CC daily 183 – 6.271 – Revelation needs to be understood through the living tradition

Thank you mukti pada shabde sakshata ishwara kahe so here Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is responding to Saru Amritacharya's attempt to reword Bhagavatam wherein in the verse namaste Sarvabhauma in his zee has changed mukti pada to bhakti pada and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu did not approve this and therefore he stated that rather than changing the word he is saying that we should try to understand the proper intent of the person who has spoken that word there is a speaker's intention in speaking a word and there is the connotation that the reader might get while on hearing the word now if there is a live speech going on then the speaker can see oh people thought that this word means this then the speaker may immediately clarify oh I didn't mean this I meant this so words can have different meanings that's why communication can often be a perilous process it has to be done very carefully so for example few decades ago the word lusty had a negative connotation it meant a person who was even now that connotation is there in the word lecherous lecherous means a person who looks at women with evil eyes with unconcealed animal appetites however lusty is the word has now quite a positive connotation so for example if a batsman is playing he played a lusty shot now what does a lusty shot mean that lusty means energetic, powerful so now in today's society lust is not considered really negative so much and the word lusty has acquired connotation as energetic so when a newborn baby is there the lusty crying of the newborn baby indicates healthy lungs people may say now obviously the child does not have any lust it's a newborn infant at least it's not present biologically or psychologically right now so there lusty simply means energetic so now if somebody may use this word in that context energetic and then the audience thinks oh lusty what is this person talking about then immediately on seeing the seeing the potential confusion seeing the ambiguity or apprehension in the audience's eyes the speaker may change one's speaker may clarify but when something is written in a book and there is no direct contact between the speaker and the audience especially for a book that has existed for thousands of years then the problem that comes by such a situation is that clarification is not possible unless there are living scholars and practitioners and exponents of that book who understand what the book meant in a sociocultural context and who try to clarify what it is that needs to be done in our case when we study scripture often we don't know Sanskrit so much that's why we may not find so many words that jar because for us Sanskrit is an unfamiliar language and then we whatever translation is given we study but if we study Sanskrit a little bit deeply and then we start looking at the dictionary for the meanings of words you will see that different meanings are different words same word has different meanings and even in the history of Sanskrit the meaning of words has changed just as say the meaning of English words has changed and it is changing so Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya has associated the word mukti with liberation and he has associated liberation with impersonal liberation and because of this dual set of associations he is feeling an instinctive recoiling sometimes when we realize that something is not good then we may go to extreme recoil from anything that reminds us of that as a self protective measure that is good but as a universal structure that might be extreme so for example if we had a pet dog and that dog bit us and bit us very badly and we got some serious terrible pain and some complication then we may just be fearful of all dogs all the time but then dogs also have their utility and dogs also have a right to live so of course the point here is that our experience may make us recoil for certain things because our experiences may stimulate certain associations in our mind and those associations may not be universal so for Sarvabhauma Mukti brings the association of association of impersonal liberation Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is stating over here, no Muktipada, rather than focusing on the word Mukti alone, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu focuses on the word Muktipada and so he says that actually in impersonal liberation rather than seeing Mukti as impersonal liberation, he says that Muktipada can be seen as a compound word and the abode of liberation is the Supreme Lord Himself Muktipade Sudaibhag so for such a person he resides that Lord who is a refuge of liberation in whom liberation resides that Lord who is the giver of liberation so in the Bhagavatam elsewhere also, in the Hindustan prayers Kaivalya Pathaya Namaha Kaivalya Nathaya Kaivalya Pathaya Kunti's prayers also come Kaivalya normally connotes liberation but the Bhagavatam makes it clear that there is a Kaivalya is not just an impersonal being but there is an impersonal exist merging but Kaivalya also has a master and that master is Krishna Himself, the Supreme Lord so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu focuses here explaining how certain words seem to have some uncomfortable connotations they need not have those connotations because we cannot just take one word and understand its meaning in isolation, we have to see that word in its context, we have to see the word in the context of the overall world view and thereafter we strive to understand what is right and what is wrong and thus by focusing on the overall context and thus gaining a sense of the intention of the speaker we can understand properly so there is no need to change the word of scripture rather we should change the connotations that we instinctively or reflexively bring to certain words and without those connotations then we can understand the proper implications of the usage of certain words in scriptures Thank you.