19970429 Caitanya-caritāmṛta Madhya-līlā.4.19

The following is a class given by His Holiness Jayapataka Swami on April 29th, 1997, in Bangalore, India. The class begins with a reading from a class on Caitanya Caritamrita, Madhya Lila, Chapter-4, verse 19.

Jaya Jaya Shri Chaitanya Jaya Nityananda Jaya Advaita Chandra Jaya Gaura Bhakta Vrinda

Jaya Jaya Shri Chaitanya Jaya Nityananda Jaya Advaita Chandra Jaya Gaura Bhakta Vrinda

Jaya Jaya Shri Chaitanya Jaya Nityananda Jaya Advaita Chandra Jaya Gaura Bhakta Vrinda

 

Mukam karoti vacalam pangum langayate girim

Yat kripa tam aham vande Sri Gurun Dina Tarinam Paramananda Madhavam Sri Chaitanya Isvaram

Gurumaharaj: So today and tomorrow are the concluding days for prana-pratistha ceremony for Radha-Krishna, Krisha-Balaram, Gaura-Nitai, Nitai-Gaur, Srinivas-Govinda, Prahalada-Nrshingha deities. So it’s getting very intense. So much service for all the devotees who are residing here in Bangalore yatra, the congregation of Bangalore, and all, so the visiting devotees who have come from different parts of India, and different parts of the world, so one...we had already within the last month two such installation ceremonies- one at Kanai-Natshala and other at Katmandu and this third within one month practically.

So we found it very inspirational to read the pastimes of how Madhavendra Puri reinstalled the Gopal deity that was revealed to him in Vrindavan, the Gopal deity which is non-different from...which is actually Srinathji. Madhevendra Puri, when he went to Vrindavan he was circumambulating Govardhana hill and he was resting in Govinda Kunda. While he was sitting beneath a tree a cowheard boy came and gave him a pot of milk and smiling told him that please drink the milk, I brought you, why don’t you beg some food to eat, what kind of meditation are you undergoing? Madhevendra Puri, when he saw the beauty of the boy he become very satisfied. Hearing his sweet words he forgot his hunger and thirst. Madhevendra Puri said, “Who are you, where do you reside, how did you know that I was fasting?” The boy replied, “Sir, I am a cowherd boy, I reside in this village, in my village no one fasts, in this village a person can beg food from others and thus eat, some people only drink milk but if a person does not ask food from anyone I supply him all his eatables. The woman who come here to take water saw you when they supplied me with this milk and sent me to you. The boy continued, I must go very soon to milk the cows but I shall return and take back this milk pot from you. Saying this the boy left the place and indeed he suddenly could be seen no more and Madhavendra Puri’s heart was filled with wonder. After drinking the milk Madhavendra Puri washed the pot, put it aside, he looked towards the path but the boy never returned.

Madhevendra Puri couldn’t sleep. He sat and chanted the Hare Krishna mahamantra, and in the night he was out of external consciousness and thus his external activities stopped. In the dream Madhavendra Puris saw the same boy, the very same boy, the boy came before him holding the hand, took him in a bush in the jungle, and he showed Madhavendra Puri the bush and he said that I reside in the bush and because of this I suffer very much from severe cold, rain showers, winds and scorching heat. Please bring the people in the village and get them take me out of this bush, then have them situated nicely on the top of the hill. Please construct the temple on the top of the hill, the boy continued, Install me in that temple, after this wash me with large quantities of cold water so that my body may be cleansed. For many days I have been observing

you and I have been wondering when will Madhavendra Puri come here to serve me.

 

 

 I have accepted your service due to your ecstatic love for me, thus I shall appear. By my audience, all the fallen souls will be delivered, my name is Gopal and I am the lifter of Govardhan hill, I was installed by  Vajra and I am here... I am here, I am the authority. When the Mohammedan’s attacked the priest was serving me, hid me here in the bush in the jungle, then he ran away out of fear of the attack. Since the priest went away I have been staying here in the bush, this is very good that you have come here, now just remove me with care.

