CC daily 147 – M 6.211 – Our achievements are due to not our greatness but devotees’ desires and Krishna’s mercy

We will continue our discussion in our future talks.
Thank you. Prabhu Kahel, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is speaking here. Responding to Gopinath Acharya’s glorification of Lord Chaitanya in the previous text wherein Gopinath Acharya said that the dramatic transformation of Sarubhauma Bhattacharya is due to the potency and mercy of Lord Chaitanya.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is very humbling and endearingly responding by stating, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu has shown extraordinary mercy upon him, bestowed extraordinary mercy upon him. Such is the sweet nature of the relationship between the devotee and the Lord. The devotees give credit to the Lord and the Lord gives credit to his devotees.
In the Bhagavatam it is stated that Krishna says rather that I get my capacity to purify the world because of the glory, because I serve the Vaishnavas and I get piety by serving the Vaishnavas. And that is the secret of my potency, purifying potency. Now actually speaking everyone’s purifying potency comes from Krishna.
Even the Brahmanas, they are exalted because they are devoted to the Lord. So, but it is Krishna’s endearing humility and Lord Chaitanya is actually here amazingly taking no credit for himself. At least we see in the Bhagavatam that Krishna says yes, I have purifying potency, but he acknowledges that I have purifying potency, but he states that my purifying potency comes from the potency of the devotees, of the Brahmanas.
But here Lord Chaitanya is taking zero credit for himself. He is saying that you are a devotee and it is by your, because you have given your association to Sarobhauma, because you have desired his elevation, you have desired his deliverance, his liberation, so Lord Jagannath has had excellent mercy upon him. The point is that actually it is Lord Chaitanya’s stupendous scholarship that is responsible for the, that is instrumental for the dramatic transformation of Sarobhauma.
But rather than taking credit for that, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is giving credit to the devotees and to the Lord. He states that, firstly, he states that actually it is the devotees, it is you devotees, you prayed, you desired the deliverance, you gave your association and that is exemplary, that is important for us to remember also. Sometimes when we share Krishna Consciousness, when we desire to offer blessings to the Lord, sorry, when we desire that the Lord’s blessings fall upon someone, at that time, it is we who often, if that person gets transformed, we tend to take credit.
We often say that, we tend to say that actually it is my, I made that person into a devotee, we often think of taking credit that way and such a tendency is unfortunate because it traps us in I Consciousness and prevents us from rising to Krishna Consciousness. To rise to Krishna Consciousness, we need to acknowledge that it is Krishna who is our, who is our puppeteer. That we are ultimately, we are working on the devotional, we are working on the reciprocation of the Lord with the devotees and we want to deepen our reciprocation with the Lord.
Our goal is not to try to prove that we alone are the, we are not, we are definitely not the source of the transformational potency, that potency comes from Krishna and nor are we the sole dispenser of that potency. There are many other dispensers and often the devotional disposition is that actually because Krishna’s devotees desired the deliverance of this person, that is why Krishna used me as an instrument for this deliverance. So rather than, rather than claiming credit for what has been done, for what it may have been done to us, but still we can, our goal is not to delight in self-praise or self-obsession or self-glorification.
Our goal is to seek self-realization and Krishna realization. And the way we can seek Krishna realization is by turning, by turning events of this world towards Krishna, that means by letting the, whatever happens, even if it happens through us, we want to use it to direct our consciousness towards Krishna. So often when something happens, okay, this has happened like this, this has happened like that, we may try to see Krishna’s hand in that, but when we do something ourselves, at that time, seeing Krishna’s hand in that is not so easy.
Because we often think that, oh, this is something which I have done and just see how brilliant I am, just see how, how competent I am, just see how glorious I am. And in that way, we learn, we move onwards towards Krishna by the practice of determined bhakti. If we, we can move onwards when we are focusing on Krishna.
So Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, as a model devotee, He has come to demonstrate bhakti and demonstrating bhakti means demonstrating how best to practice bhakti. So He demonstrates here that when we are able to achieve something, we see that it is Krishna who has bestowed His mercy and it is Krishna who has bestowed the mercy, not because I am such a great instrument, but because Krishna’s devotees desired the deliverance of this person, the transformation of this person. And so to please those devotees, to fulfill their prayers, to give them joy, Krishna used me as an instrument.
In this way, this may seem like self-denigration or self-denial. I was an instrument. Why should I not take credit? But the point is, we want Krishna, we want remembrance of Krishna.
Credit, taking credit can take us away from Krishna. So that’s why rather than taking credit, we can take Krishna into our heart by remembering that it is Krishna’s mercy manifesting in reciprocation to His devotees.