20160519 Evening Class at Sakṣād Hari's House

20160519 Evening Class at Sakṣād Hari's House

Mukam karoti vacalam

Pangum langhyate girim

Yat kripa tamaham vande sri gurum dina tarinam

Paramananda madhavan

Sri Chaitanya ishvaram

JPS: So tomorrow night I am supposed to go to the temple and there are some devotees who would be taking initiation. Today we are having a program here. I thank you all for being present. This is the longest time that I have been here in New Jersey and it is so nice to see so many nice devotees.

Tomorrow is a very special day. It is the appearance day of Lord Narasimhadev. Lord Narsimhadev is known to protect his devotees. There are around a hundred

Temples of Lord Narasimhadev in Andra Pradesh and many deities of Lord Narasimhadev scattered in other places and in Melkote you have the Yoga Narasimha and in Vijayawara there are two deities of Lord Narasinhadev. One is a very new temple made by Yudhishir Maharaj 5000 years (laughter and applause), and upon the hill there is the deity which has been said to be there for yugas. This Kali yuga he eats panagam, a mixture of gur and water. Normally gur attracts flies but I was very impressed that there was no flies, didn’t want to mess around with Narasimhadev, and there you pour it down the deities and he would gulp up half. So you will have his direct mahaprasad and in the dwarapa yuga they give him milk, I think in the treta yuga they gave ghee and in Satwa yuga they gave soma rasa, and so the deities has been existing for many yugas.

We saw how Prahalada, he got special mercy from Narasimhadev. It was satya yuga, and the process of yajna was to meditate on the Lord. So Prahlad as a young boy, he didn’t know how to meditate. He would chant the Hare Krishna mahamantra. And also Narasimhadev showed him how to meditate and that was Yoga Narasimha where he took a meditational pose. In Jagannath, there is also Narasimhadev  right next to the gundicha temple. There is actually a double layer of Narasimhadev. So one deity is covered by another deity. Somhow that deity was not affected by the attacking moughuls.

In fact Prahlada said, “I saw my father be delivered by you but I never saw I never saw the form of Lord Varahadev how he delivered my uncle, Hiranyaksha.” So in Vishakapatnam there is deity of Varahadev and Narasimhadev combined. Lord Caitanya visited that temple. Normally the whole year long the deity is covered by sandalwood. Usually it’s like one-fourth, two-fourths, …12.23-25… three-fourth and one day the deity is completely uncovered. At that time lakhas of people come on the akshaya trithi of this month, and somehow by the mercy of Krishna I got a special pass. I can go through the exit side. (laughter).

There were lakhs of people in the entrance but in the exit empty. When I got to the top, I showed my pass, the head police officer who took charge of the temple, he said, “Ah! too much headache.” (laughter), and so I was there just a little bit away, just like a hundred meters but it was like unlimited space but I couldn’t get in to see the deities. Then the temple president of the Visakapatnam, so he crawled over the century fence. (laughter), and somehow he let me in. Then I went to see the deities and the pujaris said, “just go inside of the temple, and I was inside like for like one and a half hours, I chanted like 16 rounds.” (laughter), and if someone noticed, “Oh, it’s you in there”, then they told me the gate out. (laughter), but it was a very beautiful deity. It’s been there since satya yuga, so some deities of India have been there for some millions of years and the temple may have been built many times but the deities are the original deities.

Prabhupada went to Tirumala and he said how Lord Caitanya visited, He said that this deity of Srinivas Govinda is from the previous Kali Yuga. In our temple there at the Tirupati level is by the road called Ali Pheri, means go back Ali, Ali was a moghul king who was going to attack the hill.

They said, “Those people, they worship a pig, a pig, haram, haram.”, and then they went back. So that was Varahadev.

Balaji, he rented or brought the land from Varadev. So they say, “If you want to get your blessings from Venkateshwar, you have to go to the Varaha Dev… go-varahadev.”

Did you go?

And so like this Narasinghadev also appeared in Nabadwip Dham, and when he flying over Nabadwip, he remembered that this is my eternal dham. In Kali yuga I come as Caitanya Mahaprabhu. So he stopped in the eastern side of Nabadwip, in the east of Godrumdwip, the island which is non-different from the Bhakti Yuga of kirtan. There all the devas also built their cotages, and they personally could serve Lord Narasimhadev.

It is said that when Lord Caitanya he felt ecstasy of Narasimhadev, that time murari gupta was chanting the Visnu Sahasranam, then Lord Caitanya ran out to the street with a stick, “Where are the demons, where are the demons, people saw him and they ran. Then he felt bad, “OH, I scared so many people.” (laughter)

But Murari Gupta said, “My Lord! So many people were delivered by seeing you.”

So be good boys and girls and Narasimhadev will protect you.

Hari bol (everyone) (applause)

The mothers and fathers are clapping but what are the kids doing? (laugh)

Now it is the summer time here. But I don’t know if you get the same fruits to have in India right now.

You get Jack fruit.

Yes (by devotees)

 Devotee: It is imported Maharaj.

