Devotion amidst persecution – Lord Chaitanya delivers Chand Kazi Part 1

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So welcome to our three day gaur katha today and tomorrow and next week we will be discussing on the topic of devotion Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's confrontation with Chandakasi so in today's talk I will discuss the background and the significance of this particular incident and in tomorrow's class I will discuss about the procession that Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu took to the palace of Chandakasi and in the last talk we will discuss about the philosophical discussion that they had and each of these we will also look at some relevant principles for our practise of Bhakti usually the Gaudiya scriptures give the example that it is difficulty that either develops strength or it discovers strength so the example is given suppose an elephant is a baby elephant which is tied to a pole and then if the baby elephant were free to move it would just move around but if it is tied to a pole and as it grows up and it desires to move it pulls against the ropes and as it keeps pulling against the ropes then gradually its strength develops so this example is of course used for a very esoteric concept of the parakiaras the example is used by Rupa Goswami he says that Krishna could easily have arranged Krishna and Radharani could have been married to each other why are they in parakiaras so he says just as an elephant is bound and then it wants to go somewhere then when it wants to go against the bondage there is greater internal realisation of one's strength and external expression of one's strength so similarly if Radharani and Krishna were married directly then there would be no obstacle to their union so by the apparent they are not being married to each other internally they are consorts but in the past times by their apparent non-marriage what happens is there are obstacles to their meeting and in that obstacle from those obstacles arises the intensification of their love for each other so this is a principle that applies in the transcendental level and that principle also applies in this world so whatever bhakti we practise when there are difficulties actually the difficulties make the sincere more sincere and they make the insincere more insincere so what happens is when there are difficulties in the practise of bhakti the insincere get justified this bhakti does not work maybe Krishna does not even exist or Krishna does not care otherwise why are you putting so many difficulties in my life so the insincere get further justification for their laxity and they may even give up the practise of bhakti on the other hand for the sincere when difficulties come then they realise that I cannot deal with this myself I need the help of God I sometimes write a few poems once long ago I had written a Hindi poem so when there is danger then we realise that dangers come in the lives of everyone but if a devotee takes shelter of Krishna we get an inner strength which convinces us that Krishna's shelter is for real that conviction may not come during the routine performance of bhakti but when troubles come and we take shelter of Krishna and we do experience peace, shelter, protection then we realise yes Krishna is for real so it makes the sincere more sincere Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appeared at a very traumatic time in Indian history it was a time when most of India was ruled by Islamic rulers and the Islamic rulers came from the western part of the world actually eventually they conquered Bengal and Bengal was like their stronghold and the particular king who was ruling there, Nawab Hussain Shah was infamous in Indian history as a very tyrannical ruler and we see that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was also very sensitive to the realities over there Chaitanya Mahaprabhu taught the way bhakti was practised basically Gaudiya Vaishnavism was practised in three places one is Vrindavan where Chaitanya Mahaprabhu sent the Goswamis second is Bengal where Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself appeared and the third is Orissa where he stayed in the later part of his life and if you read carefully what instruction Chaitanya Mahaprabhu gives to his different associates and how they practise bhakti in each of these places is different the Goswamis were not even belonging to Vrindavan, they were brought up in Bengal or some other parts of the world, the leaders Rupani Sanatana were in Bengal with Sanatana Goswamis and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu told them to go to Vrindavan and build temples there so it's like if we are in a place where we know it's easier to build a temple but to go far away to Vrindavan and build a temple it is a very difficult thing to do and yet although Chaitanya Mahaprabhu asked temples to be built in Vrindavan he never asked for any temple to be built in Bengal why? Historically speaking if we see that this was the time when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, that was the time when Akbar was ruling and among the Mughal rulers who were ruling in Delhi Akbar was relatively more tolerant and what Rupani Sanatana Goswami were doing in Bengal Rupani Sanatana Goswami they had been born in Saraswati Brahmin families but they had converted to Islam not because of fear for themselves but because of the desire to protect the Vaishnava community so basically whenever the invaders came to India whether it is the Muslims, actually Muslims are not one many different Muslims came from different parts of the world but whether it is the Muslims or later on the Britishers when they ruled, they knew that Indians are so large in number and the invaders were always very small in number so we cannot rule without the cooperation of the natives and that's why they had various systems for eliciting the cooperation of the natives the Britishers were more subtle they had systems of education which westernised the mindset of the Indians and the Indians voluntarily many of them subordinated themselves the Muslims were little more gross so when Nawab Hussain Shah was the ruler he came to know Rupani Sanatana Goswami they were also very famous people they were talented, they were intelligent, they were resourceful and he was looking for resourceful ministers so when he found these two are competent people so what he did, he told them that you should work with me and for him to make somebody into a minister a minister also very trustworthy position and there is always a fear for a king that there might be a revolt or a coup against me so he thought the best insurance to ensure their faith is to change their faith so his thought was that even if they rebel if I have converted them to Islam then their community will reject them so for whose sake will they rebel because even if they rebel and become rulers their community is not going to accept them whereas I am accepting them and I am giving them a respectable position and this Nawab Hussain Shah was so brutal it is time that at one time he had a magnificent palace built for himself and then he got some of his courtiers to some of his relatives, guests and all of them to come and see this palace and then he introduced them to the architect and this is the architect who has built this palace for him and this is a beautiful palace he has built so tell us about this palace and the architect he was talented but he was also a little foolish so he said yes this is a magnificent palace and he was telling about the features of the palace and then people were appreciating what a beautiful palace you have built, he said this is nothing I can build a better palace than this and this is nothing I could have made even better and even before he completed the sentence the Nawab pulled out his sword and chopped off his head he says how dare you not make the best palace for me so how did you have the audacity of thinking that when you are serving the king you can make something better for someone else so for not having done that you deserve to die and he was a very brutal king at that time so he told Choudhury Masanathan Goswami that if you become my ministers and it was not just a political position that he wanted him to take up it was not just the administrative burden that he wanted him to take up he also wanted that they should truly become committed to him so he says you convert to Islam then I will not persecute the Vaishnav community over there he was also a politician so he knew what was the weak point he realised that if I just threaten and torture them they will die but they will not convert but I know what their weak point is so their weak point he knew was that they couldn't tolerate there were no big temples there in Bengal but