19870919 Caitanya-caritāmṛta Madhya-līlā 1.238-243

mukan Karoti Vacalam

paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim

yat kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande

śrī Guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam

Paramananda-Madhavam

Sri Caitanya Isvaram

balabhadra bhaṭṭācārya rahe mātra saṅge
jhārikhaṇḍa-pathe kāśī āilā mahā-raṅge

balabhadra bhaṭṭācārya rahe mātra saṅge
jhārikhaṇḍa-pathe kāśī āilā mahā-raṅge

Translation

When Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu left Jagannātha Purī for Vṛndāvana, only Balabhadra Bhaṭṭācārya was with Him. Thus He traveled on the path through Jhārikhaṇḍa and arrived in Benares [Vārāṇasī] with great delight.

dina cāra kāśīte rahi’ gelā vṛndāvana
mathurā dekhiyā dekhe dvādaśa kānana

Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu stayed at Benares only four days and then left for Vṛndāvana. After seeing the town of Mathurā, He visited the twelve forests.

Purport by Srila Prabhupada

Those who visit the Vṛndāvana area today also generally visit twelve places, known as the twelve forests. They start at Mathurā, where there is Kāmyavana. From there they go to Tālavana, Tamālavana, Madhuvana, Kusumavana, Bhāṇḍīravana, Bilvavana, Bhadravana, Khadiravana, Lohavana, Kumudavana and Gokulamahāvana.

These are the 12 vana’s dwa Das vana or dwa Das kannan so we have here

Kāmya  one, Tālavana two, Tamālavana three, Madhuvana four, Kusumavana five, Bhāṇḍīravana six, Bilvavana seven, Bhadravana,eight, Khadiravana nine , Lohavana ten, Kumudavana eleven and Gokulamahāvana twelve. These are the twelve forests Kusum Serova different…forest of Krishna had his past times. Each forest is connected with the different pastimes of the Lord. Like the Talavana is where there Tala fruits special…(speaking to a devotee) and Tala fruit is available in India, in Bengal also and when its ripe it has very nice scent and during one time of the year take the ripen Tala fruit and they make a…extract the juice from it which is very aromatic, highly scented, kind of like a custard colour…yellow colour and they mix that with the flower and they make a type of pakora known as Tala bora, and they said its very favorite of Krishna so specially on Janmashtami days or other days they’ll offer this Tal bora, special type of…like you have dahi Vada, this is Taal Vada, that means special type of fry with the Tal mixed with it , its very sweet, sweet pakora, quite nice, then a Tal fruit is green then they split it inside and inside there’s a seed of the Tal fruit known as the saas in Bengali and young boys and girls always eat that, its like a type of Jello, and inside there is a Jello but like a firm Jello inside there’s  a little liquid part so whenever you bite into it, it always squirts out and gets over your chin (devotees laugh) they also make a Sandesh in the shape of the Tala fruit unripen and this one place called Chandan nagar, we’re doing a big preaching there and someone gave us this Taal fruit but it’s a Sandesh and they said this is our specialty so you please bite into it so we offered it to Krishna and then we brought in, bit into eat although then this Sandesh is hard, somehow they put the juice inside, you bit in and the juice come out, and then they all laugh (devotees laugh) this is the special thing. Its very hard to make a hard Sandesh with liquid inside. So, all of these forests of Krishna of course they are remembered by devotees all over India therefore we have these different and the different song like they say Bhaja Bhakata Vatsala, even there it mentions Taal bora’s, Taal fruit pakora’s, this a very a…each one of these forest has its own pastimes, similarly in Navadwip there are 9 islands, in vrindavan there are 12 vana’s, Tālavana, , Tamālavana, Madhuvana, Kusumavana, Bhāṇḍīravana, Bilvavana, Bhadravana, Khadiravana, Lohavana, Kumudavana and Gokulamahāvana, and in mayapur you have the dwipa’s islands. We have the Simantadwip, Godrumdwip, Madhyadwip, Koladwip, Ritudwip, Jahnudwip, Modadrumdwip, Rudradwip, Antardwip, and each of those nine islands also have different pastimes in different things which happens. In the twelve forest of Vrindavan also represent in Mayapur, Navadwip on the spiritual platform so Krishna himself in the form of Sri Caitanya, Lord Sri Krishna Caitanya His going visiting all the holy place of Vrindavan one by one.

līlā-sthala dekhi’ preme ha-ilā asthira
balabhadra kaila tāṅre mathurāra bāhira

When Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu visited all twelve places of Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes, He became very agitated because of ecstasy. Balabhadra Bhaṭṭācārya somehow or other got Him out of Mathurā.

gaṅgā-tīra-pathe lañā prayāge āilā
śrī-rūpa āsi’ prabhuke tathāi mililā

After leaving Mathurā, the Lord began to walk along the path on the bank of the Ganges, and finally He reached the holy place named Prayāga [Allahabad] today it's known as. It was there that Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī came and met the Lord.

daṇḍavat kari’ rūpa bhūmite paḍilā
parama ānande prabhu āliṅgana dilā

At Prayāga, Rūpa Gosvāmī fell down on the ground to offer obeisances to the Lord, and the Lord embraced him with great delight.

