19870517 Sunday Feast

The following is a Sunday feast lecture given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami on May 17^th 1987 in Stockholm, Sweden.

ājānu-lambita-bhujau kanakāvadātau
saṅkīrtanaika-pitarau kamalāyatākṣau
viśvambharau dvija-varau yuga-dharma-pālau
vande jagat priya-karau karuṇāatārau

Jayapatākā Swami: This beautiful form of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu on the right and Lord Nityānanda Prabhu on the left, “ajānu-lambita-bhujau” – their arms go down to their knees, their eyes are big like a lotus. Flowers are decorating their lotus feet. These two brothers appeared 501 years ago. Atleast Lord Caitanya appeared 501 years ago in India, in Māyāpur-dhāma, to bring from the spiritual world the method, the process, the message of pure love. So you all are very fortunate to be present here before Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityānanda. Lord Caitanya is the most merciful person. When we talk about mercy or if we try to measure mercy, you could think well, there are great people in the world who have done charitable acts. Someone may give free food out to hundreds and thousands of people, someone may build the hospital or endow a university, giving people education. Or sometimes people going to affordable place like red cross or something and they save people from war-stricken situations. But if you analyze who are the most merciful, kind, benevolent persons, what they have contributed to the world, the society; and then if you go a little further and try to understand what is the contribution that Lord Caitanya has brought to us, coming down from the spiritual sky here into this material world in the Kali-yuga to rescue the fallen souls, to bring them back to the spiritual world, to unite them in a bond of eternal love of Kṛṣṇa or Kṛṣṇa-prema.

Of course, to bring a little more into focus, if we think of other great benefactors. Say there was Lord Jesus, he promised that all of the followers, all his followers would be saved, everyone who would follow him would be saved. There was a devotee of Lord Caitanya, his name is Vāsudeva Dutta, he was praying to take all the suffering of all the people in the world. Whatever karma they have performed before in their life, in this life or previous lives, he requested to have all that karma placed upon him and let everyone go back to the spiritual world. This was his request, that he would alone suffer for everyone and let everyone else go back. Not only the followers. Whether believers or non-believer, whether follower or envious, whether human beings or any animal even, his plea was to deliver everyone. So that was the type of the benevolence that we find in Caitanya Mahāprabhu and his followers. By chanting the 

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

mahā-mantra for deliverance, not only is the chanter uplifted but those who hear; even the plants, the animals, bystanders, everyone benefits by the transcendental vibration. So this way Lord Caitanya came to give the most auspicious, the most favorable influence in the world. The effect of Kali-yuga is an absence of mercy, absence of cleanliness, absence of austerity or sacrifice for others and absence of truthfulness. To counteract the evil effects of Kali, Lord Caitanya brought down the system of chanting transcendental vibration. But in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, it states adyapīha śrī kṛṣṇa caitanya nāma je laya, even today anyone who chants Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya and then chant

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

then you will feel happiness. This is the statement in Caitanya-caritāmṛta.

Just recently I was on a tour of Bangladesh with some devotees from Northern Europe. Specifically Kṛṣṇa-kṣetra was with us and every night there would be five, ten, twenty, even up to 30,000 people one night were present. We would get everyone to chant the names of Lord Caitanya and Hare Kṛṣṇa, and afterwards I asked them if they are feeling happiness, and every experiment they always raised hand and they said they are feeling happiness. Those who you that were present tonight, you were chanting Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya and Hare Kṛṣṇa, how many of you feeling happy while singing and dancing? *everyone raises hand* So it seems to be working! In all the previous ages the brāhmaṇas had such mystic potency that they could take a dead cow, and by mantra bring back to life. That would show the effect of their mantra. So nowadays we don’t  do those particular sacrifices, but in this age we do the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa. So, the way to test the mantra: if you chant, you should feel spiritual bliss. So, everyone can test this. Doesn’t cost anything to test it. Lord Caitanya, He was the first to give this to everyone. In fact He was so eager to give to everyone, that at the age of twenty-four He decided to dedicate Himself to spreading this message all over, and He left the His home place, and taking sannyāsa, He went to Jagannātha Purī and He went all over India. At that time, he requested Nityānanda Prabhu (they’re two brothers, Nityānanda Prabhu) that, “I have taken the renounced order. You go back to Māyāpur, to Bengal. You take married life and you show how it can be practiced as a couple. As husband and wife, how this process can be preached and practiced by householders.” So Lord Caitanya, he was free to go to whole India. 