whatever house temples were there we see even if we all the temples are more or less inside the houses so there are no big temples there so he said that he would destroy even whatever remnants of the devotional culture were there and then Rupin Sanathan Goswami decided to convert and then they converted and they did their job so well that they actually became very trustworthy and not only once they became trustworthy then they by earning the trust of the Nawab they got their own room they got their own scope and what they did was they in their own palaces created a replica of Vrindavan so sometimes when we are put in a situation that we don't like we become so resentful of the situation that we are not able to do even what we can do so what Rupin said ok if this is the situation that has come in my life they accepted it and they did their job well and by doing their job they created a space for themselves so the nature of this world is that there is a bigger outer freedom which we may or may not have but within that outer restriction there is the inner restriction that we put on ourselves sometimes we may feel that you know I have such a demanding job that I have no time for practising bhakti or I have such inimical relatives that I can't practise bhakti these are real troubles that may be there but often adding to those troubles we have our own limitations you know we may be irritable and we may alienate people more and more or we may resentful and we become choked mentally and then we can't do what we can do we will see this principle in future also that generally if we do what we can do then Krishna will enable us to do what we can't do if we do what we can do then Krishna will enable us to do what we can't do but unfortunately we focus on what we can't do and by thinking I can't do this I can't do this by focussing on that we don't even do what we can do and then there is no question of ever being able to do what we can't do also there will be external limitations always but within that let us not put any internal limitations on ourselves what facility I have let me practise bhakti in that situation Chaitanya Mahaprabhu now when Rupan Sanatana renounced at that time he asked them to go to Vrindavan why? because he wanted them to actually develop Vrindavan dham and the diplomatic skills which they had acquired while working with the Nawab they alone could have used this for liaisoning with the emperor of Delhi so basically Rupan Sanatana Goswami we celebrate their renunciation that they used to sleep under different trees on each day that was the extent of their renunciation they would eat very little but when they renounced their material possessions they did not renounce their skills they all had their skills and they used those skills in Krishna's service and that's how they beautifully developed Vrindavan if we look at the history of India within 100-150 years Vrindavan which was a lost place was miraculously rejuvenated and even historians agree that the primary credit for this goes to the Gaudiya Vaishna Sampradaya and this is historically also unique, not unique, distinctive because Vrindavan is a holy place somewhere else and the people who restored it came from somewhere else they restored Vrindavan over there of course two generations after Akbar was Aurangzeb and Aurangzeb devastated everything and then after that Vishwanath Chaturthi Thakur who had been born in Bengal, one day Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appeared in his dream and told him go and restore Vrindavan and again he went all the way to Vrindavan and he restored Vrindavan again to some of its glory so now I was talking about the different ways in which Bhakti was practised Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, he used the skills of Rupan Sanatana Goswami to ensure that Vrindavan was restored at least to some of its glory in terms of visible structures so in contrast in Jagannath Puri there was already a already a devotee king one of the greatest victories of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu which had a long term sociopelagical consequence Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had many different victories right from his transforming Prakashan Saraswati or Sarovam Bhattacharya but from sociocultural point of view the biggest change was that Pratapudra became attracted to him, he became a follower of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and he deployed all the resources of the state to support the Sankirtan movement and that's why if we look at the life of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his associates in Puri it's a life of jubilant festivals and at the same time in Bengal the devotees had to practise Bhakti in a restrained way so in Bengal there was no construction of temples the primary mode of Sankirtan was, primary mode of Bhakti was Sankirtan and Sankirtan was also done how? it was largely done inside the houses and this past time which we'll discuss today this is of breaking that barrier and doing Sankirtan outside we'll discuss that, so even now we see that just as a direct angle diversity, some places where people could practise Bhakti freely like in Puri, some places with caution such as in Bengal and some places they had to have lot of discretion to continue and expand like in Vrindavan so like that even now in the world we see that there are different parts of the world and for example in the Middle East there is, devotees were flourishing but it is all in house Bhakti Rathyatra is held inside a building so it is wherever, whatever opportunity is there, devotees continue the practise of Bhakti, so what was done at that time that is continuing on now also now the only enemy for Bhakti was not just outside the tradition, yes the Islamic rule was there but over a period of time most of the Islamic rulers recognised that we cannot provoke the Indians too much because although they were militarily in power, they knew Indians are so much in number that we can't antagonise them too much so they attempted to convert some Indians but once they were settled in power they said you do what you want to do but no public performance of your religion Bhaktivinoda Thakur contrasts this later on when the Britishers ruled India initially when the East India Company was ruling at that time they had a clear agenda we have come here only for commercial purposes in fact for a large part of the rule of the British East India Company in India from about 1757 to 1857 from the battle of Plassey to the Indian revolution when they were ruling, they did not even allow a single Christian missionary to enter India they said if you try to convert the Indians they will get provoked and then our commercial interests will get well interfered, so what they would do is when Jagannath Rathyatra would be there the British government had arranged that they would have their policemen and they would shoot guns in honour like an honourable person comes along, guns are shot so they would shoot guns in honour of Jagannath they had no devotional understanding of Jagannath simply they wanted to keep their local people appeased and Bhaktivinoda Thakur appreciates this he says at least under the British rule we were able to practise Bhakti openly whereas previously under the Muslim rule we were not able to practise Bhakti openly so of course there was a different danger that came up when the Muslims were ruling, they destroyed temples directly but when the Britishers were ruling they had a system of education by which they destroyed the faith that made people go to the temples so there is always opposition to Bhakti but suffice it to say here that the major opposition was not just from outside the tradition from Muslims, actually there were also the caste Brahmins and they did not like the popular religion that was Bhakti unfortunate history of this world is that everything by the power of time Krishna says in 4.3 that by the power of time things get deteriorated so if a king is in power for a long time the tendency is to have that power corrupt oneself can you come ahead some devotees are standing outside so now the same unfortunately happened with the Brahminical rulers also so the Brahmins who had power over the general people because they were the priests and the Brahmins are traditionally called as Bhudeva Bhudeva means they are gods on the earth the kings were called as Naradeva and the Brahmins were called Bhudeva so the idea is that the kings and the Brahmins they are the links for the general people with God the king represents the political or the martial power of God and the Brahmins represent the spiritual power of God so the Brahmins had a lot of power and it happened that rather the power is meant to be used to do good to people but they started using the