20160524 Addressing Bhakti Vṛkṣa Groups

20160524 Addressing Bhakti Vriksha Groups in Dallas

 

Mukam karoti vacalam

Pangum langhyate girim

Yat kripa tamaham vande sri gurum dina tarinam

Paramananda madhavan

Sri Chaitanya ishvaram

Hari Om Tat Sat

So I am glad that many bhakti Vriksha leaders are here. We are many youth and here we have a special guest, the leader of the Nepali group, here in Dallas. Su swagatam. (GM speaks in Nepali)

All of you know Nepali?

We have recently been through a big earthquake in Katmandu and neighbouring places. Actually if you go to Nepal it is a very beautiful place, and the people have a very strong culture. It used to be the only Hindu Kingdom in the world. So in… so we were talking recently about the expansion of congregational preaching.

Most of Lord Caitanya’s devotees were grihasthas. In Nabadwip practically everyone was a grihasth, only Sukhlambar Brahmachari was a brahmachari and we hear when Lord Caitanya was in Nabadwip, of course he grew there and he became Nimai Pandit and he was known as the greatest pandit of all time.

After he went to Gaya and performed the pindi for his father, and worshipped the Gadadhara Charan and got initiated by Ishwara Puri Maharaj, we also have here Ishwar Puri Maharaj Das.

So then he became very ecstatic. Started running off to Vrindavan. He said, here I go, Vrindavan Lal Krishna Ji ki….. Jay. Then the voice came from the sky, “You cannot go to Vrindavan now, you have to go later, and now you have to go back to Nabadwip and start the sankirtan yajna.

So Vrinda Devi directs the pastimes in Vrindavan. It seems that someone directs the pastimes even in other places. So then Lord Caitanya turned around and headed back to Nabadwip and he followed the path of Ganges and came up to Kanai Natshala which was… now it’s just on the border of the Ganges. This side Jharkhand and that side is Bengal. The Ganges is like six kilometre wide there. There while I was in Kanai Natshala which by Lord Caitanya’s mercy is under the seva of ISKCON.

Lord Caitanya, He heard someone playing on a flute. He saw on the distance a cowherd boy wearing a yellow dhoti, read sash, a turban on his head, peacock feather on his turban and he was dancing and playing on his flute, coming closer and closer, and closer, closer, and he saw he was Krishna himself playing on the flute. He was amazed Krishna came very close and Krishna ran up to him and hugged him, and he was like, exploded, and then Krishna ran off.

And he said, “OH! No, I have lost Krishna”, and he ran after Krishan but he couldn’t catch him and Krishna disappeared somewhere and Lord Caitanya  he was in so much separation that he was rolling in the ground. That place is still there. I still remember about 20 years ago, one very old sadhu, I mean like 99 years old, beard and hair, and a short dhoti, he was sitting on the verandah of the Mayapur Chakra building and so I asked him, “Sadhu baba, do you want prasadam.”

He said, “No, No, I want to meet the General Manager.”

“Oh, can we give you something to eat first.”

“No I just take once a day some fruits but I want to meet the General Manager.”

So at that time Dayaram Das was our General Manager and I was director of Mayapur. So I brought Dayaram Das to him and he was from the Ramanandi sampradaya, he said that from the past 300 years they have been incharge of Kanai Natshala but they were told that if you are ever unable to serve the deities, you should give the seva puja to Kanai Natshala, the most prominent preacher of Gauria Vaisnava Sampradya. So for that reason he came down to Mayapur to hand over the seva puja of Kanai Natshala, because the deities have been stolen. So he said that by his inability to protect the deities they were stolen. So he said that Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s ISKCON mission was the most powerful preacher of the Gauria Vaisnava Sampradaya at that time. So he said that he wanted to hand over this holy place. The other thing is that the whole Kanai Natshala is on China Clay which is worth crores and crores of rupees, and he was afraid that is such a place was given to his disciples they may sell it off for greed.

So because the place was held by him as mahanta, so he said that someone from ISKCON had to become a mahanta. So one of my little known title’s is Mahanta of Kanai Natshala.

Hari Bol.

