Japa Retreat—Level 02 Day 02—Sadhana Sadhya

Giriraj Swami: So, the question may arise, is it a selfish desire to want to become more advanced in Krishna consciousness? Because the basic definition is to serve and please Krishna, the basic definition of pure devotional service is to please Krishna, so is it a selfish desire to want to make advancement?

And Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura explains no, the desire to make advancement really means the desire to purify one’s service to Krishna, to intensify one’s service to Krishna, to be able to please Krishna more by one’s service. As we discussed, our basic problem is that we turned away from Krishna. We briefed our relationship with Krishna and came into the material world. And now, we want to restore our relationship with Krishna and return to our original home with Krishna in Goloka Vrindavan. So, it’s a journey. And when we embark upon a journey, we have the goal in mind, we have the destination in mind.

Now, sometimes we may be very preoccupied with staying on the course and making progress on the way. Say, if you are hiking or climbing a mountain, your goal is to reach the top, but along the way, you have to be very attentive so that you don’t go off the course, you don’t lose your footing, you don’t slip and fall, but still, it’s always in the back of your mind what your goal is, what your destination is. And so, our goal is to serve Krishna with love. It’s only when one has bhakti, one will be able to enter the spiritual abode.

Personally, in my case, I don’t always think in those terms, but I do always think of returning to Srila Prabhupada, and that’s always there in the back of my mind. As far as Krishna and Goloka Vrindavan, sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not, but in my case, in my position, that’s always there, and it should be there. And then as we progress in japa, as our heart becomes more purified, one has a more intense longing, one has more intense feelings of separation, and one becomes very eager, hoping against hope to have direct service.

Once, I had quite a remarkable dream in which Srila Prabhupada. . . I mean, it was a longer dream. At one stage, he said to me, “You have to become mad for Krishna.” And I mentioned that to His Holiness Radhanath Swami, and he commented, “Oh! You have to be very pure to become mad for Krishna.”

So, there is a verse in Caitanya-caritāmṛta, quoted, I believe, from the Nāradīya Purāṇa, on this very point, that we should be fixed on our goal, and if we are fixed on our goal and at the same time engage in our spiritual practices, we will very quickly achieve our goal. That verse is quoted by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura in the Śrī Caitanya-siksamrta. I hope everyone here has this book or has read this book. It’s called Nama Rahasya—The confidential secrets of chanting the holy name in perfection by Sacinandana Swami. It’s a wonderful book, you must read it, and read it, and read it again. It’s very compact and condensed. Just read one sentence and think about it, and the next sentence, and think about it, but it’s worth keeping as a constant companion.

So, this is the verse that Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura. . . Well, he says, “From the very beginning of this practice, the devotee must adopt this concentrated attention, and he should be careful not to give it up because of distraction or inattention.”

And then he quotes this verse

TEXT 106

acirād eva sarvārthaḥ
sidhyaty eṣām abhīpsitaḥ
sad-dharmasyāvabodhāya
yeṣāṁ nirbandhinī matiḥ

TRANSLATION

“ ‘Those who are eager to awaken their spiritual consciousness and who thus have unflinching, undeviated intelligence certainly attain the desired goal of life very soon.’

COMMENT

Nāradīya Purāṇa quoted in Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līlā, 20.106.

So, we should have that goal in mind, and we should have hope. Hope against hope that we will achieve the goal. If we become hopeless, we will lack that enthusiasm, that impetus to make progress.

And there is another verse in the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu. After Rupa Gosvami enumerates the sixty-four items of devotional service, he mentions five that are most potent, including chanting the holy name, hearing Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, associating with advanced devotees, residing in Mathura Vrindavan, and worshiping the Deities with faith and veneration. And he says that even a slight association with any one of these will awaken ecstatic love of God, bhāva-bhakti.

So, the question arises that with even a slight association with any one of the five, one will awaken ecstatic love of Godhead, and we are associating with so many of the five, so many hours every day, but we are not awakening ecstatic love of Godhead. Why? The answer is because of offenses. Rupa Gosvami says, “If one has even a slight association with any one of the five and does not commit offenses, then very quickly, he will awaken ecstatic love of Godhead.”

So, that’s the obstacle that’s standing between us and the ecstatic love of Godhead, between us and Krishna. And therefore, that’s our sadhana, offenseless chanting and hearing. As Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said, nirapradha, if one consistently chants the holy name without offenses, then very quickly, one will get prema-dhana, the treasure of love of Godhead.

And, as in any effort, in devotional service, we make our best effort and at the same time, depend on the mercy of Krishna and the higher Vaishnavas. It’s like that. There is the logic of the cat and the monkey. Srila Prabhupada sometimes gave this example. I believe it comes from Ramanujacharya. One paradigm is the monkey. The baby monkey rides on the back of the mother monkey by holding her or his arms around the neck of the mother.