Nityānanda Prabhu went back to following the order of Lord Caitanya. He took the householder āśrama, and He set up His place in Navadvīpa, the sacred dhāma, in a place called Godruma. So there Lord Nityānanda, He attracted literally thousands and thousands of people to come, and He would have big harināma-kīrtanas going on for long periods of time. And this way the people would come, stay with Him for some time, and He would send them back out and He would tell them to make their villages, their communities, their families Kṛṣṇa conscious. So this way, it was described that He set up a Nāmahaṭṭa, or a type of super market of the Holy Name where everyone, regardless of their caste, their creed, their color, their sex, their age, their qualification or lack of qualification, everyone would go there to get from Him this spiritual inspiration and go back and give it to others. His son, Vīracandra Prabhu, he was empowered to spread this message also. So he was going and he opposed any kind of force. Their method was simply by chanting and by attracting. That the people will be attracted simply by the force of love. So by force, there were Mohammedan rulers that came and forcefully made 500 Hindus accept the Mohammedan religion, forced conversion. Well, Vīracandra, when he heard about that, he went there and started to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, and by the force of his love, those 500 plus another 500 persons who had been previously converted by force, they all came back. They all surrendered to Kṛṣṇa, and began to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, and accepted initiation in the Vaiṣṇava tradition. So his effect was so powerful that the Mohammedan rulers, they eventually actually passed an edict that no one should obstruct Vīracandra or Nityānanda Prabhu. So powerful was their effect! And they stopped their forced conversion. So about 150 years ago, one of His final pictures; there are royal pictures here going from this side to that side, He is sitting there with opened top. Every ones open top.

Anyway, the far-right picture is Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura. So he re-established that Nāmahaṭṭa or that preaching of Lord Nityānanda in the same place Godruma, but he added a little bit of structure to it all. He set up that when there was a group of people who were interested in Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, he made one of them as a kind of custodian for the others. He called him elder brother – ‘dādā’. As the elder brother, it was his duty to organize at least regular chanting sessions where everyone would gather together to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s name. In this way, he called them as Nāmahaṭṭa groups or prapannāśramas. A prapannāśrama is a kind of a center for spiritual shelter, a center of spiritual dedication, of surrender. In this way he had established… we found a recorded list of at least 500 of such centers, and there were probably thousands and thousands of them. In this way, without any formal structure… I mean the structure was very informal. That simply local groups were established of devotees that would chant, and then when it became so many, to make sure that everything was going all right, that their questions were being answered, then for every number of groups, he called them a senāpati, for which a gross translation would be commander. But the literal translation is senā means soldiers and pati means either master, or father, or protector. So he said that senāpati means the protector of the soldiers who are all devotees, the one who should protect them from influence of different types of illusion. So in this way he had over a certain group a circle protector, then a district protector, then a state protector. In this way the movement was expanding into various areas of the society. So he predicted that in the future, this form of Nāmahaṭṭa propagation of Kṛṣṇa consciousness would be considered the most essential and dynamic, or important aspect of propagation of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. That the temples are actually like wholesale markets. Just like Stockholm is a wholesale center. People come here and they buy their things, and they sell those things in other smaller cities and villages. They have little grocery shops. They come here, buy the things wholesale and they sell in retail. So these temples and holy dhāmas, these are like wholesale, or special centers, where you can get the quantity of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Then retail outlet are these Nāmahatta groups where people are chanting in their homes, gathering together, chanting “Hare Kṛṣṇa” and practicing Kṛṣṇa consciousness, contributing some of their energy to Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. There are guided by full time preachers, full time bhakti-yogīs who are trained in training others how to advance in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. So, this was the way the Kṛṣṇa Conscious movement was, up until last century, expanded in every town, every village, everywhere in entire eastern India and other parts of India as well. As we come into 20^th century, then the need for bigger temples and centers for publishing books in a mass scale, these became more and more focused upon by Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura and finally by Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda took this message of Lord Caitanya to the Western world in 1965, and until 1977 he was continually travelling around the world, establishing Kṛṣṇa Consciousness. So when he completed opening more than approximately 200 temples, almost 100 literatures and various farm projects, schools and big spiritual centers in Vṛndāvana, India and Māyāpur, India and many other accomplishments, then he said that, “I have done half the work, and the other half is to have this spread among the mass of people in the society, to establish daiva-varṇāśrama, to have the message be disseminated to everyone. So that time in India, he also told me the one of the processes to bring people to our temple, to our centers of Kṛṣṇa Consciousness: “Let them see how we chant, how we worship Kṛṣṇa, how we offer prasādam to Kṛṣṇa, then let them go and practice in their home, let them train their family and their friends and this way let Kṛṣṇa consciousness naturally be disseminated through society.” So now we are going through different phases of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and this is one of the phases which is already being implemented in different degrees. And I’m very glad to hear that there are many friends of Kṛṣṇa who are present here today, who are already beginning to chant.

