Tamal Krishna Maharaj books appreciation

[Vyasa-puja offering to HH Tamal Krishna Maharaj, Mayapur, India]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, I am more of a writer. I am not just a writer.
I am a literary writer. I like to play around with words. I have literary ornaments.
So, I have literary ornaments. Basically, there are many devotees who write. But for most devotees, writing is a tool for communication.
But for me, writing is art. Communication is important. But I see it as an art to glorify Krishna.
And through the glorification also, communication happens. That’s why I have always looked at other devotees who also try to see writing as an art for glorifying Krishna. Among all the Vaishnavas in our movement, I have found that Tamal Krishna Maharaj was the most accomplished in this.
So, he has written many different kinds of books. In his life’s magnum opus, most important contribution for which you have probably most heard was his creating thesis. Which is a very academic and not so easy to understand book.
And there he has presented Prabhupada in a way that academic scholars who often find Prabhupada’s presentation a little too dogmatic, a little too sectarian, should take an appreciation of Prabhupada. That is his biggest contribution in terms of the effort that he put. But apart from that, several other books that he wrote.
He, for example, wrote a drama called Jagannath Natakam. Now, generally, every language is like a universe in itself. So, English has its own ornaments, has its own rules, has its own ways of playing with words.
Sanskrit has its own ways, own language, own way of playing with words. And when we translate from one language to another, the message can be translated. But the art and the beauty, that cannot be translated.
Because that is, say for example, he is saying that is there in a particular language and just doesn’t come out in another language. Say for example, Hindi, we say, So if you translate it to English, the ghosts of kicks don’t learn by talks. It doesn’t make any sense.
This is of course an extreme example. But wherever, the ghosts of kicks don’t learn by talks. So like that, the art form or these sort of sayings, they convey something in a particular language in a very powerful way.
And you really cannot translate sayings. Similarly, poetry, drama can be translated from one language to another and the message will come through. But the artistic beauty, it is very difficult to do.
And that was what Tamar Krishnamoorthy was trying to do in his books. So, this Jagannath Natakam, he has taken the rules of poetics in Sanskrit. It’s very intricate.
Among all traditions, our tradition, the Gaudiya tradition has given a lot of emphasis on poetics. So some of our Acharyas, like Gopal Chamko has written, Anandam Chamko has written the Kavikarnath. And then, for every action of Krishna, he illustrates so many different metaphors.
So many different poetic comparisons. And similarly, Kavikaranathpur has also done that to Chaitanya. So, in fact, in the verses written by Chaitanya, one cannot really be a Rasik Bhakta unless one can compose Kaavya for glorifying Krishna.
So, Kaavya has been given a lot of importance. Now, over the centuries, that, especially in the Krishna consciousness movement, that sweetness of our tradition was largely lost. That sweetness, of course, of Bhakti is always there.
But Bhakti glorified through artistic poetry. That sweetness was lost. It’s just like, say, if we have the Gopi Gita.
And the Gopi Gita is sung in Sanskrit. The sweetness that is there for Gopi Gita, if we read the translations, we cannot get any of it. We get the meaning.
We cannot bring the translation. Even if somebody put it in poetic metre, still the translation, the sweetness is not there. Very difficult to get.
So, like that, this challenge of conveying the depth or the beauty of the artistry of the tradition, that was what Chaitanya Mahaprashna Maharaj took up. And if we read the the Jnananath Nathakam as a story, that’s nice. Most of us, we have heard the story so many times.
So, we will not find anything special about it. But it’s saying that that the more what we can know depends on what we know. Just like, say, an ordinary person sees hands and says, oh, your pigment colour is white.
Somebody else, a medical doctor sees the hand and says, you have got anaemia. So, what we can know depends on what we know. So, like that, it has some appreciation for artistic composition, especially in terms, if we know some Sanskrit Kavya and the rules of that, then if we study that book, it is a masterpiece.