 

After saying this the boy disappeared, then Madhavendra Puri woke up and began considering his dream. Madhavendra Puri began to lament, “I saw Lord Krishna directly but I couldn’t recognize him”, thus he fell down in the ground in ecstatic love. Madhavendra Puri cried for some time but then he fixed his mind on executing the order of Gopala, then he became tranquilled. After taking his morning bath Madhavendra Puri entered the village and assembled all the people and he told them, so like this he gave this story, they went and they found the deity in the bush, they saw the deity covered with dirt and grass and they were struck with wonder and pleasure. They cleansed the deity and someone said that the deity is very heavy, no person can move him, so some of the stronger men assembled, carried the deity to the top of the hill and Madhevendra Puri also went there.

 pātharera siṁhāsane ṭhākura vasāila baḍa

 eka pāthara pṛṣṭhe avalamba dila

A big stone was made into a throne, and the Deity was installed upon it. Another big stone was placed behind the Deity for support.

grāmera brāhmaṇa saba nava ghaṭa lañā

govinda-kuṇḍera jala ānila chāniñā

 All the brāhmaṇa priests of the village gathered together with nine waterpots, and water from Govinda-kuṇḍa lake was brought there and filtered. When the Deity was being installed, nine hundred pots of water were brought from Govinda-kuṇḍa.

 

There were musical sounds of bugles, drums and the singing of women. You see, so we are going through...we want to have atleast... this was something on the spot, deity was found, there was no preparation, there was no pre-planning, nothing, this...all the villagers spontaneously they created a festival to welcome Gopal. Here for five years the devotees have been planning this installation, so we are sure it will be hundred times more than whatever is written here. Of course it is very difficult to compete with Madhavendra Puri, atleast it’s impossible, only we can pray to him that he will personally bless this ceremony so that we can also have a very nice ah... welcome for all these different deities. So here we see we need some bugles and drums, atleast we can have this shenai and what you call this nagara...nadaswara... and singing of woman, so we also need ladies kirtan party. you see, you have to also...

keha gāya, keha nāce, mahotsava haila

dadhi, dugdha, ghṛta āila grāme yata chila

During the festival at the installation ceremony, some people sang and some danced. All the milk, yogurt and clarified butter in the village were brought to the festival. Can you imagine bringing all the milk, yogurt and ghee to Bangalore for the festival? Anyway, so here everyone...some were singing and some dancing, so everyone should be singing and dancing at the festival of installation.

 

 bhoga-sāmagrī āila sandeśādi yata

 nānā upahāra, tāhā kahite pāri kata

 

Various foods and sweetmeats, as well as other kinds of presentations, were brought here... brought there. I am unable to describe all these. I heard the temple is planning to do a chappana bhoga, 56 offerings. I said ok, 56... that’s a very minimum for the temple of devotees to offer but there could be 108 or 1008 preparations also for the bhoga, there is no limit to how many preparations that can be offered. So we can expect...I don’t know if they didn’t organize it but you could try to organize, but this should be cooked especially by initiated devotees.

tulasī ādi, puṣpa….

 

Others can help in cutting and other things

 

 tulasī ādi, puṣpa, vastra āila aneka

āpane mādhava-purī kaila abhiṣeka

 

The villagers brought a large quantity of tulasī leaves, flowers and various kinds of garments. Gurumaharaj: So these  are the things that devotees can bring as offerings- flowers, tulasi leaves, new clothes. Then Śrī Mādhavendra Purī personally began the abhiṣeka [bathing ceremony].

 

Purport: In the Hari-bhakti-vilāsa (sixth vilāsa, verse 30) it is stated that the Deity should be bathed in water mixed with yogurt and milk, accompanied by the sounds of conchshells, bells and other instruments and the chanting of the mantra

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

Devotees: oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya Gururmaharaj: oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya  Devotees: oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya Gurumahraj : oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya, Devotees: oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

 

 So you remember all these things tonight at the istagoshthi, we are going to give all these service. Of course today we are doing the nyasa homa. Tomorrow we are doing the abhisekh. Doing the nyasa homa, we can also have men and woman kirtan party and we can have mantra chanters to create auspiciousness but that’s not to be done so loudly so as to drown the ah... nyasa mantras.

 

But tomorrow during the abhisekh, we are going to... we are going to have very intense vibrations from all of the different participants but we are going to have a isthagosthi tonight at 8:30 to assign for tomorrow, but today also take volunteer in the end. So we need here bell-ringers, if you have a bell at home ring it, not limit of how many bells, conchshells, other instruments, I don’t know if Pranaballabha wants to play some of his instruments, this are not ever seen before I think in India, he has all this what you call it....pff...pff.. what you call it, mouth organ...harmonica, anyway it says other instruments.

