Initiation Talk

Giriraj Swami: It is a great honor, privilege, and pleasure to be sitting next to Srila Niranjana Swami Maharaja, at the lotus feet of Srila Prabhupada, in the presence of Sri Sri Gaura-Nitai, and with all of you on this most sacred and significant event. His Holiness told that he is giving first initiation and second initiation. So I will speak a little about both. And in doing so, I will simply be chewing the remnants of the foodstuffs that His Holiness Niranjana Swami has left. 

As Maharaja mentioned, the holy name is Krishna Himself. As much as Krishna is a person, the holy name is also a person and when we chant our japa we are spending time with Krishna. Srila Prabhupada has explained the meaning of Hare Krishna maha-mantra: “O Lord, O energy of the Lord, O Radharani, O Krishna, please engage me in Your service.” When we call someone’s name, naturally the person will respond, “Yes, you called my name? What do you want?” So, as devotees we will not ask for anything material. We will ask for only one thing—service, devotional service. And we show our seriousness about developing our relationship with Krishna with the holy name by how attentive we are when we are our spending our time with Krishna, chanting. It is common in any relationship that if you want the relationship to develop, you have to spend time with the person. We want to develop our relationship with Radha and Krishna so we have to spend time with Him. And when we are spending time with Him we have to be very attentive.

Even in ordinary affairs, if a husband wants to keep good relations with his wife, he has to spend time with her. Otherwise she will complain, “You never spend any time with me.” Of course it could be the other way too. Then if he agrees to spend time with her, but he is distracted, if he is sitting with her, but his mind is on so many other things, she will be affected. She will be talking to you but she will see that your mind is somewhere else. She will complain, “You didn’t hear one word that I said.” So Krishna is a person and we show our interest in Him by spending time with Him by chanting and really being attentive when we chant.

At initiation ceremonies, Srila Prabhupada would almost always go through the list of ten offenses because to get the real benefit of chanting we must avoid the ten offenses.

The first is sādhu-nindā, or blaspheming the devotees who have dedicated their lives to propagating the holy name of the Lord. Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura has explained that the prohibition, for example is don’t criticize devotees, but the positive approach is to glorify devotees, appreciate devotees, serve devotees.

Then there is an offense. They are all related to each other. Naturally if the devotees are preaching the glories of the holy name, they are servants of the holy name. So if you criticize the master’s servant, who is sincerely serving the master, then the master will feel offended. Srila Prabhupada gave the example that if you are walking on the beach in the hot sunlight, you will feel the scorching heat more on the soles of your feet than you will on your head. So the Lord feels more pain when you offend His devotee or blaspheme His devotee than when you offend Him directly.

It is an offense to consider the names of the demigods such as Lord Brahma or Lord Shiva to be equal or independent of the holy name of Lord Vishnu.

The third offense is guror avajñā: to disobey the orders of the spiritual master. And especially today, when you take your vows, you are making a serious commitment. So, one should not disobey the instructions that the spiritual master gives in relation to chanting the holy names or any aspect of devotional service.

The fourth offense is to blaspheme the Vedic literatures or literatures in pursuance of the Vedic version. As His Holiness Niranjana Swami quoted Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta that to understand the glories of the holy name, one should hear the Vedic literatures from Vaishnavas. The Vedic literatures proclaim the glories of Krishna and the holy name, so if we don’t have faith in the Vedic scriptures, or we even go so far as to criticize them, naturally the holy name, or Krishna, will feel offended.

It is an offense to consider the glories of the holy name to be imaginary. Again, if someone is being glorified properly, and if the glorification is justified, and you say, “Oh no. No, that is not true. He is actually not that good. He is not all that great,” it is an offense. To consider the glories of the holy name to be exaggerated is the same type of thing.

The seventh offense is to commit sin on the strength of chanting the holy name. If one engages in some sinful activity, or say, before coming to Krishna consciousness, before initiation, one has engaged in sinful activities, but if one chants the holy name with feeling, without an offensive mentality, one can become freed from the reactions to the offense or the sin. It is said in the scripture that if one chants the holy name only once, he can eradicate the reactions to more sins than he is able to commit. 

Srila Prabhupada remarks that the holy name has such potency. There is not the least exaggeration in such statements. But there is also the matter of the quality of the utterance. If one is trying to improve one’s condition materially, he will not be able to chant with such sincere feeling, but one who has no material aspirations, he or she can chant with feeling and approach the Lord through the holy name.