But when Lord Caitanya came back to Nabadwip, remember that he left as Nimai Pandit, when he came back he was totally in love with Krishna, and all the students, thousands of students at that time, they thought that something has happened to Lord Caitanya, now he is always talking about Krishna, even the ka, kha, ga, gha, na of Sanskrit, everything he describes with the names of Krishna.

So the people thought that he was attacked by some vayu dosh, and one day mother sachi and she was describing, she was calling, “Nimai, Nimai, come for lunch”, and the neighbours approached her, “You know your son has vayu dosh, some mental disease.”

That’s why you should give him some tender coconut to drink. Another said, “No, No, that won’t do”

“You have to rub on his head dashmul tela, oil from tan roots, that will cool down his brain”, and the other one said, “He is too far gone. Tie him with rope, don’t let him out.”

Mother Sachi said, “Nothing wrong with my son.”

So there is a big reaction, Nimai Pandit had changed, and the students of Nimai Pandi approached to Ganga Das Pandit.

“Something is wrong with you disciple Nimai Pandit, please go and see him, he used to be able to argue with people and defeat them but now he just talks about Krishna sankirtan.”

So Ganga Das Pandit came to see Caitanya Mahaprabhu, see Nimai Pandit. At that time the students of Nimai Pandit asked him that, “You don’t seem to be the same anymore.”

“No, I am the same Nimai Pandit, bring anybody before me, I will defeat them, I will prove what they say is wrong and then I will prove it right, then I will prove it wrong, then I will prove it right, I am Nimai Pandit”

(Hari Bol)

So let the first brahman come and I will defeat him. So they are waiting there. So the Brahmin came the brother of Srivas Thakur, and he was chanting a bhajan to Krishna, how Krishna was so merciful, the serial killer the witch Putana who was killing many babies by putting poison on her breast, she came to kill Krishna, when she held Krishna, she thought, “what a beautiful baby, if I had a baby I would like one like this, too bad I have to kill him, but Kamsha is my friend and I told him I will do it, so my dear baby drink my milk.”

“ah… “

He started breathing the pran from her body.

“Leave me, Leave me, Leave me, child leave me…ah…”

But then she was promoted to the spiritual world. Why a serial killer, why a witch was promoted to the spiritual world? Why this?

Because for a few moments she thought, “I would like to be a mother for a baby like this.”, and there is no one like Krishna except Krishna. But since even for a moment she had the desire to be the mother of Krishna, she was promoted to the spiritual world to be one of the mother of Krishna.

And when Nimai Pandit heard this he lost it. He was rolling on the ground, “Krishna, Krishna, you are so merciful Krishna.”

All the students were going, “Oh, no!”

So then he went back to the Ganges side where he would teach and there he told them, “I have always tried to give you the best knowledge I had, now I realize that the Krishna is the sumum bonum, Krishna is everything. So how can I give you less than the best, but now I understand if you want to go somewhere else it’s you choice, but I understand if you want to go somewhere else it’s your choice, I am free to go anywhere but I can only teach you the best I know, like I have always known. Now my teachings will definitely include Krishna. So you are free.”

So the best students stood up, “we want to follow you but you never told us before about the sankirtan, we didn’t know about chanting, we didn’t know about any of these things. So bring over your vaisnavas, bring over your people to teach us.”

So the best students, the best youth of Nabadwip, they all joined Lord Caitanya in one shot. He converted them to the sankirtan movement and they all also joined him.

So like that you could say that the backbone of the sankirtan movement was the yougths, some grihastas and in this way the movement started and he showed that how in the vedas in this Kali yuga the chanting of the holy names of Krishna was the most effective way to get back home, back to Godhead.

We had a beautiful kirtan here, and I always hear beautiful kirtans in Dallas, whether in this house or whether at the temple, there are always nice kirtans. So like this for the eight years or so Lord Caitanya did the sankirtan movement in Nabadwip, then he went to Jagannath Puri, and he was… and he told Nityananda Prabhu that we didn’t finish the work in Bengal, so you please go there and finish the work and then Lord Nityananda with a group of devotees, may be 40, 50 and they were so absorbed in the pastimes of Krishna, it’s normally one month journey by foot, but it took them three months because they were be acting out the different pastimes of Krishna, they would wonder off the road and ended going 20 kms the wrong way, and they would ask, “Oh! where is Bengal ?”, and they would see that the road is back there 20 kilometers, then they would come back, and as they were going they were telling some other pastimes and then ended up wondering off the road and go to the other side and say, “where is Bengal? It’s past the road back there.”

