Which books of the previous acharayas can sadhakas read?

From Vraja Bhava Prabhu

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you.
Hare Krishna. Question. As devotee sadhakas, which books of our acharyas can we review? Answer.
Yes, certainly the books of the previous acharyas are the gift that Shrila Prabhupada has given us. Shrila Prabhupada gave the essential or the essential important points from their commentaries and his purports to us. And he naturally didn’t want to stagnate Krishna consciousness with us, with himself.
He wanted us to connect us with our glorious tradition. So there are two extreme positions in this. One is to say that unless we have completed all of Shrila Prabhupada’s books repeatedly, we should consider the previous acharyas’ books as utterly untouchable.
That is a very extreme position. Another extreme position is to say that Prabhupada has given us only very basic things. So we don’t have to read Prabhupada’s books.
The real nectar is only in previous acharyas’ books. So we should just jump to previous acharyas’ books. So both these are extreme situations.
We need to understand, get a balanced understanding. And a balanced understanding is that we need to be properly attracted to Krishna. Properly attracted to Krishna means that attraction to Krishna.
Sarvajiyas also have attraction to Krishna. But the problem is the non-philosophical attraction which becomes sentimental and over time it becomes immoral. Or at the very least it’s superficial.
So we need a very strong foundation in basic philosophy. And we need to see the relevance of scripture in our day-to-day lives. Yes, sometimes we may read some Prince Acharya’s books and we may get some we may get some esoteric come to know about some esoteric things about Krishna and his pastimes.
We may think, oh this is all so sweet. We may speak this but at one level we speak the sweetness of those things and then at another level we are chasing after the supposedly sweet taste of sense gratification. So then that sweetness is not permeating our life and transforming our life.
So the point is that we want to study scripture and study Prince Acharya’s works in a transformational way not just in a titillational way where we just come to know oh I know something about Krishna which no one else knows or which so few people know and we get a small egoistic kind of thrill thinking that oh I read this book I read that book I read that book No, we shouldn’t be like that. So our goal whenever we read Prabhupada’s books or the Prince Acharya’s books should be the mood of service. We read their books so that we can we can serve them and we can relish the legacy that they have left for us.
Now specifically in the initial phase of our life we need to focus on getting the fundamentals the basics of Krishna consciousness right and that’s why we should read Prabhupada’s books very systematically seriously and nowadays there are most places in the Krishna consciousness movement there are systematic Shastra study courses like the Bhakti Shastra course that is happening so we attend such courses and we get rooted strongly in the basics and once we have understood the basics properly then depending on our our specific service our specific inspiration our specific need we can study other books other books can also be books by Prabhupada’s followers if we have interest in a specific subject and we want to study that subject for example if we are from a scientific background and we want to study something on science and spirituality then we can look at devotee scientist books so that way if we study based on more of a need or interest or inspiration then our study will be more guided and it will not be superficial it will be more purposeful it will be more transformational because we will be using, internalizing, contemplating what we study so now regarding Dhrishtacharya’s books generally if you want to I’ll just go over some of the books here to give an understanding it’s difficult to do a summary of all the Dhrishtacharya’s books here so we usually start by studying the Bhagavad Gita as our main book so for understanding the Bhagavad Gita deeply the previous Acharya’s commentaries are very helpful so Bhurijan Prabhu has made some insights from those commentaries available in his Saran Rang to me and Garuda Prabhu has also made some insights of that available in his book The Beloved Lord’s Secret Love Song and other devotees have also written in the Bhagavad Gita like that but Vishwanath Chakravadakur is a is a is a commentator who brings the rasa in bhakti who makes the rasa in bhakti accessible to us and further also we see that the Baldevidya Bhushan has his own way of analysing the Bhagavad Gita’s multiple levels of presentation and integrating them by using his own three level frame of analysis so it’s quite illuminating to see the Bhagavad Gita analysed and explained in so many different ways and Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s commentary is of course more of a sub-commentary Bhaktivinoda Thakur wrote two small commentaries. He published the Bhagavad Gita twice. Once Baldevidya Bhushan’s translation with a brief commentary of his and once Baldevidya Chakravartika’s commentary with a brief sub-commentary of his own.
So if we are inspired by Bhagavad Gita then we can study the Bhagavad Gita commentaries of the previous Acharyas If you are interested in the Bhagavatam then the Sarad Darshan is a wonderful, wonderful book It opens the Bhagavatam and charms the heart. So it’s a beautiful book if you want to go deep into the Bhagavatam We can read that If our stress is on connecting ourselves with the Bhagavatam then definitely that’s a go-to book If our interest is more in the 10th Canto, which is of course we have a focus on Krishna then there is there are books which our Acharyas have written on the 10th Canto which are very relishable and we can read those books So for example, now all this I am talking about after one has situated yourself properly in the philosophical fundamentals But in the 10th Canto we can read Gopal Champu and Anandavan Champu There are some sections which are esoteric and if we start feeling disturbed while reading those we can skip those sections. But overall the characters who are described in the 10th Canto we really come to know them when we study Gopal Champu The character development of those characters who are just briefly described in the Bhagavatam the development is done by Jigna Goswami in a beautiful way Actually Gopal Champu in Sanskrit is an exquisite poetic book Champu is a form of literary composition that combines prose and poetry according to certain specific rules of composition So Jigna Goswami uses those rules of composition and he does exquisite work.
