History of bhakti tradition over 5000 years

[Congregation program in the Middle East]

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna! So, I am grateful to be here, amongst all of you. I travel across the world, but, places where, devotees are seriously interested in studying Shastra, deeply are not many. So it’s a pleasure to speak at such places.
Thank you for inviting me and giving me the opportunity. So the topic is the history of Vaishnavism. So I’ll take one metaphor first.
And this metaphor will be what I will use as the frame for explaining the history. Say if we have an ancestral house and in that ancestral house we start exploring one day and we find an antique, maybe a precious jewel, a very ancient painting, some artefact and we find that it is so valuable that it transforms our fortune, that it makes us celebrated, it makes us wealthy then at that time not only will we value it but we’ll also want to know why it is so valuable or how it has passed down to us. Most antiques at first glance they just look like ordinary things there will be an ancient painting or ancient handicraft, ancient artefact, it might have priceless value for a collector but to the ordinary eye it might appear very small, just an old item that is there.
So similarly bhakti is something which requires a rasika to appreciate. Muhur aho rasika, bhobhi bhava bhokaha, as the Bhagavatam says, that to relish we have to become rasika and that those who are rasika, just like the antique collectors, they value the antique a lot and others who are not antique collectors, if they associate with the antique collectors they gain their vision and they will also start appreciating. Similarly for us when we get the practise of bhakti, either we get it from our tradition and our culture and our family or we get it by the association of devotees, we do have some appreciation for it but if we understand that it has a deep value, associating with those who are rasikas associated with Prabhupada and his followers, we can appreciate it more.
Just like an antique, how did it come about over here? How was it passed down from this place to this place to this place? What all adventures were there around it? All that can be an exciting story. So similarly the story of how bhakti has come to us is also an exciting story and in one sense advancement in Krishna consciousness is essentially an increase in appreciation of Krishna consciousness that the more we appreciate Krishna, not appreciate in the sense of compliment but appreciate in the sense of understand the value. So we sing the same bhajan and an exalted devotee may sing the same bhajan but their appreciations are entirely different level and that appreciation brings divine emotion, that appreciation brings absorption that appreciation ultimately takes us to the spiritual world, to Krishna’s eternal abode.
So I will talk about the history of Vaishnavism in three parts and after each part I will stop and if you have any comments or questions you can make. So I will talk in three parts. The first part will be the bhakti as it existed till the time of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu then bhakti as it came down from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to Srila Prabhupada and then from Srila Prabhupada to us.
So before that one point that when we talk about bhakti, bhakti is both eternal and historical that means bhakti is actually the eternal feature of the human heart. So every human heart longs for love and the ultimate object of love for the human heart is the divine heart, is Krishna. So in that sense bhakti is eternal.
Whichever human beings have existed wherever in the world they have had that longing for bhakti, whether they understood it or not, whether they realised it or not. So bhakti in that sense is eternal. It is there in generation after generation across religions, across caste, across nations.
At the same time bhakti is at one level emotion and bhakti is also another level of process for developing that emotion. So when we say what is passed down in the tradition, that is the process for activating that emotion. So all our hearts long for love, but how to love Krishna? How to experience Krishna’s love for us? For that there is a process.
And when we talk about the history of bhakti, we are talking about the history of how this process of expressing of love and experiencing love that has been passed down throughout history. And at one level we can explain everything as it happens by Krishna’s plan. It happens by Krishna’s will.
And that is of course true. At the same time Krishna’s will manifests in this world according to time, place, circumstance. So we could consider a desha kaala patra, a Sanskrit word used for it.
So we will look at it, that we look at the historical, the cultural and psychological factors. At different times in human history and how they led to the manifestation or the unmanifestation of Krishna bhakti at particular point. That means at particular times depending on the historical, cultural or psychological factors, more people directed their love towards Krishna and sometimes less people directed their love towards Krishna.
So how that happened and how Krishna’s plan worked through it all, that’s what we will discuss. So any quick questions on this point? Anything that is not clear? So let’s move to the first part. Now there are two distinct visions of history.
One is the Vedic vision of history, which is more like top down. It’s a history of devolution. That in the past there was Satyuga and there were many advanced beings over there.
And now humanity is declining. As the Yugas are going down, as Kali Yuga is going down, humanity is declining. Now of course this decline is also not permanent, it’s cyclic.
The modern vision of history is a history of evolution, that we are evolving as we are moving forwards. And if you look at recent history, we can say we have more machines, more computers, more technology than at least the recent past. So we could say that whichever way we look at it, whether it’s a devolution or evolution, there is a change.
And how has that change affected people? So if we understand that Krishna descended 5000 years ago and he himself taught bhakti through the Bhagavad Gita. And it’s interesting, in the Bhagavad Gita there are many different paths which are taught. And at the end Krishna says, sarva dharman parityajya, mam ekam sharan amraja, just give up all this and surrender to me, practise bhakti.
Sharan is practise, is bhakti actually. So then why does Krishna give all these paths? I said Krishna whenever he descends, he descends at a particular time. So at that time people were following all these different paths.
And Krishna teaches the Bhagavad Gita, what he does is, he shows how all these various paths culminate in bhakti. They all lead to bhakti, they all culminate in bhakti. And Krishna’s heart is especially revealed towards the end of the Bhagavad Gita.
When he says, before this verse, mam ekam sharan amraja, before that he says that, ishto sime dhrudhamiti, tavakshamite hitam, says you are very dear to me. Acharya has explained, ishto sime dhrudhamiti means, you are dearly loved by me. In fact Krishna is saying, I am determined to love you.
Even if you are determined to forget me, I am determined to love you. Krishna has used the word dhrudha earlier for how a devotee should practise bhakti. So Krishna is saying, that is how we should practise bhakti.
But here he is saying, I am determined, I am dhrudha, ishto sime dhrudhamiti, I am determined to love you. And then next verse he again says, that, manmana bhava mad-bhakto madhyaji mam namaskuru, mam evaisyasi satyam te pratijane priyosi me. Now before that, this is 18.65, 9.34 is, mam evaisyasi yuktvayivam atmanam atparayanaha.