So when they came back to Bengal and they had pastimes in Panihati and various places and finally Lord Nityananda, he ended up in the Nabadwip Dham, Godrup Dweep, Surabhi Kunja, there he established the Namahatta which in the cities we do as bhakti vrikshas, and to make a long story short he preached throughout east, west Bengal, to what’s the kingdom where Janakraj was the king? Mithila, he preached upto Mithila and in this way one year Advaita Gosai came to Jagannath Puri.

Lord Caitanya asked him, “how is the preaching?”

He said that the market has become overfilled. He said, he was describing the Namahatta, the market place of the holy name was being filled with goods so that, just like if there are so many people who are supplying apples you have apples everywhere. Like that there were so many people chanting during sankirtan, that Advaita described that the market was flooded.

So since Lord Chaitanya had grihasthas and youths spreading the Hari Nam, we know that the grihasthas have a big responsibility for the children, for the family, for the tax man, and various responsibilities to the relatives, but they also keep their responsibility to Krishna and guru to spread the Hari Nam sankirtan, atleast  a couple of nights during the week, and also the youths in Malaysia they recently opened the temple of understanding, all the devotees, the youths were given the balcony to develop as an exhibition for Prabhupada, and they were given 150,000 and they raised 75,000 more and this is one of best exhibits anywhere.

You go turn the wheel of the sheep and you could see Prabhupada’s room where you could rock it. They had a big walled picture of …34.34-36… temples around the world, and there were drawings where the best artist in Malaysia, there was a big kalash picture of Prabhupada’s head made from many small pictures of  Prabhupada’s pastimes, there was a little garden, you could go out and see Prabhupada seating. On the day of inauguration, they did a special drama where they had a screen and behind they had like a shadowed box drama. They did so many things and they touched everybodie’s heart.

Now if youths, if they use their intelligence and energy how to spread Krishna consciousness, it’s amazing what they can do, and it was the parents who were supporting the children but the children left them behind, they were so enthusiastic.

So we know that the material world is very attractive, it tries to attract everyone, “this is the reality, we are meant to enjoy the senses, that is the only thing in life.” That’s part of material life no doubt, but that’s not the real goal of material life. So somehow we have to keep on practicing Krishna consciousness and avoid breaking regulative principles.

Although I ride around India in the train, in the plane, and I didn’t calculate the exact percentage but I would say that most of the people are non-veg, may be 20%, may be more than other parts of the world are vegetarian but lots of people are not, and kali everywhere is attacking, this country is considered by Kali as his place and so naturally he will try to attract everybody.

But people would tell Lord Caitanya, “I want to give up my grihastha life”, and Lord Caitanya would say, “Stop speaking this nonsense, this is false renunciation, this is markata vairagya”, and he will encourage people, “Stay here, stay here as a grihastha, jare dekho tare kaho Krishna upadesh, whoever you meet tell them the message of Krishna. On my order become a spiritual teacher and liberate your country and Rupa Goswami was saying how much transcendental pleasure is there in the two syllables Kris and Na, there is no limit”

So in the glories also of the pursutomma month, the month that falls every three years, the adhik mas, but he is saying that lead a happy, peaceful, material life, engage consistently in Krishna’s service, and at the end of your life you will go back to the spiritual world. So the rules are not so… anyone would want to follow the rules. Therefore the initiated devotees, they eat Krishna prasadam. They don’t take narcotics, drugs or intoxications, they don’t gamble.

In Florida one time we were driving through Alachua. All along the road were gamblers anonymous. “Are you an impulsive gambler, do you lose all your money and then go back to you family and say, I lost all my money, join such and such group, gambler’s anonymous” It is so hard to earn money, and then one gambles it away thinking that I will become rich quick but everyone knows that the only one that becomes rich is the gambling casino. Any way these are  principles.