power to just gain more and more prestige and privilege and when Bhakti as a popular religion started off and started becoming very popular the Brahmins felt threatened because if a Yajna is to be performed then a Brahmin is required, the Brahmin knows the mantra, the Brahmin knows the rituals the Brahmin performs all the sacrifices but if religion is to be performed by Kirtan then no Brahmin is required, anybody can do Kirtan so what happened by this is the Brahmin has felt he would become sidelined and that's why one of the dogmas that they propagated is actually the names of Hari are not meant to be chanted publicly they are not meant to be chanted publicly actually we will see again and again in Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's pastime Haridas Thakur, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, they are all code verses from scripture how the names of Hari are not only meant to be chanted publicly actually chanting publicly is far more beneficial than chanting privately but as scripture Krishna has given the human mind the intelligence to interpret anything in any way that one wants we can take any truth or any aspect there was once an anti-alcohol campaigner and he used to give talks about how alcohol is dangerous but he found that people were not very convinced so he decided to do a demonstration so he got alcohol in a container and he had a box in which he had kept a fly, an insect and he opened the insect and he put it in the container and within a few moments the insect fluttered and it sank and died that was how toxic that alcohol is and then he looked jubilantly and all the people were assembled so what did he learn from this? nobody wanted to say what was the lesson but there was one person who was smiling so what is the lesson? he said when we eat alcohol all the germs in our stomach will die so different people think not just differently but sometimes utterly opposite ways so the same practise the same scripture which actually is meant to make God accessible to people so brahmanas have been given power and position so that they can make scripture more accessible to people but if the brahmanas they start holding on all scripture knowledge to themselves they start holding that knowledge then people become spiritually deprived V.C. Srila Prabhupada, he wrote his books in English why? he could have very well written his books in Sanskrit but the problem is how many of the people who need spiritual knowledge know Sanskrit so it is important that whatever message is presented is presented in a way that people can understand and appreciate so bhakti tradition within Indian culture itself the bhakti tradition was a very strong reform movement which was democratising religion making the religious rituals and practises accessible to everyone and this the brahmanas did not like and we see that all over India there are different bhakti saints and wherever they are they often face persecution from the local brahmanas who have power there is another pastime which we will not go into in detail but just the principle Haridas Thakur was a great saint and he, such a great saint that Chetan Mahaprabhu declared him to be namachari and when he was chanting the holy names now he was born in a muslim family but he had become attracted to Krishna bhakti and he was chanting ecstatically and even Hindus were inspired by his chanting of the holy names but after he had become transformed and such a great saint that most people did not even know that he was born in a muslim family, they just saw him as a saint you know a saint, he does not need to know what his past is a saint, it is said that that bhakti saint Haridas Thakur tells the story that how we always tend to remember people's past and try to pull them down so he said that there were two friends who were living in the same neighbourhood and children play, children are sometimes semi-clothed sometimes unclothed, they play around here and there so one of them, he went on to become the prime minister of the country afterwards and then his friend, whenever he would meet him, he would say you remember, I saw you when you were unclothed so he says what is the point of that, there is a complete change in the position so people would not even notice that Haridas Thakur was actually born in a muslim family but who noticed was the Kasi Brahmanas because they felt that oh this Haridas Thakur was a true saint and people were respecting him and they felt that we are not getting the kind of respect that he is getting so actually they went and complained to the muslim rulers so they went and complained to the muslim rulers that he is deviating from our dharma he is deviating from Hinduism and now the muslims are not really very interested and ok it is your religion, you do what you want to do, why are you coming with problems to us then when they saw they were not getting interested then they add further fuel to fire, you know, actually he has already deviated from your dharma also he was a muslim, he has left Islam, he has come to Hinduism and now he is following Hinduism also then they became alarmed, so the point is that often the enemies inside the house are more dangerous than the enemies outside the house so in this Haridas Thakur was persecuted by the muslim rulers, not because he was a muslim but because first the Hindus complained about him the Hindu Kasi Brahmanas, so something similar happened over here Chaitanya Mahaprabhu when he was chanting the holy names then there is a slightly different dynamic here, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was born in a Brahmin family and a very respected Brahmin family so he was always very respected and further he was not just born in a Brahmin family, he was a phenomenal scholar and the tragedy is that Navadvip was a land of phenomenal scholarship at the same time none of the scholarship culminated in Bhakti there were scholars who studied lots of books but they were lost in the books so it is said that Kulshikar Maharaj in one of his prayers he says that if one doesn't remember Krishna then he tells how all the various religious practises are useless he says if somebody fasts without remembering Krishna then that fasting is simply a weight reducing exercise and you see nowadays fasting is becoming popular, the main reason is people are not really interested in spiritual purposes they are fasting because they feel, oh my figure will improve by this so this is predicted actually by Kulshikar Maharaj long before, he says fasting is simply a weight reducing exercise somebody may do a lot of rituals, they are like the bathing of an elephant, you bathe to clean one's self and after that one's self only makes one's self unclean so like that, not much influencing by the rituals then he says if one does yajnas that yajna, if it is done without the remembrance of Krishna it is like putting ghee on a pile of ashes ghee in a fire is good but pile of ashes is useless and then he says that if one studies scriptures studying of scripture is like crying in the wilderness if somebody is lost in the forest and cries there is no one to come and rescue if you are crying in a place where there are others, that's fine so he says studying scripture without remembering Krishna is like crying in the wilderness because scripture is so vast and there are so many things taught in scripture and there are many scriptures and every sentence in scripture can be explained in different ways so therefore, what had happened to the scholars in Navdeep was they were scholarly but they had become misdirected away from the purpose of scholarship that is Bhakti, that is Krishna so it was in such a setting where Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appeared and the primary focus of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mission was to elevate those who were followers of the Vedic tradition to the conclusion of the Vedic tradition see, there are some interactions of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu with the broad Muslim rulers, we will discuss one in this past time Chand Kazi and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu when he goes to North India he meets some Pathans and he makes them into Vaishnavas so there are a few interactions but Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's primary focus was that he wanted those who were followers of the tradition but they had deviated from the purpose of the tradition to elevate them to a higher understanding and gradually that mission once it is internally established soundly then it will be spread further outwards and that was later done by Bhaktivinoda Thakur, Bhaktivinoda Thakur and then our Devashila Prabhupada when he took it far and wide the tradition in Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's