19840423 Caitanya-caritāmṛta Ādi-līlā 9.52-53

The following is a lecture given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami on April 23rd, 1984 in Atlanta, Georgia. The class begins with a reading from the Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Ādi-līlā, Chapter 9, Verse 52 and 53.

Ādi-līlā 9.52

sarva-loke matta kailā āpana-samāna
preme matta loka vinā nāhi dekhi āna

Translation: With His saṅkīrtana movement the Lord made everyone mad like Himself. We do not find anyone who was not intoxicated by His saṅkīrtana movement.

*repetition*

Ādi-līlā 9.53

ye ye pūrve nindā kaila, bali’ mātoyāla
seho phala khāya, nāce, bale—bhāla bhāla

Translation: Persons who had formerly criticized Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, calling Him a drunkard, also ate the fruit and began to dance, saying, “Very good! Very good!”

Purport: When Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu started the saṅkīrtana movement, even He was unnecessarily criticized by Māyāvādīs, atheists and fools. Naturally we are also criticized by such men. They will always remain and will always criticize anything that is actually good for human society. But the preachers of the saṅkīrtana movement should not be deterred by such criticism. Our method should be to convert such fools gradually by asking them to come and take prasādam and chant and dance with us. This should be our policy. Anyone who comes to join us, of course, must be sincere and serious regarding spiritual advancement in life; then such a person, simply by joining us, chanting with us, dancing with us and taking prasādam with us, will gradually also come to say that this movement is very good. But one who joins with an ulterior purpose, to get material benefit or personal gratification, will never be able to grasp the philosophy of this movement.

Thus end the Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Jayapatākā Swami: So one thing here… here Śrīla Prabhupāda encourages us to be very tolerant of criticism, because even Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, when He started the saṅkīrtana movement, even He was unnecessarily criticized by Māyāvādīs, atheists and fools, He didn’t pay attention to them. He went on with His saṅkīrtana movement. This was not only what He did. He didn’t only… ignored them, but He also gradually invited them and got them to participate in His saṅkīrtana movement until they also became mad after Kṛṣṇa, and they were saying actually, “The saṅkīrtana movement is very good, very good, bhalo, bhalo.”

Even when the Kṛṣṇa conscious movement first went to India, there was a movie called “Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Rāma” made by one of the most famous Indian movie stars called Devananda, and he depicted the hippie who was going all over India, because many hippies use to go to India and still do, taking marijuana and their theme song was “Dam maro dam, Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Rāma”. Dam maro dam means take another toke, chant Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Rāma, or take another puff, whatever it is but… So in this way when we first started to preach in India, everyone thought “Oh, all these Westerners, they are actually here for taking marijuana, they are not actually devotees.” Many common people had that idea, and when you’d go on the streets, they’d see the devotees, and then go “Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Rāma, dum maro dam”, (laughter) and then you know, the devotees you know they’d become so disturbed, that here they are trying to preach, even in India, and they had to endure such ridiculous thing… Of course Kṛṣṇa conscious movement is based upon pure living. We don’t take even coffee, tea, cigarettes, what to speak of marijuana, or whisky or anything else.

But somehow due to this propaganda, false propaganda, the people had the wrong idea in the beginning and everywhere you went, this is how you were greeted by punks on the street corners. So it was very difficult for devotees, but gradually people could see what is the real character of the devotees, what is their actual purpose, and even that movie star Devananda, he came and offered and apology and became a life member. (laughter)

Devotee: Jaya.

Jayapatākā Swami: He gave some donation, he was feeling guilty that he had in this way misrepresented… of course it was a smash hit, so everybody knew about Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Rāma but they had a wrong idea. So now all those people, that was chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Rāma somehow or another, now they are chanting more seriously. They are joining our ratha-yātrā processions, you never hear that anymore. Maybe once in a whole year. Now people are very respectful and very very appreciative accepting that, “Yes Kṛṣṇa consciousness is original Vedic. It is not simply an import from the West, not some kind of an imitation, but actually it is an import from India that went… an export from India that went to the West, took hold and has come back, and therefore people are very enthusiastic, and in fact in any major religious conference, they always invite the ISKCON representative or ācārya to go there and to speak, and then they give them the exalted seat along with all the other ācāryas of their recognized ācāryas in India along with the Rāmānuja ācāryas or the Madhva ācāryas, they give them the equal seat, even though there are people from different countries, they… they don’t consider on any bodily consciousness even that they are also heads of the most important religious institution of the day, and even of these very orthodox people, they are completely acceptive of the Kṛṣṇa conscious movement today. This is all the mercy of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, that even in the beginning if sometimes people criticize, and now they are giving equal seat but, in the future, they will realize that Lord Caitanya’s movement is actually deserving of the most exalted seat, because they are carrying the message of the Lord Caitanya which is actually the message for this age. The message which is the only message that is completely guaranteed to be effective in this age. Any other system may be good, but whether it will be adequate to cure the materialistic disease of this age is very, very doubtful.