I saw it actually in the Johannesburg Zoo. Anyway, I had been sick, so as part of my recovery, I was supposed to walk every day. So, the devotees had the idea to take me to different nice places to walk. So, one day, they took me to the zoo. There is a very interesting exhibit with tigers and leopards and all these really ferocious cats, and I guess panthers. And then there were panels, “Tiger,” “Leopard,” “Panther,” and then the title of the last panel was, “The World’s Most Dangerous Creature,” and under that heading was a mirror, that’s us. We are the most ferocious beasts of all, without Krishna consciousness.

So anyway, there is quite a nice zoo and a lot of plants. So, there are really tall trees. And I would see the monkeys jumping from one tree to the next, one branch to the next, and the little babies were holding on for dear life. And I could really appreciate the example, because they are babies, they are not that strong, and the mother is just bouncing here and there, way up in the sky, and little babies holding on for dear life, and I could imagine what a fearful experience it was.

So, that example of the baby monkey illustrates, depending on our own effort, our own strength. And the other example is the cat and the kitten. The kitten just depends on the mother cat. The mother cat picks up the kitten with her teeth, I guess behind the kitten’s neck, and just carries the kitten wherever she wants to take the kitten, and the kitten has no anxiety, just going for a ride with her mother, his mother.

So, of course, we do both, we make our own effort, but ultimately, we depend on the mercy of the Lord, and that’s the special feature of bhakti, and ultimately, we surrender to Krishna. We do what Krishna asks us to do, and beyond that, we just depend on Krishna. We have faith that He’ll. . . Well, it’s not even that He’ll do what’s best for us. Of course, He’ll do what’s best for us, He’ll do what He wants to do with us, and that’s the mood of surrender. Like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said, “You can handle Me roughly by Your embrace or make Me brokenhearted by not being present before Me.” Of course, that being brokenhearted when Krishna is not present, that’s the goal, it’s really the goal, that separation, and then Krishna will come. That’s another example.

Krishna played on His flute to call the gopīs to meet Him, and then they began to reciprocate with Him, but then He disappeared. He left them all except for one, and they were bereft of His association. They went mad, they were looking all over the Vrindavan forest, “Where is Krishna? Where is Krishna?” Then eventually, they came to the conclusion, “We cannot find Krishna unless He wants to be found by us,” and they thought, There is no use roaming the forest like this. We should go back to the banks of the Yamuna where first He called us, and together, we should chant His holy name and glories. And so, they did.

This is saṅkīrtana. They returned to the banks of the Yamuna and they engaged in saṅkīrtana, crying out from the depths of their hearts the holy name and glorifying the holy name, form, qualities, and pastimes with Krishna together as a group, and when their feelings of separation reached the height, then Krishna’s heart was moved and He returned to them.

And when He did, He told them, “Actually, I was never very far from you. I was actually near, but I hid Myself from you to increase your attachment to Me.” And He gave the example that if a poor person works hard and acquires some wealth and then he loses the wealth, then he’ll think of nothing but the wealth day and night, what he’d lost. So, in the same way, Krishna said, “If you thought that I’m very easily achieved, then you might take Me for granted. And so, I hid Myself from you to increase your meditation on Me.”

So, we may all have similar experiences with the holy name. Sometimes Krishna, by His mercy, allows us to experience His presence more, and sometimes He will withdraw Himself from us. Of course, there is also our side of it. We commit offenses, and because of our offenses, He is away, but still, sometimes we feel His presence more, and sometimes He seems to have left us, but even in His leaving us, apparently leaving us, He is still very close to us. He is witnessing our struggles, our prayers, our japa, and when He is satisfied that we are really sincere in serving Him, and pleasing Him, and if we have offended Him, if He is satisfied that we’ve understood the implications of the offenses we’ve committed and we are sincerely repentant and don’t want to and then resolve, sincerely, not to commit the same mistake again, then He’ll reappear.

And we should always have that in mind. Even if we are struggling, we should know He is there, the holy name is there. We know it’s just a matter of time He’ll reappear. He just wants to see how sincere we are in our efforts, and maybe how repentant we are for our offenses, and then He’ll reappear. So, He is always near us.

So, He is witnessing our efforts, as we understood through yesterday’s exercise, hearing Krishna’s comments about our japa, and we can have the dialogue. I mean, of course, we want to hear, but intermittently, we could have a little dialogue with Krishna or prayer to Krishna. There is this idea of praying while chanting or before chanting. Actually, the mood of prayer is embedded within the chanting. The chanting itself is a prayer.