It is, to take the artistry of one language and try to render it in another language, it’s an incredibly difficult task. And I, Maharaj, did that. So, that was extraordinary.
And incidentally, I think you may have seen Maharaj’s book on Preaching for China, the story of Li Kangxi. Have you seen that book? Oh, you enjoyed. It is a novel, Science of Yoga.
So, what happened is that Maharaj was trying, Maharaj was trying to preach in China. He was thinking how to reach the Chinese people. So, So, he was thinking how to reach the Chinese people.
So, I met one devotee. He is the head of the the BBTH, Asia Pacific. And this story, this is a novel.
It’s the story of Li Kangxi. Maharaj has done so intelligently that nowhere in the book you can know that it’s a novel. So, actually his wife, his devotee’s wife is Chinese.
And she said, she somehow rented to China and she came to the temple because she wanted to meet Li Kangxi. Well, Li Kangxi is a fictional character. She came to meet him and then she, she is attracted.
So, what Maharaj did was that in that novel, he basically depicted how a Chinese boy, Chinese young man comes to comes to America to study and he studies genetic engineering. And then he meets devotees. And then devotees present the science of Krishna Consciousness and he gets attracted.
And he, I am trying to write novels in Bhakti and it’s not at all easy for me to. Because it’s, it’s just like say, somebody is very good to one history, somebody is good to harmony. And suddenly you tell them, now you start playing tabla.
For the outside person, both are musical instruments. But for an inside person, it’s very difficult to shift from one musical instrument to other musical instrument. Not so easy.
So, again, my normal writing is non-fiction. And to write fiction is very difficult for me. So, Maharaj wrote non-fiction and then when he was writing fiction, he just did a magnificent job.
He really entered into the mind of Chinese people. How Chinese people think in America. What are the dynamics they face? What are the career choices that they face? And how to deal with them? So, although he is a sanyasi, he has brought in some, some romance also in it.
It’s beautifully done. So, he brought in Bhakti and Chinese patriotism together in that novel. So, he, this Chinese boy is very successful as a genetic scientist.
And he gets a very big, very high-paying job offer in America. And then his family, his uncle, who is staying in China, he’s arranged for him to be married to an equally educated girl in China, in America. She’s also an immigrant from China.
And then he also gets offered to become the head of research department in China, in Shanghai University. And then he has to choose what to do. So, then the girl with whom he is going to marry, she tells him, if you go back to China, I’m not going to go back to China.
See, our relationship is over. And then he’s becoming a devotee at that time. So, he goes to his guru.
There is a fictional character named Sarapan Swami. So, I took the same name. I wrote a book called Why Don’t We Need a Temple? Then I took the same name, Sarapan Swami.
So, so he goes to Sarapan Swami. And tells him what to do. So, Sarapan Swami tells him that actually go back to China.
But don’t go back just to cure diseases. Cure the diseases. And then, at the end of his book, he goes back.
And his father, he’s got a very nice family relationship. His father is actually Chinese who wants his son to come back to China. His uncle is more of a materialistic person.
And he wants him to prosper in China. And then he resolves the whole tension so that he comes back to China not just to cure diseases but to share Krishna Consciousness. And his father arranges for him to marry a Chinese girl over there.
And then, that’s how he ends the story. So, he’s very expertly presented Krishna Consciousness as a way for the Chinese people to accept. Because there’s novel, there’s Chinese patriotism, there’s understanding of Chinese culture.
that book was a major breakthrough. So, to write very scholarly books and then to shift to fiction. So, this fiction is, so, Jagannath Natakam is basically traditional art form put into English.
But the story of Lee Kong Shi is contemporary novel. So, taking Krishna Consciousness, putting it in a contemporary novel form. That is something which is hardly any other devotees have done that.
So, he had told Krishna Swaranaprabhu who is IIT professor who was IIT professor telling to to do a similar book for Indians. Indian goes to America. You know him? Yeah.
