20070909 Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.7.22

The following is a lecture given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja on September 9^th, 2007 in Bergamo, Milan, Italy. The lecture begins with the reading from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam canto 3, chapter 7, text 22.

Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 3.7.22

yam āhur ādyaṁ puruṣaṁ
sahasrāṅghry-ūru-bāhukam
yatra viśva ime lokāḥ
sa-vikāśaṁ ta āsate

Translation: The puruṣa incarnation lying on the Causal Ocean is called the original puruṣa of the material creations, and in His virāṭ form, in whom all the planets and their inhabitants live, He has many thousands of legs, thighs and hands.

Purport: The first puruṣa is Kāraṇodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, the second puruṣa is Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, and the third puruṣa is Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, in whom is contemplated the virāṭ-puruṣa, the gigantic form in which all the planets with their different developments and inhabitants are floating.

Jayapatākā Swami: So nice to see all of the devotees here again. Nice to be here. Back in Vialo Hare Kṛṣṇa. This is what Vilajo Hare Krishna. So here in this verse Vidura had asked many questions about the puruṣa-avatāras. So here it’s explained that the puruṣa-avatāras are in three forms. The first is the Mahā-Viṣṇu known as Kāraṇodakaśāyī Viṣṇu. He sleeps in the rest in the Kāraṇodaka ocean, the causal ocean, and from His pores in the skin comes all the living entities, come all the universes, He is an immense form. So this is known, that’s why they said there’s unlimited millions of universes. Ananta-koṭi brahmāṇḍa, you understand? Ananta means unlimited and koṭi means 10 million. And then each one has a Brahmā in it.

Just recently I was in Trivandrum for a health retreat. You may be wondering what does that have to do with this verse. But it has more than you think. Because in Trivandrum now they have changed the name. Now it’s called Thiruvanantapuram. Thiru means Lord Viṣṇu and Ananta means Lord Śeṣanāga. So, there they have the form of Viṣṇu lying on the serpent bed. And from His navel is coming Lord Brahmā, a lotus. And on the top of the lotus is Brahmādeva.
So which of the three Viṣṇu is this one?

Yes, the Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu. He’s the Viṣṇu lying on the Garbhodaka ocean.

It’s like lying in this water that’s in the bottom of each universe. So, because Brahmā is our first spiritual master in our disciplic succession, first after Kṛṣṇa, that for this also very important for our sampradāya.

So, they say that there’s eight very important temples India by some saints’ calculation and this is one of the eight.

So here’s where the Lord is always resting. He’s always sleeping, He’s always laying down. And Jagannātha Purī, which we just observed at Ratha-yātrā is one of the other eight important temples there the Lord’s hand never dries. He’s always eating. He’s eating and then washing and then eating and washing like that. So, it’s going on, 56-offerings a day. Jagannātha Svāmī kī jaya!

It says that Vṛndāvana, Mathurā, Vṛndāvana there in Vṛndāvana the Lord is always in a childhood pastime. He’s always a child. And in Badrinātha, He’s always in meditational mode. And in Dvārakā, He’s always the king. And in Māyāpur, He’s always the devotee. So, like this, I can’t remember all, but there were the different temples that the Lord is always in a particular mood.

So this here we’re talking about this Viṣṇus, Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, and this Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, He’s being worshipped in Trivandrum.

We took the safari there this year earlier, got a special permit to bring in all the Hindus, all the Westerners. There we put the lotus footprint of Lord Caitanya in that temple because Lord Caitanya had visited that temple.

So, something interesting happened at the king who’s now like the descendant of the royal family, who’s as a king, he only has a role as serving the Deities. He doesn’t have any kingdom anymore. India is a democracy. But he does have this hereditary right of worshipping the Deities.