As Prabhupada says, “Oh Krishna! Oh Radharani! Please engage me in Your devotional service.” The chanting itself is a prayer. Even if we don’t articulate in more detail, “We want to engage in Your service, or what service we want to do for You,” but it’s there. All the prayers of the Śikṣāṣṭakam are included in the sixteen words of the Hare Krishna maha-mantra. Each pair of words corresponds to one of the prayers of Śikṣāṣṭakam. So, it’s there, but we should be in the mood of prayer, mood of supplication.

And I’ll just conclude with one prayer. It’s also from Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu. All of these verses are also very beautifully paraphrased in The Nectar of Devotion, but many of the original verses appear in Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, and I also like the Sanskrit. So, although they appear maybe originally in Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, they are also quoted in Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta.

I won’t even read all the Sanskrit, but it begins

TEXT 29

na premā śravaṇādi-bhaktir api vā yogo ‘tha vā vaiṣṇavo
jñānaṁ vā śubha-karma vā kiyad aho saj-jātir apy asti vā
hīnārthādhika-sādhake tvayi tathāpy acchedya-mūlā satī
he gopī-jana-vallabha vyathayate hā hā mad-āśaiva mām

TRANSLATION

“ ‘O my Lord, I do not have any love for You, nor am I qualified for discharging devotional service by chanting and hearing. Nor do I possess the mystic power of a Vaiṣṇava, knowledge or pious activities. Nor do I belong to a very high-caste family. On the whole, I do not possess anything. Still, O beloved of the gopīs, because You bestow Your mercy on the most fallen, I have an unbreakable hope that is constantly in my heart. That hope is always giving me pain.’

COMMENT

Now, that should be there, that hope. And the reason it gives pain is because we want that thing. I mean, I don’t know exactly why I’m thinking of this, but in those days, the sixties, I would see a Beatles concert. I mean, I didn’t go, but I would see it on television, and there would be all these girls in the audience crying. I was thinking, Why are they crying? I guess they were crying because they wanted the Beatles, and it was painful. They wanted the Beatles, and they couldn’t have them, it was painful.

So, I think that’s the idea here, that we want Krishna and we are unqualified, we possess nothing. But because Krishna is merciful to the most fallen, we have hope. Not because we are qualified, but because of His merciful nature, we have hope, and that hope gives us pain, because we want that thing and we are not getting it. Of course, this is a more advanced stage, this is, I think, one of the qualities of bhāva-bhakti. This is touching the advanced stage, but still, even in whatever state we are, we have that, we want to chant with attention. We want some taste, and we have hope that we can get there because Krishna is merciful to the most fallen. Hare Krishna.

Oh oh, I get it, because we disconnected it?

Devotee: It’s actually ten after.

[Unintelligible 00:29:36]

Giriraj Swami: Mine says nine minutes.

Devotees: [Unintelligible 00:29:58].

Giriraj Swami: Well, given that that clock said ten to nine, and I thought we had time for questions, and given Krishna’s merciful nature. . .

Devotees: [Unintelligible 00:30:52]

Giriraj Swami: Alright. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking because I thought we had ten minutes. So, if anyone would like, we have a few minutes for questions or comments. Yes?

Devotee: [Unintelligible 00:31:34]. 

Giriraj Swami: Yeah, the original source is Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu 1.3.35, but it’s quoted in Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līlā, 20.23.29.

Devotee: When you were speaking this, how this hope can give pain, while you were speaking, I was thinking about that, I guess, there is strong hope, right? It’s still a strong faith and a strong hope that kind of makes the goal so tangible, because it has strong hope. So, that means it must be very tangible, dangling in front of you. At the same time, you don’t have it, so the pink you see, it’s so close, right in front of you, and then that’s still there, separation, you are not there yet.

Giriraj Swami: Yeah, that’s a very important point, and like I mentioned, this comes in the stage of bhāva-bhakti, this type of prayer. We are going to have similar prayers and similar hopes according to our stage, but there is one verse in the Bhagavad-gītā, in the Third Chapter, that emphasizes hearing the instructions from Krishna and trying to follow the instructions of Krishna. And in the purport, Srila Prabhupada says that even if one is not able to follow properly, but if one is not envious of the principle and perseveres without consideration of hopelessness or despair, he will ultimately reach the goal.

I believe that it directly refers to those two we read from the Eleventh Canto, about knowing that all sense gratification leads to misery, but still, not being able to give it up, one should continue in a happy mood.

Devotee: When we open our heart and all of a sudden, a verse pops in, that’s the whole premise of your death because they are offering, and this was that type.

Giriraj Swami: Yeah, because we are praying for service, and the holy name may hear our prayer for service and give us some service, give us some inspiration in our service, so we can’t reject that because that’s also the holy name’s mercy. We do have breaks in the schedule during which we can act on the inspirations we get from the mercy of the holy name.

TEXT 100

ānukūlyasya saṅkalpaḥ
prātikūlyasya varjanam

COMMENT

“Accept whatever is favorable, and reject whatever is unfavorable.”

Hare Krishna.