He was a… He’s an Indian. He’s a Bhoompat Swaranam etc. So, he he had told Tamar Krishna Maharaj had told him that you can do a similar book for Indians.
So, he said that to have an Indian go to America. And then he comes back to India. So, so, so, what happens? Krishna Swaranaprabhu he said that I’m too busy to do that.
So, when he saw me writing books and read all of it, he says you should do this. So, I see that as a structure which will teach Tamar Krishna Maharaj when thinking about it. That was one of the reasons why I also No, not one of the reasons.
That was part of the reason also when I went to America where I interacted with a lot of Indians over there and talked with them understand them understand the way they live. Indians in America are in a very peculiar situation. Have you heard this word ABCD? No, ABCD is American Born Confused Nations.
So, Indians who go to America they they have been born and brought up in India. They have Indian culture. But their children who are born and brought up in America they don’t know who they are.
So, by their skin they are clearly Indian so they cannot give up their Indianness. But by their accent by their upbringing by their way of thinking they are totally American. But still they can’t become American and they can’t become Indians.
It’s a very difficult situation for them. Like there was a South Indian I think Telugu or Tamil in a movie they were called ABCD also. So, for those people so I felt that that kind of book would be a help.
That book is a big inspiration for me. Not just because of the content the content philosophy is very nicely presented. It doesn’t count she asked asked Ananthan Swami many questions but more than that it’s the whole concept of presenting Bhakti wisdom in that way is very creative and not only creative it was done very successfully also.
So, it’s somebody usually writes a novel first novel ok so I may write a second novel that works out much better. But it’s like say a cricket player who who starts miss an international debut. It’s not that on the international debut only that person will make a double century or something.
It’s only there. He makes some runs and gradually they perform better. So, Tamil Swami wrote his first novel and it came out very well.
So, just from the literary point of view the sheer amount of talent that he had did well right to be critically reviewed serious academic work to render artistic Sanskrit poetics into English and to write a contemporary novel. It’s the breadth of it is amazing and along with that he also was an authority on Shila Prabhupada especially in the last days. So, because he was so close to Shila Prabhupada that he was Prabhupada’s servant in the last days and he wrote that book Servant of the Servant.
Now, he wrote three books about Prabhupada. One is Servant of the Servant. And then after that he wrote one more book Prabhupada Ante Leela final pastime of Shila Prabhupada.
So, now each of these books has a history to it. I was in America and I met Giriraj Maharaj in Carpentry and Giriraj Maharaj and Tamar Krishna Maharaj were close to each other. So, Giriraj Maharaj is right now writing the book on Prabhupada’s struggles in Juhu.
You know what? He told me he wanted to come to Juhu and write most of the part in Juhu. Yeah. he has been.
So, I served him as editor of some of his earlier books. So, we interacted regularly especially about writing. So, he was telling that when he wrote that book he wanted servant of the servant.
So, each of those books had a history. This book basically some of Tamar Krishna Maharaj’s god brothers felt that he was just placing himself as the next to Prabhupada which means the above god brothers. So, he wanted to be servant of Prabhupada.
So, the whole book is centred around Prabhupada letter that Prabhupada has written. And he gave the name also of his picture as servant of Prabhupada. And to write a book like that it is a very creative way of writing a memoir.
Biography basically covers the whole life. Memoir covers a particular phase of one’s life. And when he wrote this memoir, he has shown how the letters that Prabhupada sent, they were the pieces of his life, they were the pieces of his decisions.
And in fact, I see the whole book as a like a living commentary on those letters. What is a living commentary? Living commentary is a life that was a commentary based on those letters. So whatever Prabhupada has done, how he implemented it.
It’s a very nice book to read. It’s for the literary gallery. But if we know why the author wrote the book, then that gives a very different perspective.
So, it’s like when I read Journey Home, I was fascinated by it. I read it almost four or five times. And then when I read, when I met Maharaj, Rana Maharaj asked me to go through the book and give me some editorial comments.
