When Bhagavatam focuses on devotion through renunciation, how do we understand Lord Chaitanya’s having grihastha followers and stressing Bhagavatam both?
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was from renunciation towards devotion but Chaitanya Mahaprabhu emphasized the bhagavatam and he also had rastha disciples rastha followers so how do we reconcile this the bhagavatam is the book among the various books in the scripture that focus on Krishna directly Krishna’s pastimes are talked about in the Vishnu Puran, Padma Puran but they are not talked in so much detail as they are in the bhagavatam so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s focus whenever we see him becoming ecstatic talking about the bhagavatam we see it, he is hearing Dhruva’s pastimes he is hearing Prahlad’s pastimes he is hearing Shamshoka of how Krishna is so merciful to Bhutana so it is actually Krishna but there is no reference Chaitanya Mahaprabhu hearing all Jambudvipa’s scriptures and becoming ecstatic it would have been possible but there is no reference to that so within our tradition there is a particular the bhagavatam is talked about and important but there is a certain section of the bhagavatam that is talked about when we have Sadan Goswami he wrote a Vaishnav Tosha Neelam it is commented only on the left hand it is not commented on the other hand so in general the tradition’s focus has been on Krishna Vishwanath Chakraborty in his commentary on the cosmology section he says that this is actually primarily for those who are already enamoured with the universe those who are already enamoured with the universe, the bhagavatam shows how dharma and devotion pervade the universe and therefore as you focus on dharma and devotion so that’s the point of the bhagavatam, everything is directed towards Krishna and Krishna Bhakti and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu focuses on the bhagavatam, it is for its emphasis on Krishna and Krishna Bhakti and yes, relatively speaking the Gaudiya Vaishnav tradition has had much more of an emphasis on renunciation than the other bhakti traditions there have been many bhakti traditions in India and for example Vallabhacharya he started bhakti at the same time now he is strongly against renunciation of course after Vallabhacharya met those swamis and he saw how truly utterly renounced they were after met Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and saw how renounced they were there are bhakti traditions for renunciation also but it is the written legacy we focus primarily on the trans-varshan this is the way for people to admire the spiritual life basically Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s followers were of different natures, his followers in Vrindavan were all renunciates but his followers in Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had followers in three places Vrindavan, Bengal and Odisha his followers in Vrindavan were all renunciates but his followers in Bengal and Odisha were on both sides and there is no way Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is telling any of his followers you are entering when you come out of the ashram he is extraditing that is bhakti Advaitacharya is supposed to be quite entering he is quite entering Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is not telling you are the patham you are in a deep dark well he will not allow you to take a bath Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is not telling he is extraditing so where there was somebody who had an inclusion towards renunciation or where renunciation was Swamiji had an inclusion towards renunciation Swamiji because they were Muslims they had converted to Islam at that time in the circumstances they were required to so there was no possibility for them while they were alive to do the practice of bhakti explicitly then for them renunciation was favourable and he encouraged them to renounce so the principle underlined is accept the favourable which is the unfavourable so for those who renunciation was favourable he was not going to recommend that for those for whom it is not he doesn’t recommend that their focus is on practicing bhakti and they you know the devas in Chaitanya Mahaprabhu are practicing bhakti wholeheartedly so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu focuses on bhagavatam primarily because of the devotional pastimes the detailed devotional pastimes in the bhagavatam