Virabhadra Goswami – An important preserver and propagator of the Gaudiya tradition

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna on the occasion of the appearance day of Veerabhadra Goswami let us look at his legacy for us the Gaudiya Vishnu tradition has been a living vibrant tradition for over 500 years now and the tradition has stayed alive and has expanded because of its many generation of extraordinary individuals and in fact these are not just extraordinary individuals actually when the lord comes and gives a message he doesn’t just leave the message after he leaves the world you know he makes arrangements for that message to be continued generation after generation after generation so the lord arranges for extraordinary souls to be there in each generation who will continue on the legacy of love that he has given so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu he himself met his associates he got the six Goswamis and he sent them to Vrindavan and then after Chaitanya Mahaprabhu departed the Vaishnavas in Bengal they were led by two main individuals one was Nithyananda Prabhu and the other was Advaita Acharya and Nithyananda Prabhu’s son was Veerachandra Goswami so Nithyananda Prabhu was the leader of the Gaudiya Vaishnavas after Chaitanya Mahaprabhu at least in the Bengal area and after that Veerachandra Goswami was one of the leaders and he it is said is to be an incarnation of Mahavishnu so he although having the power of the supreme lord acted like a devotee not acted like a lord and he took initiation from Janma Mata who was like his second mother Nithyananda Prabhu had two wives and Veerachandra Goswami was extremely powerful Vaishnava who could bring, infuse devotion in whoever association he went and not only he was a great devotee but not only did he continue and share the Gaudiya tradition wherever he went but along with that he also continued the tradition in two ways the sampradaya generally are of two types there is shukra sampradaya and there is shrauta sampradaya or shukra parampara shukra parampara is seminal succession that which continues by birth and shrauta parampara is that which continues by hearing that means the guru speaks to the disciple the disciple and the guru may not be related by blood but they are related through sound and the disciple then carries on the legacy of the guru so Veerachandra Goswami continued the Gaudiya Vaishnu legacy in both ways his own family was extemporary devotees and his sons were also great devotees and along with that he preached and initiated many many glorious devotees his disciples were among the most powerful preachers during his times so much so that Krishnadas Kaviraj Goswami in the Chaitan Charitamrit while using a metaphorical tree to describe the spread of Gaudiya Vaishnavism he says that this tree has many many branches and one of the foremost branches one of its most important branches of coming from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu which is a whole tree it is one of the most important branch and coming from Nityanand Prabhu it is the most important branch that is the branch of Veerabhadra Goswami so in this tree what Krishnadas Kaviraj Goswami says is that each branch is like one person and the sub branches coming from that are the subsequent devotees who became devotees by being connected with him so he says one of the heaviest strongest and one of the most important branches in the tree of Gaudiya Vaishnavism is the branch of Veerabhadra Goswami and he says that Prabhupada in his translation to that verse explains that actually it is by the grace of Veerabhadra Prabhu that all of us have the opportunity to practice Krishna consciousness so there are so many generations of devotees about whom we don’t know much and as subsequent Gaudiya devotees, generations of Gaudiya devotees do more research, find more, we may come to know more and more about these glories, about their glories but even when we don’t what we can remember is that there are many many great souls who may be the Lord himself manifesting again or may be the Lord’s special devotees it is through all of them that the Gaudiya legacy has come to us so we can pray for their mercy so that we preserve that legacy relish it and then propagate it to others in the best of our capacity