So almost three-fourth of the verse is similar. But there is a significant difference. In 9.34 he is saying, if you do this, if you are engaged thus, if you thus offer your being to me, yuktvayivam atmanam atparayanaha, in this way if you do this, you will come to me.
I guarantee that you will come to me. I will make sure that you come to me. So if two people are forming a deal, then the first person may say, if you do this, this, this, then I will give you the land or I will do that part.
So that is where the person is laying the condition. You have to do this, this, this. But by the end of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna is so concerned that Arjuna practises bhakti.
Now he says, mam evaisyasi satyam te, you will surely come to me. pratijane priyosi me, I proclaim to you that you are very dear to me. So here Krishna is not so much laying condition as giving assurance, making a proclamation.
Like somebody who is very anxious to seal a deal. If you just do this, I will do this, this, this. So in a sense, Krishna’s eagerness by 18.65 is much more.
Come on, you just do this and I will do this for you. So Krishna, he also says, how dear is someone who shares this message with the world. So he says, the last three verses are also very sweet.
The next four verses, phalashruti. First Krishna says that one who shares this message with others, yaidam paramam guhiyam mad-bhakteshu vidhasyati, bhaktimai param krutva mam evaisyatya samshayah, chitasman manusheshu kashinme priyakruttamaha, bhavitam kriyam namicchami tasman anyapriyatarobhavi. He says, those who share this message are most dear to me.
In fact, no one is more dear than them. Now somebody may say, actually, sharing this message is very difficult. Who will preach? I can’t do it.
And Krishna says, if you can’t do it, at least you hear, at least you study it. This is what 18.68, 17.70 is, adishyate chaimam dharmyam samvadhamavayo, jnanayagyena tenaam ishtasyamiti mehmati. He says, if you study, studying is not just an intellectual activity, it is a devotional activity.
You are worshipping with your intelligence. So to understand this metaphor, understand what is happening over here, that suppose somebody has fallen in a well and somebody outside throws a rope. He says, you hold the rope and you climb out.
You say, I can’t climb out. OK, then the person says, OK, you hold the rope, I’ll pull you out. And that is the second level.
Just study this message. Now somebody may say, I can’t, actually if I hold on also, my hand will pain so much, how will I carry the whole weight of my hand? And the person outside is so compassionate, a person sends the rope down with a nice big tub in it. You just sit, I’ll pull you out.
That is Krishna’s next verse. What is Krishna’s next verse? He says that those who just hear this, So you preach. If you can’t preach, you study.
If you can’t study, you just hear. By hearing also you’ll come to. This is Krishna’s eagerness that we all attain him.
So Krishna reveals his loving heart and that is filled with concern for all of us. And that is how Krishna begins this. What is a timeless bhakti tradition? 5000 years ago, Krishna through the Bhagavad Gita starts it.
And that spreads further through the Srimad Bhagavatam, where also various parts are analysed. But bhakti, especially to Krishna is stressed. Bhagavatam has 335 chapters, but 90 chapters are about Krishna.
That’s 10th canto. 11th canto is also about Krishna itself. 35 chapters, most of them are about Krishna’s instructions.
So bhakti gets rejuvenated. Now over a period of time, in general, people tend to hang on to externals and forget the essentials. That is how religions become ritualistic.
Hanging on to externals and forgetting the essentials. So Krishna has given many, many different paths for different people. So in about 2000-2500 years, people became very ritualistic.
People became what is called as smart. Now to be smart is to be not smart. Why? So those who were smart, what happened to them? They were simply hanging on to externals.
Like what happened in Krishna Leela itself. There is a past time in which people got somebody who was supposed to be very learned, they got very caught in externals. Which is that past time? Yes.
Yajik Brahmin patnis. Yajik Brahminas. Their wives, they could see the importance of Krishna.
But the husband, the Brahminas, they got caught in externals. Something similar happened over the centuries. And as this happened, people started getting caught more and more in Vedic rituals without considering the essential purpose of those rituals used to purify our hearts and to become devoted to the Lord.
And religion, when it is abused, it can lead to terrible things. Nowadays there is a big concern. People say that religion leads to so much violence.
Now, yes, at one level it is true that religion has led to violence throughout history. But it is not religion. Actually, if suppose, tomorrow morning, the whole world woke up and everybody was belonging to one religion.
One religion, one race, one nation, one creed, one skin colour. By afternoon, people would find some reason to start fighting. So, it is the nature of the human mind that as long as the mind is in rajas and tamas, is in passion and ignorance, it will find some reason for fighting.
And because religion has enormous amount of emotional power on people. So, religion can become a very easy tool to trigger fights. So, religion can also be abused and one such abuse happened was in terms of the caste discrimination.
People started becoming very ritualistic and the brahmanas were traditionally very respected. But the brahmanas were also expected to be respectable. That means they were expected to be detached, they were expected to be devoted and they were expected to treat others in a way that would also elevate them spiritually.
But the brahmanas and to some extent the kshatriyas, both of them started becoming more power centric than Krishna centric. Started demanding more privileges. We are pure and you are impure.
And this kind of caste discrimination, where people from the lower caste were discriminated against, that led to alienation. And when the rituals started gaining more and more prominence, so, for example, there are certain rituals which talk about meat eating, which talk about animal sacrifice. And they started becoming too prominent.
And the result was that people started, at one side, they were not feeling religiously valued and respected. And other side, they were also feeling this religious practise doesn’t make any moral, much moral sense. Most people don’t value religion for its transcendence first.
They value it for its immediate contribution. See, religion has its two aspects. It is world transcending and it is world transforming.
So, if you see the Bhagavatam’s focus of bhakti is, I am broadly equating religion with bhakti over here, but religion is much broader. The Bhagavatam’s bhakti is world transcending. Parikshit, just forget everything.
Focus on Krishna and transcend the world. But the bhakti that the Bhagavata teaches is not world transcending. Arjuna wants to resolve, rounds the world, but Krishna says, dharma samstha apana artha.
