Initiation—with Radhanath Swami

Radhanath Maharaja:

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare
Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare

On behalf of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the Founder Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and all of the great acharyas of the Brahmā-Madhva-Gauḍīya-sampradāya we are performing this most sacred and auspicious ceremony of initiation. We have chanted the mantra:

oṁ apavitraḥ pavitro vā sarvāvasthāṁ gato ‘pi vā
yaḥ smaret puṇḍarīkākṣaṁ sa bahyābhyantaraḥ śuciḥ
śrī-viṣṇu śrī-viṣṇu śrī-viṣṇu

This verse means purified or unpurified or even having passed through all situations of life, one who remembers the beautiful lotus eyed Supreme Personality of Godhead is purified from within and without. This is the purpose of human life, purification, nitya-siddha-kṛṣṇa-prema ‘sādhya’ kabhu naya: That love of God is dormant within the heart of every living being. It is our nature to be in the ecstatic happiness of loving service to the Supreme Lord, Sri Krishna. But since time immemorial we have forgotten who we are, what we are supposed to be doing and what is our real wealth. Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu instructed the original spiritual master, Nityananda Prabhu along with the nāma ācārya Haridasa to give a simple message to anyone and everyone without discrimination. They would go door to door, bathing ghāṭa to bathing ghāṭa, store to store, house to house, village to village, repeating this message: Chant the holy names to Krishna, worship Krishna, speak about Krishna. Anyone who does this becomes my very life and soul. Krishna is your mother, Krishna is your father, Krishna is the real treasure of your wealth. Krishna is your very life and soul. Take the name of Krishna. They gave this message to everyone they met and whoever accepted this message with faith and practiced it became purified: ceto-darpaṇa-mārjanam, bhava dāvāgni-nirvāpaṇaṁ, the name of God is nondifferent than Krishna Himself, Kali-kāle nāma-rūpe kṛṣṇa-avatāra, that Krishna has descended, He has incarnated within His own holy name, nāmnām akāri bahudhā nija-sarva-śaktis, and all the power, all the potencies of the Lord, all the sweetness, opulence of Krishna is within the name, the name of Krishna is pavitra which means supremely pure. It is the law of nature that what we associate with we become that. Prabhupada gave the example if you put an iron rod in fire, the iron rod takes on the quality of fire and if you still think it is an iron rod then touch it my friend and see what happens. It is non different from touching the fire.

Similarly, if you put iron rod in ice, it will become as cold as ice. What we associate with we become. According to our free will we must decide what we want to associate with. There are three modes of material nature, goodness, passion, and ignorance. According to our association we develop those qualities. A human life is meant for a special benediction. If we associate with the all-pure, pavitra, we become purified and how do we associate with Krishna? By remembering Him, an easiest, most accessible way to always remember Krishna is to take His holy names, Hare Krishna Hare Krishna——There are nine processes of devotional service. Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya asked Lord Chaitanya, “Of these nine processes which is most important?” Lord Chaitanya immediately replied: “The chanting of the holy names, harer nāma harer nāma———“Now anybody can have their own opinion of what is the most effective means of self-realization. But the scripture is the word of God. According to the shastras, in the age of Kali there is no other way, no other way, no other way of attaining the ultimate perfection except the chanting of the holy names, Kali-kāle nāma-rūpe kṛṣṇa-avatāra, kaler doṣa rupe rājan kīrtanād eva kṛṣṇasya mukta-saṅgaḥ paraṁ vrajet. This age of kali is like an ocean of faults but there is one benediction, simply chanting the holy names one can attain the perfection of liberation, not just liberation but the perfection of liberation, which is unconditional, unmotivated loving service to the Supreme Lord. Therefore the great sages worship Kali-yuga as the best of all times because the Lord makes Himself so accessible, so easily approached in this age through the holy names but in order to take to this process properly, accepting a spiritual master is very important and the vows that you are taking today is really the beginning of your spiritual life. Prabhupada explained initiation means to begin but if you want to take it seriously we must prepare even to begin.