JPS: So there is a story by Bhakti Siddhantha Saraswati Thakur. It’s about an English magistrate, he had a beard and in India there are people who are professional witnesses like say you burned somebody ….murdered somebody (laughter). You pay them like thousand rupees and they will be like, “he was in my house” So he was appearing before the British Megistrate, but he already appeared in the court as a witness for another case. (laughter), so he was a bit shaky, so he had a beard, so he cut off his beard.

Just at that time someone gave the British Megistrate a Jack fruit, he didn’t tell him how to eat it. So he didn’t know that the jackfruit was very sticky and that you have to put oil in your hand. So he cut it, looks good, feels good, smells good, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, please help, it was all stuck in his beard. So the barber came and cut his beard.

“Oph…. Saved” That day he went to the court and he saw the man who was the witness for another case with his shaved beard. He thought, “Oh, he also must have had jack fruit.” (laughter)

He told him, “I want to see you after the court.”

So he was shaking, “Oh my God, I got caught.” (laughter)

Then he sat down and the magistrate told him, “don’t worry, I know what it is like, I also had jackfruit.”

So he gave him rasagulla and five rupees, like by this time like, “what was going on!” (laughter)

So the moral of the story is, “You think what you think is what everybody thinks.”

He thought, “This false witness took a jackfruit and everyone who takes jackfruit knows it’s going to stuck in his beard.”

So he thought that everyone who has got his beard cut off must have taken jackfruit. So this kinds of stories would be told by Bhakti Siddhantha Saraswati Thakur. So then he would use these stories to explain a philosophical point. So he had little names for these histories. One is “gache kathal gope tel” means “Jackfruit on the tree, oil on your moustache.” (laughter)

He was walking down the road, there was a jackfruit orchard and he smelled the sweet smell of jackfruit, “Umh…. I lover jackfruit, I lover kathal, but he knew that it is sticky, so he went to the nearby grocery store and brought oil enough to oil up his moustache. (Applause). So he had his moustache oiled, all ready to eat up the jackfruit, he climbed up the tree, he was almost getting it, almost, almost, almost, “Ah…” dhoom and the branch broke and he was laying on his back, “gache kathal, gope tel.” “jackfruit on the tree, oil on the moustache.” (applause)

Hearing the sound of his falling and screaming the guard of the orchard he came running, “Ah…Jackfruit thief, beat him.” So what is the moral of the story?

You know the kind of things that Prabhupada’s gurudev would tell. It’s a funny story but what does it mean?

You are smart kids, but what does it mean?

You see, if you had approached the guard, “I want to buy the jackfruit”, pay the money, you get it right, but instead you want to steal it. He was so sure he will get it, that he put oil on his moustache but he didn’t get it, he got beaten instead. “gache kathal, gope tel.”

So the same thing, if one wants to reach Krishna, you have to go through the guru-parampara, if you don’t you don’t get Krishna (applause)

You like this stories?

Hari bol (everyone)

So there is all kinds of stories that we told.

One story is called, “breaking the peanut shell with a Narayan saligram!”

Devotees: Ohh…..

That’s very bad.

So there was a son of a priest, but the son was atheist but he knew how to worship the deities, so he got a job with the Lord owner, the jaminder, to do puja, to do worship the deities.

So one day someone gave the peanut’s with the shell on it and he loved peanuts. He was looking at it and he was like, “no one is here, let me eat the pea nuts.”

So he closed the door, he looked around, “what can I break the shell with?”, and on the altar there were shaligram shilas and because he was an atheist he just took off one shila, because stones are good to break peanut shells, breaking tt..tt.. breaking peanuts.

So the Landlord came up, “why is my temple door shut?”, and he heard the sound coming from the temple tt..th…th… (laughter)

So then he looked through the window, “pasandi, pasandi, how you are breaking the peanut with the holy Narayana Sheela, get out of this temple now you demon, you pasandi.” (laugh), He grabbed him on the neck and threw him out.

So what’s the moral of the story?

Devotee: A monkey cannot understand the value of a jewel

JPS: close

Devotee: ignorance is not an excuse.

JPS: He is a priest, he should know.

Devotee: If someone’s does wrong some day or other he will be caught

JPS: interesting, the point that Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur was, the point was that everything we do, we should do it for Krishna’s pleasure, you shouldn’t take our property for our own sense gratification and one of the sanyasis at that point had a Ford Car…Bhaktisiddhantha Saraswati Thakur had a Ford Car which was very rare, the car in the 1910 was just starting. So he was going to use that for preaching. He found that some of the sanyasis were using the car to go to the nearby city to buy some medicine or something, so he used this example, “shaligram diya badam bhanga” badam is Indian name.

So don’t use Krishna’s things for sense gratification, use that for Krishna’s service. So because you love your children you want to give them the best of life. What’s the best, to be Krishna conscious, so you all have to take birth again and again in this conditioned life. 

So like that they would use this different stories to make spiritual points. One mantra like “breaking peanuts with the shaligram shila” is a whole long story, or “Jackfruit in the tree or in the moustache.”