Do I think here that like similar position as the king of Purī? He came here somehow, he likes Italy, I think. So like that he was having a pain in his foot. Yeah. And for two years the doctors couldn’t cure it. Finally, one doctor said, look it, I think you should maybe the Deity has a crack on his foot or something. Maybe this is coming from the Deity because you’re very much connected to the Deity. So, when they found there was a crack on the Deity’s foot, they were trying to repair it and it fell off, not the foot, some covering. Some fell off of the foot and revealed that underneath was solid gold, like a, like a gold armor covering the Deities, Thick gold armor. Yeah. The whole Deity from the feet up to the neck and arms, maybe more than a ton of gold. In total they found like 3 tons of gold in that area. We found that when the Mughals were attacking the Tipu Sultan, he was attacking about 400 years ago, the Kerala.

So they must have covered the deity with some kind of a paste. So. So it looked just like He was just a black Deity, but actually underneath was all gold armor. But now it’s a beautiful face of Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, covered with a beautiful shining gold and the columns are also covered with gold. Very amazing to see the Lord dress like that in so much gold. I don’t think in ISKCON we would do that because the thieves will come. Anyway, that’s one of the Viṣṇu’s is there being worshiped like that. Nearby there’s the Ādi Keśava temple in Tamil Nadu. That’s where Lord Caitanya found the Brahmā-saṁhitā and Kṛṣṇa-karnāṃrta. Yeah. So there we don’t know exactly whether this is Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu or this is Mahā-Viṣṇu. I think Mahā-Viṣṇu, but He doesn’t have any Brahmā coming from His navel and He’s lying down, no Brahmā.

So like this, in different parts of South India they have these different forms of Viṣṇu that are mentioned here. So I took the opportunity when I was there to have a darśana of Padmanābhajī and to pray at His lotus feet for the devotees around the world. So, like this it’s quite well known that there are these different forms of Viṣṇu and maybe not everybody knows or exactly how it works, but there are these ancient temples and there is this understanding that Viṣṇu is manifested in these three forms that they have the Mahā-Viṣṇu who’s one for the whole material world, Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, who is one for every universe, and Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu who is the Supersoul, who is every entity’s heart, every atom and the whole universe.

So how many Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu are there?

We don’t even know how many atoms are in our cādars.

So Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu in so many forms, and he also the one who comes down and deals with the different demons and also who takes care of His devotees. So like this, these three Viṣṇu, they’re very important. We should know about these puruṣa-avatāras. The yogīs meditate on the Viṣṇu in the heart. So Mahā-Viṣṇu, He has appeared as Advaita Gosāñi in Lord caitanya-līlā, and all the avatāras are coming from Kṛṣṇa avatāra, they know that Kṛṣṇa, from Kṛṣṇa come Balarāma. From Balarāma comes all the Nārāyaṇa forms. And then from Nārāyaṇa comes the puruṣa-avatāras. So this is what the devotees they need to be aware of all these different forms of the Lord. So Advaita Ācārya, He knew that He comes from Kṛṣṇa and that Lord Caitanya was Kṛṣṇa. So He wanted to offer Lord Caitanya respect, but since Lord Caitanya was coming in the pastime as a devotee, so He wanted to show Advaita respect because He was initiated by  Mādhavendra Purī, so He was like the uncle-guru. Just like here we have some Prabhupāda disciples. And then there’s the disciples of Prabhupāda disciples. So they’re supposed to respect their uncles, certain protocol. So Advaita Gosāñi, every time Lord Caitanya was bow down to him. But Advaita Ācārya, He wanted to bow down to Lord Caitanya. But He couldn’t. Lord Caitanya wouldn’t allow Him. So, one day Advaita Ācārya came up with a plot, how He’s going to make Lord Caitanya treat Him as a junior. So He started Advaita Ācārya started to lecture in an impersonal way, the impersonal yoga system. When Lord Caitanya heard that, He was very angry. Why is He doing that?

Our Lord Caitanya went chasing with a stick, “What are you doing? You don’t lecture on this, on impersonal.” And Advaita Ācārya was feeling so blissful that now finally He’s disrespecting Me, treating Me as a junior, Haribol! Who can understand His līlās.