Today we are celebrating Gita-jayanti. Nirantara Prabhu will be reciting the entire text of Śrīmad Bhagavad-gītā in a few minutes. Bhagavad-gītā is what Prabhupada called Gītopaniṣad, the summary essence of all Vedic literatures. Even the greatest thinkers of the western world have praised Bhagavad-gītā as a monumental master piece as if an entire empire is speaking. Thoreau Emmerson claimed that in comparison to this one book the seven hundred verses of Bhagavad-gītā all the libraries of all western literature appear trivial and insignificant. Srila Prabhupada taught us that if we want to understand the knowledge of Gītā we must follow in the footsteps of Arjuna. Who is Arjuna? Arjuna is Krishna’s eternal associate. He is not like you and me. He was Krishna’s dearest friend. They would sit together, they would laugh together. They would sometimes lay down in a bed together. They would joke together, they would eat together. In fact, Krishna gave His own sister to Arjuna in marriage. They were very very close. And Krishna accepted the position of a menial servant, chariot driver of Arjuna. But in order to instruct the world, Krishna put His own devotee in a condition that was exactly like every living being in material creation. Arjuna accepted our role for our benefit. Thus Krishna put him in yoga-māyā or temporary illusion.

In Kurukshetra the two armies were assembled, the Kurus and the Pandavas. One family divided by envy and intrigue. Arjuna was impelled by Krishna in His heart to tell Krishna, “please let us see who is fighting today before we begin. Bring my chariot between the two armies. Krishna brought the chariot between the two armies and said Arjuna just see. When he said just see, Arjuna saw on the enemies’ side is his grandfather whom he loves more than his own life, Bhīṣmadeva, his teacher, Drona who taught him so many gifts that he was going to be using to fight. There were relatives, friends, well-wishers, his uncle Salya whom he loves dearly. When he looked on his side, there were his brothers, his well-wishers. Arjuna became perplexed, bewildered. He proclaimed to Krishna I am not going to fight this war. Now Arjuna was more learned than any person is in the world today. He was presenting logical, scientific, social, philosophical arguments why he should not fight. He presented moral, ethical arguments and actually they were really excellent arguments. He was trying to figure out what was the best thing to do but due to the circumstance, Arjuna became so perplexed. He was weeping tears. He was white in complexion. He was trembling. The gāṇḍīva bow fell from his hands. His hairs were standing on end. At that point Arjuna revealed our situation. We all think we know what we are doing just like Arjuna did but when he actually became a little sober, he realized that he didn’t know, he was confused. He did not know what is to be done or not to be done, kārpaṇya-doṣo——prapannam. With folded hands, trembling with an urgent need for direction, for guidance, for mercy, Arjuna turned to Krishna, “I am confused about my duty. I do not know what is to be done and what is not to be done. I have lost all composure due to weakness of heart. Now I am your disciple, please instruct me.

Arjuna was not asking Krishna for direction out of curiosity, out of formality. It was an urgent desperate need in his heart. He understood I do not know. He surrendered to Krishna. To the degree a disciple has this consciousness, to that degree their hearts are receptive for transcendental knowledge. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam was spoken in a similar way. Parīkṣit Maharaja was cursed to die in seven days when he was sitting on the bank of Ganga before his guru, Śukadeva Gosvami. It was not just out of curiosity or formality that he was listening. It was life or death. He was urgent, there was a need. This should be the consciousness of a proper disciple. When Krishna saw Arjuna in this situation, He smiled because he understood that now Arjuna could actually be delivered because he has become humble. This world by nature is full of complexities and perplexities. Srila Prabhupada gives the example just like in a forest, nobody has to come and start the fire but it starts anyway. Here in Southern California I think you have some experience of forest fires. How do you put them out? Once they blaze They are impossible. So this whole material existence is considered to be like a forest fire. If your house is on fire you get out, you get out fast because you understand it is an urgent need. You grab your children and you get out. It is with this type of urgency, with this type of enthusiasm and sincerity that Maharaja Parīkṣit, Arjuna, and any other proper disciple is approaching their spiritual masters. That is the proper consciousness. yes Krishna smiled because He understood now that Arjuna has been sobered up by the natural evolution of the complexities of material life he can hear submissively, na śocanaṁ na śocanaṁ, Krishna tells Arjuna, first thing that you are speaking learned words but actually you are a fool. You are lamenting for that which is not worthy of lamentation. Never was there a time when I did not exist nor you and all of these kings, nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.

