20230211 Glories of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam
paramānandaṁ mādhavaṁ śrī caitanya iśvaram
hariḥ oṁ tat sat

Jayapatākā Swami: So today is the appearance day of His Divine Grace Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda and in the Vyasa-pūjā offering by Śrīla Prabhupāda to Srila Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura in 1961 before he went to the USA. He went in 1965. We can see what his mood was then. There are eight vaiśiṣṭya but we will read only two now:

First vaiśiṣṭya

1. On this day, O my master, I made a cry of grief; I was not able to tolerate the absence of my guru.

2. On this auspicious day I have come with this offering just to worship you, remembering your lotus feet.

3. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s judgement is that renunciation is most important. Not only that, but such knowledge must be delivered to every conditioned being.

4. The beginner in devotional service has no ability to solve this dilemma, but you are a mahā-bhāgavata, you have given us direction.

5. One bewildered by ignorance, what kind of renunciate can he be? He will only be a “phalgu-vairāgī”; renouncing externally.

6. Renunciation is actually the result of real spiritual emotion. Without such feeling it is simply known as show-bottle.

7. But there is another “show-bottle” for the purpose of preaching. That is the Lord’s sannyāsa by which the Mayavadis are defeated.

8. Lord Caitanya’s Philosophy is beyond varnāśrama; it is Bhāgavata-dharma, for putting an end to all cheating processes of religion.

9. Performing dry renunciation there can be no real preaching. Therefore “yukta-vairagya” is given the highest essential understanding.

10. “That sannyāsa which I have given you” is for preaching in devotion. The faithless sense enjoyers are unable to understand this.

Second vaiśiṣṭya

11. Generally the sannyasis renounce everything and go and stay in the mountain caves, but you, O master, keep your sannyasis in mansions of marble.

12. To see a sense enjoyer is just like drinking poison, but you, O my master, go far and near, even abroad, to give them your darśana.

13. Mlecchas and Yavanas are forbidden to enter the Hindu temples, but you my Lord, make them chairmen and sit them in the assembly of devotees.

14. Hindus are not allowed to cross the ocean, but you send your devotees overseas to preach.

15. In the cities of Kali-yuga, the instructions of the bona fide spiritual preceptors are forbidden. Still, you remain here in any way possible.

16. The devotees want to hide in a secluded place to perform their bhajana. You, however, do not accept this in your judgement.

17. Whenever there is an increase in population, there in that place preaching is to be found.

18. In London you want a student hostel. You explain that it must be first-class.

19. In the land of barbarians a student hostel for preaching Hari-kathā! Who can understand the significance of these things?

20. To resolve all the apparent contradictory statements is not the play of some incompetent fool.

21. If everyone simply sat down together and considered these things, what nice preaching there could be.

22. What is your order also, that everyone, coming together, should merge in your message and preach it to the world.

23. If everyone just initiates then there will only be a contradictory result. As long as it goes on there will be only failure.

24. Now even, my godbrothers, you return here to the order of our master, and together we engage in his pūjā.

25. But simply a festival of flowers and fruits does not constitute worship. The one who serves the message of the guru really worships him.

26. The service of the message is the real meaning of the Vedas. Don’t be proud, brothers, come back to this.

27. Kālīdās Nag (a learned man who was defeated by Śrīla Sarasvatī Ṭhākura and later became his disciple), that master said in public forum one day.

28. That Kali’s mission was to kill the entire world while the essential meaning of Lord Caitanya’s message was kept locked up in a cage.

29. O shame! My dear brothers, aren’t you embarrassed? In the manner of businessmen you increase your disciples.

30. Our master said to preach. Let the neophytes stay in the temples and ring the bells.”

Like this there are 8 Vaiśiṣṭyas. But to read all these will take up too much time. We only have one hour. So, as we heard Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura said, prāṇa āche jāra, sei hetu pracāra. Those who are alive, they preach. So, he wanted the devotees to go out and preach. Today is the 150^th anniversary of his appearance. Unfortunately, there should have been a much bigger celebration. Last night, we heard the SGVA (Sārasvata Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Association) lectures on Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura. For the 125^th appearance of Śrīla Prabhupāda we did a bigger thing. Unfortunately, we did not take this opportunity to glorify our Parama Gurudeva and so our presentation is a bit humble. But actually, we can see here how Śrīla Prabhupāda even before he went to the West, he had a worldwide vision and that was given by his gurudeva, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura. He wanted to unite all the disciples of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, to do a grand, united preaching all over the world. But they did not take it very seriously. So Śrīla Prabhupāda went himself and that is why we are all sitting here today!