Between one time, Advaita Ācārya, He went to see Lord Caitanya when Lord Caitanya was in Jagannātha Purī. And Lord Caitanya said how the preaching is going in Bengal. Advaita Ācārya started to repeat some, some song that actually the. I am going to have two more minutes here. So it is mentioned that the market is (what you say, you know, when you like somebody starts a new product and then everybody has it, then it’s saturated.) saturated. The market is saturated, But now everybody’s already that the market. The merchant went there to sell the goods, and now everybody bought the goods and now Nityānanda Prabhu, His preaching is so successful that practically everywhere, every town and village, they got the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra. And of course, there’s a time when Advaita was received Lord Caitanya just after He took sannyāsa. And so the Advaita invited him and Lord Nityānanda to take prasāda. The Lord Caitanya was in the mood, “No, I am sannyāsī, I will eat very austere, very simple. I don’t want so much opulent prasāda, just simple little dāl rice, sabjī light, you know, very light, nothing much.” Advaita said, “Yes, yes sir. We are just going to give you a very simple, you know, austere diet.” But Lord Nityānanda was in a totally different mood, “Listen, I am hungry. I haven’t eaten for three days. You better feed Me a good prasāda. I am really hungry.” So, everybody had a different mood. So when that Lord Advaita actually served a huge feast. His wife is a super cook and she cooked like maybe 108 preparation or something. So when Lord Caitanya and Nityānanda sat down, then when Lord Caitanya started bringing all the precise, “Oh, it’s too much. And I am a sannyāsī, I have to eat now. You know, I just take a little bit.” “You know, we’re gṛhastha, we’re already attached. We have to serve You something.” Big mountain of rice with ghee on it, surrounded by all the subjīs and things. And then, “What is this? This is nothing. I am hungry. Come on, what you doing?” Then Advaita is bring in more prasāda. And then Nityānanda is, “What is this? You’re not feeding Us.” There’s a huge mountain of prasāda. But still Nityānanda many then takes some prasāda, throws it at Him. “What is this? You’re not serving us.” So it hot, His dhotī of Advaita Ācārya, So see, when somebody’s eating, if you throw that on the put that on a cloth, the cloth becomes contaminated. So, then Advaita, I said, “Look at you. You made My cloth contaminated.” But then He started laughing and dancing in ecstasy. He was actually very happy that the Balarāma had treated Him like that. So, like this, they’re having this very intimate pastime. So. nobody else could really figure out what’s going on, why they’re doing all these things, that they actually have so much sense of humor. The Supreme Personality of God is very humorous. So, with His different expansions they can exchange this humor. So, like this, when Lord Kṛṣṇa comes down, even the Viṣṇu avatāras come, right? Advaita Ācārya is the Mahā-Viṣṇu. And they said the son of Nityānanda, Vīracandra Prabhu is the Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu. So that’s a Supersoul.

I don’t know who is the Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu in caitanya-līlā. Anyone know?

Have to research that one. But so actually the Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu was. I mean Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu as Vīracandra Prabhu, He was after Lord Caitanya, one of the very active preachers. The Mughal ruler came and converted 500 Hindus to Muslim. By those days, they’d spit on them or something. Some crazy then people, “Oh, I am converted it.” Then Vīracandra Prabhu went there, preached to all of them and gave a massive initiation ceremony for 1000, five hundred plus another. So, like that Vīracandra Prabhu dynamic preacher, not also afraid of the Mughal ruler.

Once he went right to the capital of the Mughal king and then the Mughal invited him in and said, “Hey, listen, my daughter or sister, she’s got some problem.” I think she was having a nervous breakdown or mental problem, haunting, maybe possessed by ghosts. Said, “if you can cure her, then I will give you whatever you want. And if you can’t cure, that means you’re not a real sādhu. So I will kill you.”