 

So we need also... Prabhupada says, as well as the chanting of the Brahma-saṁhitā verses beginning from

cintāmaṇi-prakara-sadmasu kalpa-vṛkṣa-

lakṣāvṛteṣu surabhīr abhipālayantam,

lakṣmī-sahasra-śata-sambhrama-sevyamānaṁ

govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi

So, amaṅgalā dūra kari’ karāila snāna bahu taila diyā kaila śrī-aṅga cikkaṇa

After all inauspicious things were driven away by the chanting of the mantra, the Deity’s bathing ceremony started.

 

First the Deity was massaged with a large quantity of oil, so that His body became very glossy. pañca-gavya, pañcāmṛte snāna karāñā

mahā-snāna karāila śata ghaṭa diñā

After the first bathing, further bathings were conducted with pañca-gavya and then with pañcāmṛta. Then the mahā-snāna was performed with ghee and water, which had been brought in one hundred pots.

 

Purport by Srila Prabhupada ki Devotees: Jay

The ingredients of pañca-gavya are milk, yogurt, ghee (clarified butter), cow urine and cow dung. All these items come from the cow; therefore we can just imagine how important the cow is, since its urine and stool are required for bathing the Deity. The pañcāmṛta consists of five kinds of nectar — yogurt, milk, ghee, honey and sugar. The major portion of this preparation also comes from the cow. To make it more palatable, sugar and honey are added.

punaḥ taila diya kaila śrī-aṅga cikkaṇa

śaṅkha-gandhodake kaila snāna samādhāna

 

After the mahā-snāna was finished, the Deity was again massaged with scented oil and His body made glossy. Then the last bathing ceremony was performed with scented water kept within a conchshell.

Purport: In his commentary on this occasion, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura quotes from the Hari-bhakti-vilāsa. Barley powder, wheat powder, vermilion powder, urad dhal powder and another powder preparation called āvāṭā (made by mixing banana powder and ground rice) are applied to the Deity’s body with a brush made from the hair at the end of a cow’s tail. This produces a nice finish. The oil smeared over the body of the Deity should be scented. To perform the mahā-snāna, at least two and a half mounds or twenty-four gallons of water...a mound is 40 kilos. So two and a half mounds means a hundred kilos of water, has to be liquids comprising one hundred kilos, is required to make it mahasnana for super abhisekh, great abhisekh, this has to be poured over the body of the Deity.

śrī-aṅga mārjana kari’ vastra parāila

candana, tulasī, puṣpa-mālā aṅge dila

After the body of the Deity was cleansed, He was dressed very nicely with new garments. Then sandalwood pulp, tulasī garlands and other fragrant flower garlands were placed upon the body of the Deity. dhūpa, dīpa, kari’ nānā bhoga lāgāila dadhi-dugdha-sandeśādi yata kichu āila After the bathing ceremony was finished, incense and lamps were burned and all kinds of food offered before the Deity. These foods included yogurt, milk, as many sweetmeats including sandesh and other things were received.

 

suvāsita jala nava-pātre samarpila

 ācamana diyā se tāmbūla nivedila

ārātrika kari’ kaila bahuta stavana

daṇḍavat kari’ kaila ātma-samarpaṇa

 

The Deity was first offered many varieties of food, then scented drinking water in new pots, and then water for washing the mouth. Achaman. Finally pan mixed with a variety of spices was offered.

 

After the last offering of tāmbūla and pan, bhoga-ārātrika was performed. Finally everyone offered various prayers and then obeisances, falling flat before the Deity in full surrender. So one of the ceremonies today is to offer puspanjali and to surrender to the deities. Krishna has a big price to pay. If you want Krishna to come and stay it’s easy, you simply have to surrender to Him, give your life, then he will be very inclined to stay.

So the devotees who want the Lord to stay accept their worship, they offer their full surrender to their deities. This is a very good occasion to get people who are..want to join on the siksha program, they can surrender to chant one round, four round, eight round, go up on notch, go up the steps, those who are just beginning.