Krishna began by explaining to Arjuna the eternal nature of the soul. We are not the body. We are part of God. In Bhagavad-gītā Krishna explains how the soul becomes entangled in the bodily conception of life due to the three modes of material nature. And the endless perplexities that impel a person to act and speak in certain ways that bind him or her in karmic reactions, birth after birth after birth trying to be happy in this material world, ābrahma-bhuvanāl lokāḥ punar——na vidyate. If anybody knows how the world works it is the creator. Krishna explains from the highest planet in this material existence down to the lowest they are places of misery, why? Because everything is temporary. Death will come upon everyone and anyone. Death of ourselves, death of our loved ones but this human life is so precious, so rare within these few years we have we can actually realize our eternal nature, jamna karma ca me divyam evaṁ yo vetti tattvataḥ tyaktvā dehaṁ ouna——so Arjuna, we can realize that state beyond death. We can attain the eternal natural world of love, the Lord’s abode simply by understanding Krishna. Man-manā bhava mad-bhakto—priyo ‘si me, Krishna tells, He promises, always think of Me, become My devotee, worship Me and offer your homage unto Me in this way you will come to me without fail. It is my promise and He is speaking to you and me personally, directly. Arjuna is representing us. He is speaking to you. So if transcendental knowledge is actually going to be transferred, the disciple has to be in the spirit of Arjuna with a desperate need, tad viddhi praṇipātena paripraśnena sevayā. We must be humble, submissive, inquire with that submission and eager to carry out what we hear by rendering service.

There are many examples of this. Sanatana Gosvami, the most learned scholar alive at the time. When he approached Lord Chaitanya he said, “I do not know anything. I do not know who I am. I do not know why I am suffering. I do not know where I am going and yet people call me a scholar and I believe them that is what a sinful fallen fool I am. Now I am approaching you my guru please instruct me. That is the consciousness. Srila Prabhupada explained do not try to keep guru like a picture on the wall. The relationship is based on the eagerness to hear and determination to serve. There was one initiation where a devotee took the vows, took the beads, threw the seeds in the fire and shortly after left. When Srila Prabhupada was told that Prabhupada said, “He was never initiated.” Because real initiation is of the heart. It is not just a formality; it is not just a ritual. Krishna is within our heart and He is reciprocating with our motives, with our purpose, with our sincerity. It is that commitment to the life of purification under the guidance of guru-paramparā that is the real spirit of initiation. The formality of taking the vows is very important. Taking vows gives us strength, it helps us to make us more serious and also gives us a formal connection to the mercy of the paramparā. But really that connection is in reciprocation to our sincerity to our surrender. Krishna explains in Bhagavad-gītā as you surrender unto me I reveal myself accordingly. Let us discuss for a few moments what is really the spirit of initiation. Lord Chaitanya took the role of a devotee. When He took initiation, first thing He just did menial service for His guru. He did not even begin His hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana movement until His guru ordered Him to do so and He gave His life and soul to do that.

Service is the nature of the heart. To take is an artificial imposition created by maya. We are meant to serve. It is our constitutional nature. Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu taught us what type of servant we should be, gopī-bhartuḥ pada-kamalayor dāsa-dāsānudāsaḥ, the servant of the servant of the servant. So this is really what you are about to do today. To live by this spirit of service, devotional service. And Krishna He is Jagat guru and paramparā means the spiritual master is simply representing Krishna. We understand Srila Prabhupada’s position in our movement as founder acharya. It was his sacrifice, it was his compassion, it was his love that made the highest treasure of love of Krishna available to all of us. Otherwise it was simply inaccessible. Krishna empowered Srila Prabhupada in such an extraordinary way to spread the holy names of the Lord and the pure philosophy of Bhagavad-gītā to every continent of the world. Therefore he is the founder acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. He is the preeminent guru of all of the lives of the members of our society. And all of Prabhupada’s disciples are working together to assist him in his glorious mission.

What is ISKCON? ISKCON is not simply a religious institution. ISKCON is Srila Prabhupada’s life and soul. It is his life’s offering to his guru and to the entire paramparā and ultimately to Radha-Shyamasundara. Therefore he said ISKCON was his body. However many difficulties, however many mistakes, if we want to reciprocate with Srila Prabhupada’s love it behooves us to work together to make his offering to the guru-paramparā and to Srimati Radharani and Sri Krishna, what he wants it to be, a glorious society giving such pure association, sustaining and protecting and developing love, love of Krishna in people’s hearts, that is what ISKCON is. So please all of you who are taking initiation together respect, honor all of Srila Prabhupada’s servants your śikṣā-gurus, dīkṣā-guru, and all the senior Vaishnavas. Do not think that I just have one guru and I don’t have to listen to anyone else. Prabhupada would not tolerate that in his own life. He commanded that we follow, honor, respect those who he was empowering to be his representatives. So it is very important to honor our śikṣā-gurus, respect them and follow them. Because we are all śikṣā-gurus, we are all working in harmony with our dīkṣā-guru to please Srila Prabhupada by assisting him in his glorious mission. Take your vows very seriously.

