How Gaudiya Vaishnavism used drama in bhakti

[Chaitanya Charitamrita class at ISKCON, Bahrain]

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so today morning we are discussing a section for Chaitanya Charita Amrit which describes the artistic and aesthetic foundation of Gaudiya Vaishnavism Chaitanya Charita Amrit especially in the Anta Leela describes how Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu relished the remembrance of Krishna and shared the relish with others Chaitanya Charita Amrit has three parts, Adi, Mantya and Anta in the Adi is the first 13 chapters give the philosophical context of Lord Chaitanya’s advent, the remaining six chapters describe his childhood pastimes and his taking up the path of bhakti the Madhya Leela is what primarily describes his preaching and the Anta Leela describes primarily his relishing so in the Anta Leela it says Namo Mahavadanyaya Krishna Premavadayate Krishnaaya Krishna Chaitanya Chaitanya Mahaprabhu so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu depicts the two aspects of Krishna Bhakti one is sharing and the other is relishing at one level when we share also we relish but still relishing itself is undistracted focus on the Lord and that’s what he does here in Jagannath Puri where he is absorbed in the mood of savouring Krishna Bhakti and he has preached to many people and they all come to meet him in Jagannath Puri Swarupa Goswami has come to meet this chapter is entitled the second meeting the first meeting is described in the Madhya Leela in chapters 1920 1920 chapters there the meeting with Swarupa Goswami and the meeting with Swarupa Goswami are described and the instructions that he gave are also described over there now here Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is now introducing Swarupa Goswami to his intimate associates from our perspective all these Vaishnavas are very exalted at the same time they have their own interactions so for example Ramananda Rai, Swarupa Damodar Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya they are all in a elder generation in fact Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya is older than Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu one generation older Swarupa Goswami is relatively younger although even in age he is elderly but still in terms of being introduced in the elite circles of devotion he is relatively younger although his contribution in the Gaudiya Vaishnava history will be far far consequential at this point he is being introduced to the other Vaishnavas and among them Ramananda Rai is especially learned Ramananda Rai has written many different plays, he has celebrated plays of Jagannath, Priya Nataka so he is now evaluating how Swarupa Goswami is writing Natakas what kind of plays is he writing and he is asking some technical questions about how are you going to introduce the characters what is the nature of the play what is the purpose of the play, what is the invocation all these questions are being asked so this without going into the technicalities let’s focus on the principle here that Natak or Natya there is Nritya and there is Natya Nritya is dance Natya is depiction through drama so Nritya was what Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself performed immensely he would dance and sing, in fact the chanting of the holy names itself is a very integral part of the Bhakti tradition right from the time of Ramacharya it has been stressed quite a bit but chanting and dancing that was primarily propagated by Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu so Naam and Nritya with Naam you see even now in many traditional other Vaishnava groups for example Madhava Vaishnava Sri Vaishnava, they also have Kirtan but they don’t dance in Kirtans so much and they have processions, it’s more legal processions, it’s more in the mood of awe and reverence whereas Chaitanya Mahaprabhu he depicts Bhakti and spontaneous ecstasy, so he depicted chanting and singing, so Nritya was what Chaitanya Mahaprabhu personally introduced and propagated and Natya is drama so Natya Shastra is itself a very big tradition in India it goes down thousands of years just like the Bhakti tradition if you consider cultural forms they also have their traditions so Natya Shastra it is described Natya is a cultural form that is based on Natya Shastra Natya Shastra is a book which is written by Bhagat Muni and it describes how at one time Devatas went to Brahmaji and asked them how can we understand how can we have a form of entertainment that is appealing as well as uplifting and at that time Natya, the rules of Natya the principles of Natya the practises of Natya, they were all outlined by Brahmaji so today we think of drama means some people just come together, do some rehearsals and do some enactment that is good in terms of at least we are depicting Krishna Leela but there is a whole field of study of drama which is called in English as Dramaturgy Dramaturgy is the field or the subject which studies drama elaborately and there are many specific rules about how dramas are to be performed now Natya as a we could say a tradition was going on for a long time in India but it is Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and the Gauriya Vaishnav tradition that brought about an elaborate marriage between the Natya tradition and the Bhakti tradition Natakas or dramas were performed by other traditions also dramas are there but the systematic theological blending of the two was brought about by the Gauriya tradition so the concept of Rasa Rasa is mentioned