I have come to establish dharma and you have to aid me in establishing dharma. So, the Bhagavata’s bhakti is what? World transforming. So, most people can’t appreciate the world transcending aspect of religion much.
First, they have to appreciate the world transforming aspect. And when they appreciate the world transforming aspect, then they want to know, is there something more to this? And then, oh, there is world transcending also. That means most people have practised religion because they feel this will make you more ethical, more moral or it may make you more peaceful, more calm.
And these are world transforming or individual transforming and ultimately world transforming. So, when that doesn’t happen, when religion doesn’t lead to people feeling better, rather it makes people feel discriminated, when religion doesn’t make people better, when people feel better means those who are coming to the religion, they feel better. And those who are teaching the religion, they actually don’t become better.
Rather they become more arrogant, more dismissive of others, more condescending towards others. Then when people see that religion has no world transforming value, then they start rejecting religion. And this is what happened at the time of about 2500 years ago.
When two, when you could say the broad Hindu tradition, the word Hindu itself is not present in the scriptures, but it’s just a name that we can use broadly, we could say the Vedic tradition, the dharmic tradition, whatever, that gave rise to two rebel children. Normally when children are born, children obey the parents and children are part of the family. Some children are rebel children.
So which are these two rebel children? Buddhism and Jainism. Now Buddhism and Jainism, if you look at them philosophically, both of them reject God. Actually they don’t reject God primarily.
They are not concerned about God directly. They are concerned about enlightenment. Their idea of enlightenment, it has the philosophy to it, but it’s primarily a sattva guni living.
So when they found, they have the concept of sattva also, rajas, sattva, tamas, but broadly people practise religion if they feel it will make their life better. So when they felt these Vedic rituals and Vedic practises were not making their lives better, they started practising. Some other religions came up and they started teaching something which would get people to sattva.
And the idea of sattva is just become more peaceful, become more moral, become more giving. And that way there was a significant, although there was a rejection of the Vedic religion, but there was a resurgence of sattva. Sattva is what? Goodness.
Goodness means that there is thoughtfulness, following of ethics and not just ritualism. And actually at one time in Indian history, Buddhism and Jainism ruled large part of India. Large large parts of India.
In fact, if you consider the classical languages, I guess Greek is there, Roman is there, Sanskrit is there. We today consider Sanskrit to be like a holy language. And it is holy, no doubt.
But more books have been written propagating atheism in Sanskrit than any other classical language. That’s because Jains and Buddhists, today we see these people, people of Jains and Buddhists, they just look pious, nice people who are moral. Most people are not philosophical.
So Jains and Buddhists also don’t know their own philosophy. Just like most Hindus don’t know Hindu philosophy. So it’s almost universal.
But at that time, as these religions also gained power, they became somewhat aggressive. Aggressively intellectual and dismissive. There is a Jain Ramayana.
So now this Jain Ramayana is such a work of brilliant deceitfulness. Why brilliant deceitfulness? No criticism of Jainism over here. I am just talking about this particular book.
See the whole story in the Jain Ramayana is what? Because at one level, initially these religions wanted to reject the idea of God and just focus on ethics, focus on morality. But then they found that the influence of Ram, influence of Krishna is way too much in this culture. So they decided to incorporate that.
And for such incorporating that, they wrote their own books. So if you go to Jain temple, there are many many Gods, all the Hindu Gods are there in the Jain temples. But their idea is all these Gods are stepping stones to the state of enlightenment.
And Mahavira is the enlightened one. So Jain Ramayana, what they did was, more or less the story is the same. That Ram is the prince in Ayodhya and then he is exiled.
But there is a significant twist. That throughout his forest journey, Ram keeps meeting Jain sadhus. And they keep instructing him in Jainism.
And then finally Ram fights a war, wins the war and comes back to Sita. But again he is separated from Sita because of the whole rumour and then he is so grief struck. And then finally the climax of the book is Ram meets a Jain sadhu and embraces Jainism.
And he becomes enlightened Jain. So the idea is that religions often, when they find that they can’t just reject the existing structure, they have to subordinate the existing structure into their own ideology, into their own storyline. So basically why I told this story is to illustrate this point that the Bhakti tradition was very resilient.
Although politically and intellectually lot of the other traditions took up a lot of space, but still Bhakti remained deep rooted. And then around almost for 1200 years, 1100-1200 years, after Buddhism and Jainism gained sway on India, then a great Acharya came. Who was that? Shankaracharya.
Shankaracharya, each Acharya comes with a particular purpose. And his purpose was basically to get people back into the Vedic fold. His purpose was not primarily to teach what is the essence of the Vedic literature.
So what he did was, he presented that Buddhism talked about shunyam. And from the Vedic literature he presented the concept of Brahma. And if you consider, there was an influential Buddhist thinker, Nagarjuna.
He had presented the idea of shunyam quite elaborately. Now if you consider Shankaracharya’s presentation of Brahma and Nagarjuna Buddha’s presentation of shunyam, they are intellectual clones. Intellectual clones means that he taught people, this is what you are attracted to, but it is there in the Vedic tradition also.
And there is so much more there in the Vedic tradition. And this way what he did was, he got a lot of people back into the Vedic tradition. And his focus was not on, as I said, teaching the specific of what the Vedic ultimate teaching is.
His focus was, first teach the Brahman. Teach about the Brahman and get people back into the Vedic fold. And he was hugely successful in that.
And he also talked a lot about bhakti. There are many many compositions of which I talk about bhakti. But his followers, they see that he is presenting bhakti as one way to enlightenment.
And that enlightenment is mukti. So ultimately, bhakti they don’t consider to be the highest and Bhagavan they don’t consider to be the highest. They consider Marju to be the highest.
But still, even when he was teaching that, he recognised that most people cannot just think of liberation and attain liberation. Most people need some emotional connect with the divine. And that’s why, although he had a particular mission, but even within that he integrated bhakti.
Because bhakti is a longing of the human heart and it cannot be neglected. Thereafter, the various Acharyas came. The prominent Acharya after him was Ramacharya.
Now Ramacharya, when he came, his stress was on, yes, Shankaracharya, everything is one. He said, yes, everything is one. But within the one, there is also variety.