There is no preliminary step that one needs to do before chanting. Immediately one can start to chant without any preparation. By chanting, that alone helps us to understand the philosophy much better. That allows us to get ahead in the whole process of devotional service or bhakti-yoga, far faster than any other means. Of course, this one is very intellectual, wants to analyze everything before doing anything, then of course we have so many books to first analyze the process and see why, how it works, everything and it can be practiced. Now Lord Caitanya, He was in a particular time time when India was divided by various types of philosophies. It is still divided in many ways. But that time the philosophers were also very strong. That time there was not only the Mohammedan religion which had invaded from Turkey and other countries, but there was also Buddhism, Jainism, there was Māyāvādīsm of Śaṅkarācārya and various types of materialistic so-called religions. So all of these different elements were basically against Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s program. At that time there was a rigid caste system in India, that if you were of a particular caste then you have to act in that way. No one who was not a brāhmaṇa could say the name of Kṛṣṇa or this mantra. These mantras were only meant for the priests. There were secret mantras that were never to be spoken out loud before. But Caitanya Mahāprabhu, He broadcasted them publicly and had every one chant them. Not only brāhmaṇas, not only other members of the caste systems, even so called outcastes – cāṇḍālas, yavanas everyone, He would bring together and have them all chant. So it was some of the caste priests, they went to the Chand Kazi and they complained that this Caitanya Mahāprabhu, He is going to the ruin the Hindu-dharma, He is going to ruin the Vedic culture, because He is having every one chant these mantras. The mantra's potency is going to be destroyed. So, of course Lord Caitanya faced all these problems, and hundreds of thousands of people followed Him, and He went to the government for the first civil disobedience for the right cause, and He convinced the government that their ban on His chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa, on His allowing everyone to come together on a common platform, was actually improper, was against all religious principles and people who are complaining against Him were actually bigots. So he (govt.) declared that no one would interfere with His saṅkīrtana movement. So His moment was going on, analyze but at the same time the society around was still very much seeped in this type of very rigid caste consciousness.

For instance, at that time the ruler of Bengal was the Badshah Hussain Shah. He was a Nawab or the Mohammedan ruler. He was in charge of the entire eastern-northern India. Going down to Orrisa and going east to Burma practically, and going west up to the border of the Delhi Nawab. So he was one whole quarter of India was under his domain. So he had minister in his government, who was another Mohammedan. He was a follower of the Vedas. His name was Buddhimanta Khan, and Buddhimanta Khan was a bit older than the emperor. And when emperor was a boy, he was actually training the emperor in military art and various things. At that time the emperor was doing something wrong. He wasn’t emperor then. He was just a prince or something and He was misbehaving. So Buddimanta Khan, when he was his teacher, he got angry and he hit him on the back with a whip and it caused a scar on his back. Later, through various intrigue somehow that royal family member become the emperor, and his wife asked the husband that, “How is that on your back you have this scar?”

He just somehow let it slip. He said, “I was whipped.”

“You, the Emperor… You were whipped!? Who could dare do such a thing to you!?”

He said, “No, no. When I was a child, I did something wrong, somebody whipped me, it doesn’t matter.”

“No, no! I am your queen! I want to know who did this to you. They must be punished! They must be killed for this offence.”

The emperor, he loved Buddhimanta Khan. He was his teacher, he was his uncle. So he would never tell the queen who did it. But she kept pushing and pushing and pushing, “I want to know who did this.”

So finally he said, “Well it was Buddimanta Khan. But he is too dear to me I can’t allow any punishment to be given him.”