in the Bhagavatam also Rasa means taste or mellow so before we came to Bhakti probably the only time we heard about the word Rasa was Amras or Gannaras you know mango juice or sugarcane juice in Bhakti the word Rasa has a particular meaning so the meaning it comes in Bhagavatam it is mentioned relish the Rasa in Natya Shastra there is a particular meaning that meaning is when a drama is performed at that time the drama is meant to evoke certain emotions in the audience and the emotions that are invoked in the audience are called as Rasa so Rasa is not just some taste or flavour at least in the drama theory it is the emotion that is invoked in an audience when a particular drama is performed or a particular aspect of the drama is performed and to relish Rasa one needs to be a Rasika Rasika means one has to have some aesthetic sensibility so the Bhagavatam itself talks about how one needs qualification to understand the depiction so for example if say Bharat Natyam is being performed and now Bharat Natyam is not just dance it is dance quite often which depicts a particular pastime say the woman who is dancing the dancer she is depicting Krishna stealing butter and another if you have the chasta so now she is doing different actions, facial expressions hand gestures, body movements and one who knows the pastime then can correlate, oh this action means this, this action means this, this action means this somebody who doesn’t know the pastime what is this going on, just some nice attractive looking hand movements, face movements body movements are there somebody so somebody who is devotionally disposed who has knowledge of the pastime can relish the depiction of the pastime somebody who has no knowledge of the pastime will be simply seeing the hand movements face movements and body gestures if a person is just having no aesthetic sensibility at all that person might just get lusty on seeing the movement of the body so to remember Krishna and get attracted to Krishna through the depiction of the pastime one needs to be a rasika rasika means one has to have the aesthetic sensibility by which what is depicted will awaken the intended emotion there are certain songs in movies and other places which are basically meant to evoke lust in people they call item songs and things like that now when at one level any depiction can evoke any emotion that’s possible somebody can just by touching a wooden effigy of a woman a person can get agitated but now so just because anything can tempt does not necessarily mean that everything is a temptation there is something which is intended to tempt and there is something which is meant to elevate now for some people who are not rasika even the artistic cultural depiction of Krishna lila may also tempt but that is because the person is not rasika when the person is rasika then the depiction of Krishna lila will actually awaken bhakti and bhakti will purify the heart of whatever lower desires are there in the heart so just the point here is that rasa is the emotion that is experienced in an audience when a particular depiction is made now what depiction what emotion it should induce that is well thought out by the directors and the actors that you act in a particular way and this is the dialogue that should be done this is how this should be done and then by this emotion the audience can experience so so natak or natya this is elaborately taken by lord chaitanya mahaprabhu and his followers they say that Krishna lila is not just something to be heard it is to be experienced ultimately it is to be entered into you want to enter into Krishna lila and that is why we have to actually have a those who are performing the dramas they have to have a very elaborate they have to have a very devotional disposition and its not just a matter of their individual disposition just like when we cook prachad for the bhoga for the ladies when we try to have as devotional disposition throughout as possible for example ideally it would be that even the grains are cultivated by farmers they are transported by devotees they are cooked by devotees they are offered by devotees they are served by devotees they are honoured by devotees so just as we would like to have everything connected with the bhoga offered to the lord as very sacred as done very devotionally like that everything about the drama is meant to be done very devotionally so when the playwright is writing the drama that itself was an act of devotional composition not just artistic composition now plays are something which have which were at one time in human history enormously popular as a as a very attractive form of entertainment now of course with the coming of television and now internet plays are not that common many of the western history many of the greatest authors they were actually playwrights Shakespeare is considered the greatest author in the western world and he wrote plays so similarly there is a tradition of writing plays and these are not dramas so here Rupa Goswami is for posterity writing a drama and Dhramanand Ray who is an experienced drama writer a playwright he is evaluating how have you done this how have you done that and the whole idea of this exchanges that Rupa Goswami’s expertise in writing drama is tested and it is certified by which he will get the blessings of all the senior Vaishnavas by which he can write wonderful books which will evoke Krishna Bhakti among its readers so when we talk about drama the idea is that when a particular drama is being depicted then the audience is meant to get elevated and to enter