śrī-rūpe śikṣā karāi’ pāṭhāilā vṛndāvana
āpane karilā vārāṇasī āgamana

After instructing Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī at Prayāga, at the Daśāśvamedha-ghāṭa, Caitanya Mahāprabhu ordered him to go to Vṛndāvana. The Lord then returned to Vārāṇasī.

So this is the Madhya Lila chapter one Chaitanya Caritamrita 243, so this is…chapter one of the Madhya Lila is giving a synopsis of the latter part of Sri Chaitanya’s pastimes, then after this this will be unfolding one after another in greater details, our great spiritual master Krishna Das Kaviraj thakur, he was very old when he was writing the Chaitanya Caritamrita, he was practically blind, very old, he was always afraid any moment he might pass away, so he wanted to at least give the synopsis and then as long he lives try to complete it, see when Prabhupada came at a very elderly age to the west, he was also pre-occupied, he had a heart attack in the ship coming over, as well as often health wasn’t good always so he was always telling the followers that you had to take up responsibility, I’m elderly advancing in age anytime I may go,11:04 so you had to take up responsibility, you have to see that the movement goes on spreading, this was Srila Prabhupada’s pre-occupation as well that after He’s departure physically from the world that the movement would continue in solid footing, of course that’s responsibility… Prabhupada had whole responsibility of the previous acharya’s Bhaktisiddanta Saraswathi Thakur on His shoulders because no one else…all his god brothers had remained concerned about fulfilling those instructions of Bhaktisiddanta to spread the movement all over the world so the full responsibility was on His shoulders and in that sense we are so fortunate enough that in ISKCON there is so many disciples, grand disciples of Srila Prabhupada so we are able to work co-operatively together for furthering His message. Of course, each disciple or grand disciple takes the responsibility similarly that its my duty to serve Srila Prabhupada myself but even though his not able to do it all alone, and because he’ll be more pleased if I do it co-operatively with the other devotees so therefore we’re doing that way. Krishna is more pleased when one does co-operatively nonetheless the responsibility come to each and every person just like in the Mahabharat when some Kings were imprisoned by the Kuru’s and everyday they were given the food one person less for… just enough to feed the one person so what happen was everyday one person would die so they only imprisoned king who made the plan to get vengeance and would give all the food to Sakuni and its his duty to destroy the Kuru dynasty so they would give all the food to the one person so at least one person will be left and he’ll finish of the kuru’s like his father said when I die you save my bones and use those bones and make dice and with those dice they’ll do what ever you want, those dice will defeat the Kuru’s. So, of course that was kind of for a negative purpose, but they wanted…at least if there’s one person left from our descendent he’ll be able to finish off the Kuru’s. This is a positive thing of course his disciple there preparing well even if there’s no one else, if there’s a world war or something and there’s only person…silly not to try to spread the Krishna conscious movement, of course not that whimsically one would individually…obviously we can do less individually then one can do with twenty and as Prabhupada’s instruction to co-operate with one another so we cannot say we’re trying to carry out Prabhupada’s instruction and go directly against him, however singularly and jointly we’re all responsible to carry out that great instruction to further the message Prabhupada has given us, just like Dhruva Maharaj was very determined to find Narayana in spite of so many obstacles he was not giving up, his determination to find Narayana, to find the Supreme Lord, he could not be distracted, similarly we have our determination to propagate the great message that’s been handed down by the disciplic succession from Lord Chaitanya through the 6 Goswami’s and the great acharya’s Bhaktisiddanta through Bhaktivedanta swami Prabhupada Abhay Charan Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. It’s our determination, because of the disciplic succession system that to keep the message intact the disciple will receive instructions from his Guru and he hands it in turn to his disciples goes on like this, sometime people wonder why is it in Krishna consciousness we don’t go listen to this group or that group or we don’t associate with the different Gaudiya Math, different groups and listen to all their teachings because I must be sure that it’s a group which totally receptive to Srila Prabhupada’s message. Then if we simply…we may respect everyone but if we take those instructions and if we dilute or change instructions we received from Srila Prabhupada, at least one should fairly study Srila Prabhupada’s books several times before going onto other studies, of course people always eager to learn something new, we find that even if you read Prabhupada’s books many times there is always something new that you realise whilst reading then thorough study if it’s necessary then one might get permission to go on or not to go on but to translate books or use other reference material although it’s not at all necessary to achieve full Krishna consciousness so it’s important that you use that as the, the previous acharyas, Krishna Das Kaviraj took so seriously to see that message of Lord Chaitanya reached the fallen souls similarly we have to see that Krishna conscious movement is preserved in its proper form to give that message of Srila Prabhupada perpetually to the conditioned souls. So, when Lord Chaitanya saw Rupa Goswami he embraced him with great delight you see Rupa Goswami payed his obeisance’s to the Lord, but the Lord embraced him. A disciple always pays his obeisance’s whenever they see their spiritual master but sometimes when the the spiritual master is very happy to see the disciple from his own sweet will if he wants he can embrace a disciple or a god brother so that’s a Vaishnava practice, normally it’s a rare thing to get embraced by Lord Chaitanya so Lord Chaitanya was so happy to see Rupa Goswami for the first time coming out from his entanglement that he just embraced him, it’s a special mercy for Rupa Goswami then that Dasaswamedha ghat Srila Prabhupada wet there and inaugurated something there, there’s a plaque with Prabhupada’s name on for some purpose, he was there in 1971 there was a function I forget now, it’s in the Lilamrita, there was some function at the kumbha mela at the Dasaswamedha ghat (not sure) and Prabhupada was a chief guest or something for that function. There’s two Dasaswamedha Ghats, there one in Prayag and there one in Venaras, in the past someone performed ten Ashvamedha Yagya there that’s why it’s known as Dasaswamedha ghat so it’s a very sacred bathing place, that was at the place for ten days, Lord Chaitanya taught Rupa Goswami everything in a nut shell about the science of devotional service.

