Raghunatha Dasa G – The sweetness of devotional renunciation

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
On the sacred occasion of the disappearance day of Shri Raghunatha Goswami, let us look at His enormous and distinctive contribution to our lives. The Lord arranges for different devotees to act in different ways so that they teach us different lessons.
Shri Raghunatha Goswami demonstrates devotional renunciation in its supermost degree. Generally, people have the misconception that bhakti is naive sentimentality, that people have sentiments in material life, and similarly, some people direct some sentiments towards God. But bhakti is not naive sentimentality.
It is transformational devotion that naturally results in renunciation. So a devotee directs all of one’s emotional energy towards Krishna and because of that, one has no emotional connection, no emotional attraction left towards anything material. Raghunatha Goswami’s example is extremely important to serve as a counter for many sahajiyas who claim to be followers of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu but were engaged in all sorts of attachments.
So actually, there are four possible ways of interaction with the matter and with Krishna. The materialists are attached to matter and detached from Krishna. The mayavadis, they are detached from matter and they are detached from Krishna also.
The sahajiyas, they are attached to matter and they are attached to Krishna also. Whereas the devotees, they are attached to Krishna and they are detached from matter. When required, they will use matter in Krishna’s service.
So Raghunatha Goswami demonstrates this detachment. He had everything that people can dream about. You know, a fabulous wealth, incredible power, a wonderful family, loving parents, a beautiful wife.
He had everything that people dream about and he was dreaming about something else. Instead of dreaming the dreams that most people had, his dream was to give it all up and to surrender to the Lord. Now, just the desire to give all this up itself is extraordinary.
And if somebody is ready to give it all up, that is glorious. But when one wants to give up everything and not only does one have obstacles in giving it up, but one has justification for not giving it up also. It is not that sometimes in material life people renounce because they are frustrated with material life.
That is a very low level motivation because one doesn’t get success in material life, so one renounces. But another level is that, okay, because in my material life, there is opposition to my spiritual life, so I will give up my material life. But Raghunatha Goswami had neither of this.
His material life was not miserable. It was very enjoyable and it was not sinfully enjoyable. It was pious enjoyment and he could very well have practiced devotional life within his material life also, within his opulence.
But Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu wanted to demonstrate that for the sake of Krishna, you should be ready to give up not only the bad of this world, but you should be ready to give up also the good of this world. So give up everything of this world for the sake of Krishna. And so he had a justification that he could have practiced devotional service at home, but he did not accept that justification.
He could have had a justification that his parents were opposing him. He tried to run away and he couldn’t run away. How? Because his parents kept guards around the clock and obstructed him and captured him and brought him back.
And he tried again and again and again and still he couldn’t give up. And eventually, the way he was able to give up was not just by his own intelligence. He was intelligent.
As soon as the opportunity came at one night to go and attend to some duty with the local temple. So he grabbed that opportunity. But before that, with whatever facility he had, he used it to serve Sri Nithyananda Prabhu.
And he arranged for the Panihati Chiradayi festival where he pleased Nithyananda Prabhu and he pleased all the Vaishnavas by his service and by their blessings he was able to successfully disengage himself from this world and engage himself fully in the service of the Lord. So what this demonstrates is that whatever facility we have for serving Krishna, that we use it in Krishna’s service and by that we show Krishna the sincerity and the intensity of our desire to serve him. And then he gives us more facility, more freedom.
So he had the resources of the world to serve Krishna and he used them in Krishna’s service. That’s how we express the desire. So it is impossible for us to imitate Raghunatha Das Goswami.
But we can take the principle that we should be ready to engage everything that we have in Krishna’s service and if required we should be ready to give up whatever we have for the sake of Krishna’s service. And that is pure devotion. So the devotion that is filled with the sweetness of renunciation.
Normally renunciation is considered to be bitter. But Chaitanya Mahaprabhu tasted the food that had been thrown away even by the Kalinga cows and he tasted it and he said this was more relishable than any other food that I have eaten. So what was he eating there? He was actually relishing the sweetness of the devotional renunciation of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, of Raghunatha Das Goswami.
So that devotional renunciation and its sweetness can be tasted when we focus wholeheartedly on the service of the Lord. And that is the inspiration and that is the blessing that we can seek from Shri Raghunatha Das Goswami on this sacred day. Shri Raghunatha Das Goswami ki Jai!