into the experience as not just observer but as a participant they get transported to that realm and when this happens then the audience can actually get intimate experiences of Krishna Bhakti just as even in Vrindavan if you are physically there literally there in Vrindavan Krishna is performing pastimes it is not necessary that Krishna is performing pastimes with every one of us all the time the devotees relish the pastimes which are performed by Krishna with others and even observing at close quarters those pastimes is also very relishable in fact in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition it is said that observing Krishna’s pastimes is actually more relishable than participating in those pastimes also why is that? it is described that Krishna performs pastimes with his intimate devotees, the Gopis and the Gopis have associates, close associates who are called as the Manjaris the Manjaris are young they are younger than the Gopis and they assist the Gopis they dress the Gopis they decorate the Gopis and they prepare the Gopis for pastimes with Krishna now when Krishna and the Gopis are performing pastimes the Manjaris hide their gross and observe those pastimes and it is said that the Manjaris relish these pastimes more than even the Gopis how is that? it is because the Gopis are experiencing Krishna’s love for them and that’s very relishable but the Manjaris, they can relish from both perspectives they can relish by identifying with the Gopis how Gopis are loving Krishna so much and they can relish from the perspective of Krishna because they have decorated the Gopis they have dressed the Gopis and they know how beautiful the Gopis look so when Krishna is seeing the beauty of the Gopis and Krishna is appreciating that the Gopis can see from Krishna’s perspective also and that way the Manjaris can relish pastimes of Krishna both ways in novels when somebody writes a novel there is often what is called as POV POV is the point of view now from whose point of view is this novel being described is it from the say there is a hero, there is a heroine is it described from the hero’s perspective is it described from the heroine’s perspective or is it described from a neutral perspective what is called as the omniscient observer he describes what the hero is doing over here what the heroine is doing over there what the villain is doing over there or sometimes it may be described alternately there are some novels in which one chapter is described from the hero’s perspective and then the other chapter is described from the heroine’s perspective and another chapter from the hero’s perspective so these are all literary ways in which the author tries to make the experience more engaging for the reader so this POV point of view the Manjiris can have both point of views when they relish Krishna’s pastimes and the whole principle here is that the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition used what was common at that time so in the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries at that time the dramas had become very popular especially in Bengal and Orissa but all over the world also all over the country also so dramas were there earlier but the culture is always flexible flexible in the sense it is always evolving according to time, place, circumstance so the whole emphasis on art music aesthetics that became very high in what is called the mediaeval times and it is these times that the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition used this emphasis on art for the sake of communicating bhakti in Vrindavan in Ayodhya there is also what is called as Krishna Leela or Ram Leela and Krishna Leela or Ram Leela what happens is that at the time of say for example Ayodhya at the time of Ram Navami in Varanasi and other places like Ayodhya Varanasi they have elaborate depictions of Ram’s pastimes and then the particular character who is said to become Ram at that time you know just like when we have deities so there are two kinds of deities there are Stahi Vigraha and there is Astahi Vigraha Stahi Vigraha is where the lord is invoked permanently and that is what is traditionally focused on in our tradition especially Vaishnava Prabhupada but Astahi Vigraha is where the lord is invoked in a particular form for a particular time say for example we have the Ganesh Puja in India especially in Maharashtra it is very common where in the Ganesh Puja there is Ganesh who is invoked in the house for a particular amount of time so the idea is at the start this is not done in many of the places today but how it is when the deity is made and the worship is to begin now a days people just purchase whichever image looks good for them they get it and they start doing Puja but ideally how it is after the image is procured then the lord’s presence has to be invoked through the Aarohan invited and then after the lord is worshipped for 1 week, 10 days, 15 days whatever it is then we have what is called Visarjan. Visarjan means we take the Ganesh deity and put it in water and now actually speaking before the Visarjan is done the Tirobhav has to be done. That means we thank the lord for having manifested over there and for giving us an opportunity to serve him and then we request him to take leave and after the lord departs then the deity is meant to be put in water now people just get the deity they start worshipping it and after they worship it they just put it in the water but that’s not the way it is meant to be done that is the lord in the sense whoever the particular devata it might be.