So Advaita was there and Ramacharya’s philosophy was? Vishishta Advaita. Yes, there is Advaita, but there is some qualified oneness. There is some difference also.
So he talked about oneness. The standard example he gave was that the body and the soul are one. In the sense that there is one living being.
But the body and the soul are different. So he said, similarly Vishnu is the soul of the universe. And all living beings, the non-living and the living beings, they are all in the body of Vishnu.
So when a thing is functioning, when we are functioning, the soul and the body function together. Say right now when I am speaking or you are hearing, when I am speaking, I the soul want to speak and the body, the mouth speak. So functionally there is oneness, but analytically the body and the soul are different.
His philosophy is technical, but he, this is a simple explanation of that. He said there is oneness, but there is some subtlety in the oneness also. And then there was Madhvacharya.
Madhvacharya talked about, where is oneness? Everything is two. He said even if you look at a sand particle, two sand particles are not identical. So he talked about matter and matter is different, matter and spirit is different, spirit and spirit is different, matter and God is different, spirit and God is different.
So he talked about Pancham Bhed. So if you consider a pendulum, Shankaracharya had taken the pendulum to one extreme. Everything is one.
Madhvacharya took the pendulum to the other extreme. Everything is two. And this we can see symbolically also in their depiction, teachings.
If you see Shankaracharya’s pose, he is always like this. Actually, everything is one. Now Buddha, if you see before that, everything is void ultimately.
Now of course, Buddha’s teachings were very non-philosophical originally. But subsequent teachers tried to bring some intellectual perspective to it. So when they talk about shunya, they have their own world jugglery to it.
They say it is not non-existence. They say shunya is the existence beyond existence and non-existence. Now what does that mean? They only know that.
But anyway, so that was shunya. Then we had Shankaracharya who had one. Then we had Madhvacharya.
He had two. Everything is two. So it’s like from Shankaracharya, from Madhvacharya it went to the other extreme.
And then we had Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. And what did Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu teach? Achintya Bhedave. So he says there are two, but there is an inconceivable oneness between the two.
Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, his poses, two hands are praised. So it is the ecstatic two. The two are in a bond of ecstatic love.
So what the previous Acharyas taught, Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, he brought it to its zenith in the form of the revelation of pure devotion. Especially the devotion of the gopis of Vrindavan. That is mentioned, the devotion of Radharani is also mentioned.
But he especially described it in detail. In a depth and detail that had not been described before. So this was how there is a chronological progression.
Now in the meanwhile, if you see, at one level this is happening, but at another level in India something else is also happening. In the 10th century onwards, the rulers who came, they were not at all dharmic. Many ways they were against dharma.
They had their own idea of religion. And in the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, what happens is they have a strong antipathy to worship of any forms. It is like embodied images.
They call it soul images. And they have their logic for that. Their logic is that when people worship a form, even if they know that this form represents someone, over a period of time, because people get caught in the externals, so they keep worshipping the form and they forget who is represented by the form.
And over a period of time, the form, which was meant to be a means to God, the form becomes a competitor to God. People start worshipping the form which they attributed to God and they stop worshipping God. And that’s why they feel the form is a competitor to God and therefore the form has to be brought down.
And they consider that desecrating and destroying all forms of worship, all worship of forms, not all forms of worship, all worship of forms, that is the way they are establishing the glory of the true God. So there was enormous amount of political oppression that is happening, political persecution, religious destruction that happened of temples. Now throughout it all, what did the bhakti tradition do? The bhakti tradition, as I said, is remarkably resilient.
So that resilience was manifested by the bhakti tradition becoming less and less ritualistic and more and more free form. That means if you see Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself, I’ll talk about Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s devotion a little bit later, but just this point to illustrate, that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu when he was in Mayapur, he did not ask a single temple to be built. No, if you see Mayapur, now we are building a big temple, but immediately follows Chaitanya Mahaprabhu which majestic temple they are building, not even one, because the ruler at that time was severely oppressive.
And Sankirtan is such a thing which can be done anywhere, any place. Just have a kartal, if somebody comes, just move away from there. So there is no big temple structure that somebody can bring down.
So what happens is, the way in which bhakti may be expressed will vary, but the form of bhakti remains the same. So actually, historians say that bhakti had a tremendous resurgence or renaissance during the time of the Islamic rule. What happened was, dharma in the sense of temples were sometimes destroyed, yajna became difficult, any form of religious worship which required elaborate structures, that became threatened.
And although these religious structures were useful, in many ways these structures had led to the externalisation, to ritualization. And people were forgetting the substance. So the bhakti tradition, what is the adversity in terms of the political persecution of religion, the bhakti tradition is so resilient that adversity became an opportunity.
So more and more people started saying, if you see across in South India, North India, we see so many people compose songs, verses, poems, and they are sung and recited and memorised. So the whole idea of verbal devotion rather than ritual devotion, that became much more prominent. And Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s propagation of the Sankirtan movement is a special example of that.
So that was the first part. I don’t know whether I can complete all three parts. But any questions or comments about this till now? Base of conversion and why conversion? By conversion what do you mean? Conversion to other religion, inconsistency in the faith, following the path and not convinced about it.
So why should anyone convert anyone, is that what you are asking? Yeah. So if you consider that bottom of the mountain, top of the mountain. So bottom of the mountain is material consciousness, top of the mountain is spiritual consciousness.
And there are different parts of the mountain. So these different parts are like different religions. And in each religion, there is a exclusivist thread of thought.
That this is the only way. Every religion has it. Krishna, somebody can say, Bhagavad Gita is like this, sarva dharman patya mam ekam sadanam vraja.
But we see it in context. When Krishna is saying surrender to me, Krishna is not demonising the path of karma. Krishna is not demonising the path of jnana.
See, this is the best you practise it. But he is accepting the validity and potency of other paths also. Such statements which are there in every religion, they are meant to create focus.