But the queen was insisting, “No! You must punish him! Or at least forcibly make him a Mohammedan.” In those days the system was to convert a Hindu to Mohammedan, the Muslim would take a pot of water and spit in it. Then he would forcibly put that down the person’s throat. By drinking the water he spit in, they’d say, “Now you’ve become a Mohammedan!” It was that simple! So Buddhimanta Khan was brought to the palace, and he didn’t know anything. He was a minister. All of a sudden, the emperor said “This is the thing. My wife kept asking me about the scar. So she demanded. I am helpless, I have to satisfy my wife.” Sometimes husbands, they come under the sway of their wives, even if you are emperor. He said “I am sorry. I have to take away your jāta, your Hinduism, your caste. I am gonna make you a Mohammedan.”

So then he said “No!”

So then they grabbed him, and spit in the water, and threw it down his throat and released him. So then he wanted to be reinstated in society but society said, “You can no longer come, you are no longer a Hindu anymore. You have been spit on.”

So then he went to some brāhmaṇas, some priests and requested “Is there some way I can get purified?”

They said “Yes. You take clarified butter, you boil it, and while it is steaming you drink it”.

He said “But if I do that, I will die!”

They said “Yes. In your next birth you’ll take birth as a Hindu and then you will be purified” (laughter)

He said “That wasn’t the cure I was looking for!” (laughter)

He went and everyone was giving him these things. “You just go under the Ganges, you take a deep dive. Let all the air out of your lungs and then take a deep breath of Ganges water.” (laughter) So all these kinds of very positive solutions. (laughter) So he seemed hopeless. This was the situation then, that simply by these very caste conscious brāhmaṇas and very rigid opinions; say someone has spit on you and suddenly you become outcaste. That is why in India today there is 25% Mohammedan. Otherwise, only a small fraction came from Turkey. But it was by all this type of conversion. Once they are converted, they wanted to come back. They weren’t allowed to come back. So Buddimanta Khan, somehow or the other he went to Caitanya Mahāprabhu and he asked Caitanya Mahāprabhu “This thing has happened to me. Is there some way I can be purified? Is there some way I can be allowed to be freed from this curse?”

He said “Yes. I can cure you. I can save you from this. You simply chant this mantra:

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

If you just serve Kṛṣṇa, you are transcendental to Hinduism, Mohammadism all-isms. You can be on transcendental platform. That’s all there is.”

So then Buddhimanta Khan started to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, and he became one of the prominent associates of Caitanya Mahāprabhu who started to widely preach widely Kṛṣṇa consciousness, enthusing others. So he approached one time Mohammedan magistrate, and he was telling him “Give up your caste consciousness. Give up all this sectarianism. Why don’t you just chant Hare Kṛṣṇa?”

He said “Well… later.”

“Why don’t you just try it?”

“I will chant Hare Kṛṣṇa tomorrow.”

“Haribol! Haribol!” He started jumping. “You just chanted Hare Kṛṣṇa now. You already said Hare Kṛṣṇa. Now don’t stop, keep on chanting. Out of three words you just chanted two. Now just chant Hare Rāma and keep on chanting!” (laughter) So in this way Buddhimanta Khan, he was very enthusiastic. Actually Buddhimanta Khan, he didn’t realize what he was in his previous birth. Buddhimanta Khan, actually in a previous birth, he was also a king.

In the Vedas, it was predicted… there was history that in Navadvīpa, thousands of years before, there was a king called the Suvarṇa-vihāra King. He was very successful king. He had a well-protected kingdom. All of his prajā, his citizens, were very happy. They respected him. They loved him. He provided them all type of material facilities. He himself had every form of material opulence: good wife, good children, good everything that a king could have, that a human being could have. He had everything at that time, and he was working hard to get some more income and to have little more facility, and he was doing religious activity to have more pious karma. In this way he was situated. One day, Nārada Muni came to see that king. Nārada Muni is one of our spiritual masters. When he saw Nārada Muni, he immediately rose from his throne, offered Nārada Muni a seat, gave him some respect, washed his feet, offered him an ārati, and all the respect that one offers to a Vaiṣṇava when he comes. Then gave him food, then sweet words. In this way he requested Nārada Muni “Please give me some spiritual instruction.”

So then Nārada Muni started to instruct him that, “What is your goal in life?”

