Are all the holy places in dhamas with Krishna’s footprints authentic?

Answer Podcast

So Are all the holy places In the dhams Where there are footprints of Krishna Are all these footprints necessarily Krishna’s footprints How can we know How can we know their authenticity There is Rupa Goswami talks about in the Bhakti Samasandhu About Shastra Pramana And then he talks about Loka Pramana Shastra Pramana is that which is known from Scripture And Loka Pramana is that which is known from Say about the dhams especially There are many stories about the dhams in general Which may not be found in Scripture So for example As far as our devotees have searched Or in general any sampradaya devotees have searched A famous story about Krishna Krishna having a headache And the Gopis giving their dust To him, that is not found in any Shastra But it is a beautiful story Which illustrates The principle of the selflessness Of the Gopis love for Krishna That is a story which definitely can be accepted Wholeheartedly accepted And it is accepted But it is not found in Shastra It is not found in any of the workings of our Acharyas also Maybe it is somewhere Where it is not found, where we have not yet searched But even if it is not It is simply Loka Pramana, it is acceptable So when the Loka Pramana is in accordance With Guru Sadhu Shastra It is to be accepted But sometimes the Loka Pramana is making some specific claims Which are not according to Sadhu Shastra Then It is not necessary that that has to be accepted Everything So that is in a grey zone Some people may accept it, some people may not accept it So we have to We should One of the most common words in Rajoguna is Or this or this In Satoguna quite often it is and It could be this And it could be such So for example, there are many stories Say about some particular Deities in some Dharms This Jagannath Deity or this Narasimha Deity They performed this pastime with this devotee And they may say this pastime is happening right now You know this Pujari went there And then it was hot and he forgot to switch off the AC Or whatever These are what you could say These are at the level of devotional Folktales Now I am not using the word folktales in a very negative or derogatory sense But simply They are not Shastra Pramana And one doesn’t have to Take them at the same level As Say Kirche and Gopinath Selling Kheer for Gopinath for Madhavendra Puri Something similar It is not at that level Some people may accept it, some people may not accept it Sakshi Gopal Kirche and Gopinath Those are told in scripture, they are accepted by great great saints And they are put down in Canonical books That is not the case with these So there is a certain level of skepticism Different people will have different degrees of skepticism With respect to this So recently in Mayapur there was a saying that The Deities have shed tears So my position was no And Pankaj Andharipu also said that Jannivas Prabhu When I met him he said I also did not support it But it was made out as Jannivas Prabhu supported it So I think is These are things it will vary So Some devotees may consider These as literal markings This is Krishna’s footprint But there are other devotees who may not accept it And Bhakti does not require Rejecting our intelligence It requires transcending Our intelligence Transcending means we understand that there are realities Beyond what are perceived by our intelligence But That does not mean that If there is some alternative explanation Available at a practical level We are meant to just deliberately reject that and accept something These markings may have come by Even this point of criticality Self-criticality within the tradition It is talked about Narottam Das Chakra also says In one place that All holy places are not Necessarily holy Some holy places are also made for purpose of business By some people they are touted as holy So this is an example I think it comes in That book Narottam Dalas One of the books The book that is Biography of Srinivas Acharya There he mentions This is not actually a holy place Although it is thought of as a holy place by people The thing is We have to find like-minded devotees If Say there is a gathering of Vaishnavas Where a particular Senior Vaishnava is speaking about this thing And they say what is the proof for this You will be labeled as a doubter and you will be mocked over there And you will feel isolated Just don’t talk about this thing over there Talk with some other devotees whom you know They are rational They are thoughtful They evaluate evidence carefully And you will find that there is a lot of room for Difference of Understanding on these things And many different devotees have different understandings So certainly It’s not that Everything that is considered in the tradition To be like a footprint of Krishna Krishna has to be accepted as a footprint of Krishna It may be, it may not be You don’t want to consider oneself to be like Having deficient in faith because of not accepting this It’s not necessarily like that Some devotees Basically accept that which is anukul to your bhakti And keep a distance from that which is pratikula And move onwards Okay