Even if someone can’t follow the principle we say, “Chant Hare Krishna and be happy.” Over the time as they gain knowledge and gain intelligence, they naturally see why they want to practice spiritual life because they care about their children and they want to set a good example for their children. They want to give the best they can for their children, and what’s better than Krishna consciousness. So I am very grateful that so many devotees are helping with the bhakti vriksha.

Not only that outreach brings new people but it also helps them maintain their own spiritual life and that there are so many examples in the vedas how people by chanting the holy names, even otherwise sinful people, like Ajamil or there is one lady in the Padma purana who had a parrot that chanted the name of Ram, all these people were taken by Visnudutas back to Godhead, what to speak of people who lead a pure life. So Yamaraja told his dutas, “don’t bring to me people who chant the holy names. Bring to me people who lie, who cheat, he gave a whole description, but don’t bring to me people who chant the name of Visnu.”

Then he gave another description. So it reminds me that whoever that dispatches of the yamadutas, he said, “Bring some Yada Sena or…  I forget the name”, but the Yamadutasa came but couldn’t find Yadav Sena in that address, but at the next house there was someone named Yadav Sena. So they thought, “Oh, the dispatcher man made a mistake.”, so in the next house, I forget the name but it is a name that could be a brahman or a someone else and they brought him to Yamaloka. There he saw all these half man, half animal half men type people, they were very fierce looking. He is looking at them, “What a place, what a place, what did I do to get down here, I have been doing Varnasrma Dharma, so why am I here?” So they dragged him to Yamaraja.

Yamaraja looked. “the wrong guy, I never want to see him again”

“I don’t want come here.”

He said that, “at that place you didn’t see him because he had amlaki trees.”

So whoever has amlaki trees, the subtle entities like Yamaduta’s, ghosts, they can’t see them, it is too blinding bright. So if you want to have a protected house, have some amlaki trees. That’s the first tree that was created by Lord Brahma. After that the person, he began to chant, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Hare Hare”, he did everything good, he said that I don’t want to see that place again.

So being devotees, by spreading the Hari nam sankirtan, by doing Bhakti Vriksha, usually you never have to see that place. The seventh aparadh of the holy name, which is to sin on the strength of the holy name that should be avoided. Like Ajamil he was thinking of his sons name but he wasn’t doing it to cheat Visnu, he didn’t think,” I will sin and then I will chant the name of Narayan and get free. So anyway, I wanted to talk a little bit and take dinner with you, but I got exited.

Hare Krsihna.

Hari Bol (everyone)

So I just hope that our youths will take care of Krishna consciousness very seriously, that our grihasthas continue to spread the movement, I was very inspired to see so many programs for the children and found in the middle- east this was a way to not only help the children but also to get the appreciation.

I had some parents say, “You know how it feels when the child comes home from school and says, father, mother and touches their feet as pranam and says is there any way I can serve you?” Of course I don’t know because I am a sanyasi but they said that they had put their children in the Hare Krishna school in Bombay but they said that school is the only school where they teach childrens so nicely.

So anyway, any questions?

Question:  Thank you gurumahraj for your wonderful class. I want to ask you a question on behalf of all the devotees that when we are little bit low sometimes doing bhakti Vriksha or going to Bhakti Vriksha, how do we get the enthusiasm to go on continuously?

JPS: If you remember there was one devotee who went to 26^{th /} 2^nd avenue and he looked through the window. The front window was painted half, he looked in and he could see Prabhupada, Prabhupada was giving a lecture, you could see his hand moving enthusiastically when he was giving a lecture. So we thought, “I am late.”

And we came in and saw that there was no one there, Prabhupada was alone. We said “ oh! no body here.”, he said, “no, there is Indra, there is Narad Muni, and so many devas.”

So Prabhupada, even if no body showed up, he would give lecture, he was posted when the lecture and even if you came or didn’t come he would give the lecture and some Bhakti Vriksha servant leaders told me that, “some weeks there may be more people will come and some weeks few people will come.”