 

In this way it’s a good time during this installation and immediately in the month after to do many programs where people should surrender to the deity and take up the service for the temple. So then it gets into the whole house, all the villagers came and cooked a big feast, piles of Chappatis, piles of vegetables, dry vegetables, liquid vegetables, they made a mountain of rice and different things, they made dal bari like ah... you know dal badi, that’s like dahi vada... in South they call vada, in North they call vadi... same thing. Dahi vada…That everyone knows, so you can make all kinds of vadas, flat vada, dahi vada, round vada with a whole in it, you can offer roots, fruits, spinaches, vegetables, chappatis, puris, dhosas, idlis, all the things you like, you offer to the Lord for His pleasure, they put...they didn’t have any temple there, they just did it on a mountain side, you can imagine, just putting clothes on the ground they were piling big ah... mountains of prasadam, putting liquid vegetables in clay pots, then they had so many pots of yogurt milk, butter milk, srikhand, how many pots of srikhand would be offered tomorrow? You can make it tonight. Sweet rice...Payash, cream, solid cream, placed along side, in this way it became annakut, a mountain of prasadam and Madhavendra Puri Goswami personally offered everything to Gopal deity, lot of drinking water was given to Lord, so Gopal, he became so satisfied with all offerings of the devotees that He personally ate everything, nothing was left. Gopal ki Jay Nitai Gaur premanande hari hari bol But after eating everything just by waving his hand puh... everything came back as it was before. “You were all worried that you will get no mahaprasadam. (laughter), I knew your mind you see.” but Gopal was so merciful, he could eat everything and within a flash, back it came. Bhagavan Sri Krishna ki Jay

 

Prabhupada explains that food offered to Krishna is qualitatively as good as Krisna, just as Krishna is avyaya, indestructible, the food eaten by Krsna being identical with Him, remains as before. Prabhupad also says that atheists can’t understand how the Lord appearing in the form of the deity, can eat all the food offered by His devotees, He can eat everything offered by the devotee but the touch of His transcendental hand all the food remains exactly as before, it is the quality that’s changed.

 

Before the food was offered it was something else but after it was offered the food acquires a transcendental quality because the Lord is Purna, He remains the same even after eating. Purnasya purnamadhaya Purnameva Vasisyate So actually the Lord is always complete, he is always full, he doesn’t need that we worship Him but He is so merciful that He knows,we need to worship Him and He is so kind that He is even happy to even receive our worship that we offer through the spiritual master and the disciplic succession.

 

The Lord is so merciful, otherwise we are not able to see the Lord with this mundane senses but He is so kind that he comes down in a visible form of the arch avatara allowing us to worship, the ceremonies that are being performed from the time that the devotees desire to worship the Lord and to establish the deity of the Lord, already on the subtle platform the Lord is being invoked and then the Bimba or the reflection of the Lord, the deity form... uninstalled deity has been formed with great devotion and thus by all of the desires of the yajamanas and then that deity form in order to receive the Lord is purified and for so many days now different yajnas have been performed, various purifications have been performed, just even again we are performing ah...different things to prepare the deities, to except the worship that Krishna will be present. Krishna is already there and Krishna is gradually more and more manifesting His presence and becoming ready to accept our worship.

 

Of course the devotee should pray to Krishna to be present, to accept our worship, we want to worship the Lord, we want Him to come, this is the heart-felt desires of all the devotees. How many of you want the Lord to come? Nitai Gaur Sitanath premanande hari hari hari bol. Of course Srila Prabhupada, he also said that there is so much enthusiasm when we install the deity, the enthusiasm should be maintained throughout the presence of the deity, not that someone would down the line think, “Oh, the guru has given me such a burden, I have to do so much service for these deities, then everything is lost, then where is the bhakti?”

 

So just like you are all enthusiastic now, you should always try by being sincere devotees, then the deity will be always be enthusiastically worshipped. There is a hell.... I don’t know if you say it a hell...we can say heaven and hell but we say heaven and earth, or heaven and ah... bhuloka, difference between the worship done by devotees of the Lord who are doing so out of their own desire to please the Lord and the professional priests.... the professional priests are doing because they are being paid and ah... many times you can see the deities are not looking as brilliant or as dynamic as the deities we see in ISKCON, where the devotees are worshipping out of spontaneous and sincere devotion. Krishna Balaram ki Jay

 

So we want to maintain this devotional mood. That means that we need to always be chanting, preaching, so that we remain fixed in our devotion and so that the different devotees can participate in various ways in the worship and the service of the deities. So tomorrow after the ah... bhoga offering, during the arati also devotees can... before doing these ceremonies they can bring these offerings. Similarly they can go on bringing different kinds of offerings. Some important yajamanas are also bringing that very important offering of Laxmidevi which has made this fabulous temple and complex possible to be erected to this point.