Like if a patient has tried many, many doctors before and then finally comes to a doctor and the doctor starts giving diagnosis and prescription and the patient says, but I went to this doctor and he said this and I went to that doctor and he said that and there I tried that. The doctor may say, just forget everything that you have done, just take the medicine that I am giving you, you will get cured. Now when the doctor is saying, just forget all the medicine that you have taken in the past, does that mean he is rejecting all other doctors? No, he is saying, right now you take this.
So when the doctor’s statement is like that, it is for creating focus. It is not absolute truth for rejecting. But some people take such statements as absolute truths.
So statement which is made for creating focus, if it is meant to be absolute truth, then it leads to fanaticism. So going back to the example of going up the mountain, see different people are going up the mountain by different paths. And the important thing is, are they following that path? Becoming spiritual.
But some people, they are so determined, so passionate about the idea that our path is the right path and instead of climbing up the other paths, they keep moving at the bottom of the mountain, pulling others down from their paths. So that is unfortunate. So if somebody is a materialist and somebody say from a Hindu materialist becomes a Christian materialist or somebody from one religion just becomes another religion materialistic, what is the use of that? But this happens because, as I said, religion is, there is a social critic who said, the worst thing that religion did was that it got mixed up with people.
That means religion principle is good. But when people start practising religion, people bring their contaminations. So there are people who are power hungry and for them religion can become a tool to power.
And then the more followers they have, the better it is for them. So that’s why they may also try to convert. So it’s possible that sometimes some person may find this path of the mountain very difficult for me.
And that path I like. So if a person is changing one’s religion as a genuine way of going towards God, then that is fine. Some people might be genuinely inspired by the particular teacher, a particular book, a particular way of practise, that’s fine.
But to forcibly convert or to demonise a particular path in order to convert to another path, that is unwanted. So, bro, what should I do? Should I take questions or should I complete the class or how should I do? Complete. Okay.
Okay. So if you go to the second part now, I’ll have to rush through this. Till what time can I go on? 9.30. 9.30, okay.
I’ll take 10 minutes, I’ll take each part. And then my 5 minutes questions. So now from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s times, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself created an enormous resurgence.
He went to North India, he went to South India and he inspired so many people to become devotees. But at the same time, we see that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu created some bases. The first Kheturi Gramme festival that was held, the first God Purnima festival, that primarily from three places devotees came.
That was Jagannath Puri, Bengal and Vrindavan. So it’s one thing to do preaching in terms of getting and converting many, many, of inspiring many, many people. But what about the sustainability of it? The sustainable practise of Gaudiya Vaishnavism happened in these three places.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, either he himself stayed or he had his followers based over there. But wherever he went by his personal charisma, he inspired many, many people. If you see according to, from a historical perspective, the Gaudiya Vaishnav tradition, it is an extremely unlikely candidate even to survive or to speak of flourish.
Like sometimes when a child is born, if the child has a lot of complications, then the doctor may say, chances of this child surviving are not very high. But the parents may say, no, still we want to have this child. And then sometimes that same child grows up and outlives the doctor.
And not only outlives the doctor, the child outlives the doctor’s children also. So the way things work are quite different. But if you see from a historical perspective, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, he departed suddenly in Jagannath Puri.
He created an enormous resurgence of Bhakti. Normally for a religious tradition to succeed, there are three things. The founder has to appoint successors.
The founder has to write books explaining what his teachings are, what his will is. And the founder has to start an organisation which will continue his teachings. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu did none of these three things.
He did not appoint an official successor. He did not write any books. Only Shiksha Ashram was what he composed.
And a few other poetic compositions are attributed to him. And he did not start any organisation. Gaudiya Vaishnavism is a retrospective name given to his followers.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu did not, like Prabhupada started ISKCON, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu did not start any Gaudiya Vaishnav organisation. So actually, what happened was, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu entered deep into the hearts of his followers. And through the six-fold exchanges, if you see, the Antya Leela of Chaitanya Charita Amrita, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is not preaching at all, in a sense.
He is just basically Jagannath Puri. But what he is doing is consolidating his preaching. You see, the last part of Chaitanya Charita Amrita, either Chaitanya Mahaprabhu reciprocated Krishna and divine ecstasy, or he is having loving interaction with his devotees.
The six-fold loving exchanges. When Raghunatha Swami comes, he gives him a gift. And then he accepts service from him.
He appreciates Rupa Goswami for his beautiful writing and his beautiful poetry. So through all this, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is entering into the hearts of his followers. And those followers carry on his tradition.
And when they carry on his tradition, his teachings, again, historically speaking, it is a Gaudiya Vaishnav tradition, along with the Vallabha tradition that rejuvenated Vrindavan. Vrindavan was almost lost. And Vaishnavas brought it back.
In Bengal, in Orissa, the Gaudiya Vaishnav tradition went on. But over a period of time, things started going down. The Britishers, they came roughly in the 18th century.
1757 was the time when the Battle of Plassey was fought. And that time, they won Bengal. And from there, they spread soon and they conquered all of India.
So if you look at the historical accounts of Britishers, in the middle of the 18th century, they describe how all of Bengal was worshipping Gauravnathai. Or Chaitanya and Nithyananda, the worship was spread across everywhere. At least in Bengal.
And to some extent in Orissa also. But what happened was that there was a lot of sentimentality going on. And again, with respect to kirtan, many people love kirtans.
But not many people like philosophy. So at one level, you could say kirtan is like the technology. And philosophy is like the science.
It’s a rough example. But let’s get to a particular point. Millions of people know how to use a phone.
How to send a message, how to make a call, how to surf a site. But how many people know actually how a machine works? How the phone works? Very few. So actually in a sense, the devotional culture, the culture of some kirtan, anybody who sings and chants, they can experience something special.
They can experience something spiritual. But what is it that is being experienced? Why is it being experienced? How can one experience more of this? What is the philosophy behind it? So philosophy is like the science. So that philosophy got lost.
And when that philosophy got lost, people were practising bhakti. In Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s times, what had happened was somehow, in Bengal, people were doing all kinds of wrong activities. It was common at that time, people would go to the shop, people would go carrying a bead bag in their hands, one hand.