But this chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa is guaranteed for everyone, whether neophyte or whether the most advanced person, this chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa is supremely effective. So Śrīla Prabhupāda, he had to endure so many criticisms, when he went to preach in India, with all of his followers around the world. Sometimes they would accuse them of being say, “Oh these foreigners are secret agents.” They would say, “Oh they are CIA.”

Prabhupāda became so disturbed, he once put an advertisement in the newspaper that, “On the order of my spiritual master I have gone all over the world and preached the Sanātana-dharma, the message of Mahāprabhu, and I have been attracted, I have been able to attract the intelligentsia of the different countries of the world, and I brought them back to India, they are following four regulative principles, no intoxication, no meat eating, no gambling and no illicit or extra marital sex, they are chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa every day, they are rising at 3.30 in the morning, they are not living in hotels, they are not concerning themselves with anything else but the propagation of the message of the Bhagavad-gītā, and I can…” he appealed all the responsible… to all the responsible people in the India, that they should see that their actual position… in this way Prabhupāda was upset that that this type of...actually this criticisms were instituted in the Parliament of India by con… Communist party of India member, whose name was Bhupesh Gupta, and the communist party of India has one member of its bureau in India sit in the bureau in Russia. So for some reason, Russia personally wanted to see the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement preaching stopped in India. So they, we went to see that Bhupesh Gupta and said, “why did you criticize this?”

He said, “I like you people. Actually you are doing good work. What can I do? I got the order from Moscow.” So this is the thing. Sometimes people have this critical idea in the beginning due to ignorance, but we hope that even in Moscow, in the future people will see that actually this Hare Kṛṣṇa movement is only solution to their problems. Communism is not the solution to the world’s problems, neither is capitalism. Materialism at all isn’t the solution. The solution is actually Kṛṣṇa consciousness, to be God conscious. That you can combine in with any political system. If the people are adequately God conscious, then there is some hope, otherwise simply political systems, dry materialistic systems, they are never going to satisfy the people. They may intoxicate the people for a short period of time, but in the end, people will be dissatisfied and they’ll revolt, in one way or another, but they don’t know what to revolt to; therefore, the end result will also be unsatisfactory. In this way they simply became more and more animalistic.

So people will have to be trained, what is the real purpose of human life. Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, He very methodically, He just kept hammering home the point that everyone is eternal, and they are the eternal servant of Kṛṣṇa, of God, and it is their only duty to serve the Supreme Person. That is their ultimate duty. Everything else is a temporary maintenance of this body, but the actual purpose of life is to serve and to love the Supreme Personality of Godhead. To realize Him in fullness, that is the perfection of yoga, that is the perfection of life. So even Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, when He was preaching, I think I mentioned many times how different people would stand outside His door and criticize Him, speculate what is He doing. No one could figure out what is Lord Caitanya doing. These people are singing, why they are jumping up and down? Why they are laughing like mad man? Because no one has any such experience, people get drunk and they dance sometimes, so people they just dance sometimes for 4-5 minutes for joy, or they may even folk dance for an hour, but this type of wild dancing and laughing, and crying and sometimes the devotees become so ecstatic they even fall down on the ground, and while chanting the name of God this is completely unheard of. So in the beginning people thought there must be something else, they must be on… taking some type of intoxications on the sly, but then with association they could see that now these devotees they don’t take any intoxication. They are actually intoxicated on God. They are intoxicated on the transcendental qualities and in the transcendental love of Kṛṣṇa, and that’s the only pure intoxication. That’s the only pure happiness, because it is not at all dependent on any material source. You don’t have to have anyone give you a fix or any kind of terrible thing like that. It’s independent. You don’t have to depend on even on this people, they are lining up to get their cigarettes, lining up to get their weekend ration, in Canada where they have government controlled whiskey stores. Before the holiday people line up sometimes to get their ration, to get their whiskey.

So this type of thing where people are somehow or another, trying to get the little bit of relief from material nature, so they are trying to become intoxicated. They don’t realize that the actual relief from material life is spiritual life. The actual happiness is spiritual happiness and the real status of life is to be always to be happy in love for Godhead.