In fact, what you are about to do today is the most serious thing you have ever done in your life. You are going to vow to chant at least sixteen rounds of Hare Krishna maha-mantra to purify your hearts, you know every day. You are going to vow today to follow four regulative principles, no illicit sex, no gambling, no intoxication, no meat eating. Why? Because these activities are killers, they corrupt our heart from the true sweetness of loving service. When we follow the four regulative principles carefully and chant the holy names great purification takes place. But you are also taking a vow following in the footprints of Srila Prabhupada and his followers to be the servant of the servant of the servant. And if you live by this spirit, take them very very seriously, Srila Prabhupada promised us that we would go back to Godhead in this life. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura also gave that promise, just follow my instructions sincerely you will go back to Godhead. So please take this chanting of the holy names very seriously, take these moral principles very seriously. Vyavasāyātmikā buddhir ekeha kuru-nandana, we should take these vows as our life and soul, very seriously. To the degree you take it seriously to that degree you will make spiritual advancement. On behalf of Srila Prabhupada and our beloved acharyas of our guru-paramparā we will be giving you entrance into our wonderful family, eternal family whose origin is Radha-Krishna in Vrindavan. So now we are going to request HH Giriraj Swami Maharaja to explain the importance of the chanting of the holy names. Thank you very much.

Giriraj Swami:

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare
Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare

As His Holiness Radhanath Swami Maharaja said, we are all here to serve Srila Prabhupada and to repeat what we have heard from him. The initiation into the holy names of the Lord involves more than just the actual act of chanting. Everything that we do in our lives with our body, our mind and words are part of our chanting and therefore at the time of initiation Srila Prabhupada would discuss the ten offenses because the effect of the chanting is directly proportionate to the quality of the chanting. There are many statements in the scriptures about the effects of chanting the holy names even once. Such statements are not exaggerations but they depend on the quality of the chanting and Queen Kunti has explained that one who is akiñcana or niṣkiñcana, one who has no material possessions or no material attachments can actually chant the holy name with feeling and when one chants the holy name with such feeling even once, one is liberated and one actually gets Krishna, Krishna consciousness. So when we come into the world and as Srila Prabhupada said in the introduction to Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, we are in an awkward position just like Arjuna because we are by nature eternal or sat and the material world is by nature temporary or asat and we as spirit souls hanker for eternal life and we can only truly be happy and satisfied in the eternal atmosphere, in the spiritual atmosphere. So when we become sober and actually confront our situation in the material world, we realize that, like Arjuna, we are also trying to become free from the miseries of material existence but all the efforts we have made so far have failed. All the material efforts we have made so far have failed and therefore we need to know how to solve the problems of life. How to become free from the miseries of material existence.

Sometimes devotees become afflicted with serious illnesses and some of the illnesses are bound to be fatal and when a devotee is afflicted with such a disease like cancer when it cannot be cured, the devotee confronts the reality of our material condition and the devotee begins to give up so many things that seemed important in the devotee’s life before the devotee confronted the imminent reality of death. So giving up, letting go of this, letting go of that, letting go of this, letting go of that until finally we are not holding on to anything except the lotus feet of guru and Gauranga, Krishna consciousness. Then we are qualified, niṣkiñcana, then we are qualified to chant the holy names with quality and then we get the true benefit of the holy name. But still because the influence of maya is so strong, we forget. We hear, we become purified by hearing, we become sober by hearing, we become educated by hearing but because again we are in the material atmosphere, we forget and therefore in our ignorance we may commit mistakes and the mistakes we commit will affect our spiritual progress and therefore the Vedic literatures and the spiritual masters give us instructions.