Fortunately, we’re not in that period, you needed the Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu and such. So, He cured her. Obviously, no problem and then. So, the king said, “What do you want?” He said, “You have a big black stone in the wall of your fortress. It was actually like a giant śālagrāma-śilā, that weighs like more than a ton,” I don’t know how many tons, but it’s a huge, you know, so quite a big black, shiny rock. So it’s in the bottom of the huge wall of their fortress. How are we supposed to get that out? Overwhelming for… “No, it’s no problem.” “You just have to tell me if I can have it, I will take it out and your wall won’t fall down.” So, they, “Okay, take it.” Let’s see this one Vīracandra had His kīrtana party chant and the rock poop flew out, fell-down. So then, “So now what do you want to please take it by the side of the Ganges.” The king asked, “What should we do?” He said, “Take it by the side.” But they took so many people, even elephants, they can’t move this. Then again, some Vīracandra Prabhu did some kind of miracle and had the rock moving. Then He got to the Ganges. “So what do you want to do with the Ganges? Why? What’s the point?” They said, “Wrap it with straw, like packing.” Like how they pack Deities. They wrap it with the straw. Okay, they did that.

“You know what the sky is like. Okay, now throw it in the river.” “So what’s the point? It’s going to sink, right? You destroy the river.” “I know what I am doing.” So, they threw in the river this heavy, gigantic stone. And it’s floating like a balloon on the top of the water. So Vīracandra Prabhu gives the direction to the stone where to go by His house in Khardaha, and the stone went downstream. You know, I don’t know. This is not UPS or Federal Express, but. But somehow then the rock floated down the river and waited by the side of the river by the house of Vīracandra Prabhu. So then Vīracandra had some sculptor make three Deities. The first make one Deity, but it was too small. Or maybe it’s too big. I don’t know. Maybe it’s too big. He said, “No!”

First he said, “Do one,” but it was too big. I think. Then the second one was too small. Then what was left? He said, “Okay, make it in between.” And the end He had three Deities. So there’s three temples established by Vīracandra Prabhu. Were these three different Deities. One is in Khardaha, which is the Śyāmasundara temple. And then one other one is in Srirampura where they have. I think it’s Rādhā Vallabha. I seen those two temples. There’s another one which is the bigger Deity. And that’s like 12km in Khardaha. But I have never been there to see it yet. It’s definitely on my to do list. So, actually supposed to see, all the three. Then you get a special blessing.

They say that this Deity of Śyāmasundara one time the pūjārīs didn’t serve nicely and he started to sweat, He was like getting angry. So when he sweats, the pūjārī dies. When the Deity sweats perspiration come out on the Deity. Oh, on the Deity? No, on the Deity. Deity is alive. This is a very active Deity. If you offend the Deity, He gets angry. Little sweat comes. Pūjārī dead. Yeah, you get it right? So this is very special Deity. Really, pūjārīs are very careful there. I don’t know. I didn’t ask him. They’re all very beautiful. So, like this Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu came as Vīracandra Prabhu and He was preaching, and when Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura had Kheturi Gaura-pūrṇimā festival then Jāhnavā came also Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, I mean this Vīracandra Prabhu came, Acyutānanda, the son of a Advaita, Vīracandra also the son of Lord Nityānanda. They all were doing this massive preaching around Bengal. So how when the Lord comes as a devotee, His pastime is to awaken the fallen souls to bhakti.

So you can also help them now, continue to awaken the fallen souls to kṛṣṇa- bhakti. Kṛṣṇa-prema wants a few expansions to come and help us. Well, they can also empower the devotees, and the devotees can also like Prabhupāda, he did so many wonderful things spreading the Kṛṣṇa conscious movement all over the world. So, use your abilities to help bring people to Kṛṣṇa. Like Śrīla Prabhupāda said that Lord Caitanya gave the animals to dance in Jhārikhaṇḍa. We may not you know, obviously we may not be able to do that but we could at least get the human beings to dance. Yesterday there was a number of people dancing. So like this people dance before Jagannātha, they also get tremendous blessings.