Lord Nityānanda, He used to go and everyone who would see Him, He would just give him love for God, just like his devotee Mīnaketana Rāmadāsa. He go around and have a flute and whoever he touched with the flute they would become ecstatic. In fact, Lord Caitanya He was so ecstatic that when the fisherman caught Him in the net and when that fisherman touched Lord Caitanya, He became just ecstatic, His tears started flowing from His eyes, His hairs started standing on end, He started choking up and crying, and He was just chanting

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare,
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare,
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

And when Svarūpa Dāmodara was looking, “Where did Lord Caitanya go?” They were going up and down the side of the ocean in Purī, there they found this fisherman, and they said, “What’s the matter?” They found him chanting,

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare,
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

Hare Kṛṣṇa…

Just hysterical.

They said, “What’s the matter?”

Said, “I have been possessed by a ghost.”

They thought, “What kind of ghost makes a person chant Hare Kṛṣṇa?”

“What is… Where is this ghost?”

Said, “Just see, that dead body, that terrible thing, there lying in the sand, 9 feet long making horrible sound, jaga, jaga, jaga, jaga, jaga, jaga, jag. (laughter). I just touched it and I was just overwhelmed, a cold shiver came through my body, my hairs were standing on end, I haven’t stopped crying, some time I’m laughing and I… so horrible.” Svarūpa Dāmodara said, “It must be Lord Caitanya, He touched Lord Caitanya and because he is so frightened, he doesn’t realize that he is actually experiencing ecstasies of love for Godhead.” and there they saw Lord Caitanya completely elongated, His arms were practically dislocated and just held together by this skin, His knees were dislocated and held together by the skin.

They said, “That’s Lord Caitanya.”

The fisherman said, “No, No, I know what Lord Caitanya looks like, He is so beautiful, this is… this is, look at, this is terrible!” because Lord Caitanya has been floating in the water for so many hours, day… over days practically, that… you know how this skin becomes wrinkled, became pale, and different ecstatic symptoms made Him look completely different.

The devotees, when the put down the cloth on the ground, turned to Lord Caitanya over, washed off His body, and they began to chant,

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare,
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

And then when Lord Caitanya heard the devotees chant, boom, He contracted and came back together, He came back to external consciousness. No one can imitate the transcendental ecstasies of Lord Caitanya. Actually even the devotees feel some ecstasy, it’s just superficial… not superficial, it’s real but it’s insignificant… it’s a.. it’s a of course in a lesser quantity, a minute quantity of what Lord Caitanya experienced, nonetheless the minute quantities the devotees in a conditioned state, just like that the fisherman, he was so frightened that he was feeling ecstasy but didn’t even know that it was ecstasy at first, because he was so frightened, he didn’t know what it was. You see, sometimes a person chants Hare Kṛṣṇa, doesn’t know that this is ecstasy at first, because he’s is not tuned in, they are frightened or they feel uneasy, they never experienced such a thing because initially we are seeing it from the material senses, from the material mind looking in towards the soul, and as we become advanced, finally we become liberated, then we actually experience directly seeing from the soul out. Then we can fully appreciate the ecstasies of Kṛṣṇa consciousness in an unlimited way. Even in our conditioned state, the ecstasies of Kṛṣṇa consciousness are inconceivable. More than any other happiness and they even… these sensations of the senses and mind, it’s inconceivable. See… but at first it is something different. So, a person if they are not in a normal state of mind, if they are hysterical or if they are extremely agitated, then they might not, there might be mixture of their agitation and the ecstasy which a makes it difficult for them to understand what’s actually happening.

So actually, that fisherman, he was so hysterical that just to get him to speak where Lord Caitanya was, Svarūpa Dāmodara had to say, “Alright, I know how to cure these ghosts. You just stand still. Don’t worry, I am going to… in a…in a… going to get rid of the ghost, in the name of Kṛṣṇa, ghost, leave him, one, two, three.” Bap, bap, bap! He slapped him three times. “Alright!” He shook him, “Everything is alright.” Actually not…there was no ghost at all, but to just make the person think that alright, that he was alright and he calmed down. Then he was still ecstatic, where that time his fear was over, then he could speak and they could usually point out where Lord Caitanya was. So that was an extreme case, you see.

Sometimes people when they are walking down the street, they hear the harināma, they actually feel something, but they don’t know what it is, so they get all frightened. They cover their ears, and they run away. One time a devotee asked Prabhupāda, “What to do, somebody covers their ears, when they are going by the harināma?” Prabhupāda said, “Pull their hand away and chant louder in their ear. (laughter) it’s having effect.”

So anyway, by inviting people to take prasādam, like our Rādhākānta prabhu is doing, or he is even going out to them, as we are doing here in the temple and by letting them here, and chant and dance with us, they gradually then they be…they become converted, they become convinced, that this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is very, very good, you see. Any open-minded person, they can see, well there is nothing wrong with this movement, it’s very good, but because people have never seen anything like this… Even India when Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu began his movement 500 years ago, they never saw groups of people chanting congregationally like this before.