I told last night that Śrīla Prabhupāda went because he was carrying out the order of his gurudeva, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura. So naturally, we should be very grateful to our Parama Gurudeva for sending Śrīla Prabhupāda to us. And Śrīla Prabhupāda, he echoed the same message to his followers that they should go out and preach. Śrīla Prabhupāda said that Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura was telling him, sometimes I think to pull out the marbles from the temples, and sell it, and print books! He told Śrīla Prabhupāda that if you ever get books, print books. So one of the priorities that Śrīla Prabhupāda did was to establish the BBT to print his books. He asked ISKCON to distribute the books. He heard that Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura had a rule that his pūjārīs and devotees who stayed in the temple, they would chant 100,000 names.

When I first came here to Māyāpur in 1970, there were still many of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s godbrothers alive. So we got some insider information! Some nectar! We heard that those who went out and distributed the books, they would have to chant 25,000 names a day. That is 16 rounds. And he had a daily newspaper, people asked how do you print information on a daily basis, how do you have enough information for a daily spiritual newspaper? He said, this material world is ekapāda-vibhūti, the spiritual world is tīnapāda-vibhūti, so you have three times more information!

We heard that Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, he was a very unique personality. His hands would go down to his knees, like Lord Caitanya, ājānu-lambita-bhujau, he had three lines on his neck, he would go around in his cādara and dhoti, bahir-vāsa, and he would give out sweets to the Muslim kids. Actually, much of the land that he had, was given to him by the Muslims of Māyāpur. So he was a very gracious and encompassing personality. And one of our neighbors was one of the youngest disciples of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, Dāmodara Swami. He told us some things. He said Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura was walking with his disciples and he was there, in the evening. He stopped and he was looking at the moon, he looked for a long time. The disciples were thinking, “What is he looking at the moon for?” Then he turned to them and said that, “People in the moon planet, they have become materialistic, bahir-mukha, we have to go there and preach!”

So we don’t know where he is now, where he is preaching! He studied the four Vaiṣṇava sampradāyas. In his temple there are the four sampradāyas there at the four corners. And he studied them, he said that the differences are not so significant. What is really important is that everyone is promoting viṣṇu-bhakti. So he spent time discussing with different ācāryas and different sampradāyas. And he appreciated how Rāmānujācārya defeated impersonalism quickly. How Madhvācārya, he also defeated the impersonalists. So, like this, he was preaching in a very cutting-edge way for his day and age. Like when cars were just a thing that only the elite would have - a few British; then he bought a car! But then some of the devotees would take the car to buy some medicine from the market or something. So he told the story, śālagrāma diye bādam bhāṅga – breaking peanuts with a śālagrāma-śilā. He would tell a unique story that one temple had a professional pūjārī. He was basically an atheistic, but he was born in a brāhmaṇa family, so he knew how to do the pūjā. He loved peanuts! Wow! Peanuts wow! Peanut-prema! So to this person, someone gave a bag of peanuts, gave it before the temple. And the pūjārī, thought peanuts, I love peanuts! He closed the door and was thinking how to break the shell of the peanuts. Rock is good. He took the śālagrāma-śilā and started breaking. So the zamindar, the temple owner, he happened to come up at that time. Door was closed, he looked through the window. He heard the sound chik, chik, chik. He looked that the pūjārī had taken the śālagrāma-śilā, the Nārāyaṇa śilā, and was breaking the peanuts! “You pāṣaṇḍī demon, how can you do this?” He grabbed him by the neck and threw him out! So when people would take the car to go buy medicine or to go to the town, he would say this is like śālagrāma diye bādam bhāṅga! Like breaking peanuts with a salagram-śilā. Of course, now we take the car to all places. At that time the car was a very rare thing. So here was thinking that he bought the car for preaching not for buying medicines.