This year I went to Barcelona for the first time in my life. They have a road where there’s only this big, big like maybe about 20 meters wide, and it’s all walking. Hundreds of thousands of people walking up and down this road. This… What do you call it? La Rambla. So we had 150 devotees with us who went on Harināma on this La Rambla. We didn’t have a Ratha-yātrā but it was like, almost like Ratha-yātrā so many people were there. So as were doing kīrtana, some people, you know, they stopped and they, they got into some dancing. There were three young guys sitting at a table in an outdoor restaurant. And one got up and started to, you know, do his dancing for Kṛṣṇa, dancing while the holy names they get so much blessing.

So very grateful that you got so many people in Milan to also dance. Heard there was a big football match yesterday. You see the people, they shout gold, gold, they want gold. We want in the future that they will start to chant Haribol! Haribol! Haribol!

So, thank you very much. Usually, I go to Villarejo Pérez Ratha-yātrā sometimes I come here. This year I couldn’t go to Villarejo Pérez. So I really, I feel very fortunate I could come here because we had some meeting in Māyāpur Temple construction at the same time. Looks like we’re moving forward. Taking some strategies to go forward and build a temple on our existing land. We could use all your prayers and blessings.

Any questions? Yes, sir.

Question: We heard that when Lord Caitanya was traveling in South India, He turned bhakti for Nārāyaṇa and bhakti into Kṛṣṇa, into bhakti for Kṛṣṇa, named everybody Kṛṣṇa’s. So, basically, he’s asking when Lord Caitanya was preaching profusely with as followers with spiritual love. So how come that we had to wait for 400 years for Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura to come and the preaching to start again? Loss of time, 400 years of preaching

Jayapatākā Swami: Well, Lord Caitanya’s movement was very active for about 200 years. But then apparently this Kali was very upset that he wasn’t able to do his thing because of Lord Caitanya’s movement. So he asked Śukarācārya to help him. This was told by Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura that, Śukarācārya who trying to get Viṣṇu to stop get Bali to stop giving the charity to Viṣṇu. He entered into this water pot that Vāmanadeva had, he took the form of a fly with his mystic power and went inside that pot and jammed the hole. Because part of the take, to give the promise, he had to take three drops of water, and with the water in the hand, he had to make the promise. So that was like more serious, kind of, you can’t go back on that. Then it’s like, ‘I promise hereby to give you three steps of land.’ That was what he’s supposed to say, right? But then this Śukarācārya went and blocked the hole. So the water isn’t coming out, you know, kind of a futile attempt, you know. But anyway, he’s trying at the last minute, you know, it’s a futile attempt, you know. But you know, it’s like. Anyway, then Vāmanadeva looks inside, sees this fly there. And He takes a kuśa grass dry and He sticks it in the (huff) and pushes out the fly. When He did that, He actually poked out one of the eyes of Śukarācārya. So said that when he took his human form, he was blind in one eye. He was a bit angry with Viṣṇu, why he blinded me in one eye, you know, it was a bit heavy thing to do.

So then when Kali asked, “Please help me!” Then he said, “Okay, I will incarnate and I will spread the sahajiyā process and that will destroy the preaching mood, and then Lord Caitanya’s movement will become weakened. And everybody just imagined they’re a gopī or some great devotee of Kṛṣṇa and they don’t preach anymore, they just try to get absorbed in some really cheap kind of ecstasy, imitation ecstasy. So that stopped the preaching.” It was successful and more or less stopped the preaching for 200 years. Then Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura came and he restarted preaching again. Again? Yeah. So that, and Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura also was in a pretty much preaching mood to catch up on all the lost time with Bṛhat-mṛdaṅga with the books, with the temples. Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura did the Nāma-haṭṭa. So Śrīla Prabhupāda also, their descendants and he’s carrying on that preaching mood. He also warned us to be careful. One side of the coin is the māyāvāda and the other side is the sahajiyā, we had to avoid the both, that’s why there’s a little gap there.

Anyway, I think I have to go to catch my flight.

Thank you very much.