times Chaitanya Mahagavata, Chaitanya Charita Amrit when they talk about how fallen people are their focus is that oh how fallen people are that people take a bath in the Ganga but they never chant the name of Narayana today we think if somebody takes a bath in Ganga that's a good thing it's a good thing, but people were doing a good thing but they were forgetting the purpose of that good thing so in this particular situation when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appeared this pastime happens Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's pastimes are described in many books after he departed 27 biographies were written and among these 27 biographies most of them were in Bengali and a couple of them were in Sanskrit and most of them are simply biographies the last biography of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu that was written was Chaitanya Charita Amrit and Chaitanya Charita Amrit has a very fascinating position in the Gaudiya Vaishnava history it is practically the only book in Bengali history that has a Sanskrit commentary on it normally there are Sanskrit books and there are vernacular commentaries on it but this is a Bengali book with a Sanskrit commentary on it the commentary was written by Vishwanath Jyotapur unfortunately that commentary is no longer available now maybe it is there somewhere in some Vaishnava's house in Bengal in some musty corner of a cupboard or something like that and maybe it will be found by Lord Chaitanya's mercy but among these 27 commentaries most of the commentaries were written by the followers of Lord Chaitanya who lived in Bengal and they described the past times of Lord Chaitanya very beautifully so Chaitanya Mangal, Chaitanya Bhagavad, Chaitanya Charita Chaitanya Charita Amrit Mahakavya, Chaitanya Chandrodaya Natak many of these books were written like this now these books were written in Bengali and parallel with this in Vrindavan the Goswamis went and they wrote books in Sanskrit because they are in Vrindavan and even then Sanskrit was the main language for intellectual and spiritual discourse in India and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu wanted Rupa Sanatana Goswami to bring respectability, mainstream respectability to Gaudiya Vaishnavism so they wrote in Sanskrit because that is where that is the main language of scholarship and the books that they wrote, they are not focused on Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu why? because in Vrindavan how many people know Chaitanya Mahaprabhu he had come once for two months, performed Sankirtan stunned everyone, but then he had gone so the same message, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had directly reputed Rupa Sanatana Goswami but they presented the message in all types of circumstances they saw Vrindavan is the place of Krishna there if you talk about Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, people will not appreciate so much so all the books of the Goswamis that they have written, they are about Krishna and they are philosophical books so Prabhupada when he went to America most of the time he just talked about Bhagavad Gita basically, you are not the body, you are the soul, chant Hare Krishna and after a long long time he gradually started introducing, first he introduced Krishna then he introduced Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, then he introduced Radharani it was gradually he started introducing things because people cannot accept everything immediately so step by step according to people's level we have to present things one of the offences to the holy name we say is that to instruct faithless persons about the glories of the holy name so now this is a very interesting offence interesting means what? does it mean that we are not to instruct people? you say don't instruct faithless people about the glories of the holy name well when I came I was faithless most people are initially going to be faithless so what does it mean? it essentially means that we should not tell people things which they cannot have faith in so we should instruct people according to their present faith level and then as their faith increases then we give them higher instructions so if somebody doesn't believe in God itself and we say how wonderful Krishna is on his little finger he lifted Govardhan for 7 days this is just Hindu mythology we leave it at that and if somebody goes away they are faithless people only they are going to go to hell well that is a very uncompassionate way of preaching so yes there will be always a challenge to faith but it is our responsibility to present Krishna's message in a way that it makes sense to people it makes sense to people and gradually people rise up so once Sri Prabhupada was asked by some of his disciples on a morning walk that there is a description in the 10th canto that Maharaj Ugrasen he had some millions and millions of bodyguards so they asked Dwaraka is on an island how were there so many millions of bodyguards where would they live? where were their toilets? where were their homes? so now Prabhupada could well have answered Krishna can do anything Prabhupada told his devotees he said among all the thousands of verses in the Bhagavatam was that the only thing that you found to talk with the scholars? see one we have to present the message according to time and place circumstances so what the Goswamis did is because Vrindavan is the place of Lord Krishna they focused on Lord Krishna and they explained how Krishna's glories have been revealed more beautifully by Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and that way they brought in Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu also so the books which were written in Vrindavan were primarily about the glories of Krishna and the philosophical glory of Krishna Bhakti as taught by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu whereas the books in Navadvip were primarily about the pastimes of Lord Chaitanya so Krishna's King Raj Goswami was born in Navadvip from there he went to Vrindavan and so from his childhood he was always hearing Lord Chaitanya's pastimes then he went to Vrindavan and he got trained systematically in philosophy, the six systems of philosophy and after that he wrote a book and the book that he wrote is Chaitanya Charita Amrit in this book he quotes 53 different books it's a very scholarly book and it's actually not so much a biography it is a book of theology in the mode of a biography that means normally when we read some stories, if we are reading some Bhagavatam stories and some prayers, something philosophical comes up our tendency is to fast forward, skip the prayers and go to the next story because we like the stories but in Chaitanya Charita Amrit, Krishna's King Raj Goswami does the exact opposite stories he does fast forward and philosophy he expands why? because the stories have already been told by other biographers in their books what he is doing is, he is integrating the biographies of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu which were written in Bengal and the philosophy which was written by the Goswamis in Vrindavan and he is putting it all together in one book and this one book became the final authority for Gaudiya Vaishnavism and afterwards nobody wrote biographies of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, anybody who had to write, they wrote explanations of Chaitanya Charita Amrit itself so Chaitanya Charita Amrit describes this pastime of Chandakasi in the Adi Leela and there it is described briefly and the focus is on the philosophy, so we will discuss on Chaitanya Charita Amrit in our class day after tomorrow and the drama and the action that is described primarily in Chaitanya Bhagavatam and Chaitanya Bhagavatam also has three parts, Adi Khandam, Adi Madhya and Aditya but the divisions are slightly different so the same pastime comes in the Adi Leela of Chaitanya Charita Amrit it comes in the Madhya Leela of Chaitanya Bhagavatam so what all has happened till now, you know Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appeared and he was a child of the Brahmana family and initially he was a scholar as is the as was the trend of those times we could say trend of those times, people were scholarly at that time Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was also a scholar and a phenomenal scholar and initially he also did not seem to practise any bhakti and the devotees would pray oh this Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, this Nimai, he was called Nimai and when he grew up he was called Nimai Pandit this Nimai Pandit, you know he is so brilliant but with his brilliance he tries to catch us in word jugglery and he doesn't practise bhakti, if only he practises bhakti he will attract so many people