So this principle is there in Vaishnavism also but especially the Acharyas who are focused on building temples, when temples are built they have the Sthai vigraha where the lord is invoked not for some time but permanently so the reason I was saying this is that when the Ram Leela or Krishna Leela is being depicted at that time Ram and Krishna they are it is said that the character who is playing Rama he is it is like the Avesh of Rama enters into him so he has to say a lot of prayers before that to go into a very devotional mood and then eventually before the play starts they perform a Aarti of that particular person they are not worshipping that person they are worshipping Ram who is manifesting to that person and during the time of the drama that person is treated almost as if he is Ram and afterwards then when the play ends then again they have performed Aarti which is like Thirobha and that person departs and that person becomes a normal person whoever may be so this is there in Krishna Leela also in Vrindavan and this was there a part of Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition also Sri Prabhupada however did not encourage this so much because every art form it can be used positively but it can also be misused so some devotees for the first time Sri Prabhupada took them to Vrindavan Sri Prabhupada took devotees in 1968 to Vrindavan when his health was not good he went along with Kirtanand Swami and a couple of other devotees second time in 1970 he again took devotees to Vrindavan and that is a big group of devotees a whole bus full of devotees like a very victorious return of what was considered to be like a home town Swami somebody from a small village goes abroad and gets a big degree becomes famous and that person comes back home the villagers are very proud our boy has become so famous so the whole Vrindavan is very proud of Sri Prabhupada and they organised many festivals to honour him at that time Sri Prabhupada he introduced his disciples to many of his Gaud brothers and other Vaishnavas over there and there they learned about this Krishna Leela and once Sri Prabhupada was in LA so they were doing a drama and in which a couple of devotees, one devotee was dressed as Krishna another devotee was dressed as Radha and they started performing the pastime when they came the other devotees started doing aarti of them now Prabhupada just watched the whole drama just quietly but next day in the Bhagavatam class he said don’t do like this you can perform the drama but don’t perform aarti of the person why? because what had happened was that there was the sahajiya tradition which also developed now sahajiya is sahaj, it comes from the word sahaj means easy those who take things very easily in bhakti those who take spiritual emotions very cheaply so sahajiya is a syncreticism of Shaktism Buddhism and Vaishnavism syncretism means to bring different things together from different places we have synthesis where one or two or three things are brought together but syncretic means it’s not just brought together, it’s a mishmash of everything so what happened in the Shakti tradition we know that there is Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism so that is the worship of the goddess Shakti now in the Shakta tradition there is left hand tantra and right hand tantra right hand tantra is considered auspicious left hand is considered inauspicious all black magic comes under left hand tantra and in that in tantra there is one conception which the Vaishnavas don’t approve of that is, they say that the whole of creation is the union of Shakti and Shiva this Prabhupada also mentioned in one purport but the further thing that they take from there is that so Shiva is the masculine principle Shakti is the feminine principle and in the tantra tradition they hold that actually when a man and a woman come together it is Shiva and Shakti who are coming together and in this way men and women rationalise their sensual enjoyment by saying that this is the union of Shakti and Shiva this led to a lot of deviation but in the Sahajiyas they took this idea and they brought it into Vaishnavism and they said that actually so there will be a man who will act as Krishna there will be a woman who will act as Radha and they will do immoral activities and they will say we are not enjoying actually it is Krishna and Radha who are enjoying through us this is ridiculous not just ridiculous it is horrendous so this kind of debauchery that happened severe immorality this came into the Gaudiya Vaishnav tradition at the time of Bhaktivinoda Thakur there was a there was a book written by a British scholar and he said that I have travelled all over the world but I have not seen any religious tradition that is so shamelessly immoral as the Krishna Bhakti tradition actually the devotees of Krishna try to follow very high standards of purity but this was the experience at that particular time in fact at one particular time the British government there was a court case in which there was one particular Swami who pretended to be Krishna and who corrupted many women and after that the women from a particular caste they sued not only that Swami they petitioned that the worship of Krishna itself be banned in