kāśīte prabhuke āsi’ mililā sanātana
dui māsa rahi’ tāṅre karāilā śikṣaṇa

When Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu arrived at Vārāṇasī, Sanātana Gosvāmī met Him there. The Lord remained there for two months and instructed Sanātana Gosvāmī perfectly.

mathurā pāṭhāilā tāṅre diyā bhakti-bala
sannyāsīre kṛpā kari’ gelā nīlācala

After fully instructing Sanātana Gosvāmī, Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu sent him to Mathurā with empowered devotional service. In Benares He also bestowed His mercy upon the Māyāvādī sannyāsīs. He then returned to Nīlācala [Jagannātha Purī].

chaya vatsara aiche prabhu karilā vilāsa
kabhu iti-uti, kabhu kṣetra-vāsa

The Lord traveled all over India for six years. He was sometimes here and…..

[Audio Break}

That’s why I’ve given a synopsis of the Madhya Lila, the middle pastimes of the Lord Oh devotees kindly give the synopsis of the final pastimes of the Lord known as Antya Lila

So let’s save Antya Lila for later. The Chaitanya Caritamrita Adi Lila is the life of Lord Chaitanya up to the time of sannyasa after sannyasa the 6 years he was traveling all over India from Jaganath Puri is known as Madhya Lila and the last 18 years where he settles in Jaganath Puri didn’t go anywhere is the Antya Lila, in the Chaitanya Bhagavat Adi Lila is his childhood pastimes up to the time when he took diksha from Isvara Puri, Madhya kanda is from the time when he started the sankirtan movement to the time when he took sannyasa and Antya Lila is after sannyasa, Antya Lila is very short, he couldn’t finish much, he was earlier writer, he was the son of Narayani who was the niece of Srivas Thakur, so for the early pastimes he knew everything, his mother from Srivas thakur and everyone, he was very well…but in the Antya Lila Krishna Das Kaviraj was expert because he heard from Das Raghunatha who was the personal secretary of Swarup Damodar, he was the assistant secretary of Lord Chaitanya so he got all the notes from Swarup Damodar he then in turn told everything to Krishna Das Kaviraj in Vrindavan and in this way Krishna Das Kaviraj was Grihastha devotee doing his devotional service at his home in a place I think is called Jari…forget the name of it, it’s about 75 kilo metres north of Mayapur 20 kilo metres north of Katwa where Lord Chaitanya took sannyasa. I went there one time looking for the place, found it, it’s very far of the beach and track, no road only dirt roads, someplace where nobody would go, only field road but its not so far from the river. Now we have a motorboat for the flood, after the flood we can get to some of these places easier by river. The situation was he was doing his devotional service with his family members. There but they were not giving so much support but there was not a big problem but one day when *Mirikita (Not sure) ram Das was visiting his house, great devotee of Lord Nityananda and he was such a great devotee that he would carry a flute and where ever he touched the flute immediately they would get ecstatic love for god, merely they use to crack up in ecstasy, all the symptoms of ecstasy would come such an empowered devotee and but then Krishna Das Kaviraj younger brother or older…younger brother he somehow criticised Lord Nityananda and that hurt offended *Mirkita (Not sure) Ram Das that he broke his flute and left that place so Krishna Das Kaviraj felt very polluted he told that I had to hear offence to Lord Nityananda that I’ll leave this place, at the same time…that night he dreamt of Lord Nityananda , Nityananda came there in his dream and form of Balarama blessed him and said you got to Vrindavan so then after that Krishna Das Kaviraj just left his family, brothers and relatives he was very old at that time when he went off to Vrindavan so sometimes some difficult situation occurs in order to distract us from… to this day rather, there’s a temple in the place of Krishna Das Kaviraj, a temple of the lotus feet of Lord Nityananda from the time when he visited. Now the people are realising of course and they’re having lot of festivals there. Krishna Das Kaviraj went to Vrindavan and was in Vrindavan until Lord Chaitanya disappeared he met Rupa, Sanatan and Raghunath Das and others 6 Goswami and hearing Rupa Goswami and Das Raghunath both who were in Jaganath Puri with Lord Chaitanya, he wrote down the entire tale of Lord Chaitanya. So like this in our life different test that come, sometime we may have some situation where we get our rug pull out from under us it seems but actually that maybe Krishna’s arrangement for us to engage in more devotional service, if devotee has pure devotion to the Lord, his mind will be automatically flowing to Krishna and there’s no material impediment which can stop the mind.so we should be prepared that whenever…whatever happens in our lives, what ever tests, these are like tests to see our sincerity, are we going to remain fixed up in our devotional service of Krishna, of the Lord, we should be prepared to pass all the tests. Any questions?