They warned us that even though you are affected by the modes of nature, even though you are inclined to do certain things that are against your real self-interest you have to make an effort to control your mind, your senses, your tongue so that you don’t harm yourselves, begging Srila Prabhupada that only you are the one who can lead us, only you are the one who can lead us. You should be the chairman and Prabhupada said, “Yes that may be true that I am the only one who can lead you but are you prepared to follow me?” So that brings us to another one of the offenses to disobey the order of the spiritual master. And then one of the other sadhus or people dressed as sadhu said to Srila Prabhupada that he was gathering people together and having them chant the holy names. So he said to Srila Prabhupada that he would gather them and tell them to chant and then sort of the reward for the chanting would be that they would be cured of their physical diseases, like sometimes Christians have meetings. Someone will be crippled and working with crutches and the preacher will say, “If you accept Jesus Christ in your life and then it is like throw away your crutches and then the person can walk. So of course I have understood that some of those events are actually staged but apart from that the idea is that we don’t chant the holy name for material benefit. So anyway the gentleman said to Srila Prabhupada that I am gathering people together, you are gathering people together, I am getting them to chant the holy names, you are getting them to chant the holy names, we should cooperate and Srila Prabhupada said no what you are doing is against our principles. You want to engage the holy names in the service of the material problems of the people but the holy name is Krishna Himself. He is the master and we are the servants. We cannot make Krishna our servant that, “Oh I have a cold can you cure me of my cold?”

And then the last one that we will discuss is committing sin on the strength of chanting Hare Krishna. Srila Prabhupada has in places said that it is the greatest offense against the holy names and that is that if one chants the holy name offenselessly one is freed from sinful reactions, just like Krishna says sarva-dharmān parityaja mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja——moksha – if you surrender to Krishna He will free you from all sinful reactions, so if we surrender to the holy name who is nondifferent from Krishna and then by chanting the holy name we will be free from sinful reactions and that is also the principle of initiation, part of the principle of initiation that one surrenders to the spiritual master as the representative of Krishna and by that process one becomes free from sinful reactions and by being freed from sinful reactions one is able to actually understand transcendental knowledge. In fact Jiva Gosvami gives the definition of dīkṣā is that which frees one from sinful reactions and endows one with transcendental knowledge. So by surrendering to the spiritual master and becoming relieved of sinful reactions one is purified and enabled to understand transcendental knowledge but if you think that well I can just chant Hare Krishna and become free from sinful reaction, So I will go out and do some nonsense and then I will come back and chant Hare Krishna, I will get freed from the reaction. That will not work, that will not work. So yes we are surrendering to Krishna, we are vowing not to engage in sinful activities and we have to make every effort to fulfill our vow and we cannot callously think oh it doesn’t matter, I will do a little nonsense and I will chant and the chanting will remove the sinful reaction. It is not so.

Actually that mentality is itself offensive and by becoming implicated in offenses we can lose the mercy of the holy name even more than an accidental fall down into sense gratification, we can lose the mercy of the holy name by offending the holy name and specially by offending the devotees who are dear to the holy name, the preachers and the servants of the holy name. Krishna can accept, tolerate offenses against Himself more easily but HE cannot tolerate offenses against His dear devotees. The example is given that you can be walking bare foot in the hot sun and the sun beating on your head, it will be unpleasant but you can tolerate it but the scorching heat under your bare feet you can’t tolerate. So Krishna is like that if someone offends Him, He can tolerate it but if someone offends the dear devotees who have surrendered to His lotus feet and who are engaged in the service of His lotus feet He cannot tolerate it and therefore if we happen by some misfortune to offend a devotee we cannot go directly to Krishna and be forgiven. We have to go to the devotee that we have offended and ask to be forgiven by him. But Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura has advised that although there is so many negative prohibitions not to commit offenses the best course is to be positive and that is yes on the negative side we don’t want to blaspheme devotees, we don’t want to offend devotees but on the positive side, rather we should serve devotees and we should appreciate devotees and we should glorify devotees and that will be the best protection against offenses and the same with all the other types. So it is really by Srila Prabhupada’s mercy that we are all here today. We talk about offenseless chanting but I at least I can say for myself I don’t find it easy to chant offenselessly and to live my life without offenses. So it is really by Srila Prabhupada’s mercy that we are here and so all we can really do is serve him and the disciplic succession, serve Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Sri Nityananda Prabhu and by their mercy one day we will be able to chant the holy names of Krishna and serve Radha and Krishna. Hare Krishna.

Srila Prabhupada ki jaya!
Sri Sri Gaura-Nitai ki jaya!
Gaura bhakta vrinda ki jaya!