India now of course the British government didn’t agree to that they couldn’t because at least initially their policy was to be hands off from religion they said we are here for business we don’t want to interfere with the religious life of others but I am just giving these two examples to illustrate this point that Krishna Bhakti had a lot of immorality coming in because of the Sahajiyaism and this Sahajiyaism was a misappropriation of the idea in drama that for the purpose of drama Krishna and Radha their presence is invoked by the actors but there are Sahajiyais who perverted this that’s why in our tradition Srila Prabhupada especially was very cautious he said you can perform drama about Krishna but you don’t venerate the characters as if they are Krishna or Radha so the principle of drama at the time of Gaudiya Vaishnavism’s inauguration that is where we were seeing here in Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s times that was fresh and it was being tapped by Lord Chaitanya and here if we have to do something we have to do it well that means that if say a devotee is going to give a class in English now there are rules of grammar for English which a devotee has to know especially if that devotee is going to speak in English to a prominently English audience one of my friends has done his Ph.D. in Bhaktisadhan Sri Thakur and he said that Bhaktisadhan Sri Thakur had like one big book which was his English vocabulary book now he would take words from the dictionary write it over there and memorise those words and then he would speak in English and his English was so impressive so if we are going to use a particular cultural form English language can be a cultural form then we have to use it well to appeal to those who are attracted to that cultural form so similarly with respect to drama Natya Shastra and the Natya tradition had elaborate rules of dramaturgy so here Ramanandra is checking whether Rupa Goswami knows those rules properly or not whether he is using those rules properly in his literary compositions and thus he is ensuring that the contemporary cultural forms are both accurately are done accurate in literary terms and also they are accurate in devotional terms and this principle that whatever is appealing in the contemporary tradition that has to be used for reaching out to people this is a principle that Srila Prabhupada also used extensively in 1.5.22 in the Srimad Bhagavatam the Bhagavatam says that all branches of knowledge they are all meant to they should be used to glorify the Supreme Lord to glorify the Supreme Lord and Prabhupada writes in the purport that in today’s world science is very influential so we should use science to glorify the Supreme Lord the personal scientist should use science to prove the existence of God and similarly that same principle whatever cultural forms are there we use them in Krishna’s service so today we have technology which is shaping the whole world and for example social media is there at one level we can say social media or internet so many people are going into illusion by that that’s true but that is where most people are at and unless we present Krishna’s message according to contemporary cultural forms we will leave out the presentation of Krishna’s message from reaching to many people pure research foundation is the biggest religious research foundation in America so they did a survey and they found from 2007 to 2017 among the people who converted to Christianity in the age group of 15 to 35 60% of people who came to Christianity were engaged through online through their websites through YouTube videos through Facebook so 60% of people who came to Christianity came from social media from online outreach so if we are not there what will happen is we will be left out and this has been time and time again the error of the Vedic tradition you know in the 4th, 5th centuries BC when Buddhism and Jainism started Buddhism and Jainism they propagated primarily in the local languages Pali and Prakrit now there were many Vedic Brahmanas who said we are going to speak in Sanskrit we are not going to go down to the low level languages but the result was that the Brahmanas kept speaking Sanskrit the common people did not understand Sanskrit the common people heard what was spoken in their languages by the Jains and the Buddhists and Jains and Buddhists spread all over the country from the 5th century BC to around 6th century AD Buddhism and Jainism ruled many parts of India large parts of India in fact so only after Shankaracharya came he unified what we call as Hinduism and he countered Buddhism but when they ruled eventually what happened Buddhists and Jains they also learned Sanskrit and then they started writing books in Sanskrit and they started recruiting Vedic teachings in fact from the 1st century AD to 5th century AD if you look at the history of literature all over the world more books on atheism, Buddhism and Jainism doctrinally are atheistic culturally they are very similar to Vedic tradition but philosophically they are atheistic so from the 1st century to 5th century AD the maximum books on atheism that were written in any language all over the world the maximum books on atheism were written in Sanskrit can you