Jiva Goswami – Scholarship perfected in the service of pure devotion

Transcript

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Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna so on the sacred day associated with Shri Jiva Goswami let us contemplate on his oceanic contribution by considering just one drop of it, Shri Jiva Goswami is known as Siddhanta Acharya many times, he was the person who systematically formulated and established the Gaudiya Siddhanta and he did it in such an extraordinary way that his books, the Sandarbhas have become the foundation of Gaudiya Vaishnavism for all generations of devotees Jiva Goswami’s writings are many and his writings are his primary legacy among the various Goswamis, he was the most scholarly and yet he was the most submissive also, completely surrendered as a menial servant to Shri Rupa Goswami doing whatever Rupa Goswami asked for and going forward in a very humble and menial way to do whatever it was required and through that he got the full blessings of Rupa Goswami now when Jiva Goswami was serving Rupa Goswami, in one sense Rupa Goswami was the uncle and Jiva Goswami was the nephew, the son of Anupam, who was the brother of Rupa and Sanatan but when he was serving them he served them just like a spiritual master and completely offering himself and he received the full blessings of Rupa Goswami and based on those blessings Jiva Goswami wrote and established the Gaudiya Siddhanta in extraordinary ways. Now his writings which are his primary legacy can be classified into four broad categories he has written books on philosophy, systematically explaining our philosophy that is the Sandarbhas and then he has written a sort of commentary on Sandarbhas also combining the insights and integrating them and commenting on them further in another book also so like these are his philosophical books then there are his narrational or past time books, primary among them is Gopal Champu.
Gopal Champu is a masterpiece in poetry and ornamentary devices and it is, Champu, Champu is a very special composition in Sanskrit which is a blend of poetry and prose and it’s not a very easy composition to write in but he has written very beautifully this book Gopal Champu expands in the 10th canto past times based on insights drawn from various scriptures and based on the profound revelations of Sri Jiva Goswami himself and also the Vaishnav Toshin which the Goswamis have written before him and is made such a vivid, intimate and personal picture of Krishna available to all of us through his Gopal Champu. Then he has also written the extraordinary Hrinamamrith Vyakran wherein he has formulated all the rules of Vyakran in terms of the names of Lord Hari and in this way Vyakran which is often considered to be like a dry subject where one has to memorize so many rules he has made it very devotional and that is the beauty and the sweetness of the Hrinamamrith Vyakran and Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu when he was acting as a grammar teacher at that time when he was in ecstasy he would say that actually all the words, all their roots ultimately lie in Krishna and how that is so and how all grammar can be made Krishna centric that which Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu talked about in his trance in the last days of his career as a grammar teacher before he just gave up teaching grammar and started focusing fully on relishing and sharing pure devotion so what Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu taught in those few days, Shri Jiva Goswami demonstrated through the Hrinamamrith Vyakran and then after that he has also written some very amazing commentaries on the books of the previous Acharyas. So for him of course previous Acharya is Rupa Goswami himself so Rupa Goswami wrote Bhakti Rasamrith Sindhu and then he wrote also Ujjwal Neelamani which all talks about Rasa and Durgam Sangamani is the commentary which Jiva Goswami has written and in that he very beautifully and deeply profoundly analyzes and elaborates on the Siddhanta of the Gaudiya Acharya of Rupa Goswami so in this way not only that actually Jiva Goswami after he came to Vrindavan after Rupa Sanathan departed although there were other Goswamis who were much more senior to him but still they all unanimously elected Jiva Goswami as the leader of the Vaishnavas and there were many other exalted spiritual masters who also entrusted to Jiva Goswami their disciples so that he became their Shiksha Guru and prominent among them were Srinivas Acharya, Shyamanand Pandit and Narottam Das Thakur and these three Vaishnavas they became trained, equipped and empowered under the tutelage of Srila Jiva Goswami and thereafter he instructed them go back to Vrindavan go back from Vrindavan to Bengal and Orissa and flood it all with the mercy of Lord Krishna and Lord Chaitanya and so Jiva Goswami himself did not travel much and preach in one sense but he sent his trained disciples back and they after Lord Chaitanya departed there was a sort of upheaval and there was sort of some little down slide in Gaudiya Vaishnavism but after these devotees came back next generation and they rejuvenated and spread Krishna consciousness far and wide and Jiva Goswami himself was a peerless scholar he before he went to Puri, before he went to Vrindavan he did something extraordinary which should not be done by others he actually went to Kashi and he studied grammar under the grammar teachers, best grammar teachers over them Madhusudana Vidyavachaspati and he became one of his best students over there also now Kashi was surrounded, filled with Mayavadis but still Jiva Goswami went there, not only protected his devotion but he equipped himself to counter that Mayavad and then after that he went to Vrindavan and there he used, integrated all his learning into his masterly writings, so Jiva Goswami is glorified very profusely by Krishnadaswamy Goswami who says that Jiva Goswami wrote 4 lakh verses it’s oceanic what his contribution is and Sri Prabhupada would say that if devotees are troubled by doubts they can read the Sandarbhas and they can see the magnificence of the scholarship and the profundity of his realizations and his brilliance his sheer brilliance shining through these books so we can all pray to Jiva Goswami that this glorious legacy that we have got in the Gauri Sampradaya we can all relish it and we can all share it with others, relishing it with our intelligence and relishing it with our heart and sharing it according to our capacity with the world Jiva Goswami pad ki Jai Hare Krishna