Giriraj Swami’s Vyasa-puja

Giriraj Swami: Hare Krishna.

Devotees: Hare Krishna.

Giriraj Swami: We heard around the corner, but that was memorable. And that really is our goal, love, premā pumartho mahān, and it’s love for Krishna, ultimately, but Krishna includes all of His expansions, and everything is an expansion of Krishna, different categories of expansions. And that is what nourishes us, that is what sustains us, that is what attracts us. It’s a spiritual principle that relates to Krishna, it’s a general principle, but it relates to Krishna, which is that a person will stay in that place where he is loved the most.

Of course, the acharyas raised the question, “How then could Krishna leave Vrindavan? Because the residents of Vrindavan loved Krishna more than anyone else loved Him. So, how could He leave Vrindavan? It seems to contradict the principle that a person will stay in the place where he is loved the most.”

Of course, it’s an intricate topic, but the answer is that Krishna only apparently left Vrindavan. He did leave, but He told the gopīs, “I shall return,” but apparently, He didn’t return. But as Srila Prabhupada describes in the Kṛṣṇa book with reference to the previous acharyas, Krishna was present in Vrindavan in His bhāva expansion. So, how Krishna is present, how Vaishnavas are present, is very mysterious, and it is not limited to time and place. We all experience it. And it’s true in many ways and on many levels. As Krishna says,

nāhaṁ tiṣṭhāmi vaikuṇṭhe
yogināṁ hṛdayeṣu vā

“I’m not in Vaikuntha and I’m not in the hearts of the yogis, but I am there wherever My devotees are chanting My glories.” So, whenever we chant the glories of Krishna or His associates such as the spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, or Srila Prabhupada’s associates, they are present. But in another way, they are present and they are alive and they can come personally. We may not have the eyes to see them, but we can feel their presence.

I’ve mentioned it, but I’ll mention it again today. I believe that Srila Prabhupada’s close associates, especially Srila Tamal Krishna Goswami, are with Srila Prabhupada and are serving him in relation to the mission of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the saṅkīrtana movement, to some extent in the same way as he served when Srila Prabhupada was here on the planet and they were here on the planet.

There are many, but one example that comes to mind is the case of Bhakti Tirtha Swami and Tamal Krishna Goswami. Maybe two or three weeks before Bhakti Tirtha Swami actually left, Tamal Krishna Goswami visited him or appeared in his dream and told him, “Srila Prabhupada is calling you. You have done what you were meant to do and you can come now.”

And then Bhakti Tirtha Swami saw that Tamal Krishna Goswami was crying. So, he asked him, “Why are you crying?” Tamal Krishna Goswami replied, “Because I know how much my disciples suffered after I left, and I know your disciples will suffer in the same way.” And so, he again asked, “Are you ready? Srila Prabhupada is calling you, are you ready?” And Bhakti Tirtha Swami replied, “No, I’m not ready. I want to spend some more time with my disciples to prepare them.” So, Tamal Krishna Goswami said, “All right, you can have some more time, and when the time comes that you actually do have to leave, I will send a sign.”

So, thereafter, as some of Bhakti Tirtha Swami’s intimate disciples have related to me, he did certain things to prepare his disciples, not telling them that was what he was doing, but that’s what he was doing. And one of the things was emphasizing the importance of their relationship with the holy name. Because Bhakti Tirtha Swami was so sick, so emaciated, and his body was so wracked with pain. I mean, he couldn’t sleep, there was just too much pain. And if he was able to drift off into sleep, it was a wonderful thing.

So, one night, he said he hadn’t finished his rounds. The disciples were saying, “You should try to take rest.” He said, “I can’t because I haven’t finished my rounds.” And they said, “No, you’ve chanted enough, you’ve done enough for all of us. You should take rest.” He said, “No, I can’t.” But finally, he agreed. But then, a half hour later, an hour later, he was up again, and felt he had to chant his rounds. So, from that, the disciples understood the importance of maintaining one’s vows and chanting the holy name.

And then Maharaja’s main caregivers, while they were a team, husband and wife; Ekavira and Vraja Lila. So, Ekavira said, “Guru Maharaja, can I see you chant your rounds? Can you take your beads out of your bag? I want to watch you chant your rounds.” So, he watched him and he saw that because he was so weak physically, he couldn’t move the beads, so he would chant many mantras, but he wouldn’t move the beads because he was too weak. And then afterwards, Ekavira said to Bhakti Tirtha Swami, “You’ve been so worried that you haven’t been chanting your rounds, but you’ve been chanting, but you just haven’t been able to move the beads.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami thanked Srila Prabhupada. He was in so much anxiety that he wasn’t chanting his rounds and he said, “You mean all this time I’ve been chanting sixty-four rounds and I didn’t even know it? Thank you, Srila Prabhupada.”

But then, as Tamal Krishna Goswami had told him, there was a sign, because none of the disciples could give Maharaja permission to leave. And then one disciple named Kalpavriksha, who was quite young, an American young man from New Jersey, came and he said, “Guru Maharaja, you’ve done everything for us. You’ve given us everything that we need and you are suffering so much. You should go.” And nobody could believe it because this relatively young disciple, a regular American, could say something that no one else was able to say, at least not with the force with which he said it. And he was saying, “Please go, you’ve done everything for us. You’ve given us everything we need. Now you go ahead and we’ll follow your instructions. And you go ahead and prepare the way for us and we will join you.”

