Gauranga Shata Nama 24 – The Lord is the life-treasure of his devotees

Gauranga chetanam text 24 bhaktera gauravakari bhakta pranadhana haridasa raghunatha swaroopajivana bhaktera gauravakari that chetan mahaprabhu glorifies his devotees and bhakta pranadhana he is the life of his devotees the prana pranadhana is used earlier also when talking about the pancha siddha so there he was referred to as dhan in relationship with srivasa thakur and prana with respect to by the other pandit now these two are brought together as the word pranadhana over here now if we see for many people their prana is their dhan that means that they are not they live for money sometimes people people's life is so much invested in their money that if they somehow lose money they commit suicide also the way to protect oneself from this kind of entanglement is to redirect is to reeducate oneself about what is real wealth and what is true life when we understand that we are at our core souls so our real life is spiritual life and our relationship with Krishna is our essential source of happiness that is our greatest treasure as Krishna says having gained this there is nothing more to gain so when we understand this then we are able to move forward in our spiritual life very rapidly so devotees recognize that Krishna is their life and treasure or their life treasure so both of these are valuable precious for us prana and dhan both are precious but when the prana and dhan come together then they become all the more precious it indicates that life treasure prana and dhan means that this is what the center of our life the center of our life is our heart is where this heart is and that indicates that by making our prana and dhan into Krishna or somebody is accepting that I am a devotee of Krishna because Krishna we rarely ask Krishna should we become a devotee and Krishna rarely answers whether Krishna doesn't answer directly so the point is that we need to carefully we may ask ourselves sometimes should I really become a devotee but we don't have a direct verbal contact with Krishna so therefore we need to work systematically by which we can establish educate ourselves and purify ourselves by which our prana and dhan will become Krishna and he says bhaktera gaurava kari and one way we can make Krishna our prana dhan is by seeing how he reciprocates with his devotees so bhaktera gaurava kari that actually bhaktera of the devotees gaurava glorification kari chaitanya mahaprabhu orchestrates the lives of his devotees in such a way that their glories are revealed to the world now quite often he himself speaks their glories its like he would speak about his associates in a way that he had five mouths he would lavishly glorify his associates, his devotees for their exalted devotion and not only that he lavishly glorifies devotees but also he would arrange circumstances in such a way that their glories are revealed to the world so bhaktera gaurava kari bhakta prana dhana in this way that when we understand that Krishna loves his devotees so much that he glorifies them and he reveals the glories their glories to the world so by this our preconception oh that when I become a devotee I will lose things I will lose this, I will lose that and those preconceptions will be overcome and we will be able to wholeheartedly offer our heart to Krishna so now in the next line the examples are given of those who have this intimate reciprocation with Krishna, those whose glories lord Chaitanya has revealed and those who have made lord Chaitanya lord Krishna as their prana dhan haridasa raguna taswarupa jivana jivana he is the life of haridasa thakur swaroop davudar goswami and ragunatha, ragunatha das goswami so now haridasa ragunatha swaroopa, now each of these for many of his associates Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said that you know that they have purchased me by their devotion and they can sell me wherever they want, so he said like this about premananda puri and many other intimate associates so apart from such statements where he reveals his heart so intimately if you look at his life also, normally especially let's consider haridasa thakur normally if a person dies, even the loud ones don't want to touch the corpse because the corpse is scary scary from emotional point of view and he is is considered impure from a religious point of view yes sometimes when a person has just died the loud ones may fall on that person and embrace that person and oh where have you gone, where have you gone but after sometime as the corpse starts decaying discoloring and putrefying then nobody wants to touch it it has to be kept in a deep freeze or something like that by which it will be preserved Mahaprabhu was a sanyasi he had been brahmana and haridasa thakur from the point of view of birth was an outcast but that was only external he was actually in essence he was a great devotee as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu called him as namacharya the most exemplary of the teachers who glorify the holy name so for such a devotee, what did Chaitanya Mahaprabhu do? he took his body and lifted it up with his own arms and danced around with that body and he himself begged, that was the only time in Jagannath Puri when lord Chaitanya begged for food directly from the shopkeepers normally he would get food without even being asked but here he wanted to honor the memory of haridasa thakur by having a lavish feast and therefore he himself went to ask people so haridasa raghunatha swaroopa jivana like that raghunatha thakur raghunatha swami, he gave his own his own govardhan gunja mala govardhan, blessed him intimately and so down there was swami he was with lord chaitanya in his most intimate ecstasy in gambhira and in this way he was the pranayama of these devotees and chaitanya mahaprabhu himself orchestrated things in such a way that their glory would be revealed to the world chaitanya mahaprabhu sent raghunatha swami back home although he initially wanted to renounce and then when his parents came to know about his father, had guards and repeatedly tried to restrain him from running away and still he kept by his, by thus he demonstrated by, through raghunatha swami's repeated determination to keep coming back again and again to lord chaitanya lotus feet lord krishna's bhakti that how totally utterly renounced he was despite having phenomenal wealth and in this way he demonstrated their glories such is the wonderful lord whom the devotees cherish and whose glories he cherishes and broadcasts for the whole world to know so often when we chant and practice bhakti we may think that am i doing anything productive or is my life just getting wasted in this mindless repetition of mantra, we should know that we are entering the world of love wherein we will get the supreme satisfaction we will be truly valued cared, loved, cherished and herein lies our life's supreme success thank you.