to the path of Krishna so normally you know when we see non devotees having many abilities a devotee's mood is to see that whoever has any abilities if only they became devotees and they use their abilities for Krishna's service how wonderful it would be the first time in the Ramayana when Hanuman saw Ravana the first time when he saw was when Hanuman was searching in the bed chambers looking for Sita, that time Hanuman and Ravana were sleeping and then later on second time when he saw was in the court after he had been arrested and he was brought when he saw Ravana was in his imperial glory at that time and the first thought that Hanuman had he has such power, such brilliance if only he had been on the side of Dharma he would have helped the world so much so even in a person like Ravana who was not only evil he had already done the terribly evil act of abducting Sita even in him what Hanuman saw first is the potential for bhakti the potential for Dharma so you know all of us when we meet people we often say this person is not a devotee this person is not a devotee, this person is a karmi this person does this sinful activity, this person does that now if we approach everyone with a critical mentality first we have a critical mentality towards non-devotees they don't practise this, they don't practise this then that critical mentality comes towards devotees also this devotee doesn't do this, this devotee doesn't do this and by that we essentially alienate everyone bhakti means we need to see the spark of spiritual potential that is there and we fan that one of the things that happens with Shila Prabhupada is he uses strong words on many occasions and we often catch on to those words and we think this is what Shila Prabhupada he was categorically categorically teaching and strongly speaking yes he did that, but on a one to one level he was very loving, he was very caring and if Prabhupada had been constantly judgemental he would not have been able to stay in America only he was a pure Vaishnava from the birth who had always followed the regulatory principles and he was living among people whose only regulatory principle was to break all regulatory principles so how did he stay there? he stayed there because he was not judgemental he saw the spiritual spark and he fanned that spiritual spark similarly here the devotees, they saw Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Chaitanya Mahaprabhu tried to make fun of them but the devotees would preach that Chaitanya let this Nimaya Pandit become a devotee and then to their great amazement that dream became fulfilled Nimaya Pandit became a devotee by the grace of Ishwara Puri and then after he became a devotee he started manifesting his devotion then he called the devotees and said let us perform kirtan and then at that time they would perform kirtan privately usually in the house of Srivasthakur and occasionally in the house of Chandrasekharacharya who was also another associate of Lord Chaitanya and when he started performing kirtans his becoming a devotee was itself breaking news in Nadia everybody was stunned, Nimaya what has happened to him so actually even his own teacher, he had a grammar teacher and his grammar teacher also came Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was just 16-17 years old initially Chaitanya Mahaprabhu actually became a phenomenal scholar by the age of 14 when he defeated Keshav Kashmiri and then he manifested his devotion by the age of 20 and at the age of 24 he took sannyas so by the age of 20, because of the age of 14 itself he had become a great scholar and normally, imagine somebody at the age of 15, 16, 17, 18 if somebody goes abroad just to study some Indian goes to America for study must be a very clever person or somebody gets a PhD by the age of 18 or 19 what a precocious person but can we imagine somebody at the age of 18 or 19 going abroad to teach abroad that was the calibre of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu scholarship that even before he came to India at the age of 18, he went from Bengal to Bangladesh and that he went for teaching and he got so much fame after that so he was the foremost teacher and scholar in Nadia and when he changed over to Bhakti it was amazing so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, what he demonstrates through this is that every culture has its own definition of success every culture has its own definition of success and people within that culture will be attracted to those who have achieved that definition of success so for example in that Mahabharata and Ramayana the definition of success was the greatest person is the king so the Mahabharata, Ramayana and Purana generally depict how the kings were saintly how the kings were devotees so if those who have the prevailing definition of success they have achieved that success and then they practise spiritual life then everyone becomes attracted so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the prevailing definition of success in Nadi was scholarship and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu achieved unparalleled success in scholarship and from there he started practising Bhakti so Bhakti is not about giving up what we have achieved in our material life it is about going beyond what we have achieved in our material life Bhakti is not about giving up but going beyond we don't let what we have achieved in our material life stop us we move forward something higher Chaitanya Mahaprabhu achieved what people dreamt for and then he said we have to achieve something more and people saw this, if somebody else, there were many Vaishnavas who were already practising Bhakti at that time but the scholars did not take that seriously but when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu became a Vaishnava everybody was amazed and there were three different reactions broadly speaking one was the devotees were jubilant their hearts, dreams were fulfilled and they would come together and perform ecstatic kirtans then there were again the Brahmins who were all scholars and they thought Nimaya has got spoiled now Nimaya has got spoiled so even Chaitanya Nimaya Pandit's own teacher he was Gangadhar Pandit and Gangadhar Pandit also had his Tola Tola means his own students so although Nimaya was his student he had more students than his teacher also that was his calibre and that was of course the joy of Gangadhar Pandit also this is the teacher's greatest joy when the student becomes more learned than the teacher of course the student should never think that I will become more learned than my teacher so Gangadhar Pandit was very happy and when he came to know Chaitanya Mahaprabhu he just stopped teaching after he became a devotee one day he came to the school where he was supposed to teach and he started speaking something speaking about the root of words Sanskrit grammar is quite technical so to understand the roots of words and suddenly he quoted a verse from the Gita the root of everything is Krishna and all of them are pointing towards Krishna and as he was speaking of Krishna he just went to a trance completely lost and he spoke and spoke for a long time and finally he came out of trance and asked what did I speak he said we don't know what you spoke but it was wonderful but did I speak about grammar he said no you did not speak about grammar Chaitanya Mahaprabhu thought that actually I cannot teach you anymore he closed his books and said I give you leave you can go to any other teacher and learn from me I cannot teach you then his students were so mesmerised by his devotional brilliance and his scholarly brilliance they all closed their books also they said whatever you teach we will accept that so it was not only he became a devotee all his students also became devotees and it was you know like imagine one day there was a school next day there was nothing over there you wonder what happened this whole school disappeared so that was one by one what Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was doing was creating sensations so Gangadhar Pandit came and told him see your father was also a Vaishnava your father was Jagannath Mishra he was also a Vaishnava your great grandfather Nirambar Chakravarthy was also a Vaishnava but they were also scholars you should be balanced have your scholarship also and have your bhakti also so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was very humble he said what you are saying is perfectly right but he said Krishna has conquered my heart I cannot do anything please forgive me and he spoke with such sincerity such humility that Gangadhar Pandit's heart melted and he said I bless you if you have such bhakti that you just cannot think of anything else then there is no need to stop yourself just practise bhakti whole heartedly