If it is told in the Vedas that “Krishnas tu bhagavan svayam” then why do other Vaishnav sampradaya worship Vishnu and not Krishna?

From: sundarshyam das

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question from His Grace Sundarshan Prabhu If it is told in the Vedas that Krishna is to Bhagwan Swayam then why do other Vaishnava Sabradayas worship Vishnu and not Krishna Answer The Vedic conclusion is given in the Srimad Bhagavatam as Krishna is to Bhagwan Swayam and it is also indicated in the Bhagavad Gita when it says in 15.15 that by all the Vedas I am to be known so if you compare these two important scriptures Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagavatam the Vedic conclusion is quite clear at the same time if we look at the historical unfoldment of this revelation that unfoldment has been progressing just as within the Vedic literature there is a progressive development of the revelation of the absolute truth in the Karmakand literature there is only the talking about the Vedic rituals by which one can get material sense gratification then as a seeker keeps practicing more and more then that person starts realizing that actually these rituals don’t satisfy me much therefore that person comes to Gyanakand and then that person becomes detached from material things and focuses on the eternal aspect of the absolute truth that is the Brahman aspect and that’s how the person comes to the impersonal conception and beyond that the person may realize ok now I have become detached from material things I am no longer miserable I am peaceful but still peacefulness is not joyfulness and then his longing for love in the heart will gradually inspire him to come to the bhakti revelation and within the bhakti revelation also there can be various rasas traditionally there is the common rasa the Dasya Ras and then the higher rasas are also there to which a person if he is very fortunate he becomes attracted and that is actually this progressive revelation is indicated in the Brihadbhagavatam story just told by Sanatana Goswami about the Gopakumar so we know that this is the gradual progressive plan of the Vedic literature now in Kali Yuga this gradual progressive plan has also actually been implemented or revealed progressively if we look back to the history of India two thousand five hundred three thousand years ago not at the time of Kali Yuga but after Kali Yuga started and took off as it spread more and more the religion that existed in India was mostly Karmakandi and in fact that centered on animal sacrifice because of which they started abusing those injunctions and that’s why Lord Buddha came and he said stop all this and Buddhism and Jainism which were two schools of thought that evolved around two thousand five hundred years ago they focused more on rejection of Karmakand and in general rejection of the world itself so when they rejected the world they indirectly focused on making people detached from material things and progressively when Shankaracharya came in the 6th century then he said that ok you want to talk about world rejection and renunciation but this is there in the Vedic literature also and then he introduced the people of India to the Gyanakanda section of the Vedic literature and he showed that what was actually being promised in Buddhism and Jainism is also being provided within the Vedic fold itself through the literature of the Gyanakanda section of the Vedas and then after that Shankaracharya was enormously successful in bringing in various parts of India practically all parts of India back into the Vedic fold and then after that when the Vaishnavacharyas came as a response to the intellectualized presentations of the impersonal teachings of the Vedas the Acharyas were forced to present intellectualized versions of the devotional conclusions of the Vedas so if we look at the teachings of Ramacharya his commentary on Janma Athato Brahma Jignasa it at a particular font size in a particular print it can run to almost 100 pages of a Srivastava commentary and he is commenting on the Upanishads and is commenting on the Vedanta Sutra and using very high level polemical intellectual arguments to show how even if one is attracted to the intellectual aspects of philosophy one shouldn’t think that the bhakti aspect is any lesser personal conclusion is also based on sound intellectual philosophy and similarly when Madhavacharya came along at that time he also gave heavily intellectual presentations of the Vedic literature in fact actually Madhavacharya’s teachings were such that those who met and debated with him were converted because they found him to be an incredible philosopher but those who heard his arguments from a distance or heard about him found his teachings incomprehensible and sometimes even almost absurd it is only when later on his successors like Jayatirtha and Vyasatirtha wrote commentaries elaborating Madhavacharya’s writings then the depth and the profundity of Madhavacharya’s teachings became accessible to the intellectual people of India so the point which I am making here is that progressively from the 10th century when Ramanacharya appeared to the 12th, 13th century when Madhavacharya appeared when the impersonal notions were being countered at that time it was important to present intellectualized aspects of bhakti so the Madhurya rasa and especially the love of the gopis for Krishna and in fact the whole conception of Krishna himself seems too playful romantic mundane and at times even immoral to actually appeal to an audience that is primarily if not exclusively intellectual so after the intellectual credentials of the bhakti path were established then after that the lord arranged to himself descend as lord Chaitanya and then he created a widespread awakening of Krishna bhakti so before that there were poets like Jaidev Goswami and there are songs of Krishna bhakti even among the alwaras but at that time the socio cultural and socio intellectual situation was not receptive for the widespread dissemination of the understanding that actually this blueish black cowherd boy who plays a flute and wears a peacock feather and dances in a full moon night with young cowherd damsels he is the absolute truth he is that same absolute truth whom the vedanta sutra is talking about in highly intellectualized ways so that’s why this particular acharyas they whether it is the Vishnu acharya like Madhavacharya or Ramacharya or Dadaacharya like Nimbarkacharya or Vishnuswami Vishnuswami and Nimbarkacharya of course especially their successors in terms of Vallabhacharya and others they do talk about Krishna bhakti they talk about Radhakrishna bhakti only but if you look at the other prominent sampradayas Dvaita and Vishishtradvaita their prominent acharyas who are called the systematizers Ramacharya and Madhavacharya they appeared in a historical situation that was not conducive for the understanding of the loftiness of the beautiful vision of God as Krishna that’s why the vision of God as protector the vision of God as the imposing majestic Vishnu who is served in Aishwarya Rasa that was the most suited conception for countering the intellectual pretensions of impersonalism Mayavad and that’s why that was the presentation that they emphasized now they did not minimize or reject Krishna worship in any way but they did not highlight or emphasize it because that’s what was required at that particular situation and so when Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu comes along he comes and gives the highest conclusion of the Vedic literature which is there in the literature but which is not brought forth till now and not certainly not widely propagated till now so that’s why it is the Gaudiya Vaishya Sampradaya which builds on the spiritual restoration work that was started by Buddha continued by Shankara and then further continued by Ramanuja and Madhava and culminated in the teachings teachings of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and in his mission that the revelation that Krishna is the ultimate conclusion of the Vedic literature that was revealed and established and