Remembering Tamal Krishna Goswami

Giriraj Swami: So we shall continue our discussion of Srila Tamal Krishna Goswami in keeping with the theme of the Dallas part of the Pandavasena Youth Retreat. I have written a verse on the board which has great relevance, the verse and the purport. So we won’t discuss too much because we want to speak more directly about Tamal Krishna Goswami, but it will set the tone or indicate the theme that guided Tamal Krishna Goswami in his service and Srila Prabhupada in his service to his spiritual master.

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
 

Bg. 2.41

vyavasāyātmikā buddhir
ekeha kuru-nandana
bahu-śākhā hy anantāś ca
buddhayo ‘vyavasāyinām

TRANSLATION

Those who are on this path are resolute in purpose, and their aim is one. O beloved child of the Kurus, the intelligence of those who are irresolute is many-branched.

PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada

A strong faith that by Kṛṣṇa consciousness one will be elevated to the highest perfection of life is called vyavasāyātmikā intelligence. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta (Madhya 22.62) states:

’sraddha’-sabde visvasa kahe sudrdha niscaya

krsne bhakti kaile sarva-karma krta haya

Faith means unflinching trust in something sublime. When one is engaged in the duties of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, he need not act in relationship to the material world with obligations to family traditions, humanity, or nationality. Fruitive activities are the engagements of one’s reactions from past good or bad deeds. When one is awake in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, he need no longer endeavor for good results in his activities. When one is situated in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, all activities are on the absolute plane, for they are no longer subject to dualities like good and bad. The highest perfection of Kṛṣṇa consciousness is renunciation of the material conception of life. This state is automatically achieved by progressive Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

COMMENT

I will just add a note here, that although Krishna consciousness, actual Krishna consciousness is enacted on the spiritual platform, on the absolute platform and therefore has no relationship with material conceptions of good and bad, but still in the progressive development of neophyte devotees Srila Rupa Gosvami and all of our acharyas have recommended that the devotees follow a lifestyle that is in the mode of goodness. Although Krishna consciousness itself is transcendental but one’s lifestyle should be in the mode of goodness, because the mode of goodness is favorable for developing pure Krishna consciousness. And it is also the example that we want to set for others to follow in their lifestyles, and especially those who are acting as brahmans or trying to act as brahmans, which is the crying need of society. Society needs brahmans more than anything. It is essential to one’s duty to, under ordinary circumstances, act in the mode of goodness.

PURPORT (continued)

The resolute purpose of a person in Kṛṣṇa consciousness is based on knowledge. Vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā su-durlabhaḥ: a person in Kṛṣṇa consciousness is the rare good soul who knows perfectly that Vāsudeva, or Kṛṣṇa, is the root of all manifested causes. As by watering the root of a tree one automatically distributes water to the leaves and branches, so by acting in Kṛṣṇa consciousness one can render the highest service to everyone – namely self, family, society, country, humanity, etc. If Kṛṣṇa is satisfied by one’s actions, then everyone will be satisfied.

COMMENT

So here Srila Prabhupada is continuing the discussion of faith. To actually stick to Krishna consciousness and be fixed in Krishna consciousness one must have faith. One must have faith that personally one will achieve the highest perfection through Krishna consciousness. And one must have faith that through Krishna consciousness one is doing the best service to others; himself but not only himself, also his family, his community, his nation, all humanity, all living entities.

PURPORT (continued)

Service in Kṛṣṇa consciousness is, however, best practiced under the able guidance of a spiritual master who is a bona fide representative of Kṛṣṇa, who knows the nature of the student and who can guide him to act in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. As such, to be well versed in Kṛṣṇa consciousness one has to act firmly and obey the representative of Kṛṣṇa, and one should accept the instruction of the bona fide spiritual master as one’s mission in life. Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura instructs us, in his famous prayers for the spiritual master, as follows:

yasya prasādād bhagavat-prasādo
yasyāprasādān na gatiḥ kuto ‘pi
dhyāyan stuvaṁs tasya yaśas tri-sandhyaṁ
vande guroḥ śrī-caraṇāravindam

“By satisfaction of the spiritual master, the Supreme Personality of Godhead becomes satisfied. And by not satisfying the spiritual master, there is no chance of being promoted to the plane of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. I should, therefore, meditate and pray for his mercy three times a day, and offer my respectful obeisances unto him, my spiritual master.”