so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's whole hearted embrace of bhakti among the scholars initially it created consternation what is happening how did he it created puzzlement Chaitanya Mahaprabhu started performing kirtans he would perform kirtans in closed doors there are multiple reasons for this from the external point of view the reason was there was the government which would have persecuted but those are only external reasons the internal reason of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was that he wanted to relish bhakti rasa and to relish bhakti rasa suppose now say we are discussing about the ecstatic pastimes of Lord Chaitanya and suddenly somebody asks what is the proof that God exists this is not the forum for this question the whole mood will get spoiled or somebody asks something about atheism or something like that there will be a rasa abhas so like that there were all these people who were just interested in devotion intense devotion and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu did not want that rasa to get lost so he wanted to relish that rasa more and more that's why he had only devotees and they would perform kirtans alone, in their own association so now these Brahmins they used to think that we are the delimiters we will say this is a sacred space you Shudras you cannot come here you cannot come here but this Nimai Pandit is telling us you cannot come here who dares stop the Brahmins from coming somewhere they were incensed so they started maybe they are doing some sinful activities over there privately and all sorts of rumours started maybe they are getting some women over there and debauching the women over there or they thought maybe they are doing some black magic over there when when people want to blaspheme someone they just need to there blasphemy often has no basis in reality at all they start something and distort it completely Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had such exalted reasons for doing the kirtan privately all sorts of rumours started going around and there were the common people they had seen Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and they kept meeting him during the day time they had great admiration and reverence for him and they started feeling how unfortunate that we are not able to participate in Lord Chaitanya's kirtans so these two attitudes were radically different one is the Brahmins are thinking we are qualified and how audacious it is that we are not being allowed to participate and the common people they were thinking we are unqualified and we are unfortunate if only somehow we would be able to participate in these kirtans and in this way both of them were actually striving they both desired to enter into the kirtans but neither could enter now while this was going on at one particular point some of the people came along they thought Chaitanya Mahaprabhu does not allow us to enter into the kirtans but at least we will seek his blessings so they came to Lord Chaitanya and they told him please give us some instruction of how we should grow in our spiritual life and at that time Nimai Panditji told them always chant the names of Krishna remember Krishna, worship Krishna make him your life and soul Krishna Mata, Krishna Pitta, Krishna Pranadhan make Krishna your mother, Krishna your father, Krishna your life, Krishna your wealth and he personally chanted the Hare Krishna Mahamantra and when he chanted the Hare Krishna Mahamantra it was almost like he initiated all of them and they were filled with such spiritual energy Bhaktivinoda Thakur says what happens at the time of initiation it is not just a vile sacrifice or some ritual the spiritual master invests invests Krishna in the holy name that means the holy name are not different at one level but when the spiritual master prays this soul is a sincere soul O Krishna, please manifest this soul through the holy name just like we have deities where the spiritual master invokes the Lord to become manifest in the deity similarly Krishna is always present in the holy name but when the spiritual master prays then Krishna's presence becomes more manifest so like that when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu chanted and gave the people became infused with ecstasy they became jubilant and Nimai Pandit has told us to chant he has blessed us and they all started chanting jubilantly now the devotees themselves were discreet but these were new people those who come new to any path they have a lot of enthusiasm, sometimes they have over enthusiasm sometimes we take 6 months, 1 year, 2 years to become devotees and once we are convinced we think whoever meet, in one meeting they should become devotees we try to doze the whole philosophy in one hour one lecture, one talk so it doesn't work like that so these people had tremendous enthusiasm and they thought Nimai has told us to do kirtans so they all started doing kirtans and Nimai Pandit and the devotees were doing kirtans privately but these people started doing kirtans publicly they were dancing on the streets and they were singing and they were using all the instruments, loud kirtans they were doing and all this noise it went to the Brahmins first and the Brahmins were as it is antagonised that Nimai Pandit is not allowing us to come in his circle now he is taking our people also to his circle they got angry and they informed the Muslim soldiers do you know what is happening do you know what disruption is happening in your kingdom what is the disruption? and he went around and when he saw loud kirtan happening he became, he was surprised so actually he says these Hindus what happened to them till now they used to practise their religion in a very subdued way how is it that they have got so much courage from where have they got this courage so interestingly Chaitanya Charitamruta uses the word Hindus so 3-4 times it uses and the word Hindu it uses more as a as a contradistinguisher to Islam that means those who are not Muslims they are Hindus the way Hinduism is present in India today there are so many people with so many beliefs some of which are based on scripture, some of which are partially based on scripture some of which are not at all based on scripture that to define Hinduism becomes very difficult so at one time a court case came against the Indian Supreme Court for a particular person which law should apply so then the Supreme Court of India decided that anyone in India who is not a Muslim not a Christian, not a Jain, not a Buddhist and not an atheist is a Hindu so there are definitions by negation applied to it so something similar is used over here in Chaitanya Charitamruta so Hinduism is more of a geographical marker so those who have come from outside India they were not Hindus, they were Muslims and everyone else was Hindu Chaitanya Charitamruta uses that word and he says Hindus they were very subdued what has made them so confident, so evil so then people told him oh this is because of Nimai Pandit Nimai Pandit now he had also heard about Nimai Pandit because Nilambal Chakravarti was a great scholar and he interacted with Nilambal Chakravarti and he knew his grandson he says he was a scholar what happened to him he says no he has also become a Vaishnava and he heard and observed for some time and then he thought what to do so he said that this is a law and order problem that's what he said his idea is that whatever religion you want to do it, do it in private you cannot do it in public so he went with his soldiers and marched in the midst of all the people over there now some of the devotees were also there, they were watching they were happy that all these people were doing kirtans and he just came right in the middle of them and just started smashing he smashed the mudanga, he started chasing and threatening people and actually the devotees that performed kirtan or the devotees and people in general had performed kirtan throughout the day and by the evening time the news had come to Chand Kasi and when he had got the news by that time he came charging out and he disrupted everything over there when he disrupted everything at that time people started running here and there and he was chasing them finally he shouted to them he said now it is evening so I am letting you go actually evening he couldn't see anyone only so he let them go, but he said tomorrow onwards if any of you do public kirtan like this I will, now he also had this threat he did not say that I will put you in jail he said I will convert all of you to Muslims so this was also a prevailing dogma that was there at that time that if a Muslim just put some water on the body of a Hindu the Hindu would become Muslim so now how did this particular idea come about there are principles for maintaining purity for example