(Devotees speak)

No writer of Chaitanya Bhagavat was Vrindavan Das Thakur,

(Devotee speaks)

Yes correct

(Devotee speaks)

Well Brahmanical life means life of simplicity and goodness, purity, cleanliness so on austerity

In the Vedic time Varnashram was very strictly followed. At that time a brahmana would not even accept employment, he always remains independent. he there by doing Brahmanical working or sometime he may say that come to level of being a  kshatriya or might even do the work of Vaishya business but they wouldn’t take a employment but you know now things have changed and generally people they all have jobs and jobs are employment for you work for someone else, and you do what they say to certain degree so that itself isn’t that conducive to the Brahmanical situation but of course there are differences in different occupations. This is the way the society is set up now, its hard to drive in any kind of correlation so because for the same job like if someone was a teacher thousand years ago they wouldn’t get a salary but each of the students would come and offer according to their means they would offer some dakshina to the teacher and they with that could easily maintain themselves so be brahmana be a teacher but now everyone the teachers they work for the government or they work for the institution it’s like that and I don’t think the student bring much dakshina for the teachers

(devotees laugh and speak)

They still do they really do? Maybe here in Pixy Land

(devotees laugh)

They’ll give apple with razor blades

(devotees laugh)

At Halloween, so Prabhupada he indicated that if one is a brahmana and they’re working outside or something like that then they should be giving strictly a certain percentage of their income for Krishna’s service, they should be very strict in their chanting and philosophical knowledge. They should be doing things that is in Brahmanical way so that… because… of course that  may vary as I said sometimes a Brahmana would take a role up as a Vaishya or as a kshatriya and when they do that they would also do everything in a…more than being a brahmana we’re brahmana Vaishnava’s we do everything as devotional service so this we got someone doing it as a devotional service even if it’s a employment or something, if they use the fruits of that for or an approved percentage for Krishna’s service then he becomes purified, of course for some working outside practically they give almost everything just for the purpose of the devotional service, its like a direct service. So, they’re basically philosophical consideration, sadhana considerations then the practical and economic consideration of thing how they’re using their energy in Krishna’s service. This one actually remaining, the point is devotional service is known as Apratihata Nirbandha, shouldn’t be having any ‘bandha’, any stopping any breaking, apratihata ; no not that we do devotional service few hours a day and then we do no devotional service so we do Maya another time, so what ever we do we try to…should be connected with Krishna some form or another some approved way. Grihastha’s have a license to have sex life but it has to be done in an approved manner, they have license for economic independence but then that needs to be dovetail also in Krishna’s service, whatever license is given with that comes responsibility to maintain the constant connection with Krishna and in this way one can remain on the transcendental platform even when working even when living outside so basically candidate for Brahmanical initiation should be more conscious of all these things and see that there situation is actually remaining fixed in the transcendental platform even though they’re living somewhere separate from the community of devotees or having a separate residence.