Before people used to sit down and in yogic āsanas and chant individually. That’s why even some Indians at first they don’t know, what to think about all this, but in Eastern India of course everyone knows the movement of Lord Caitanya, and in Eastern India everyone takes this processions out, chants Hare Kṛṣṇa, but in the past 100 years, preachers from Eastern India didn’t go to the Western parts of India, and Southern parts of India, and spread the saṅkīrtana movement as they should have, so now this Kṛṣṇa conscious movement is preaching of course to all parts of India.

Now we have our branches in over twenty cities in India, to all parts of the world. So although of course everyone around India accepts Hare Kṛṣṇa chanting as a most sacred hymn, the most sacred mantra, but many of them they chant just sitting down, in a small group, they call it Rāma nāma or Rāma dhuna or they chant it like in South India in a small group or they chant it as japa, individually. But chanting as a, with this mṛdangas and dancing, this is something unique for Caitanya Mahāprabhu. He has actually introduced that, all over India, and we know that this was performed by… in the spiritual world, in the heavenly upper planetary systems, also this kīrtana. So this is something that has just come to this planet recently.

The chanting has been here, brought by Nārada Muni some thousands and thousands of years ago, but how to chant it in a massive group with hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of people, this has been introduced by Lord Caitanya. So now, this chanting instead of chanting “We shall overcome”, people should be trained to chant,

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare,
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma Hare Hare.

Hare Kṛṣṇa.

They can also be completely ecstatic, and they can begin to dance and say, “Very good, very good.” Thank you very much.

Devotees: Jaya! Haribol.

Jayapatākā Swami: Any questions?

(question inaudible)

Jayapatākā Swami: He was walking with the devotees and suddenly He saw that He was looking at the ocean, and He fell into the trance that “This ocean is the Yamunā.” We just saw the water in the moonlight, and He reminded himself of Kṛṣṇa, used to play on the side of Yamunā during the full moon, and play his flute and He would attract all the devotees of Vṛndāvana.

So seeing the moonlight reflecting on the ocean, Lord Caitanya was reminded of Kṛṣṇa, and thinking of Kṛṣṇa He had like a… a darśana, like a vision of Kṛṣṇa there on the other side of the Yamunā, and He just ran into the ocean just suddenly, and His devotees looked left and didn’t see, “Where did Lord Caitanya go?” they are just walking by the side of the you know, suddenly He is gone. He just suddenly there is… you know, they are walking, they don’t know what ecstasy Lord Caitanya was thinking in His mind. All of a sudden Lord Caitanya’s poof, took off like a bullet and just run into the ocean. At that time just seeing as Vṛndāvana, He would sometime go into these ecstasies, and then, they didn’t know where He went. They thought maybe He ran down the beach or… because it was dark, it was moonlight. So then, the next morning they were looking, they just couldn’t find Him, that was the problem.

Haribol.

Any other question?

[break]

They might have compelled to but no one’s ever… that’s why you chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, you can chant for a long time if you commit offenses, and Lord Caitanya taught both how to avoid offenses, and by chanting Lord Caitanya’s name before chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, actually the offenseless chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa creates more ecstasy, but whether they feel inclined or not, they have just… no one has ever broken that inertia, but once you saw in the slides last night, how everyone, they also came out and they were chanting and dancing in the street. So it’s not hard for them to take it up.

They already know chanting. In fact in many places in South India, the main chant in Hare Kṛṣṇa, and then I asked, “Who is the person who spread this chanting here?” and, nobody can remember. So, it’s definitely Lord Caitanya when He toured South India, and had everyone chant, that that chanting is still there, because of the seeds in the preaching that He did. And in one remote village we found, the whole village they were chanting and dancing, and they had a temple and they were chanting the mantra,

śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya prabhu-nityānanda
śrī-advaita gadādhara śrīvāsādi-gaura-bhakta-vṛnda

And then, we asked them, “Where did you learn this chanting?”

They said, “We don’t know, our forefathers taught us, we don’t even know what it means, we just chant and dance, and we feel very nice.” (laughter)

Because no one done preaching there for so long. Actually Bhaktisiddhānta went and opened a temple in Madras. Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, he put footprints on the path of Lord Caitanya, but apart from that no one’s, that was the first preaching in hundreds of years and it again returned Lord Caitanya’s message, there is some… Nature is that, after some time people forget. Lord Caitanya didn’t bring any books with Him, He just went and told people to chant. So after a while people they continued chanting but then they forgot that, “Who was that saint, who was that preacher who came there and told them to chant?” They just continued chanting. Now they can see, “Yes actually it was Lord Caitanya.” They are accepting very easily. For no one else. Rāmānuja didn’t teach them to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, Madhvācārya… who taught them to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa? It was Lord Caitanya. Haribol!