So, that seemed to be a sign because up until then, no one had been able to say that with such force. And then, of course, the next sign came. The devotees, I don’t know exactly who, but as Vraja Lila told the story, a devotee from Dallas phoned and said, “We are coming with little Radha-Damodara to Gita Nagari.” And then Bhakti Tirtha Swami commented, “Okay, now the time is coming.” So, the devotees came with a little Radha-Damodara. And Maharaja, he was really very weak and mainly just lying on his bed in the inner room. But for Radha-Damodara, he said, “No, I must come up. They should be in the main room.”

And with great difficulty, the devotees brought him out of bed into the main room and he saw Radha-Damodara, there was kirtan. And along with Radha-Damodara was a small picture of Tamal Krishna Goswami. And then it was just a matter of days and he left. So, we don’t really know how things are working, how Srila Prabhupada is making arrangements, and how intimate disciples of Srila Prabhupada like Tamal Krishna Goswami are acting as his servants or agents to help us on his behalf.

And when Indranila was speaking and spoke about her journey, it’s true. We each have our individual journeys. And sometimes they take twists and turns that we don’t expect, that we don’t want, but still, the Lord and the devotees are watching over us.

I remember once, maybe two years ago, I noticed one of the devotees in the community wasn’t coming around so much, and I was quite concerned about it. I actually asked Ṛtadhvaja Swami, and said, “I think is it a problem of faith, or what is it? It’s hard to tell.” And especially in grihastha ashram, there are so many demands on us. But now I see that the same devotee who I was so concerned about is back, is here, very much here. And there was another devotee who I thought would have been here, should have been or would have been, who wasn’t here. And so, I was thinking, Oh wow! That’s not a good sign. What is it? There is something happening. But I didn’t want to have that thought in my mind during the program.

So, I offered my obeisances to Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudeva. But he is Gurudev’s disciple, and I felt I got the answer from him, “Don’t worry about it. I’m managing everything. So, just don’t worry about it, we have our plan.” And then I let go of it. And then I saw that other devotee who I was so worried about was here, and I thought, Well, that’s just the way it is.

Sometimes devotees have to go through things on their journeys, which may appear to take them from the path, or in a way, they may stray from the path, but at heart, they are still the same person, they are still devotees. And whatever service they did and whatever sincere feelings for service that they had are noted by Krishna and His servants, agents, representatives. And so, they never lose track of that devotee. And they always look for the opportunity to bring the devotee back and make arrangements to bring the devotee back.

But they may allow the devotee to experience some things that may be very humbling for the devotee, because for so many years, the devotee has been going along and doing a lot of service, and the other devotees in the community think, This devotee is such a good devotee. This devotee does so much service. This devotee is so attached to Srila Gurudev or Srila Maharaja, whoever he may be. And then suddenly, the devotee is acting in a way that seems very different, but still, they are devotees, and Krishna, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Nityananda Prabhu, paramparā, and Srila Prabhupada are looking after them.

And there are many verses in the Bhāgavatam and other places that say if the devotee falls down, he doesn’t fall in the way that an ordinary person falls, but he will never forget the ecstasy that he relished in Krishna consciousness, and ultimately, he will come back. But of course, we want to avoid the detours to whatever extent we can. And we can do that by strict adherence to sadhana, which is especially chanting, following the regulative principles, and keeping good association with devotees, avoiding offending devotees.

And love is such a motivating factor. I think every devotee wants to get love within Krishna consciousness, but sometimes it may happen that the devotee feels that he or she can’t get that love from the community of devotees, and so the person looks outside or may run into something outside. So, if we can genuinely reciprocate with the devotees in a loving way, then there is less chance that they will either consciously, deliberately look for it outside the community, or they’ll be less prone to, you could say, latch onto something that they happen to run into outside of the association of devotees.

But even if that does happen, they are still devotees. And of course, we pray for them, and naturally, always look for the opportunity to help them in some way to come closer to the association of devotees or to become more engaged in service to the mission.

And in conclusion, I thought what His Holiness Ṛtadhvaja Swami said was perfect. It’s the perfect conclusion, that although devotees appreciate our coming here to help them and appreciate Gurudev’s mercy in arranging for us to come and help his devotees, but we also get helped by the opportunity to serve, by the opportunity to serve him by serving his servants. And we also get helped just by being in the association of so many wonderful devotees and hearing their wonderful realizations and having them remind us of guru and Krishna. So, it’s mutually beneficial.

And there are so many, but one of my favorite quotations from Srila Prabhupada is from a letter he wrote to a disciple. It’s obvious from what Srila Prabhupada wrote that the disciple must have written him, “I’m dependent on your mercy, Srila Prabhupada.” And Srila Prabhupada wrote back, “You are dependent on my mercy, and I am dependent on your mercy.”

Sri Sri Radha-Kalachandji ki jaya!

“You are dependent on my mercy, and I am dependent on your mercy. It is reciprocal.” And this mutual dependence is based on love—Krishna consciousness. Hare Krishna.