 

They are still doing some last minute touches and ah... they are behind a bit because there was a twenty day truck strike in India, so many of the things could not reach here during that period and it put them behind the schedule although the main temple room and the main things are ready or will be ready, you can see that even today there will be a last flurry of activity getting all the last things ready and even in the next month, afterwards the other parts of the complex will also be finished so that ah... they can have an opening of the rest of the complex, also in this auspicious period.

 

 This is also the centennial celebration of Srila Prabhupada, he appeared in September 19 ah... 1896, so that... that means that up until September 1997, it still ah... centennial year from one way of calculating, so that is also been accepted ah...by the ISKCON leaders and GBC’s as the centennial offering, so very happy that so many devotees have come here and are going to be participating in this ah... centennial offering, this is Srila Prabhupad, in this prana pratistha ceremony.

 

 They have not advertised this ah... very widely because they are afraid that there are so many who would come and they would not be able to handle it. So they are just letting it go out by word of mouth they are expecting on the 4th, even then maybe 100,000 people...or so, they don’t know how many...there would be many people coming. This ah.. two days now, only the very major donors and congregational members who are very active are being invited to come and the devotees around ISKCON, which is the internal religious ah... ceremonies or the prana pratistha. So today there is the Neptune millennium being performed by His Holiness, Bhaktividyapurna Swami Maharaj as well as the Nyasa homa. For the nyasa’s different ah...senior Prabhupada desciples are here, we will be requesting help for doing ah... in the nyasa ceremony and then ah... that is the main thing this morning, this evening there will be the sayan adivas, and then tomorrow from five on...then in this evening there will be 8.30, right after sayan adhivas, as soon as sayan adhivas is over we gather here and have isthagosthi to give out various sevas for the next day.

 

The next day from five in the morning on will be so many things going that it’s about 20 pages of activity or 115-20 different items and ah... this is going to be the major ah... feat because they want to do impossible and almost impossible but Prabhupada said, “impossible is the word in the fool’s dictionary”, so therefore we are not going to say that word but we want to do a very ambitious thing to do many different things at the same time...requires tremendous amount of ah... cooperation from all the leading devotees. Simultaneously, we have to ah...do the kalasha abhisekh because... and also shift the deities from the temple here and do many different things ah... in order to complete all of the prana pratistha’s and all the kalasha abhisekhas and everything, prokshanas... shifting the deity from this small temporary temple. Everything has to be completed, including the bhoga offering so that we can...before noon.

 

Especially this...some auspicious muhurta’s...this day was chosen tomorrow because it is considered to be very auspicious day, the special constellation of abhijit on which such thing as the incarnation of the Lord ....is coming tomorrow, just about 11:45. So... and before noon, so therefore take advantage also during the uttarnayana in the auspicious month of vaisaka, many auspicious things about ah... about the day tomorrow. So although it was not ideal for that festival or other things, they choose this day because the temple is going to be there for... for ever, the deities installation is for permanent seva, therefore they choose ah... the day according to the most auspicious astrological environment they could find to welcome the Lord.

 

So there is a brief introduction. For the ceremony we want everyone to pray to Madhavendra Puri and all our previous acharyas to specially serve Prabhupad, who I am begging again and again to personally perform this installation ceremony and simply engage all of us as his nimitta matrena, as his ah... instrument because Prabhupada wanted that he personally came here to South India and he wanted that... that the temple should be established here.

 

 have seen that these devotees have completed from the beginning of this temple less than five years or so, temple has come to completion which is quite amazing. There was a rock on the hill, this hill was considered a useless land, therefore we could somehow get it. It was not in the map because it was just a stone, so who is going to build a house on stone, so but we could build a house of Krishna on stone and ah... so fortunately Krishna had gotten this land and now this ah... temple and ah... educational complex for spreading the culture of Krishna is ah... being prepared here, so this aspect of it ... trying, we are not involving the I.P’s for any kind of a formal, political opening, but this is ah... they are coming, different ministers and others are coming, M.P’s are coming as devotees and participating in the yajna... the other formal openings will happen later after the prana pratistha, they don’t want to mix up those type of social aspects with this totally spiritual aspect of inviting the Lord to come. So those... with that mood we want everyone to be ah...really praying for the Lord to come, deities are already on the altar waiting for the abhisekh tomorrow and you will see the deities at the different...nyasas are performed and that... Is chancala pati available? Yea, so do you already have the list of who is supposed to do what for the netra millennium or I am supposed to ... we are supposed to fix that right now? Ok, come over here. You already have leaders for the ah... ladies kirtan party?