They would go to the markets and in the other hand, they would buy fish with them. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, carrying fish with them. So the idea was that while practising bhakti, we have to follow some regulation.
That was lost. And like one Christian preacher who tried to convert Vaishnavas, he said that this Vaishnava religion is such a perverse religion. According to them, you can commit any sinful activity that you want, but if you chant the name of Hare, you will be delivered from it all.
They were very critical of it. It was at this time that Bhaktivinoda Thakur appeared. And when Bhaktivinoda Thakur came, he was born in the Shakta family.
And he grew up and he also knew about Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, but he thought this is sentimental. And that time it took him several years even to find Chaitanya Charita Amrit. See, everybody knew about Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, but nobody knew much about Chaitanya Charita Amrit.
So for years and years he had to search. And then he studied Chaitanya Charita Amrit. He understood that there is such a deep theology over here.
There is so much profound philosophy. And then he started teaching that. He started teaching that.
See, what Bhaktivinoda Thakur did at that time was revolutionary. See, imagine if there is some kind of religion practised by some poor people and they do some things, but suddenly some person who is very educated, very respectable in society, say Bhaktivinoda Thakur, suddenly he starts championing that. What is going on? And Bhaktivinoda Thakur, he was a grahastha, he had a lot of family responsibilities.
So his main preaching was through his writing. He would write magazines. And he got quite a faithful readership in Bengal at that time.
They were doing mills. He had to actually print and ship it. But through that he created respectability for all the oceans.
And he was a reformer. Reformer means, you know this house, actually this paint is not so good. Can you change the paint over here? This, this curtain is not that good.
Can you just change the curtain? So reformer is like that. Everything is good here. I am just making a point, philosophically.
So then, after that came Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur. Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati was not a reformer, he was a revolutionary. He said, actually there are so many things wrong in this house, just blow up this house and construct a new one.
So, he felt that actually, that there were traditional Gaudiya Vaishnavas, they had reduced Gaudiya Vaishnavas, because no culture exists insulated from the broader culture. See, the Bhakti culture couldn’t exist insulated from the broader culture. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was so inclusive that he made Haridas Thakur into Damacharya.
Although he was born in a militia family. But somehow the same followers of that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu started claiming that only those who are born in our caste are true Gaudiya Vaishnavas. And it became another caste religion.
So Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur broke that monopoly. Bhaktivinoda Thakur slowly challenged it, but Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur just broke it apart. Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur broke it apart.
And then he established Gaudiya Vaishnavas. Gaudiya Mathi established. And he was a powerful teacher.
He had 64 centres all over India and 3 centres abroad. One in Dhaka, one in Hamburg and one in London. And in his own way his followers were very successful.
But eventually the same thing that happened again happened. Was that as religion gets mixed with power, wealth, then what happens is either people who want power and wealth get attracted and they take over that religion. Or those who have come to that religion also for God, they get attracted to the power and wealth.
And the Gaudiya Maths mission got fractured. After Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur departed, there is always vigilance required to keep oneself on the focus, on the purpose. So when a great Acharya is there, that Acharya reminds us of the purpose and keeps us focused on the purpose.
But when he departed, then many of the followers of Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur were great devotees. It was not that he alone spread Gaudiya Maths across the country. 64 centres were established by his dedicated followers.
But somehow they couldn’t work together. And that was the time when our exalted founder Acharya Aishwarya Prabhupada came of the scene. Aishwarya Prabhupada tried very hard in various ways.
He tried to unite Gaudiya Maths. That didn’t work. He tried to preach himself in India.
Somehow that didn’t work. Indians were just, at that time, they were too captivated by politics. Oh yes, we’ll get independence and then we’ll become happy.
And so when even a great Acharya, if the whole cultural mood is against, their preaching will not have much effect. So what Prabhupada did was, Prabhupada decided to go to America. And you may wonder, Prabhupada, why did he have to wait for 40 years? In 1922 he met Prabhupada, Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur.
And then in 1965 he went to America. But actually Krishna was preparing everything for Prabhupada. If you are staying in a different country, if people go to America, immigrating to any country is not easy.
So what happened, 1965 itself, by Krishna’s arrangement, three things happened. First was, at a cultural level, there was a counterculture. Counterculture means, there were 1940s and 1945, the Second World War got over.
And America was most victorious. Because very little of war was fought on American territory. And America provided weapons to most of the allied countries.
So they made a lot of money. So the children who were born to the people who were war veterans, they had all comforts, right, from their birth itself. And they soon became jaded with it.
What’s more in life? And they said, ok, this whole trajectory of life, get a job, have a family, do all this, that’s not, I want something else. And they were very spiritually inclined. Somehow they got the idea that through drugs they will become spiritual.
So they got into drugs. But 1963, 64, 65, especially was the time when this counterculture was fresh and pure. They had not got mixed into drugs.
By 1970, they got completely mixed with drugs. So there was a whole group of young people who were spiritually inquisitive and who were materially unsatisfied. And Prabhupada went there just at that time.
Along with that, in 1965 itself, the American government, just two months before Prabhupada came there, the government actually liberalised its immigration rules. That’s why Prabhupada actually came to America with just a two-month visa. But he kept extending it, extending it, extending it.
And he was able to extend it. If he had come just one year before, the government would not have allowed him to extend it. But just they worked it that way and they extended it.
And eventually in 1967 when the government said that you can’t extend. So Prabhupada told one of his disciples, he said actually the government is not extending my visa. So you, both of you adopt me as your son.
So Prabhupada, as he is so transcendental humour, he was joking. He has the age of a grandfather. But by that time, the Christian consciousness movement had become so influential that many people came forward and supported.
And actually the government was also seeing that people who were drug addicts were giving up drugs and taking up. So he got the visa. But the immigration was also set up.
And third was that that was the time when the Catholic Church became a little more open to other religions. See America is, although we often consider America to be materialistic, America is still, in the western world, America is the most religious country. Europe is largely atheistic.
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, these are also countries where religion has very little role. But America is quite religious, evangelically religious. So in 1965, the Catholic Church passed a resolution that till then they had this idea that all other religions are false.