He said, “My goal is to be happy, to make others happy with material facilities like this etc.”

Then Nārada Muni started to explain to him that, “You are working so hard. When you leave your body, then all this is going to remain here. What about your future? Actually, you are missing the real point of life. You are born as a human being, where we develop, we stay sometime, the body dies, the soul lives on, goes on takes a new birth. So in this way now you got a very great fortune. You are the King of Navadvīpa. This is the land where Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu will appear in the Kali-yuga. This is the scared place where if you worship Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, you can develop your full spiritual awareness simply by chanting His names.” And he explained this basic process of Kṛṣṇa Consciousness. So the king, he become very enlivened and started to chant Lord Caitanya’s name. “Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya! Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya! Gaurāṅga! Gaurāṅga! Gaurāṅga!” He was chanting again and again, until finally Lord Caitanya appeared to him! The same form appeared to the king of Suvarṇa-vihāra. The king became ecstatic. He was jumping up and down, and he was falling down paying his respects. He was overwhelmed to see Lord Caitanya. Then Lord Caitanya disappeared. And then he was crying, trying again to see the Lord.

The Lord said that, “I just gave you a little darśana, a little audience, to bless you. You continue to chant, you continue to practice.”

“But I want to be your devotee. I want to be with you.”

He said, “Yes, when I come for my avatāra, my incarnation, to spread the Kṛṣṇa Conscious movement in this world, you will come as my associate and your name will be Buddhimanta Khan.”

So actually Buddhimanta Khan was destined to come and join Caitanya Mahāprabhu, to show how Lord Caitanya transcended all types of divisions. Now still our world, although we are in 20^th century, there are so many divisions which are competing and fighting against each other. But Lord Caitanya wanted to show that there is a common platform where we can all meet upon. Everyone can chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. We can transcend all the divisions if we just chant this transcendental vibration together. So in this way in Māyāpur, the place Lord Caitanya appeared, that is a sacred place. What is the meaning of a sacred place? What makes the place sacred or not sacred? This is the question that someone might ask. That just like here in Stockholm, in a particular house we all chanted Hare Kṛṣṇa here. Now we may consider that place where people gather together and chant sacred mantras, that becomes purified. The Vedas say that by continually contact with transcendental energy, that purifies something. Just like if you have a piece of steel and if you rub a magnet against it again and again. Say if I have a nail, or a piece of steel, you rub a magnet again and again, eventually that piece of steel becomes magnetized. It becomes also a magnet. So in the same way, by contact with the spiritual energy, one becomes spiritualized or transcendentalized. So even we consider that this room is a transcendental place, because it’s used for transcendental chanting, for transcendental activities. So it becomes purified. But Māyāpur, the place where lord Caitanya appears, that’s a different type of a situation. Because from the spiritual world, when the Lord comes down and contacts the material world, that place is called the Yogapīṭha. Means the place of contact, or connecting, for the Supreme Lord connects with the material world. So just like the government has their air forces and launching pads for rockets which is fenced off as a certain area which is under the central government control. When the Lord comes down into a particular place there are no fences or anything that you can see, but there is a particular area which is under the direct spiritual shelter or energy from the spiritual world. Those who are able to see on that level, they can recognize it. Just like that king he don’t know he was staying a place which was under this type of spiritual effect. But Narada Muni knew, because he was a great spiritual master. Various great spiritual teachers, they know. They visit these places and they get the energy, and then they continue revived to distribute this energy to others. These are like special circles of spiritual energy.

So Māyāpur, our founder Śrīla Prabhupāda, he has made a world headquarters of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement. Spiritual headquarters. It’s not the administrative headquarters as such but it’s like a spiritual headquarters where we all gather together and have big festivals, and chant together and have some meetings how to cooperate better to fulfil the desires of lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu. So our local GBC from Sweden, Harikeśa Swami, is also this year made the co-GBC of Māyāpur with this humble self and we are working cooperatively to try to develop our center there, so that devotees from all over the world can visit Māyāpur and take shelter there for some period in their life, whether in the beginning, middle or the end, or on various occasions in their life. So this Māyāpur-dhāma, actually Lord Nityānanda who I introduced to you earlier, he had predicted to Jīva Gosvāmī, that in Māyāpur there would be a big flood. And that time there was a big city there. That city would be shifted to some other place. And when the flood waters go down, when the Ganges subsides, this will be just open fields. But gradually a spiritual city will start to come up and all the people that would live there will be all devoted people, all Kṛṣṇa conscious persons. And he said there would be a great temple - eka adbhuta mandira ei haibe prakāśa. There will be a great temple which will be built. gaurāṅga nitya-sevā haibe vikāśa. And by this temple, he predicted, the eternal service of Lord Caitanya would be expanded throughout all over the world. So in 1977 Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda laid the foundation stone, just before about six months before he left the world. And he said, “Here you built this big temple.” So now he have the obligation to try to fulfil that prediction to build this temple.