So it’s a very beautiful book to actually increase our devotion to Krishna. Now of course Shivram Maharaj has made many of the insights from the Priyasacharya’s commentaries especially related to the 10th Canto available in his Krishna and Vrindavan series So one can read that also if one feels more inspired to read those books but the Priyasacharya’s books also have, they have been translated and they are available to us. Now if we are more interested in philosophy or interested more in saying the Vedantic study sort of thing, then Govindabhashya is the book to go to because the Govindabhashya gives us a commentary on the Vedanta Sutra and the Vedanta Sutra is basically a summary and an analysis of the teachings of the Upanishads.
So Baldevite Devotion in the Govindabhashya shows basically how the Vedanta Sutra is theistic, personalistic and ultimately centered on devotion to a personality that is Vishnu Krishna. So to see the Vedantic and the Upanishadic basis of Bhakti in a philosophical way the Govindabhashya is a very good book to understand Gaudiya Vaishnavism per se. So now I have talked about till now about Bhagavad Gita and about Bhagavatam and then about Bhagavatam 10th Canto.
We want to understand the Gaudiya Vaishnavism per se, then there are several important books also. The book Chaitanya Shikshamrita is and Jaiva Dharma these two books are foundational to Gaudiya Vaishnavism and they are the books which we if we want to understand Gaudiya Vaishnavism properly are important for us to study and to understand these principles properly and these are Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s books. Prior to that also we can study the Bhaktirasa Amrit Sindhu now with the commentary of Jiva Goswami that has also been translated by Vanu Maharaj and that’s available and that gives a very devotionally analytical study of Bhakti and then of course if one wants to look at the Vedantic and the Bhagavatam foundations of Gaudiya Vaishnavism then there are Jiva Goswami’s Sandarbhas which are Sandarbhas are foundational books for Gaudiya Vaishnavism and they also we can study.
So these are of course after we have studied Chaitanya Charitambul systematically and at one level this can appear to be a huge amount of study you may say I don’t even get half an hour to study everyday who is going to study all these books but important point you need to remember is that that so we have to connect with Krishna and sometimes it may well happen that we are not able to connect with one book and if we think that this is all that there is to Krishna consciousness and then if you know I am so unfortunate I have no taste for Krishna so let me not study anything better than that attitude is to study something so we may if we find that we are reading a particular book and somehow we are not feeling inspired we are not feeling motivated yes we certainly need to use will power to keep perceiving in the study but if you are not able to study somehow or the other then we can switch to some other book with which we can connect with better and study better now of course the Mahabharata and the Ramayana are also very important books and although our acharyas and none of our acharyas have given commentaries on them but there are several devotees who have rendered the Ramayana in contemporary terms as also the Mahabharata that is Krishnadharma Prabhu has done that both the Ramayana and Mahabharata but his is more of a primarily a narration of the stories but other devotees like say Shubbala Prabhu has done the Ramayana with some lessons from it also so these are also books that we can read so the point is we at one level don’t restrict ourselves to only a particular framework of study because then if we don’t feel connected don’t feel inspired in their framework then we may not connect at all with Krishna so the important thing is we should stay connected with Krishna and whichever way through whichever book we can connect with Krishna we should see that as Krishna’s blessing and connect ourselves with Krishna through that at the same time the nature of the mind is to take the easy way out to take the path of least resistance and therefore when we start reading a book and anywhere the book becomes a little philosophical little technical and say oh this is too much let me just put this aside and then we may just shift from that book to some other book at that time that sort of jumping from one book to another and choosing the path of least resistance not only will that deprive us of the mental discipline that brings about purification but that will also deprive us of cultivating a service attitude and rendering service to the Vaishnav Acharyas so either when we are reading Prabhupada’s books or previous Acharya’s books we should do it first and foremost in the mood of service yes we also need to be inspired ourselves in our reading but when we read any book we can pray to Srila Prabhupada we can pray to our spiritual master at least at the start of the book and we can pray to the previous Acharya whose book we have read and then we can start reading that book on a regular basis and we should make a plan it’s not that two days I read Gopal Champu and the next five days I read Sarad Darshini and the next one week I read Ramayana and then I read Nivamrut and then like that five years ten years pass and then I have read nothing practically systematically in my life that is very it can be very disheartening when we realize I have been practicing Bhakti for so many years and I have not read anything so we need to have some discipline in our Shastric study and that way we can move onwards in our practice of Bhakti so whatever so after we are rooted in the fundamentals with the books that deal with the fundamentals then after that we can based on our interest our need and our circumstance with the blessings of our seniors read the previous Acharya’s books not for the sake of titillating ourselves by getting some esoteric information but for transforming ourselves by increasing our attraction to Krishna by rendering service to his exalted devotees so we should read Prabhupada’s books in the mood of serving him and when we read previous Acharya’s books it is not that we become special just by reading those books oh I am reading a book which no one has read if at all there is any speciality that will result that is if we become transformed we become increasingly attracted and devoted to Krishna by reading those books and that will also be the mercy of Srila Prabhupada it is he who introduces us to the tradition and it is by his blessings that we get the blessings of the tradition we get the connection of the tradition and we get the blessings of the tradition also so if we have that humble mood of service and if our mood is primarily that we want to become more transformationally attracted to Krishna by knowing about the Siddhanta and the Leela of Krishna then with that devotional mood we can study different books of the different Acharya’s and thus grow in our Bhakti. Thank you. Hare Krishna