Now if we take advantage of the idea that, “I can become free from sinful reactions by chanting the holy name,” and then deliberately engage in sinful activities thinking, “I will neutralize the effects,” that is an offense. It is as if you are developing a relationship with a very wealthy and powerful man and then you try to take advantage of your relationship with him and you break the law. You think, “Oh well, I have a very rich and powerful friend, so he will save me.” That is offensive. He won’t save you. He will let you suffer the reactions so that you learn your lesson. He will be watching over you and he will be waiting for you to be purified and rectified. But he won’t allow you to take advantage of your relationship with him to deliberately do nonsense in the expectation that he will save you from the reaction.

The eighth offense is to consider the chanting of Hare Krishna as one of the ritualistic activities mentioned in the Vedas as fruitive activities or karma-kāṇḍa.

Once Srila Prabhupada was invited by Lilavati Munshi to a program at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan on how the problems of the world can be solved through the Bhagavad-gītā. Before the program began in the auditorium, she held a get-together for the sadhus, or holy men, who had been invited for the conference. One of these sadhus said to Srila Prabhupada, “I am gathering thousands of people together and getting them to chant the holy names and I tell them that if they chant the holy name, they will become free from diseases and all sorts of maladies in life.” He said, “I am gathering people together and you are gathering together. I am getting people to chant Hare Krishna and you are getting people to chant Hare Krishna. So we should cooperate. We should work together.” And Srila Prabhupada said, “No. What you are doing is against our principles. You want to make the holy name the people’s servant to fulfill their demands, but actually we are servants of the holy name. We are meant to serve the holy name.” Hare Krishna. [applause]

The ninth offense. . . I asked Niranjana Swami and he said that I should continue. 

Niranjana Swami: They are clapping because the last statement was such a profound statement. 

Giriraj Swami: Well, it was Prabhupada’s statement.

The ninth offense is to preach the glories of the holy name to the faithless. 

Once Srila Prabhupada was having a discussion with a learned man in Sweden and somehow in the midst of the conversation one of Prabhupada’s disciples started to speak about the glories of the holy name. Srila Prabhupada interrupted him and said, “This is an offense. He doesn’t have faith yet. So if you tell him about the glories of the holy name before he has faith, he will think that the glories are imaginary or exaggerated. He may think that the devotees are crazy and he will become implicated in more offenses.”

In the beginning we have to speak on the basis of logic, reason, and argument. So they develop faith in the Vedic authorities. Then when they have faith in the Vedic authorities, we can tell them about what the authorities have to say about the holy name. So we can ask people to chant Hare Krishna—that is our fundamental duty to request people to chant Hare Krishna—but we don’t tell them about the specific benefits of chanting the holy name until they have some faith in the authority of Vedic knowledge.

The tenth offense is to not have complete faith in the holy name and to maintain material attachments even after understanding so many instructions in the matter. More or less we all come with material attachments. It is not an offense to have material attachments—it is an anartha—but it is not an offense. But if we hold onto the material attachment, that is an offense. We know about Krishna, we know about the holy name, but we are deliberately holding onto something other than Krishna, other than the holy name, which is not favorable to our relationship with Krishna. That is offensive to Krishna. If we had faith in the holy name, then we wouldn’t hold onto our material attachments. If we had faith in Krishna and the holy name, we would know that all of our desires can be fulfilled by Krishna. 

Our needs and desires to love and be loved, our need and our desires for physical security and maintenance, they can all be achieved, as Maharaja mentioned, quoting Caitanya-caritāmṛta that we can get everything from Krishna and the holy name of Krishna. But if we don’t have faith, then we will think that, “Oh, I need this to be happy. I need that in order to be happy.” Or, “I need to do this to make money. I need to do this to protect myself.” We become so preoccupied with our endeavors to fulfill our desires and needs to material activities, that we forget Krishna. We forget the holy name. We may stop chanting as much as we should be chanting or even if we are chanting, our minds are distracted because we are thinking of so many other things.

