Caitanya Mahaprabhu Is Radha And Krishna Combined

radha-krishna-pranaya-vikritir hladhini saktir asmad/ekatmanav api bhuvi pura deha-bhedam gatau tau/caitanyakhyam prakatam adhuna tad-dvayam caikyam aptam/ radha-bhava-dyuti-suvalitam naumi krishna-svarupam

‘The loving affairs of Sri Radha and Krishna are transcendental manifestations of the Lord’s internal pleasure-giving potency.  Although Radha and Krishna are one in Their identity, They separated Themselves eternally.  Now these two transcendental identities have again united in the form of Sri Krishna Caitanya.  I bow down to Him, who has manifested Himself with the sentiment and complexion of Srimati Radharani although He is Krishna Himself’ [Caitanya Caritamrita Adi-lila 1.5]

radha – of Srimati Radharani; bhava – mood; dyuti – the lustre; su-valitam – who is adorned with; krishna-svarupam – who is identical with Sri Krishna

‘Radha-Krishna is one.  Radha-Krishna is Krishna and Krishna’s pleasure-giving potency combined.  When Krishna exhibits His pleasure potency, He appears to be two – Radha and Krishna.  Otherwise, Radha and Krishna are one.  This oneness may be perceived by advanced devotees through the grace of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu.  This was the case with Ramananda Raya.  One may aspire to attain such a position but one should not try to imitate the maha-bhagavata‘ [CC Madhya-lila 8.282 Purport]

 

‘I Do Not Understand Hindi’ (Varsana, Part 2)

Braja Mohan, who had appeared very relaxed, suddenly said, ‘Come, let’s go!’ Yes, I decided, I would.  Braja Mohan stopped at a chaiwalla and bought some chai.  We sat together as he drank his tea.  ‘I want you to come to my house’, he said.

We turned around the corner and arrived at a small house at the foot of Vrsabhanu’s Hill.  An old woman greeted us at the door.   Braja Mohan said, ‘This is my mother’.  The old woman humbly offered pranams.  I returned the gesture.  She couldn’t speak a word of English.  Like many Indian village houses, Braja Mohan prabhu’s family residence opened into a courtyard.  Inside the courtyard were two cows, flanked by huge piles of grain.  Braja Mohan looked at the cows and looked at me and proudly announced, ‘This is my mother!  And this!  This is my father!’  I felt most embarrassed.  Just under a year ago I would have thought nothing of eating a  hamburger.  And here were two healthy cows being offered respect in the way that you’d offer respect to your parents!   I may have changed my ways but did that make me pious?  Did that make me a Vaisnava?

I was warming to my host: The loving reception of his mother;  his beautiful infant daughter, Gunjin (named after the flower in Sri Radha’s hair); and his natural respect for the cow.   Braja Mohan took me to a room at the side of the courtyard and said, ‘This is your room.  My house is your house’.  I had heard Indian businessmen in South Africa make similar pronouncements to sadhus.  Braja Mohan, however, said this with so much sincerity I felt like I had become a member of his family!  The room was spotlessly clean and white.  There was a picture of a white-haired Indian gentleman above the single wooden bed.  ‘That is my father’, Braja Mohan said.   He left the room and returned with a handful of writings in Devanagari, impressed with my recognition of certain Bhagavad-gita verses.  He started speaking to me in Hindi but stopped when I said, ‘Hindi samasta nahi‘ – ‘I do not understand Hindi’.

We talked and talked and talked.  Night fell, and Braja Mohan continued talking – about his family, his job in the fan factory in Mathura, about the sadhus who had visited his house and so on.  It was pitch dark.  We couldn’t see each other.  There was only the sound of the crickets and Braja Mohan speaking to his new friend.   I would have to stay the night in Varsana.  This was Radharani’s wish.  I was reminded, in some way, of the episode in Krsna Book where Uddhava and Nandamaharaj talk throughout the night.

After some time Braja Mohan’s elderly mother came upstairs with a candle, like a figure out of a fairy-tale.  She spoke animatedly to her son, visibly pleased to have a guest.   She disappeared into the darkness, returning with some braja rotis and sabji.   We relished this simple meal.  I was thankful for all the love and hospitality my hosts had shown me.  This must be the mercy of Sri Radha.   ‘Come’, Braja Mohan said, ‘it is almost time for arati‘.