All other religions come from devil and they take you to the devil. But there they said that we value everything that is good and holy in other religions. It’s not a big proclamation.
They are not saying that other religions will take you to God. But we value it. So that created an openness among Christian scholars.
What are other religions? And that’s when Prabhupada went there and they saw this authentic bhakti practitioner over there. They were very interested. So there were multiple ways of openness.
There was academic openness, there was legal openness, there was cultural openness. And all this is not to take credit away from Srila Prabhupada. It was just to illustrate how there is a higher plan there.
See, that Krishna was setting the stage for Srila Prabhupada to dance. Now even if a stage is wonderfully set, still to dance requires the expertise of the dancer. And that was the expertise of Srila Prabhupada.
That is Krishna arranged the stage for Prabhupada to dance. Prabhupada prayed to Krishna, Nachao, Nachao Prabhu, Nachao Se Maruthe. Krishna, please make me dance.
And Prabhupada was so expert. The hippies were people who were as a counterculture. They liked to do outrageous things.
But even they couldn’t have thought of something as outrageous as dancing on the streets. If they had danced on the streets, the police would have arrested them and put them in jail. But Prabhupada started Drath Yatra.
And now when they dance on the streets, they were dancing with police protection. So Prabhupada created innovative ways. In 1968 when he came back from India to America, he had been sick and he came back.
So at that time he had a globe in his room. And told all, here are about 20 disciples at that time. He said, all of you, pick one country and go there and deliver that country.
Now most of them were 18, 20, 25. The oldest of our disciples was only 27 years old at that time. And this, so Jyotirani Mataji was one of Prabhupada’s female disciples.
She was just like 20 at that time. So Prabhupada, what about us girls? Prabhupada says, we are not boys or girls. We are souls.
You also pick up one country. So now Prabhupada didn’t just say that. Actually he empowered people.
And people did that. These young people, they had that spirit of adventure. And Prabhupada just took that.
And that same Prabhupada when he came back to India, India had no mood of rejecting material life. Like the western people, they had rejected material life. But when Prabhupada recognised, they didn’t have that mood.
But Prabhupada, they wanted the idea of national pride, cultural national pride. Now India, we say is a cricket mad country. But India is not a cricket mad country.
India is an international cricket mad country. It is an Indian in the Ranji trophy maker till the triple century also not much news comes. But an Indian in the match against Australia or England hits 2-3 sixes and he becomes a big national hero.
Because India has a deep rooted national inferiority complex. So we always want validation from the rest of the world. So if our player can play better against other country in the world, oh just see we are so great.
So like that, for our own religion, Prabhupada recognised that India needed western validation. So Prabhupada tapped that. He brought western people to India.
He made them, inspired them to practise bhakti. And when he presented this, he would present it such a way, he said, you people, in one lecture in Hindi he said, you are all still lamenting that India lost Pakistan. India is a big country, we lost Pakistan.
He said that, but if you share bhakti, bhakti is something the whole world wants. If you share bhakti, the whole world will become Hindustan. So Prabhupada tapped into the existing mood of people and at that time he created such a sensation.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of people became inspired and came forward to assist Srila Prabhupada. They didn’t become committed disciples, but they helped Srila Prabhupada make the Krishna conscious movement mainstream in India. So now the last part was after Srila Prabhupada departed.
Again, this was a recipe for disaster. In the history of religious movements, there has never been such a big distance between the founder and the successors. Prabhupada was a 70-75 year old gentleman who had been born and brought up steeped in the devotional culture.
Even his most dedicated followers were just basically 30, 35, 40. So I met a senior Prabhupada disciple who is a sannyasi and a guru. He said, I took sannyas at the age of 23.
And he said, I was too young to even understand what was sannyas. So they just did that. And actually at that young age, to have the leadership of the whole movement, it was a recipe for disaster.
Culturally, intellectually, spiritually, religiously. And yes, our movement did have growth pains. But it is a testimony that it’s all recovered.
And most religious movements are founded by a charismatic founder. Within 30 years, within the first generation, they just get destroyed. But the Krishna consciousness movement has not only survived, but it has spread across the world.
Prabhupada established about 108 temples. Now there are 700 temples across the world. And what Srila Prabhupada did was that he inspired people.
And Prabhupada asked, who will be your successor? Officially he appointed G.B.C. But Prabhupada didn’t appoint one successor. He said, whoever wants to be my successor, you are my successor. What does that mean? That what is succession is not actually some tangible assets.
But the desire to love Krishna and the desire to share the love of Krishna with the world. And that desire, whichever Srila Prabhupada’s followers have taken that up, and they are sharing with others, people are taking up across the world. Now, actually, if we consider from a chronological perspective, there are Krishna temples established by devotees across the whole world.
The Times of India article in 2006, it was an editorial. So they tried to write an article called the Rebirth of Krishna. So he said, what is India’s biggest export commodity for the whole world? Is it Indian software engineers? Or is it Indian speaking English who can act as cheap labour? He said, but if you go to Guatemala, if you go to Botswana, a list of countries, you will not see any Indian speaking English or Indian software engineers.
But you will see a Krishna temple over there. So he said, Krishna is India’s biggest export commodity. And the exporting agent is a scorn.
So, by Prabhupada’s mercy, if we consider, every morning for 24 hours of a day, somewhere or other, somebody is doing Mangal Aarti. You know, Krishna’s names are being glorified across the world everywhere. And that is Sri Prabhupada’s enduring legacy.
And especially if we consider how Sri Prabhupada struggled in his first few years. First few years, 1965 in America and 1964 before he went to America. It’s a very heart-wrenching read.
This is Prabhupada’s biography, Neelamrit. It has six volumes. If you read the last five chapters of the first volume, or the first five chapters of the second volume, you will see Prabhupada struggled so much.
When he went to America, he didn’t know whether to go left or right. He didn’t even know whether he would get vegetarian food to eat or not. He didn’t even know where he would live.
And the place where he lived, he was treated more like, in Butler, he was treated like a curiosity object. People came and photographed him, but everybody wanted to see him, nobody wanted to hear him. Then Prabhupada went to New York.