That brings us to the offense of pramāda, which is translated as “inattention.” Because of the nature of the Sanskrit language, sometimes the ten offenses are divided differently. You will see even in Srila Prabhupada’s books, sometimes the numbering is different because of how the Sanskrit is divided. But pramāda can literally mean “mad.” We are chanting the holy name of Krishna, we are calling Krishna, and then when He comes, if we ignore Him, it is a type of madness. It is as if I invited you to visit me and then when you come, I don’t let you in the door. And then I invite you again and again and I don’t let you in the door. It is a little crazy. So we are calling Krishna’s name, we are inviting Krishna to enter our hearts, but then when He comes, we ignore Him. We leave Him standing in the cold outside the door.

So we should take it very seriously. When we chant the holy name we are inviting Krishna and we should treat the holy name with all the respect, all the reverence, all the care, all the devotion that we would show Krishna if He came personally. It is a very serious practice, but at the same time it is a very blissful activity if we really give ourselves to it. And this is service to our spiritual master. We may want to distribute so many books, we may want to do so many things for the spiritual master, but the one thing that we are vowing to do is to chant at least sixteen rounds daily. That is our primary service to him.

Srila Prabhupada had a very talented and qualified lady disciple named Kausalya. She is a little like Mother Yamuna. She could cook, she could sing, she could worship the Deity, she could preach. She had a very sweet and intimate relationship with Srila Prabhupada. So she arranged a program for Srila Prabhupada in Jaipur. Somehow while riding on a rickshaw, she had a mishap and she broke her arm or her leg. She couldn’t do her normal service and she asked Srila Prabhupada, “I can’t preach, I can’t cook, I can’t worship the Deity, I can’t do any of the things that I used to do. What service can I do?” Srila Prabhupada replied, “You can chant the holy name.” “But I want to do some service.” And Srila Prabhupada said, “Chanting Hare Krishna is the best service.”

So, this is our service to our spiritual master. Once a disciple said to His Holiness Radhanath Swami that, “I’m so enthusiastic to do service that even while I’m chanting I’m thinking of service.” And Radhanath Swami replied, “Well, it is better that you are thinking of service than sense gratification. But when you are chanting your service is to chant and to hear with attention. So if you are thinking of other service while you are chanting, you are not doing your service of chanting properly. When you chant, you should be chanting because that is your service when you are chanting.”

So, just a few words to the devotees who are receiving second initiation, the Bhagavad-gītā says:

māṁ ca yo ‘vyabhicāreṇa

bhakti-yogena sevate

sa guṇān samatītyaitān

brahma-bhūyāya kalpate

“One who engages in full devotional service, unfailing in all circumstances, at once transcends the modes of material nature and thus comes to the level of brahman.” (Bg 14.26)

To serve the Supreme brahman, we should be on the brahman platform. We should be steady in chanting our sixteen rounds minimum and following the four regulative principles. When the spiritual master sees that the disciple is steady and that the disciple is recommended by the authorities then he awards second initiation to the disciple, which makes the disciple eligible to serve the Deity, the Supreme brahman in Deity form. So the second initiation is built upon the first initiation and to touch the Deity, to render direct service to the Deity, is also a very sacred and blissful opportunity and responsibility.

I congratulate all of you for being recipients of His Holiness Niranjana Swami’s boundless mercy. You are very, very fortunate souls and I am sure that you will take proper and full advantage of the good fortune that you have received and are receiving now.

When I first walked into the hall on Friday night and Niranjana Swami was leading a beautiful kirtan and so many devotees were dancing, I looked at the deity of Srila Prabhupada and I felt the deity was saying, “I am very pleased with Niranjana Swami.” I kept looking at the deity and I felt that he said, “You do not know how pleased I am with Niranjana Swami.” So then a few minutes later I looked again just to see if it wasn’t my imagination, or if it was still the same. So I looked again and I felt that Srila Prabhupada was saying, “I am very, very pleased with Niranjana Swami.” 

You have the most wonderful example of your own spiritual master and how he is constantly endeavoring to please his spiritual master and how his spiritual master is actually pleased with him. So if you endeavor in the same way to serve and please your spiritual master, His Holiness Niranjana Swami, Srila Prabhupada will be pleased and Krishna will be pleased.

This is my humble request and appeal to all of you. And I know it is your intention anyway—not that my request has much bearing on the matter—but still, my desire is that you give yourself fully, life and soul, to the service of Srila Prabhupada through His Holiness Niranjana Swami and your life will be completely successful and we will be together eternally, chanting and dancing and serving Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Nityananda Prabhu and Sri Sri Radha and Krishna and all of that is contained in these sixteen words: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.