 

Braja Mohan Prabhu (Visit To Varsana – Part 1)

November 1997, Varsana, India Kartik was drawing to a close.  I had only a few more days left in Vrindavan.  Even though I had gotten over my dysentry, I was eager to leave the Holy Dhama.  I had started off with ideas of performing austerities like Rupa Goswami.  Rupa was a contemporary of Lord Chaitanya who had resided on the banks of Radha Kunda, which are as hot as a desert – chanting for hours and hours, sleeping under a different tree every night, eating very little, writing devotional poetry and scripture and offering respects to devotees of Krishna. My neophyte level was exposed to me within days of arriving in Vrindavan – I just couldn’t stop thinking about western foods like ice-cream and custard.  Now, one month later, I felt as if I had been marooned on a desert island.  If my ship didn’t come soon, I might die.  There was one place I had to see before I left.  Varsana. Varsana is the ‘place of rains’, named after the gopis (the young cow-herd girls who sported with Krishna) tears of separation from Krishna.  It is the place of Sri Radha, one of the most sacred places in all of Vraja.  My travelling companions – Nicholas and Ivor – had other plans, so I ventured out on my own.  The autoricksa only arrived in Varsana in the afternoon, leaving only one or two hours of daylight within which to safely pay homage to this holy place.   A beautiful Temple loomed in the distance on the sacred hill which was once the site of Maharaja Vrishabanu’s palace.  I was excited.  I gulped back my Limka and focussed all my efforts on making my way for the sacred Hill and the Sriji Temple on its peak.  The first thing that struck me about Varsana was the beauty of the residents.  Had this something to do with their lineal relation to Krishna’s consort Sri Radha?  A winding cobblestone path drew me into the town.  After some time, the narrow path opened into a square where I walked into a gentleman sitting on a raised platform.  He wore black trousers and a white collared shirt.  He sat, like a yogi, beckoning to me with his right hand. He had a moustache and his hair was bryl-creamed.   Being a crime-conscious South African, and heeding the cautions of experienced devotees, I approached the man with due care.  He patted the sandstone dais and said to me, ‘You, sit here!  Sit here!’   I thought that it would be good manners if I sat with him for a while (Indians are very particular about hospitality).  The gentleman introduced himself in broken English, ‘I am Braja Mohan.  I live here.  We are all Radharani’s family here’.  He explained to me how the people of the village were mostly Goswamis and were all relatives of Sri Radha.  He explained to me that the place where he was sitting was a Temple of Sudhama, Lord Krishna’s Brahmana friend.  He then commenced with a fragmentary narration of the pastime of Krishna and Sudhama Brahmana.  Somewhat wary, I avoided discussing my purpose or plans in the village of Varsana with Braja Mohan.

Sudama Brahmana and Lord Krishna had been close friends at Sandipani Muni’s gurukula, in the town of Ujjain. After their education, they went their separate ways. Krishna was the son of Nanda Maharaja, a wealthy vaisya or business man; and Sudama was a poor and simple brahmana (priest or intellectual). One day, Sudama’s wife said to him, ‘My dear husband, we are very poor. There is hardly any food on our table. See how thin you are! Remember your old friend Krishna. Go to him and ask Him to assist us.’  Sudama Brahmana had only a handful of flat rice to offer the Lord when he met him in Mathura. Krishna was so pleased with Sudama’s simple devotion that when he returned to his wife, he found her in a beautiful gem-laden palace, resembling the opulences of Vaikuntha (‘place of no anxiety’) or the Kingdom of God.  

 

A Breakthrough: From The Material To The Spiritual

January 1997 was a time of serious introspection.  In hindsight I would say it was a fast-forwarding of Krishna’s mercy, a breakthrough. 

On the 13 January I watched a television documentary on John Paul Getty.  His life both extraordinary and sad.  He was wealthy but poor in spirit.  On one occasion he had a servant present his son with a $1.50 invoice for eating a hamburger at Getty’s home!  I watched the grainy black-and-white figure in the documentary work through about 20 locks to get into his house!  A house that looked more like Fort Knox than a home.  All aspirations in me to become Alexander the great were crushed.

