How Bhaktivinoda Thakura reformed and presented the Gaudiya tradition

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
There’s always hope for us. Hare Krishna So on the occasion of the sacred day, the appearance day of Shri Bhakta Vinod Thakur, let us discuss his contributions to our tradition briefly. While his contributions can be expanded unlimitedly, we can also classify them into two broad categories.
One is internal reformation of our tradition. And the second is the external presentation of the tradition. If you look at the history of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, after Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the tradition continued on for several centuries.
But Bhakta Vinod Thakur was the time when India at large and the Gaudiya Vaishnav tradition in particular encountered modernity in a forceful way. So modernity brought with it western thought, Christian ideas, scientific progress, and all of them made a sustained onslaught on many of the traditional beliefs and practices. So Bhakta Vinod Thakur responded to these and he laid the foundation for the future propagation of Krishna consciousness in this modern scientific rational age.
And Prabhupada calls him the father of the modern day Krishna consciousness movement. So he, in response to the situations, internally reformed and externally represented and presented the tradition. Internal reformation was that the Gaudiya Vaishnav tradition had become divided into two main kinds of people who were its leaders and one kind of people were followers.
None of them were capable of doing outreach effectively to the modern mindset. So there were the Babajis who were renunciates, some of them were pure hearted, some of them were hypocritical and then there were the caste Goswamis who were householders, who were the strongholds of power and they were also in many ways materialistic. And there were general people who would like to chant and dance and sing but they were not very intellectual and they were often engaging in sinful activities thinking that the holy name alone is enough to free one from sinful reactions.
There is no need to give up sinful activities. So Sahajyik influences by which immoral relationship between male and female were being propagated as if they were divine pastimes of Krishna with the Gopis was also going on. So Bhaktivinoda Thakur by his personal exemplary moral character and by his sustained efforts reformed the tradition.
He took initiation from Bipin Bihari Goswami who was an influential Goswami and he also got inspiration from Jagannath Das Babaji who was among the renunciates, Babajis and in this way he got the blessings of both the centers of power but then after that he systematically wrote and insisted on moral standards. He wrote songs which were popular to the general people and those were songs which were similar to the kind of songs that people were earlier singing but through those songs he taught the importance of detachment, of purity, of sincere devotion, of humility and he imbibed true devotional values among people by that. This is how he internally reformed the tradition and external presentation was through his writing books in innovative forms.
For example, he wrote novels like Prema Pradeep, even novels involving elaborate philosophical discussions like Jaiva Dharma. So through these kind of books, Bhaktanath Thakur wrote over 100 books and this despite being so busy with all his familial and magisterial responsibilities and his books went all over Bengal, all Orissa and eventually they went to various parts of the country. We know one book even went to Canada.
So although Bhaktanath Thakur himself because of his familial responsibilities did not travel around continuously like a travelling preacher but he built up a virtual community of people who would read his prolific writings and understand Krishna Consciousness and spread it all over. So he has shown us the example of how we can share Krishna Consciousness despite all our other responsibilities. How we can maintain purity internally and how we can strive to present Krishna Consciousness in the best possible way within our limitations and also within the circumstances we are in and attract many many people to Krishna’s lotus feet.
So we can pray to Bhaktanath Thakur for these two blessings of helping us to become internally purified ourselves and set example of purity for others and being effective by presenting our philosophy in attractive and transformational ways.