Maharaj told me that he wrote this book primarily to glorify Sri in a way that would be appealing even to those who have not accepted Prabhupada as their guru, as their saviour, as their found Raja. So, most of Prabhupada’s disciples have written books in a way that can be appreciated by insiders. Prabhupada memories will be there.
Lamrut is like a book which is meant for outsiders. When you go back, some of it is for himself. So, now, when I understood that, it’s amazing book because there’s so much other stuff.
So, Maharaj met so many other gurus and then after that and they were all wonderful people and then when he met Prabhupada and surrounded with Prabhupada how great Prabhupada is, that’s in literature this is called the story behind the story. The story is what we see in the book. but how the author grows from it is called the story within the story.
So like that the story behind the story for Tamar Vishnu Maharaj’s books I am trying to tell now. So for Sarvanda Dasarvani, it is basically he, his intent was to show how his life was centred around writing based on those, life is centred around the letters which were sent to him. Instruction is Prabhupada gave to him like this.
So how to mould one’s life, call it instruction, even those instructions are not directly given instructions, it is coming from letters. So that is, it is very striking. That is what his intent was.
And one of the most common threads that I found in that book was that Prabhupada says that because you are so sincerely trying to serve Krishna, so Krishna is giving you intelligence from within how to serve him. And Prabhupada would quote, dadami buddhi yogamitam. I give you the intelligence so that you can come to me.
So that was very striking how Prabhupada told that. So devotee’s creativity in serving Krishna, is actually Krishna giving the intelligence, the reciprocation to that devotee’s sincerity. That is the first book.
The second book was P.K.G.’s diary. Now, that is, that is a difficult book to read actually. It is for those who are devoted to Prabhupada, it is quite, quite difficult to see Sri Prabhupada going through such difficulties.
But in that, how tamal Krishna Maharaj is so sincerely served, that is, to extremely difficult situations, how much Sri Prabhupada trusted him, how close is Sri Prabhupada, that comes out in a very objective way. Generally, when an author is writing a book, in a way, he is also an important character. One is like autobiography where he is the central character.
The second is where he is not a central character, he is not the main character, he is also an important character. So it is very difficult to not be at least defensive. It is actually very easy to become self-glorificator.
Because when I am telling a story where I am involved, I would actually like to portray myself in a positive light. But when we are portraying somewhere where I am being portrayed in a negative light, where something I have done wrong, my tendency would be to at least explain it, to defend myself. So if I am a character in that, it is very, very difficult to be objective.
That’s what Tamal Krishna Maharaj has done in that book. It’s a very difficult task. It’s a very heart-wrenching, but it’s a very objective narration of very difficult phase in everyone’s life.
Yeah, that is true. But it is, you have to preserve it at that time, you have to have that maturity to preserve it, to write it down. So it’s not just present as it is, but even if you are writing it at that time, to have that level of maturity, clarity, honesty, it’s not easy.
So, there’s practically no difference between Tamal Krishna Maharaj and either of those extremes in that book. And our last book, Final Passage of Shatrughna, that is also very, a more dramatised rendition of the last three books. So Rupa Goswami has written a book called Natar Chandrika.
There he describes how devotional dramas can be written. There he says that there are three kinds of characters that can be there in dramas. One is historical, and second is imaginary, non-historical.
And third is a combination of them. That means you can have historical characters in non-historical settings. So, Tamal Krishna Maharaj, in that book, what he has done is, there are historical characters.
He is there, Bhakti Yadu Maharaj is there, other devotees who are caring for Srila Prabhupada at that time, they are there. Along with that, there is Bhakti Devi. Now Bhakti Devi, you can’t say she’s a non-historical character.
She’s also a historical character. But she’s not exactly, devotees do not see Bhakti when they are talking about this. But basically, how Krishna reached Srila Prabhupada’s last days, for the Bhakti in his disciple’s heart to become churned, to become intensified, that he has depicted.
