last life? Do you remember who

your children were? No, and it's goes on like this forever. This is the same

thing now as it was five thousand years ago. It hasn't changed. The need of

the human being is to get out of the material world.

Prabhupada knows the way out of the banyan forest, but we don't. The more we

think we know about this banyan forest, the more we get lost in it. Krsna

says no one can see where it begins and where it ends. This material banyan

forest, you cannot tell where it begins and where it ends. You cannot see

where you are. This is the same. When Krsna spoke Bhagavad-gita and today,

here at the Mayapur Festival, nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. It

is only maya putting on a different dress.

One young man wanted to take a tour of the world, world tour. Prabhupada

said, "What will you see? Everywhere you go, eating, sleeping, mating, and

defending. You will simply see maya in a different dress."

We see maya in a different dress and we think, "Oh yes, I have such

knowledge." What do you know? You don't know who you are. You don't know

your way out of the banyan forest. But Prabhupada knows. It's all in his

books. You simply follow this entire process and you will simultaneously

save yourself and save others.

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HH Umapati Swami

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