The scheme that Prabhupāda gave us, that it would be a Vedic planetarium which would show the cosmos from the Vedic point of view, with hundreds and thousands exhibits, multimedia various type of exhibits as well as big meeting halls and temple about hundred and fifty meters high, 150x150m at the base also. And there Prabhupāda also mentioned that we could show the various planetary systems in the material world, Devi-dhāma. Above the material world, there is the Śiva-dhāma or Maheśa-dhāma which is at the border of the material and the spiritual world. Then beyond that, there is the Vaikuṇṭha-dhāma or the spiritual world which never changes, which doesn’t go through the creation and destruction. And that beyond this Vaikuṇṭha-dhāma where there is no anxiety and no suffering, there is Goloka-dhāma, the place where Kṛṣṇa resides, the place where Kṛṣṇa is constantly having His loving pastimes. So this could all be demonstrated within this temple on different levels. As you go up in the temple, you can come up high and higher till finally you get to the top, Goloka-dhāma, or Kṛṣṇaloka. So, this is actually the priority project would like to complete. After 500 years, if we can complete Lord Nityānada’s prediction, all of us together as a team, it will be a great opportunity first to get some special mercy. In Kṛṣṇa Consciousness we try to do some service, and we all the devotees are called dāsa. Dāsa means servant. So, Prabhupāda one time was saying that in material world, to be a servant is considered to be a very kind of lowly thing that is envied or despised. Everyone wants to be the master. But in spiritual life, it’s very proud to be considered servants of the Supreme Master, because that it is the real type of liberation. As long as we are trying to be controllers and masters and try to exploit others, we actually become more and more entangled in the complexities to the material life. But when we try so serve others and serve the Supreme, we actually become liberated and in material nature can no longer entangle us. So some services have got special credit. In other words, if you do a service, by that service you can benefit millions of people. Like publishing books, it is a very big service. Because by book publishing so many people can get spiritual knowledge. Like when someone is speaking over the radio, many people can hear. So that’s a bigger type of chanting. Then say in the room 200 people are listening, someone is speaking over the radio, thousands of people, millions of people can hear. So similarly, some service one does that many people will benefited by, and therefore the credit for that is many times more. The more the person serves to uplift others, the more obstacles are removed from their own path, and they are able to advance very quickly to achieve the perfection. So, building this temple that Lord Nityānanda predicted would inspire and expand the consciousness about Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s message all over the world. This is a very special opportunity to get the mercy or to able to serve millions of people all over the world, and this way able to make almost instant advancement in the future by the Lord’s mercy. 

So, in this way we try to take the opportunities. Just like those of you who are chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa, if you somehow encourage a friend to sometime come and take prasādam feast, to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, you get benefit for that. That benefit of helping someone else then goes to you. You get a commission automatically! So, the Nāmahaṭṭa programme is basically that, you see normally the devotees who are full time devotees, living in the temple wearing this type of saffron cloth, they think they have a monopoly that they’re the only ones that can actually get the mercy of giving other people Kṛṣṇa Consciousness. But Lord Nityānanda, he was revealing that others who may be not able to fully dedicate all the time but they also interested in understanding and advancing Kṛṣṇa Consciousness they can also get the benefit of giving others Kṛṣṇa Consciousness through their limited ability. Whatever ability they have, they can encourage others to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, and by doing so they also get as someone wearing this saffron colored, orange colored cloth. See the cloth is just uniform. The real thing is how many people you can encourage to chant ‘Hare Kṛṣṇa’ and help them to advance towards the ending the cycle of birth and death, advance towards taking the shelter, and to developing their full Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the transcendental consciousness.

Verified By Your Ever humble servant
Vinoda Gopīkeśa Dāsa 
25-12-2024
Māyāpur India