if somebody is going to the altar to serve the deities, then we take a proper bath and then we don't touch contaminated things that is because Krishna in his deity manifestation we have to serve him purely so purity is meant to purity internally of course and externally cleanliness this is meant to facilitate the elevation of our consciousness purity our being pure is not meant to push people away it is not meant to make others feel impure it is not meant to make others feel looked down upon in some traditional Indian temples sometimes it happens that the pujari he wants to give some flowers or some prasad he will give it from above as if you know all these people if they touch me I will become contaminated so that sort of holier than that attitude is very alienating so the Brahmins at that time there are two different things cleanliness is important and standards of cleanliness and purity have to be maintained but that doesn't mean that those who are impure have to be pushed away and people have to be made feel alienated by looking down upon them or judging them as impure so what had happened was at that time this dogma had come that if so the Muslims were considered impure because they used to eat meat and many other things like that so anybody who touches them that person also becomes impure and if they sprinkle some water then the person also becomes impure so impure that person becomes a Muslim later on there is a story of a Brahmin who somehow it is a long story I won't go into it he was converted to Islam and he went to different places to different Brahmanas and what can I do I don't want to give up Vedic Dharma there is a simple way for you to become a Brahmin again he says make 50 kilos of boiling hot ghee and drink it all if I drink that hot ghee I will die if you die with ghee in your stomach you will become a Brahmin I will die in the next life so he said there must be some other way and he went away he came to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Vrindavan and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu told him that actually the real cleansing that is required is internal just chant Hare Krishna and you will become greater than a Brahmin so here why I told this story is that in that context this was a great threat if somebody is converted to Muslim then what happened because of the social segregation even if one family member became a Muslim then the other family members because of the smart rules and regulations that had come at that time, the other family members couldn't meet with that person so now somebody has become a Muslim actually he has not become a Muslim, just some Muslim water has fallen on him but because of that what happens one family member is a Muslim waterfalls so he has become a Muslim apparently and the Hindus by rule cannot associate with him so what happens all the other family members have to by force become Muslim so it was a terrible situation and everybody now a days people who came they were horrified and the Brahmins when they came to know about it they started exalting they said serves you right you were disrupting our religion and now they had their own interpretation their interpretation was what amazing they said because you people have violated the sacred Hindu Dharma by chanting the names of Hari in public so that Hari has got angry and he has punished you through Lord Ashina such twisting of logic another threat they would give is actually you know Lord Vishnu is sleeping you chant his name loudly his sleep will get disturbed Lord Vishnu sleeps and actually when Lord Vishnu wakes up there is pralay so by your chanting you will cause pralay in the world you will cause destruction of the world so you take whatever part of the scripture you want and just rearrange it in one's own concocted ideas so this news so the Brahmins were exalting the common people were horrified and the devotees they didn't know what to do then they went to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and they said Mahaprabhu I think we will have to leave this place and go somewhere else we can't stay here we cannot live without chanting the holy names but Kasiya said we are not allowed to chant the holy names so now at this state because at that time it was an arbitrary power so when he said you cannot chant the holy name he didn't mean that you cannot chant in public or you cannot chant in private also and who will live to take the risk tomorrow he may say that I may not even chant in private and he may trespass into people's houses they said that what can we do we may have to leave this place Chaitanya Mahaprabhu asked what happened so the devotees told him that he came and he disrupted the kirtans he broke a mudanga as soon as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu heard about the Harinam Sankirtan being disrupted the mudanga became broken he became furious his eyes became like blazing fire and he said nobody can stop the Sankirtan of the holy names he says tell everyone that tomorrow we will go on a procession so he has marshalled the Harinam Sankirtan today tomorrow the Harinam Sankirtan will march on him and we will go right to his palace and we will confront him and all of you he said you bring torches with you so with those torches all of you should make torches and bring those torches and we will march to his palace and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu spoke this he spoke it with such authority, such power, such anger that all those who heard it their fears disappeared and the news spread that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is going to take out a procession and going to march to Janakasi and rather than creating fear you are going to provoke him because Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had that potency everybody was filled with anticipation, excitement and joy yes there will be a procession and this procession what happened in it that we will discuss in our class tomorrow so are there any questions questions or asabhas yes Prabhu, Nirmala Pandit initially being a scholar and then becoming a devotee was it like sort of a leela of his because he was Krishna himself yeah so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Chaitanya Mahaprabhu first being a scholar and then becoming a devotee is that a leela yes of course, he as I mentioned Chaitanya Mahaprabhu demonstrated the contemporary definition of success so see in any society people are attracted to those who are successful in that society so for example say in India engineers and doctors are considered to be like residents of demigod planets special people and those who are from IIT they are like the primal devatas the topmost of the devatas so now if an ordinary student becomes a devotee that is ok but if a student from IIT becomes a devotee then it becomes big news so why because those people are those students are demonstrating the contemporary definition of success and people are attracted to that Krishna also said so whatever great people do, common people do that so now this is a universal principle what great people do, common people will do that but what is considered great that will vary in different cultures so in Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's time Vedic scholarship that was considered great and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu by his pastime arranged that he became a scholar not just as good as those scholars but better than those scholars and then after that after becoming a scholar of that calibre then he became a devotee so by that he demonstrated that actually this whatever you think is success bhakti is greater than that bhakti is greater than that so of course anybody can practise bhakti but if people who are considered successful in society they start practising bhakti then that can have tremendous effect in attracting many many people towards Krishna George Harrison became a devotee thousands and thousands of people became attracted to Krishna bhakti because of him and through him so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu demonstrated that contemporary definition of success any other questions yes did it cause greater damage to Vaishnav culture was it the Muslims or was it the Britishers actually speaking it was the Hindus see if we see from a historical point of view also the Muslims and the Britishers were invaders they were never much in number it was the Hindus who were divided they were power hungry so from the Kaliyuga from the point when Shringi cursed Parishad Maharaj that began the decline of the power of the Brahmanas and the Brahmanas as they started abusing their power that was one graphic expression of abuse of their power but subsequently that's what they were doing and there is actually meant to be a chain in society that