So we were reading in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta how Govinda dāsa, he wanted to enter to massage Lord Caitanya’s legs, but Lord Caitanya was lying in front of the door. So he asked Lord Caitanya can You roll over so that I can walk in. Lord Caitanya said, “I am too tired I cannot move my body.” Govinda asked again and again, but Lord Caitanya would answer “I have no strength, I cannot move.” So he took a cloth and covered Lord Caitanya and stepped over and did his service of massage. But he did not walk out. When Lord Caitanya fell asleep, he stayed there. Then after one hour, Lord Caitanya woke up and asked, “Why did you not leave and go take your prasāda?” He said, “You were lying there.” “How did you get in?” “See for doing my sevā if I have to go to hell I will do it. I did not want commit aparādhā for my own sense gratification.” So like that Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, he was instructing that how we should use Kṛṣṇa’s things for preaching. And in 1922, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura in one the Gauḍīya magazines, The Harmonist, he gave instruction about those who wanted to get married. I guess people don’t know about this!

Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda wrote in an article relation between the sexes in the Harmonist:

“The cardinal principle of gṛhastha āśrama is that no one may be the owner of any property or service of another. Everyone is only a servant whose activities are ever in the service of the Lord. Similarly, the sole object of everyone’s service as the only master, only friend, only son and only consort is Kṛṣṇa. Marrying and giving in marriage do not give rise to any rights of a master either to the husband or to the wife. Men and women are joined in wedlock for the purpose of serving each other in the performance of the joint service of Kṛṣṇa. The wife is not an object of enjoyment of the husband, nor vice versa. They do not marry for gratifying their sexual appetites. They marry for pleasing the Lord, not for pleasing themselves. They choose for their partners only such persons who serve God better than themselves. They offer themselves to be accepted by their partners for the favor of being allowed to share in their superior service of Hari.

Neither the husband nor the wife should claim the services of his or her partner on their own account. Both of them are only to offer their services if and when their partner is pleased to permit them to share their service of Hari. None of them can force their partners to serve them. This system of household discipline has its roots in the joint worship of the household Deity by all members of the household. The reason why the guru does not ordinarily ask any person to enter the state of wedlock is that it is very rare to find anyone in this world who is willing to regard his or her wife or husband as worthy of his or her unconditional services.

This is, however, exactly the only relationship between husband and wife that alone can be sanctioned by the guru.”

A very interesting article that was written by His Divine Grace Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura and I thought I would read that because in our community we have many gṛhasthas and naturally this is the highest Kṛṣṇa conscious principle. Actually, Śrīla Prabhupāda, on his Vyasa-pūjā in 1973 in London, he had told how his gurudeva had sent sannyasis to London, but they were not successful. Śrīla Prabhupāda sent gṛhasthas, and they were very successful. So he said that he wanted all his gṛhasthas, first of all they should be parama-haṁsas. And just like Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura was a gṛhastha and he had a son who was the guru of Śrīla Prabhupāda, Śrīla Prabhupāda said that we need many such ācāryas. So gṛhasthas should try to have such an ācārya as their children, as their son.

So, he was inspiring the gṛhasthas to take up this preaching assignment. So, there is a book called the Upadeśa Upākhyana, which are a type of example stories told by Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura. He would tell a story and have a little code name. Like śālagrāma diye bādam bhāṅga. Breaking peanuts with a śālagrāma-śilā. If someone was using Kṛṣṇa’s property for their sense gratification he would say “You are doing śālagrāma diye bādam bhāṅga!” You are breaking peanuts with a śālagrāma-śilā. Like that he told one story, gāche kaṭhāla, gope tel, Jackfruit on the tree, oil on your mustache. What does that mean? So he told ther story: A man was walking by the orchard, and on top of the tree he saw a ripe jackfruit. The smell was coming over. Oh! he was another Jackfruit-premī! But those who are foreigners they don’t know much about jackfruit maybe? They are a bit sticky. So he was afraid if I eat the jackfruit, it would be stuck on my mustache. He went to the nearby grocery store and bought few grams of oil and oiled his mustache. Jackfruit in the tree, oil on the mustache. He climbed up the tree and almost was near the jackfruit! Ah! Then suddenly the branch he was standing on broke and fell down. Ahhh!!! he started screaming! And immediately the security of the orchard he ran out, “Oh, you are trying to steal the jackfruit!” He beat him with a stick. So that is the story. Gāche kaṭhāl gope tel. What does it mean? Everyone was scratching their head, it was a very funny story, but what does it mean? Then he was saying, if someone thinks they can achieve not going through guru-paramparā by stealing, instead they get beaten. So they have to go through the guru-paramparā, they have to have a bona fide guru, otherwise, we hear people say I don’t need a guru, I am sufficient – it is like putting oil on the mustache. He told the story and afterwards if someone was upstart, then he would say, “gāche kaṭhāl, gope tel.” Jackfruit in the tree, oil on the mustache. So he would tell these stories and no one could figure out what was the purport. Then he would give the purport and then he would use the mantra, short code. There is a whole book on this. But time is almost running out. I could tell you more but, unfortunately!