COMMENT

So this is the part of the purport that really defines Srila Prabhupada’s mood of devotional service, of taking the order of his spiritual master as his life and soul and similarly, it defined Srila Tamal Krishna Goswami’s mood of service. We discussed in the japa seminar how the mind is like a child wanting to run here and there and do this and that. But we have to control the mind by the intelligence, and thus the intelligence is like the child’s parent or guardian who has to use different techniques to control the child or, in more congenial terms, engage the child as the parent deems beneficial for the child, and the whole situation. So this word bhūti, intelligence, we control the mind with the intelligence and the word bhūti is mentioned twice in the verse, but our intelligence also has to be controlled. Yes, the intelligence must control the mind but what direction will the intelligence give the mind? That must come from higher authorities, a higher intelligence. And in the case of the disciple that intelligence comes from the spiritual master, and therefore the disciple accepts the order of the spiritual master as his life and soul. Then on that basis his mind is controlled, his senses are controlled. Then Srila Prabhupada concludes,

PURPORT (continued)

The whole process, however, depends on perfect knowledge of the soul beyond the conception of the body—not theoretically but practically, when there is no longer a chance for sense gratification manifested in fruitive activities. One who is not firmly fixed in mind is diverted by various types of fruitive acts.

COMMENT

And we experience it. It may take place on the subtle platform that we are engaged with the body in devotional service; chanting, hearing, serving, but our mind is somewhere else. Or it may take place on the gross platform. We are resolving to become more serious about Krishna consciousness, to associate with advanced devotees, and the next thing we know, we are watching something on the screen that is not Krishna conscious. We don’t even know how it happened, we just got diverted and you can end up seeing something on the computer screen and in the movie house, end up in the club, end up in so many different places. But if our intelligence is controlled by superior intelligence, by sadhu, shastra, and guru, and then our mind is controlled by our intelligence then our senses will naturally be controlled. And again, controlled means not in a negative way but in engagement in devotional service.

In Juhu, when we first went, there were a lot of little children. That particular community, they were not devotees. When we got the Juhu lands there were buildings with tenants and the Indian law was such that you couldn’t really ask the tenants to leave. So we had so many tenants who had small children and those children would run around and make noise, and sometimes they would make noise when Srila Prabhupada was speaking in the temple or trying to meet with people or translate. And someone became very concerned about the disturbance that the children were making, and had the idea to tell them to be quiet. And Srila Prabhupada said, “No, that is not the way. They can’t be quiet but you have to engage that propensity to talk and shout and scream in kirtan.” So that is our approach. So when we talk about control it really means to engage the senses and mind and intelligence in devotional service, not to try to repress them or suppress them or any such thing.

So Srila Prabhupada himself, received the instruction from his spiritual master to preach Krishna consciousness in the English language, in the western countries. And as he described it, after receiving the instruction he took some time to prepare himself and he had misgivings. It was quite a daunting challenge to go alone to the west and try to introduce something that was so different, and not just different but difficult. As Srila Prabhupada said, he thought that when he came to America and told people what the regulative principles were, they would say, “Swamiji, thank you very much. Now you can go back to your own country.” And Srila Prabhupada mentioned a godbrother of his who had who had preached to some aristocratic person from England, who I believe had served in India during the British raj. And that fellow had asked Prabhupada’s godbrother, “Can you make me a brahman?” And the godbrother had replied, “Yes I can, but you have to follow these principles; no eating meat fish or eggs, no taking of intoxicants, no indulging in illicit sex, and no gambling.” And that man, the Marquee of Zeppelin, he replied, “Impossible, these are our life. If we give up these things what will we be left with? These are our life.”

So it was a great challenge that Srila Prabhupada was to face. And so, he spent some time in India as he said, preparing himself. But then he read this commentary of Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura on this verse of the Bhagavad-gītā, that the disciple takes the order of the spiritual master as his life and soul. And just as you cannot separate the body from the soul in conditioned life, the disciple cannot separate the order of his spiritual master from his very existence. And then Srila Prabhupada determined, “I must go now; I must go to the west in pursuance of the order of my spiritual master.” And so that was Srila Prabhupada’s mood that was Tamal Krishna Goswami’s mood, I imbibed a little of that mood from Tamal Krishna Goswami as I mentioned yesterday initially in our talk on the balcony in Calcutta. And that is the underlying theme or decision or motive in everything that Tamal Krishna Goswami did.

So there were a couple of disciples of Srila Prabhupada who are not present last night I would like them to speak a little about their association with Tamal Krishna Goswami, his service. And then I will speak a little about the departure of the spiritual master and how to keep company with the spiritual master even in his physical absence, and some other esoteric topics. So I will begin by calling on Chakri Prabhu because I had informed him. Misra Bhagavan, I will also call on you. I didn’t get a chance to speak to you earlier, so you can have a few minutes to prepare yourself if you need, while Chakri Prabhu speaks. We will have a chair here.

