Who is a “Pure Vaishnava”???

[krsna]

SRI SRI

GODRUMA KALPATAVI

BY

SRILA BHAKTIVINODE THAKUR

 

 

REQUEST:

 

O great souls who are the travelling salesmen and store-keepers of our market of the Name, we humbly request you to send in the name, village, address and district in clear writing of any pure Vaisnava whom you may know. In this way we can request them to allow us to print their name as a travelling salesman in our Sri Nama Hatta newspaper.

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After posting this quote by S.B.T., I start to try to understand what he was asking for; Pure Vaishnava. Well, according to Gita [7. 19] such Mahatma is su-durlabhah, which means rare to find, in this way if S.B.T. was expecting to find the ideal Mahatma it probably would not be an easy task for the travelers to report it back. However, if he was actually in hope to find someone that maybe in a conducive connection with Cairtanya Mahaprabhu’s instructions/thoughts, than his request could be reachable.

 

I understand that in most cases the title "Pure Vaishnava or Pure Devotee" are reserved for those who has deep/mature commitment with the Vaishnava practices, however, (as far I can see) that does not mean the person (devotee) is above material nature or came direct from the spiritual realm as a Nitya Parshada., in other words, he may or may not be a siddha-mahatma, nonetheless is trying to purely represent the Vaishnava thoughts.

 

I remember the other day a ex-Gurukula teen making jokes saying that he was a pure devotee because he was born in a Vaishnava family. In other words, a Jewish or Christian, Buddhist, born in the respective families, could say the same. Another example is Vegetarian Food, how many times you have been to an Indian restaurant, where the sign says, “Pure Vegetarian Restaurant” and not just “Vegetarian Restaurant”...?

 

The question is, how to better understand the title “Pure Vaishnava”?