One thing I heard that there was an Annakūṭa, mountain of rice and a dog went and ate from it. They said, the whole mountain of rice is over, dog ate it, it is impure! So they told Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, he said “really, where did the dog eat it. Here?” “There?” He said “Sure it is there? He ate it!” And the feast went on.

So he was a very dynamic person. And we would ask Śrīla Prabhupāda tell us something about Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura. He would just shake his head and say he was a Vaikuṇṭha man! So we are very fortunate that we are in Kṛṣṇa consciousness today and we are observing the appearance day of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura. We have the Bhaktivinoda Āsana in Kolkata. That was a very rundown broken house. And we got it and fixed it up and now it has been awarded some recognition as the best reconditioned houses of the 1800s. So if you have some time, it is about 45 minutes from the airport, please go and visit there. That is where Śrīla Prabhupāda met Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura in 1922. And there Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura he said on the appearance day of Viṣṇupriyā, that he was reestablishing the Viśva-vaiṣṇava-rāja-sabhā. What does that mean? Viśva-vaiṣṇava is all the Vaiṣṇavas of the universe. Rāja, the king. Who is the king of all the Vaiṣṇavas? Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu! So Viśva-vaiṣṇava-rāja, His sabhā means the devotees who are assembled. So, Śrīla Rūpa Gosvami was the first Viśva-vaiṣṇava-rāja-sabhā principal devotee, then Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī, and then Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura said he was reestablishing it. Then maybe His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda would be the next in line.

Anyway, Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura desire was to have the lotus footprints of Lord Caitanya in all the places He visited. So when we were in Vṛndāvana, we established the first lotus footprint in Rādhā-kuṇḍa and Śyāma-kuṇḍa, and a number of devotees, disciples of His Holiness Gopāla Kṛṣṇa Mahārāja, and others, they are finding out how to establish the lotus footprints of Lord Caitanya in each of the forests. And all over, wherever He visited. Of course, Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura established about eight and his followers established some. We are continuing that work. We have one lotus footprint just opposite the Ādi Keśava temple where Lord Caitanya discovered the Brahma-saṁhitā and other books.

So today we are observing the appearance day, of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, and I was told that our devotees in Māyāpur are very happy to be at the world Headquarters and receive the GBCs. So different divisions of Māyāpur are offering special prasāda to Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, for the GBCs and all the temple devotees. In Māyāpur we have about 7,500 devotees. And about 7,000 are gṛhasthas and 500 or so are brahmacārīs, like the pūjā division has 145 devotees - different altars, here, samādhi, Bhajana-kuṭīra, Jagannātha temple, three kitchens, sewing room for making Deity outfits. So totally 145 devotees. Saṅkīrtana also about 150 devotees, I don’t know exactly, 10 buses, buses are out now distributing books, will come back any day. We have different book tables like this table and different tables.

So they have this saṅkīrtana-sevā, they offer to the visitors, invitations to chant one round and afterwards they sell books as bundles and they give out sweets, they fill out sheets, if they want to keep in touch. Sankirtana-sevā is something which is an initiative by His Holiness Bhakti Vijaya Bhāgavata Swami, and gṛhastha devotees, men and women who distribute books, by following up the people who have left their contacts. That is how they sell different sets of books every day. Like that we have 30 divisions in Māyāpur. About 2500 or 3000 devotees are serving in the 30 divisions. On Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Vyāsa-pūjā, the gṛhasthas and different divisions, they cook and offer bhoga, over 2000.

So I will end here. Hare Kṛṣṇa! 

I am just that the GBC meeting is at 9.30 am.