Chakri Prabhu: Hare Krishna. It is so nice to be here again in Kalachandji dhāma with all the devotees. It is so wonderful to have your association again after so many years. It is so nice to see everything going on so wonderfully here in this temple and actually, this was the temple that Srila Gurudeva built. It was by his endeavors that this beautiful temple and facility have come about. I remember back in the 1980s we were still distributing books but Srila Gurudeva, he was a real pioneer and he could see that, of course, the book distribution was definitely necessary but somehow the public perception of us wasn’t what it should be. Instead of seeing that we were doing something good by distributing this spiritual knowledge, people were not really understanding and they thought that we were harassing them at the airports or we were cult members or something like that.

So he decided in a very innovative way, we stopped the book distribution but we started to distribute just some paraphernalia and started collecting Lakshmi. But by doing that we were able to construct this beautiful temple in this beautiful facility, and now we have this wonderful temple and it is such a great asset for preaching in the restaurant. So it was through his vision that this all happened. He always had the ability to think ahead of everything, to know what needs to be done next. What are we doing now and is it working or not working, and what should we be doing to make things better instead of just keep doing the same thing because that is what we have done before. But he was able to think of how we can do things better, what is the next step. He was very progressive like that.

And he brought everyone here to build this temple. He brought all the devotees that had the expertise to do all the construction work and he even had some devotees trained to do things that they had never done before. One devotee, I think Yasomati Nandana, he learned how to do stained glass and he did all the stained glass in the temple and how to do upholstery and so many things. It was by his endeavors and his pushings that this project was built. It was his vision. And also, he wanted to have spiritual communities where devotees would live right around the community. That is what he liked and so he started just buying all the properties around the temple so the devotees could live near the temple. You could see that in this project and also in Houston, all the devotees live around the temple.

So that was his vision, that there should be spiritual communities where the devotees could live near the temple and just be within walking distance to the temple. So many times you see there are nice temples but the devotees can’t live near the temple, so it is hard enough to come even when you are within walking distance, so what to speak of if you have to drive from a far distance. So that was always how he wanted spiritual communities to be.

And recently my wife and I have been listening to some of his lectures that he gave and especially the later ones from 1999 and 2000. And you could see that Srila Gurudeva he was on the highest spiritual platform, that he was deeply immersed in reading all the literatures of the six Gosvamis and all the acharyas and he had reached that highest perfection. He was fully absorbed in their teachings and his mood was that he wanted to give that to us. He wasn’t satisfied just experiencing those deep spiritual emotions himself. His mood was how to deliver that to us. And he was giving classes on some of these advanced literatures, and trying to help us come to that highest level, that highest understanding that he was experiencing himself. And sometimes he would push us a little bit, try to make us not be complacent and to try to work harder, to come to that to that highest level.

So that is very interesting and anybody who wants to, all his lectures are there and if you listen to them you just learn so much, there is such a wealth of knowledge in his lectures. And one thing I remember, some people say he had his heavy nature, but he said if you see something wrong and you don’t do something about it then you are part of the ignorance. So if there is something wrong then it is your duty to say something about it. So that was his mood. Some people misunderstood it but it was always for our welfare. One devotee spoke in Houston, Rukmini devi, and she said one devotee asked Prabhupada, “Sometimes you are very angry with us, how should we take it?” And Prabhupada said, “You should be very jubilant, because that shows you have someone that cares about you, someone that loves you enough to correct you.” So that was how I felt about Srila Gurudeva. When you did something wrong he would let you know, but that was because he loved you and he really cared about you.

And I was noticing, listening to some of the lectures, his last lectures, that in some way he really was opening up more and more to the devotees and really, really trying to give more of himself toward the end. And in several lectures, I remember in Fiji he was telling the devotees where he was staying and he said, “Just come over whenever you want, just come over and be with me, I want everyone to just come and be with me.” And that theme came up many times in the last few years.

I remember one lecture he gave in Houston, he was saying he had to leave and I think that was the last time he was in Houston. And he was saying, “I have to leave now but I am not going to be thinking that I am leaving. When I get on that plane I am going to be thinking that I am actually coming to Houston. Because if I think that I am leaving here, it is just going to be too much to bear, it will be too much to think. So in my mind I am thinking that I am going to be arriving in Houston and not leaving.” So even in one conversation I had with him toward the end of his stay in this world, he just said, “Just call me whenever you feel like it, just call me anytime.” And so that was his mood in the end, he was just trying as much as possible to give of himself.

Well this one story also. Once one devotee was very ill, Maha-Vishnu Swami, and this devotee said, probably many of you know this story that, “I think I am going to leave my body this time,” and then Srila Gurudeva said, “No, you can’t go yet, I want to be the first one to go, so I can greet everyone when they come back to the spiritual world.” So I feel like that and I am sure many devotees feel like that. Srila Gurudeva is there in the spiritual world and he is ready to greet us and to help us come back there. And that his guidance and his love and his teachings, are still there with us to help us in our journey back to Godhead, back to Krishna.