May be there is school finals, “so many parents stay and help their children study.” May be there is some sickness in the family. Someone can come. In fact one person was coming by two-wheeler, go into an accident, ended up in the hospital. There people came and said that we will pray for you and she was thinking that, bhakti vriksha I knew was coming but no body calls, no body checks.”

This people they are coming and saying, “we will pray for you but they want to convert people.” So they approach like that.

So if someone doesn’t come, you call them not accusing saying, “You have been on my mind” You are a friend, you are asking , “is everything is alright, you didn’t come, we missed you.”, and then you may find out that I was in the hospital, I had an accident, they will feel so good, “Oh! people they care about me, they call”

There is one couple. They were actually trying to escape. They thought that they were not ready yet for spiritual life. So they went to another part of the city, but from the post office they found out what their forwarding address was. In India you can do things. So anyway they sent to the bhakti Vriksha of that part of the town and someone came knocking on the door, “Oh! we are from the local Bhakti Vriksha, we heard that you are moving in here?” (laughter)

“Ok, I surrender, I surrender!” Don’t give up, don’t be aggressive but be friendly and be determined that you will continue no matter what. Of course we would like to have everybody participate. In Namhatta that’s not a particular requirement, but in the bhakti vriksha version of Namhatta we would like everybody to speak.

So sometimes if the Bhakti Vriksha servant leader speaks too much people may stop coming, you should see, “Am I doing something wrong? Am I involving everybody by being a friend or am I sitting in a high seat?”

Being a Swami you do that but being a bhakti Vriksha servant leader you have to be a bit humble, a few thoughts.  (applause)

Question:  Inaudible

JPS:  The whole system is to foster increasing enthusiasm. It is recommended that once in a month, once in six week may by do something special. Go out for a picinic with the family or do some big festival like Janmasthami, you can take up some seva and never, never accuse or criticize anybody publicly. People are very sensitive to their dignity and if you have any advice to give, give it in private.

Say if someone else is criticising you either give them in private or cut them off, cut them off in a very discreet way, “Oh! thank you and now we would like to hear from…” , so the facilitator has to be very conscious of what is going on. If there is family problems in the community of the temple. Some communities have marriage counselling, some have pre-marriage training to prepare them for the new life. It’s more than you can expect a bhakti Vriksha to deal with, it’s a bigger issue.

Sometimes it’ just that one member go faster and one member little slower. I met a wife saying, “Oh! my husband is not a devotee, he only chants six rounds.”

“I said four, you said six, that’s more already” (laugh)

Lord Caitanya said, “even if one chants once Hare Krishna, he is a devotee.”, and sometimes you have to tell one spouse, “be more patient, you have to let your husband or wife to come at their own pace.” Any if he or she does something nice appreciate that, and if they don’t, just feel sorry but don’t create a big fight for nothing. That’s just in a nutshell.

Question : inaudible

JPS: We don’t say that particularly, we never name other religions. Sometimes Prabhupada would say that we are post-graduate, that means anybody from any religion, hindu, Christian, Islam whatever, they can come and chant Hare Krishna.

He told that in Mayapur even if an Islam wants to do their namaj five times a day they can do that in the temple, but hey eat Krishna prasadam and attend mangla arati, and chant the sixteen rounds of japa and do their seva, then they can do their namaj.

So practically why we say that this is a post graduate study, every religion says, “You should love God”, and Krishna Prema, Ram Prema, it’s there in the Vedas.

So some people they say that, “OK, love God”, but what do they know about God, no body knows what he looks like, what he does, what are his qualities. So many of the so called religions they are impersonal, we are trying to teach the bhakti yoga which is a practice. We worship the personality of Godhead, we don’t say that you have to convert, you have to leave your religion but we say that there is one religion, that’s to worship the supreme personality of Godhead and the best system to worship him is to do bhakti yoga.

So every religion has bhakti yoga to some extent. Prayers, may be they don’t do deity worship, and then there is the service, there is remembering, there is hearing, chanting, thinking of oneself as the servant of the Lord, thinking of oneself as the friend of the Lord, and surrendering everything, sravanam, kitanama, smaranam, vandanam, pada sevanam, archanam,

 

Transcribed by: Sadananda Krishnaprem Das

Mayapur.