So, now, that is a very delicate thing to do. Because Bhakti Devi is a worshipable deity in our tradition. Now, what Bhakti Devi was thinking at that time, we can’t know.
But with our best intention, with our best education, he depicted in such a way that it becomes a very, very realistic as well as a very good narrative. That book is an example of an art form, which is, it was there in Gaudiya Vishnu tradition, but it was not there in Hinduism tradition. So, that is really historical characters in non-historical settings.
So, Bhakti Devi was not really present. At least, we don’t know. We didn’t see.
She might have been there. She might have been saying the same thing. She might not have been saying the same thing.
But that’s, Sri Ram Maharaj had later written books in Krishna and Vrindavan series. And that was taken inspiration from Ramakrishna. So, he said that, he was the person who said that we see them.
He said, just find a way out. So, that is also a part. So, those three books about Prabhupada are remarkable in their own way.
I don’t think anybody else has had that proximity to Prabhupada to write like that. So, I conclude for me, which was the most inspiring book of Ramakrishna Maharaj. That is Hare Krishna at Ascending.
Have you seen that book? Another Very Good Day. So, that book is, that is basically, Ramakrishna Maharaj said, it was a major part of his life, that you need to better understand people so that they will better understand us. There is, there are basically different ways of communication.
So, there are four broad ways. Is all this becoming too analytical? You have to play with it. Ramakrishna Maharaj is different, I know.
So, I don’t know. So, there are four kinds of outreach. There are four kinds of communication.
Insider to insider. Insider to outsider. Outsider to outsider.
And outsider to insider. So, insider to insider is what happens in our mind. So, temple bhagavatham classes are there.
So, devotees speak to other devotees. Now, most of our say books, say our classes for new people, say college programmes or our company programmes, they are meant to be insider to outsider. Now, Prabhupada wanted his books to be insider to outsider.
At the same time, the content is very insider. So, there is also outsider to outsider. Outsider to outsider means, say, in America, somebody, a street singer on the street, Hare Krishna people dance.
And they want to know who is Hare Krishna. So, most people who see Hare Krishna dancing, they do not want to ask who are you? What are you doing? They will go on Google. Or at that time, they will go on some Britannia fan cycle of India or some other encyclopaedia.
And who has written that? Another outsider. So, that is outsider to outsider communication. And this outsider to outsider communication is actually very important in determining the perception of us.
So, insider to insider, that is just to deepen our own faith. Insider to outsider is to make outsiders into insiders. But there are many outsiders who never become insiders.
But at the very least, they should have a favourable perception. They should not take negatively about us. And generally, most outsiders, they will not trust insiders.
Because it is like, if I have a product, and I want to speak about the product. So, why would I speak anything bad about the product? I will only speak about the good things. So, when outsiders hear from insiders, you are going to promote yourself only.
So, I want to know, like when you go out to purchase a product, you will only go in the company and see what the product is about. If I want to purchase a mic, I want to purchase a laptop, I will go and try to read some third party reviews. What are they saying about this? They will purchase.
So, like that, when we preach, people will hear. But people also want to know, what do other people think about it? And that, what other people think about us is, in India, that is also a problem. Because in India, Hinduism is a new religion.
But in America, in the Western world, Hinduism is not a new religion for the majority of people. For them, it is mostly a learned religion. They learn it about in textbooks, all the interactive reviews, they learn about it through the encyclopaedias and other places.
And therefore, if especially in the Western world, the outsider to outsider relationship is extremely important. And to change that, if outsiders have some wrong understanding of us, how are they acquired it? They are acquired from other outsiders. And how do we change that? So, if there are academic scholars who have certain conceptions about us, and they are the people who are writing the encyclopaedia, they are the people who are writing the books, change that is extremely important.