Hare Krishna

Any other questions?

(Devotees speak)

If a devotee…a Grihastha’s…the point is if the Grihastha’s say that they are living outside and they are doing a business they’re acting as a Vaishya for Krishna so for business they may need a car you know they have to have a certain…for business you have to adhere establish in America so you have to appear like a… its different in India, because of the high income tax, bigger the van is more poor he tries to appear

(Devotees laugh)

But since here the IRS is so expert anyway there’s no chance of very easily avoiding them so works the other way, you have to show yourself bigger than you are in order to get more faith in your customers then you make the profit then you your tax is not so high anyway it pays itself so its different in different, there you’ll find some multi-millionaire sitting in a second class train all ripped shirt you know in his bag his got 20 lacs of rupees or something

(Devotees laugh)

No one suspects him, in here as soon as a guy gets 10 dollars he immediately buys a big car and

(Devotees laugh and talk)

No If he puts a down payment then it’s his payment. So if a person is living separate and not doing direct devotional service then they may have to according to their particular situation they may have to live in a certain whatever but it’s their responsibility to contribute and support the temple otherwise how are they dove tailing their how much work their doing and it becomes…what’s the difference between their karma, by giving to Krishna becomes purified. When one is living in the temple then means that as a Brahmanical Grihastha then you should live in a simple way just like you know simple living high thinking, doesn’t…if you live in temple don’t buy a BMW because donors would say you know where are you getting that, but you know…that’s what they did actually, they  had one car in Italy which was previously used by the president and they turned it in and they got 5 economy car then the one and that wasn’t the most expensive car , that’s was just you know…so that way actually people appreciated it more and gave more facilities for the preachers , so if a Grihastha lives in centre of course we found that in some temples even though they live in the facility, they do, they try to do little sankirtan or something so that any extra expenses of their prashadam or stay is covered by their own sankirtan effort or something of course for some time they’re granted some allowance or its not possible but certainly that allowance or even…it’s a bit limiting in the sense of you know if your living outside it can be more scope for accumulation or something but then there’s more scope of Maya, living in the community then its little more, little…not so opulence there but then its more conducive for one’s personal Krishna consciousness that depends on how ones able to adapt to the different situations. In America it seems that the Grihastha’s even when they’re living in the centre of faith are able to without compromising their own service generates some income through their preaching but that’s whenever possible, that’s…in that way they can also feel that they…but its up to the temple council, they may decide that we need that person, its very valuable to do this service because one person doing puja so that use other 4 5 for preaching so that up to the temple council to decide when a  person can be subsidised to one should to when they should…so go out one or two days out in a week to cover their basic expenses but somehow through our service we should try to pull our own weight or even if we can do more better. Usually in farms there not so much pressure because you know living cost are less in the farm compared to living in the city, usually if there’s people who are devotees who are not very productive then they have you know need for more facilities, I mean not productive in economic sense I mean every devotee might be productive in another sense but then a lot if time they’ll find it more peaceful to be in a farm where they can do service and they’re wont be much of a overhead, if there was a devotee lets say good at preaching or acting  but they’re doing some valuable service then there’s then that can be used in the city centre then they find…they don’t mind living in he city. I know that in New Orleans they had a similar system like this where he had the devotees basically Grihastha would…they’d have a separate apartment they would generate by they doing sankirtan or something somehow they’d pay the rent so that way nobody could say that the  temple is maintaining and as far as prashadam everyone gets prashadam whether your Grihastha or Brahmacari if your serving Krishna you get prashadam and then if you stay in the temple and live in there and there no big apartments in the temple at this place and time just a small quarters nobody minds for that but if somebody feels that they need more you know 2-3 bedroom apartment something like that at the present time it’s not feasible to create this type of facility for this devotees and the present buildings we have then the prototype there seems like a effective way of doing it but the Grihastha was responsible in addition to his normal quarter to collect his own…but that was incorporated in the overall quarter collecting his rent and in that way no body can say well your living in the apartments , well he generated that income plus that again is up to the temple council to work out and find a place but Prabhupada said that Grihastha’s could live in a community but when they do so they should…they should be serving the community, serving the deity’s some direct way. Hare Krishna.