I carried on with my strict regimen of swimming and exercise in January and February.  My notebooks contained aphoristic entries such as – selfhood involves a sloughing off of illusion.  Around this time, I saw another documentary about a cold-hearted hitman named Klukinsky.  Klukinsky left his family at the dinner table on Christmas day to go out on “business”.   He froze the bodies of his victims in freezer-containers so the forensic detectives would be unable to ascertain when they had died.  When the judge asked him why he had killed so many people he gruffly replied, ‘It was business’.  The interviewer asked him if he had ever regretted his actions.  Klukinsky replied, ‘I can’t change yesterday’.  Then he paused.  There was an occasion where he felt a little bad.  He was about to kill a man with a chainsaw when he called out, ‘Jesus!   Jesus!  Save me Jesus! Oh, Lord Jesus, save me!’  Klukinsky said, ‘After that, I found it difficult to finish my work’. 

On the 9th of February I read from the Book Of Daniel.  The Angel Gabriel told Daniel, ‘I am here to tell you what is written in The Book Of The Future‘.  I took it that The Book Of The Future dealt with the ‘extended present’ of the Eternity and not really past, present and future as we know it.  That night I dreamt of  two large volumes, with gilded Roman lettering –  The Book Of Jewels and The Ancient Book.  I found out later that later that The Bhagavad-gita is sometimes called the ‘Jewel of the Vedas’; and the Srimad Bhagavatam is called Bhagavata Purana or the ‘Ancient History of God’.

On 11 February 1997, I decided to give up eating meat for Lent.   On the 12th of February, I meta Hare Krishna monk, Nicholas.  Nicholas had a book table outside the Standard Bank in Rondebosch.  When I told him I had become a vegetarian the day before, he gave me a copy of the Hare Krishna cookbook,  The Higher Taste.  He also gave me a book called The Science Of Self Realization.  He answered my questions about the devotees’ lifestyle.  I was impressed by their simplicity.  They shared rooms and slept on camping-mats.  They chanted the Hare Krishna mantra ‘all the time’ and served God in all their actions.  I wanted to know more.

 

Many Lifetimes Of Typing

‘Let us know if there’s any more work’, I tell him. ‘I can take it back to Mott Street and type there’. ‘More? Yes’, he says, ‘There is lots more’. He opens a closet door and pulls out two large bundles in saffron cloth. Within, he shows me thousands of pages of single spaced, marginless manuscripts of literatures unknown in the western world. I stand before them astounded. ‘It’s a lifetime of typing!’, I protest. ‘Oh, yes!’, he smiles happily. ‘Many lifetimes’.
[Hayagriva Das, The Hare Krishna Explosion, p.24]

 

Covered

‘When a living entity is deceived, covered and thrown by the illusory energy [maya], he/she develops desires for material enjoyment, but when he surrenders unto the Supreme Lord, he is uncovered, and freed from the desires for material enjoyment; this is Lord Krishna’s non-duplicitous merciful glance’ – Caitanya Bhagavata A.3.2 Commentary, by Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur

Avaranatmika-sakti – covers the living entity with ignorance, thinking ‘I am happy. I am alright’ in his ‘condemned life’ [see Srimad Bhagavatam 3.26.4 Purport, by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami.

Praksepatmika-sakti – keeps you in material consciousness [see Teachings of Lord Caitanya by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Ch.10]

 

The Srimad Bhagavatam Or Bhagavata Purana

The Srimad Bhagavatam is the beautiful book of Sri Krishna, Bhagavan. Srimad Bhagavatam is also called the Bhagavata Purana. It contains the essence of the Ancient Vedic Histories known as the Puranas – the transcendental pastimes of Lord Krishna and His saintly devotees.

Mundane histories describe personalities caught in the grip of birth, death, disease and old age. As Nietsche so cynically said, ‘History is for those who dwell in the graveyards’. Prabhupada described mundane narrations as fit for crows. I have seen crows in India and they are very fond of garbage. The Vedas consider the pastimes of Krishna, however, to be amrita – immortal nectar. These descriptions are for swanlike persons and are full of sac-cid-ananda – eternity, knowledge and bliss. Srila Vyasadeva – the compiler of the Vedas, including Srimad Bhagavatam– calls the Srimad Bhagavatam ‘The ripened fruit of the desire tree of Vedic knowledge’.

The Bhagavad-gita is called the ‘Jewel of the Vedas’. Also known as Gitopanisad, an extension of the Vedic teachings called Upanisads, Bhagavad-gita is the oldest book on the planet – dating some 5,000 years. It is the sacred conversation or song between the saintly prince Arjuna and Lord Krishna. The Gita is a perfect summary of the entire Vedic Canon of knowledge.