Then we have to actually address the scholars and explain to them our perspective is completely different. So, that was the challenge that Mahatma Krishna Maharaj took. And it is, it is said, he said one king has conquered a big kingdom.
And when that king is going to conquer another kingdom, now, that king could just rest on the laurels, what is their God, what is their big kingdom, I will enjoy this kingdom. But the king goes to conquer another kingdom. Then that itself requires a lot of effort, a lot of risk, a lot of energy.
But at least when the king goes to conquer another kingdom, the king will take his army with him. And with that army also, it is very difficult to work. That is why now Radhanath Maharaj is trying to focus on teaching America.
So, now, how is he able to focus on teaching America? In a sense, it is because he has made himself as America. For many years, the goddesses of India, this is Bombay, and the goddesses there also have been inspired by him. And through them he is able to do things.
Without that network, it will be very difficult for him to do anything in America. So, so he is starting a new area for fighting, but he has got his own system. Now, when Mahakrishna Maharaj went into academia, he is also like that.
He built the theatre in Wisconsin in the moment. Now he is going out to fight another war. But going into academia means he is literally starting a new strategy.
He can’t take a, it is like a victorious king, a big king, going to fight another war, but going into academia. And practically everything that he had acquired, it was all of newness. To start a whole new war like that, at the age of, I don’t know what his age is, he has become another student in the classroom.
And he has got such spiritual calibres which are advancement. But that’s not, nobody cares for that anymore. So, it requires an enormous youth, an enormous dedication, enormous pioneering vision.
And most people don’t even appreciate, you know, inside and outside, outsiders are becoming concerned, that’s great. Why do we need to bother about what the demons say about us? You can say like that. But Maharaj had that vision.
So, now, so the point was that to make, before we can get people to understand us, we need to understand. So, if the insider, the outsider, outreach, what is the idea? If people have ignorance, ignorance will change. But in this outreach, where the outsider to outsider outreach is happening, outside to outside outreach is happening, we want to change that.
Then we have to see that the outsiders, they are also scholars. Now, they think of us in a particular way. Why do they think of us in that aspect? What happens is common people, you just tell them they will accept it.
But scholars, they have their own opinions. They have their own reasonings for their opinions. And they don’t need to change their opinions very easily.
But then, before we can get them to understand us, we need to understand them. So, Maharaj Maharaj said that we should understand why the scholars think like this. Rather than simply demonising the scholars.
So, yeah, they are just nuts. Of course, some of their ideas are terribly wrong about us. We need to correct them.
So, what we started over there was extraordinary. So, that Hare Krishna at SMU, he describes his experiences in the university. So, I was on a recent list about a month ago, I found two or three other books written in the similar genre.
And all of them are written after Tamar Krishna has written. So, I don’t know whether these are Christian scholars. It’s called, what is that book? Finding God at Harvard.
So, this was a Christian scholar, he, a Christian pastor, he went and decided to do a PhD in Harvard. So, somebody else wrote a book called, what is that book? Losing and Finding God at Harvard. So, he went through a phase of doubts.
And then again, he got back his faith. And the third book was Losing God at Harvard. Somebody was a pastor.
And after studying at Harvard, he became an atheist. So, Losing God. So, the genre of a person is already accomplished religiously.
A person going into an academic field and then writing the experiences over there. So, that is special. So, the challenge in that particular genre of writing is, whom are you writing to? Every class that we give, we have some target audience in mind.
When I say, if the audience is 50% Hindi, 50% English. Do you target the Hindi or do you target the English? So, there what Maharaj did was, is he writing for the academics? You know, to explain how devoted he is, how a Hare Krishna person feels and lives? Or is he writing for devotees? It’s a very difficult thing. Why do you have to go and do a PhD? What is the end of the PhD? So, he has achieved a balance of writing for both of them.
It’s an amazing piece of work. In terms of its candour, honesty in how he has written it. And not only candour, it’s also he’s kept it very interesting.
So, very lively.