imagine Sanskrit is a sacred language but that’s what happened so similarly when the Britishers came to India many of the Indian pundits just continued speaking Sanskrit but English was becoming popular and thoughtful people they were getting educated in English and there was nobody to speak in English so eventually western teachings spread quite a bit so our tradition Bhaktivinoda Thakur, Bhaktivinoda Prabhupada they saw that English is the main language in which the world is getting influenced the world is thinking so Prabhupada focused on presenting his message primarily in English so similarly we see our Acharyas whether it is the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition which utilised the Natya Shastra or our recent Acharyas who used English, who used technology, who used science we see that this contemporaneous of our tradition is a very important aspect which keeps the tradition alive and appealing to people and that is what we too need to know whatever our particular interests are, whatever our particular talents are whatever our particular social situation is we think how best I can share Krishna’s message with others and when we do that then Krishna’s message and Krishna Bhakti tradition stays alive and appealing to people in every generation generation after generation the previous Acharyas I will conclude with this point the previous Acharyas had done phenomenal work in presenting Krishna Bhakti’s message in writing books, in sharing with others but every generation requires its own teachers the previous Acharyas cannot share the message in this generation without instruments from this generation so the tradition is very old and very powerful and is going to go on and on and on but in our generation we have the responsibility to relish it ourselves and to share it with others that is our responsibility to the extent we take up that responsibility to that extent we will be enriched with Krishna’s profuse blessings and those blessings will enable us not only to help others relish Krishna Bhakti but to also ourselves relish full richness of Krishna Bhakti so I will summarise I spoke today about the Natya Shastra or Natya Tradition as a part of Bhakti so here Yatana Mahaprabhu’s Antya Leela after preaching Krishna Bhakti in Madhu Leela is now focussing on relishing Krishna Bhakti and creating arrangements for others to relish Krishna Bhakti so he after introducing Rupa Goswami to his senior associates is testing Rupa Goswami’s expertise in Natya Shastra so that he can write Natakas depicting Krishna Bhakti Yatana Mahaprabhu himself introduced or propagated Dhritya along with Naam, dancing Kirtans and he encourages his followers to use Natya for sharing Krishna Bhakti Natya drama is not just some people coming together and depicting something there are elaborate rules and principles which are described in the Natya Shastra which is written by Bharat Muni which gives the revelation given by Brahma to the Devatas and in Natya Shastra the idea is that particular depictions should be made in such a way that they evoke particular emotions in people and the emotion that is invoked is called Rasa and in relation to Rasa one has to be a Rasika one has to understand the pastime which has been depicted through Bharat Natya dance one has to know the pastime and the process of Bhakti Yoga is meant to for us to develop Rasa by becoming Rasika and this Natya can very beautifully appealingly raise people so that they not just see the pastime but they experience the pastime and observing Krishna Leela can be more fulfilling than even participating in Krishna Leela because the Manjaris can relish Krishna’s pastime from both points of view the Gopi’s point of view and Krishna’s point of view and however this Natya tradition was misused by the Sahajiyas who brought in Shaktism’s idea that when a man and woman come together Shakti and Shiva are coming together and they started imitating Radha Krishna’s exalted pastime and claiming that when they themselves were doing immoral things that Radha Krishna rejoined to us so because of that the idea of Radha and Krishna being invoked and the characters played by Radha Krishna being worshipped that is disapproved by our recent Acharyas but the principle still remains that our Acharyas are resourceful in using the contemporary cultural forms to reach out to people and when that was not done at the time of Buddhism and Jainism by the Vedic Pandits the Vedas got sidelined but when that was done and similarly when that was not done at the time of Britishers then the Britishers they spread their westernised Christianised message to people but our Acharyas used English, Prabhupada used science used contemporary cultural forms to spread Krishna’s message far and wide and every generation it is representatives of that generation who have to carry on the tradition so by the Acharyas blessings we have the opportunity to carry on their legacy by using contemporary cultural forms to present the eternal message of Krishna Bhakti in a way that is appealing and transform for people Thank you very much. Hare Krishna Are there any questions or comments? Sri Gauranga Mahaprabhu ki Jai Chaitanya Charita Amrit ki Sri Prabhupada ki Jai Jai Gaur Premanand Hare Krishna