Vasudeva Ghosh – The mysterious mercy of Lord Chaitanya revealed through sweet musical songs

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna On the sacred day associated with Vasudev Ghosh let us try to understand his contribution to the Gaudiya tradition as well as to our life Vasudev Ghosh along with his two brothers were exalted associates of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu they were all extraordinarily sweet singers and they spread the legacy of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu far and wide among the people through the medium of kirtans now every tradition in order to survive and thrive requires philosophical foundation as well as a popular outreach so in our tradition’s case the philosophical foundation was created largely by the Goswamis who lived in Vrindavan and wrote books and the popular outreach was done largely in Bengal by various devotees who some of them wrote books about the past Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu but primarily they did it through singing, dancing through kirtans now along with the kirtans about the holy names there are also bhajans and Vasudev Ghosh himself wrote he was known as Vasu Ghosh in short, he wrote many beautiful bhajans and actually the life the devotional vibrancy of the bhakti tradition often largely came from the power of the saints who travelled the length and breadth of the country and they sang about their love for God and through their songs about love for God, people around them became infused by similar love for God so Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s glory and divinity was similarly propagated and Sri Krishna’s bhakti was propagated by many of the bhakti saints through in our tradition through their songs so prominent among these saints who wrote songs and bhajans were Narottam Das Thakur and Bhakta Vinod Thakur but along with that there are many others also and one of the prominent among those is Vasudev Ghosh so he has written many bhajans, two of the most prominent among his bhajans which are like his legacy which will continue on nourishing devotees of the Gaudiya tradition for a long long time to come.
Two of them are Yadhi Gaur Na Hoyte Tabhe Ke Hainte so if Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had not appeared how in the world could we have known the supreme sweetness and sublimity of the pure devotion of Shri Mati Radharani for Krishna so he in this one song encapsulates the essential uniqueness of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s message and mission there are many Yugavatars and in every Yugavatar comes to try to propagate the Yugadharma Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s sharing of the Harinam Sankirtan is his propagation of Yugadharma and that is extremely important indispensable for the souls of that Yuga but even more special and rare is that although one Yugavatar comes in every Yugadharma but only once in a day of Brahma does Krishna come and then Lord Chaitanya come so the uniqueness of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s descent is that is Krishna himself wanting to taste and then to distribute the supreme sweetness of the love of Shri Mati Radharani for Krishna so that essential mood and mission of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is encapsulated by Vasudev Ghosh in this song and that’s what reveals to us how close his heart was to Lord Chaitanya and how close he was to the heart of Lord Chaitanya that he was able to and conveys such an intimate truth in such a sweet and revealing poetic form for generation upon generation of devotees to relish and another one of his songs the most popular lines that devotees often sing is Jai Gaur, Jai Krishna Jai Jagannath in this simple phrase he conveys the simultaneous oneness and difference of the various forms of God so Krishna is manifested as Jagannath and also as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu so this Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is dancing in the kirtan in front of Jagannath Puri he is actually in the mood of Radharani who is in separation from Krishna and Jagannath whose cart is being driven he is Krishna in the agony and the ecstasy of separation from Radharani so there is Krishna in Radharani’s mood of separation from Krishna there is Krishna as Jagannath who is Radharani who is Krishna in the mood of separation from Radharani and then there is Krishna himself who is present as the holy name and all these three are three distinctive but at the same time they are one this is the inconceivable magic of the supreme personality of Godhead and that is conveyed through the song so one of the ways in which we can relish the legacy of the great Acharyas and express our gratitude for them is by reading and accepting meditating on their compositions so by meditating on his songs we can express our gratitude to Vasudeva Ghosh and seek his mercy so that we can also understand the mysterious mercy of Vijayananda Mahaprabhu relish that mercy and share it with the world