Srila Gurudeav ki jaya!.

Misra Bhagavan: Hare Krishna.  

vāñchā-kalpatarubhyaś ca kṛpā-sindhubhya eva ca

patitānāṁ pāvanebhyo vaiṣṇavebhyo namo namaḥ

I first met Srila Tamal Krishna Goswami in 1975 in January, when he took me on as a sixteen-year-old runaway that was wanting to get the best thing that was available in the ISKCON, which I found when I saw a picture of Tamal Krishna Goswami with Vishnujana Swami in a Back to Godhead magazine. I was living as a brahmachari in the temple. When I saw those effulgent figures with Radha-Damodar in the middle, I had read the Back to Godhead article and really felt like this is the best thing that is going on. So I wanted to be part of that and got permission from my GBC to join the Radha-Damodar party where I flew to Atlanta, Georgia and then got picked up by Adi Kesava who was just leaving his post as a temple president in Boston, to join the Radha-Damodar party. And he picked me up and brought me down to Gainesville, Florida. And on the front yard of the Gainesville temple was Vishnujana Swami and his band singing bhajans at the Sunday feast.

And these personalities just so effulgent. Tamal Krishna Maharaja was working something out with the temple president, Amarendra, at the time, I remember, and so I got to see both of them. And then the next morning I met them personally and Tamal Krishna Maharaja agreed to take me on the Radha-Damodar party so I could be engaged in book distribution. And then we went to meet Srila Prabhupada in February, a month later in Atlanta. And all the buses were from all over the place that Tamal Krishna Maharaja had devotees doing book distribution, saṅkīrtana, all over America with these buses. So all the buses drove to Atlanta and where each one of us who were on the Radha-Damodar party, we got to be personally introduced to Srila Prabhupada, which was quite a privilege. And Tamal Krishna Maharaja had such a relationship with Srila Prabhupada. And when I saw them, how they worked together, I could see that they had been working together for a long time and had a very close, like Prabhupada said “Tamal Krishna Maharaja is my right-hand man.” And as soon as I could see Prabhupada and Tamal Krishna Goswami together, I could see how they had that relationship. And there was Goswami and Srila Prabhupada and they would talk about things and nobody else was really on that level. It is like they were they were planning things together. Prabhupada would have plans and Tamal Krishna Maharaja was able to anticipate the order of the spiritual master.

So he had that relationship so that he was able to introduce each and every one of us personally to Srila Prabhupada. We came in and I had a flower and then I put the flower in front of Srila Prabhupada. He was behind his desk and Tamal Krishna Maharaja said, “Prabhupada, this is Bhakta Michael, he joined our party at a young age. And Prabhupada looked at me and said, “Oh very good.” Then we all sat down and Srila Prabhupada, he motioned to Tamal Krishna Maharaja and he said, “You have a very good leader with Tamal Krishna Goswami, and if you just follow him, then I will be pleased.” And I didn’t realize it at the time that that was very special, and it is not like Prabhupada said that about so many of his disciples, that you have a good leader and if you follow him I will be pleased. I didn’t realize how rare and special that was and unique to their relationship.

But that is the relationship that they had and then when Tamal Krishna Maharaja went to join Srila Prabhupada during his last days, Prabhupada was always very concerned that any major decision that was made that Tamal Krishna Maharaja was involved. I heard a tape one time of a room conversation and we were talking about going on this parikramā around Govardhana Hill. And then Prabhupada said, “Is Tamal here; where is Tamal?” He would ask like that and he didn’t want a decision to be made in the room unless Goswami was there. And later on after Prabhupada passed away, the GBC went to Prabhupada’s godbrother, Bhakti Rakshak Sridhar Maharaja. I am trying to get that right. Sridhar Maharaja is one of Srila Prabhupada closest godbrothers who would stay at Prabhupada’s house when he was living in Allahabad. The GBC are asking different questions about how the paramparā would go on and the initiations, and so many different details. And one of the things that Sridhar Maharaja said was that, “Amongst all of you, the one who reflects the mood of your guru Maharaja the most is Tamal Krishna Goswami.”

So that was the kind of thing that we have with Tamal Krishna Maharaja, his association. That is why this temple in Houston, his zone, is so special and so blessed. The places where Tamal Krishna Maharaja has his samadhi; Govardhana, Mayapur, and Radha Kalachandji dhāma are the three special places in this world where Tamal Krishna Maharaja continues to reside and give us his association. So we are very happy to be here in the association of his disciples and close godbrothers like Srila Giriraj Maharaja. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.