the Brahmanas are connected to God the Brahmanas subordinate themselves to God the Kshatriyas subordinate themselves to the Brahmanas and the rest of the society submits themselves to Kshatriyas and in that way the whole society goes towards God so the Brahmanas became more self-centred and less connected with God then what happened next was Kshatriyas became self-centred and they became self-centred in a very very luxurious and often irresponsible sort of way they had power and they had a lot of over confidence and these invaders what can they do for us and that's how time and time again invaders came and defeated India so there is a lot of historical factors involved but primarily the fall of spiritual culture in India happened when the Kshatriyas when Brahmanas and Kshatriyas became corrupted so the Brahmanas and Kshatriyas together are meant to guide society and throughout the world history wherever any dramatic change has happened in any part of the world it is by this combination of intellectuals and political rulers Buddhism was just a small religion till Ashoka adopted it Christianity was a persecuted religion till Constantine made it the official religion of the Roman Empire so whichever so basically first of all in both these cases the rulers found something something impressive in the intellectuals and then they became influenced so the primary thing that Prabhupada said is that we should focus on the Krishna consciousness movement is meant to create Brahmanas and when there are Brahmanas gradually Kshatriyas will become attracted and then there will be a broader effect in society now going further relatively speaking the Muslims ruled India for much more 700-800 years the Britishers ruled India for around 200 years and the changes that happened were different see Islam although it is a political ruler of most of India Islam was never considered an intellectual competitor to the Vindic path it was a political superior but it was never considered an intellectual competitor so even when many Indians converted to Islam it was either because of force or it is because of alienation because the higher caste Brahmins were exploiting the lower caste and they converted over they didn't get much relief because there was even among the Muslims there was a difference between those who were original Muslims and those who were converted Muslims so the discrimination went on but the point is that there was not much intellectual damage there was cultural damage in terms of temples being destroyed and things like that but when Britishers came to India they had the power of science with them the scientific revolution had started off in Europe after Renaissance and they had western education and with it they seemed to have phenomenal power through science and technology so when they started teaching in India it seemed that the Britishers seemed to be like not just intellectual competitors but intellectual superiors and that's why it was many intellectuals became attracted to the western culture and of course they did a lot of things they also adopted a western education system English education system in India and because of that a significant number of Indian intellectuals were created who were quite westernised in their thinking and unfortunately the Brahmins at that time thought that English is a malaysia language so many of the Indian if you see roughly the time when Bhaktivinod Thakur was there from 1810 to around 1910 or some period that is called the period of Bengali Renaissance in Indian history so Bengali Renaissance means there were many Hindus at that time most of the prominent leaders who are considered prominent leaders of modern Hinduism they appeared at that time and most of them were in Bengal so they tried according to their capacity their best to try to understand understand their own tradition so they came up with various different understandings most of them were speculative but the problem was they at least had the western education and they tried to understand their own tradition and then they presented their own tradition according to their understanding but those who were the traditional caste Brahmin they said its English language there is no need for it so there were traditional scholars and there were these moral scholars both of them were actually sympathetic to the Hindu Dharma but there was no communication between them Gaudiya Vaishnavism would have also suffered that fate there were the traditional scholars but Bhaktivinod Thakur was a member of these educated intellectuals they are called Bhadraloka and he presented Gaudiya Vaishnavism in a way in which the mainstream intellectuals could understand and appreciate so culturally speaking more damage was done during the Muslim culture, Muslim invasions intellectually speaking more damage happened not all of it by conscious design of the Britishers but it was a lot of other factors also happened during the British rule in general our Acharyas have not been too hostile to the British rule Bhaktivinod Thakur he said that we at least have the freedom of practising our own religion Bhaktivinod Thakur even he welcomed the Viceroy of India when the temple was made in Navadvip so Prabhupada was told by Bhaktivinod Thakur that independence is temporary the point here is that focus on spiritual growth so the point was that as devotees we don't focus too much on geopolitical realities because they will come and go certainly we have to be aware so that we don't unnecessarily provoke things just like a doctor, the primary business of the doctor is to give the medicine but at the same time a responsible doctor needs to know the case history of the patient so that if I am giving this medicine it should not have some side effect so sensitivity is not compromise compromise means the doctor stops giving the medicine only but insensitivity means that the doctor doesn't enquire about the case history actually different people come from different backgrounds and we have to be sensitive but our primary focus should be on administering our medicine so we learn about the contemporary culture so that we don't unnecessarily alienate people over there we don't unnecessarily touch off some of their sore spots but if we focus on the medicine of Krishna Consciousness on sharing Bhakti Yoga purely that will attract people whatever situation it is and that is because this is itself a big issue and in India there is an increasing arising of nationalistic Hinduism not necessarily bad but that is also not necessarily spiritual it may be conducive to spirituality but it is a highly politicalised version of Hinduism and there is a lot of antipathy in that towards both Britishers as well as Muslims but we cannot blame current generation of people for whatever wrongs previous generations have done so rather than doing too much of a post mortem of the past the focus is on understanding the present and presenting Krishna Bhakti according to present situations does it address your question? so thank you very much one question what conversation made Nimai Pandit Chaitanya Mahaprabhu the conversation between Eswarapuri how did Nimai Pandit become Chaitanya Mahaprabhu so it was not a specific conversation per se it was his name from birth was Nimai, one of his names and that was the name he adopted when he became a scholar so he became Nimai Pandit then when he took sanyas diksha at that time he was given the name Chaitanya now technically the name was Krishna Chaitanya but Chaitanya primarily and then if we see most of the times in Chaitanya Charita Amrita Krishna Das Karaj Goswami uses the word Prabhu and in Chaitanya Charita Amrita Prabhu is a reference to the lord it is not a general reference to devotees and occasionally uses the word Mahaprabhu also but primarily it is Prabhu and the word Mahaprabhu was a title given later I am not sure who exactly gave it I have not read that but the Mahaprabhu means that is actually a portmanteau, portmanteau means two words coming together so Radharani demonstrates the Mahabhava the Mahabhava is in the Antilila Chaitanya Charita Amrita described that it is the highest ecstasy of pure devotion Kevala Bhakti, that is Mahabhava so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is Radha Krishna Bhava Diti Suritam Naumi Krishna Swaroopam, He is Krishna with the complexion and the emotion of Radharani now that is embodied so it is the Prabhu who is manifesting with the Mahabhava so the Prabhu who manifests with the Mahabhava is called as Mahaprabhu that is how Nimaya Pandit came to be known as primarily Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Thank you very much Sri Chaitanya Charita Amrita Ki Jai Gauranga Mahaprabhu Ki Jai Krishna Prabhupada Ki Jai Gauravakta Vinda Ki Jai Jai Gauravakta Vinda Ki Jai Jai Krishna Prabhupada Ki Jai.