So you say this few words and everyone heard the story before, that would make a very strong impression. So this human life is actually meant to cultivate and restore our relationship our relationship with Krishna, but then people ask, “why do we exist, why are we here.”, that is Krishna’s mercy, he gives us free will, so somehow we chose not to be with Krishna, but he is giving us a chance to go back and he is very merciful.

If you say, “Hey Krishna Karuna Sindhu”,  he is the ocean of mercy. Like Putuna the witch, she was a serial killer. (laughter)

Devotee: Wow, I have never heard it like that.

She changed herself to look like a young, beautiful woman, and she put poison on her breast and she killed so many babies. So walked in the room and took baby Krishna from the lap of Yasoda, “Oh what a beautiful child” , but she actually thought that if I had a baby I would like to have one like this. “too bad I have to kill her.” (laugh)

“So my friend Kamsha, he asked for a favour, so I should do it. Ah… too bad, that’s a nice baby, Oh! my dear child let me feed you my milk and her purpose was to kill Krishna but Krishna said, “ye yatha mam prapadyante tams tathaiva bhajam aham” “According to how they approach me I reciprocate with them.”

So she approached Krisha to kill him, so Krishna sucked her prana from her body and she died but because she thought that “I would like to be the mother of Krishna. What a beautiful baby!”, Krishna is so merciful that he elevated her to be one of her mother’s in the spiritual. Where will you find someone so merciful.

When you want to kill him, just a flashing thought, “what a beautiful baby!” and he delivers you.

So Pundarak Vidyanidhi was from Chattagram in Bangladesh, and Mukunda Dutta Gadadhara Prabhu if he has  seen Pundaraka Vidyanidhi. He said, “NO!”, then he said, “come and meet a pure devotee!”, then he went to the house where Pundarak Vidyanidhi was staying. There he saw very opulent room with tapestries hanging with Brass lamps. Two servants of Pundarik put in expensive oil on his hair and he sitting on a silken mat with pillows. So Gadadhara was used to seeing Vaisnavas very simple and poor, so he said, “I came here to see a vaisnava but this place is so opulent.”, he thought, and Mukunda could understand that Gadadhara was uneasy.

Mukunda Datta, one of the kirtan singers of Lord Caitanya, so he started  to sing this pastime of Putana. Putana who was serial killer who was trying to kill Krishna but she got liberated to be a mother of Krishna but when Pundarak Vidyandhi heard this he started crying and he started screaming, “Krishna, Krishna” , he started ripping his clothes and throwing the lamps, and then Gadadhara said, “wow! I did an aparadh, this person is obviously not attached to any of this things, he is so attached to Krishna.”

So he went back to Lord Caitanya and said that, “the only way I can be free of this offence is to take Pundarik as my guru.”

And who is Gadadhara?

Devotees: Srimati Radharani.

JPS: Yes, and who is Pundarik? Viswabhanu.

So Radarani became Gadadhara in Caitanya lila and Viswabhanu became the guru of Radha.

So somehow by Lord Chitanya’s mercy because the birth place of Pundarik Vidyanidhi in Bangladesh, and the temple of Vasudev Dutta and Mukunda Dutta.

So the pastime of Lord Caitanya are only a 500 or some years ago and Lord Caitanya predicted that 500 years from his time there will be his devotees who would spread the sankirtan all over the world. We see that he was Srila Prabhupada, he was the first to bring the holy name to the west and he did establish 108 temples, and now in the 50^th anniversary we have around 600 temples.

Haribol (everyone) (applause)

By Prabhupada’s mercy, and around 5-6000 bhakti Vrikshas and namhatta’s and counsel groups and other’s.

So I was told that tomorrow was a working day, so I will take only two questions.

Question: What pleases Srila Prabhupada the most.

JPS: Well this question was asked several times to Srila Prabhupada. Sometimes he would say, “To see a disciple who has love for Krishna or strong sentiments for Krishna.”, that would make him most pleased, and sometimes he said, “making other devotees or distributing books.” So there are different things that he said. To please the predecessor guru’s would most please him.

Like Bhakti Siddhantha Saraswati Thakur, he said that he wanted his books to be distributed, and he gave some instructions to Srila Prabhupada, and then ah.. Bhakti Siddhanta Thakur wrote, “Those who will help him will also get blessed.”

So who wants to help Srila Prabhupada?

Hari Bol (everyone)

Thank you all.

Question: What should be the mood before the appearance of Lord Narasinghadev tomorrow.

JPS: Anything we pray to the Lord for, we should ask something Krishna conscious, say your guru is sick, Prabhupada would say, “if it so pleases you make our guru healthy.” Or anything like that.

Another example is “Please let my son and daughter do well in studies so that they can please you and serve you.” Anything we pray for we should somehow or other add Krishna consciousness to the equation.

People come to me and say, “Gurudev, please give me your blessings, ashirvad dau, ashirvad dau.”

I said, “what blessings do you want?”

“I got a stomach ache.”… you can see the doctor.

Or you can say, “I want to be strong to serve Krishna or something like that.”, you should always add Krishna.

 

Transcribed by: Sadananda Krishnaprem Das

Mayapur.