When he came to New York, the place where he was staying, there the person only wanted him to do kirtan, not speak in it. Prabhupada got his own place, and when he was staying there, the generator over there stole his dictaphone and his tape recorder. And then from there Prabhupada went to another place, where there seemed to be a young person who was interested in practising bhakti, in becoming his disciple, but that person took drugs, went mad and attacked Prabhupada.
And Prabhupada had to flee from there. Then Prabhupada went to the next place and stayed over there. And there, people were completely crazy.
One time Prabhupada was giving a class, and suddenly one person got up and said, I am God. And Prabhupada said, please accept my obeisances and sit down. So Prabhupada had to deal with extremely difficult people, but through it all he persevered and that’s how, now it’s extraordinary that here in the Middle East, where there may seem so much, there may seem the unlikeliest place for so much resurgence of devotion, but there are not just hundreds, but hundreds and hundreds and thousands of devotees practising bhakti.
So it’s testimony to how Prabhupada has triggered the desire to love Krishna, to share the love for Krishna with others. When we face difficulties in our life and we all will face difficulties at different times, in our practise of our bhakti, in our practise of our day-to-day life, it feels just too much. So at that time we can look back and look at the history through which we have got this bhakti.
We can look back at Prabhupada’s struggles. Suppose a child is sick and the child is given a bitter medicine. This is so bitter, I don’t want to take it.
Child is just resenting, not wanting to take that bitter medicine. But then the child comes to know, actually that bitter medicine is extremely expensive and his mother has sold her own jewellery to get that medicine for him. Then his whole focus will shift from the bitter taste of the medicine to the sweetness of the love of his mother.
And then even if that medicine is bitter, he will take it and take it happily, take it gratefully because the vision is shifted. Similarly, sometimes the practise of bhakti, the practise of the rules and regulations can all seem difficult. Sometimes even living with devotees, I was giving a class once.
I said while practising bhakti we have to tolerate many things. So what do we have to tolerate? So one devotee raised his hand. I said what? We have to tolerate devotees.
So I said yes, that is a good realisation that even if we have difficulties with devotees, we should tolerate devotees and practise bhakti. But if we advance a little more, we will realise that devotees are tolerating us. So we will all have difficulties in our spiritual life.
But if we shift our vision from the difficulties that we have, the sacrifice that Srila Prabhupada has done, by which we have the opportunity to practise bhakti. Then even if bhakti sometimes seems bitter, bhakti is actually sweet. It is because of our conditioning or conditions it might seem temporarily bitter.
But if we practise bhakti and focus on the sacrifice of Srila Prabhupada by which we have got bhakti right now, then whatever bitterness is there, we will put it aside. And the sweetness of appreciation and gratitude for sacrifice, we can joyfully practise bhakti. And the more we keep practising bhakti, the more bhakti will start becoming joyful.
As Krishna says, that which tastes like poison in the beginning, will taste like nectar in the end. And Chaitanya Mahaprabhu assures, this is not just nectar, it is poornamrita swadhanam. It is nectar that will last forever.
So I will quickly summarise. I spoke on the theme of how bhakti traditions spread historically. I first spoke about if we have an antique, for us to learn its value, we can know its history and we can associate with those who know its value.
Similarly, we have got bhakti, it is like antiquities, but we need to appreciate it. And appreciation of Krishna Consciousness is itself the essence of advancement in Krishna Consciousness. So bhakti is ultimately transcendental and it is an eternal feature of the human heart.
Every heart longs to love, but the process by which, the philosophy and the process by which the heart will learn to love Krishna and experience Krishna’s love, that is what is passed down through the tradition, generation after generation. I will discuss how it is passed down. So Krishna spoke to Bhagavad Gita where he revealed his heart, assuring Krishna that I am determined to love you.
Just practise bhakti, whatever way you can. So from that point, the bhakti started. But often people get hooked with the external and forget the essentials.
So religion can become a tool to power for some people. And thus caste discrimination happened. So then the rebel child, Jainism and Buddhism came up.
They intellectually rejected God, but practically they incorporated the religious imagery within their tradition because bhakti was so resurgent, resilient. And Shankaracharya came and he taught about oneness, but even within that he had bhakti. Because oneness was too abstract for people to connect with.
And then we had the Vaishnavacharyas, Madhvacharya, Ramacharya, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who came and revealed the heart of bhakti. And Chaitanya Mahaprabhu took it to the summit. And thereafter, we talked about how Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, what he offered was that he inspired love for Krishna, especially in the heart of his followers through sixfold loving exchanges and they carried on his legacy.
And Hare Rama Sankirtan was going on, but the theology and all the profundity was lost. Bhaktivinoda Thakura came and rediscovered Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s amrit. And then he established it again.
Bhaktivinoda Thakura was a reformer, Bhaktivinoda Sudhanta was a revolutionary. He established Gaudiya Math, but again the attachment to externals led to the fracturing of the math. And Srila Prabhupada came and Srila Prabhupada single-handedly went to America.
And Krishna arranged for him to go at a time when there was a counterculture. So people were receptive. Young people were materially frustrated and spiritually inquisitive.
The government just at that time opened up. And so Prabhupada could stay for a long time in America. And the church also had a little more openness towards other religions.
So all this, through all this, Krishna was making this change for Prabhupada. And Prabhupada danced so expertly, attracting millions of people across the world. And when he came to India, he tapped into the force of cultural nationalism to get people to start practising bhakti, at least at some level, to commit to the rejuvenation of bhakti in India.
And now by Srila Prabhupada’s mercy and by the dedication of his followers, we have, although there have been growth pains, but overall the bhakti movement has spread enormously. And we have in all parts of the world, devotees practising bhakti. And when we face difficulties in our practise of bhakti, rather than obsessing over our difficulties, we focus on the difficulties that Srila Prabhupada went through in giving us the opportunity to practise bhakti.
Then like a child who doesn’t taste the bitterness of the medicine, but tastes the sweetness of his mother’s love, we will gratefully practise bhakti and we will become more and more purified and delightfully absorbed in Krishna.