His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada writes, ‘Bhagavad-gita accepted as it is, is a great boon for humanity; but if it is accepted as a treatise of mental speculations, it is simply a waste of time’. Essentially, Bhagavad Gita As It Is means as it is understood in disciplic succession ie. via a lineage of qualified teachers. Srila Prabhupada has presented the world with wonderful translations of the Srimad Bhagavatam and Bhagavad-gita. Even more importantly, he has explained to the public at large the true spirit of these scriptures through his authoritative commentaries or purports.

 

Krishna Tattva

Krishna Das Kaviraja Maharaja explains in Chapter 2 of Caitanya-caritamrita Adi-lila that Lord Narayana possesses all six opulences in full: sad-aisvarya-purno.  He then distinguishes between Krishna and Narayana:

‘Narayana and Sri Krsna are the same Personality of Godhead, but although They are identical, Their bodily features are different’ [2.28]

‘This Personality of Godhead [Sri Krsna] has two hands and holds a flute, whereas the other [Narayana] has four hands, with conch, wheel, mace and lotus’ [2.29]

Kaviraja Maharaja then quotes Lord Brahma’s prayers to Lord Krishna from the 10th Canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam 10.14.14:

‘O Lord of Lords, You are the seer of all creation.  You are indeed everyone’s dearest life.  Are You not, therefore, my father, Narayana?  Narayana refers to one whose abode is in the water born from Nara [Garbhodakasayi Visnu], and that Narayana is Your plenary portion.  All Your plenary portions are transcendental.  They are absolute and are not creations of maya’ [2.30]

Kaviraja Maharaja gives three proofs that Krsna is the source of Narayana from Brahma’s prayers from 2.31 to 2.57.  He establishes that Narayana is the source of the purusa avataras.  The culmination of his reasoning is that Narayana is the vilasa or pastime feature of Lord Krsna [2.58].

He then quotes the maha-vakya verse of the Bhagavatam again.  The maha-vakya verse is the principle verse of a Vedic scripture or portion of a Vedic scripture.  This verse gives the predominant conclusion of the work.  Jiva Goswami calls this verse the paribhasa sutra or ‘the emperor verse’ of Srimad Bhagavatam.  There is no verse in Bhagavatam that contradicts this verse.  Krsna Das Kaviraja Goswami, therefore, completes his argument by quoting it:

ete camsa-kalah pumsah/krsnas tu bhagavan svayam/indrari vyakulam lokam/ mrdayanti yuge yuge

‘All these incarnations of Godhead are either plenary portions or parts of the plenary portions of the purusa-avataras.  But Krsna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself.  In every age He protects the world through His different features when the world is disturbed by the enemies of Indra’ [CC 2.67 from SB 1.3.28]

 

The Purusa-avataras (The Different Supersouls)

Here are some points about the Purusa-avataras.  To understand these different forms of God helps us to gain a better understanding of Vishnu tattva and our Vaishnava Siddhanta as presented by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

1. Karanadakasayi Visnu (Maha Visnu). He rests on the Causal Ocean (karana means ‘causal’).  All the universes emanate from Him when He throws His glance on the material sky. He is the Supersoul of the collective universes. The universes manifest through the pores on His skin.

2. Garbhodakasayi Visnu (Hiranyagarbha Visnu).  He is the Supersoul of the aggregate of living entities (ie. the “Universal Supersoul”).

3.  Ksirodakasayi Visnu.  He is the Supersoul of each individual living being.

 

Transcendence

‘One may argue that His relation with the goddesses of fortune may be transcendental, but what about His relation with the Yadu dynasty, being born in that family, or His killing nonbelievers like Jarasandha and other asuras directly in contact with the modes of material nature?  The answer is that the divinity of the Personality of Godhead is never in contact with the qualities of the material nature in any circumstances.  Actually He is in contact with such qualities because He is the ultimate source of everything, yet He is above the actions of such qualities.  He is known, therefore, as Yogesvara, or the master of mystic power, or in other words the all-powerful.  Even His learned devotees are not affected by the influence of the material modes.  The great six Goswamis of Vrndavana all came from greatly rich and aristocratic families, but when they adopted the life of mendicants at Vrndavana, superficially they appeared  to be in wretched conditions of life, but factually they were the richest of all in spiritual values.  Such maha-bhagavatas, or first-grade devotees, although moving amongst men, are not contaminated by honour or insult, hunger or satisfaction, sleep or wakefulness, which are all rsultant actions of the three modes of material nature.  Similarly, some of them are engaged in worldly dealings, yet are unaffected.  Unless these neutralities of life are there, one cannot be considered situated in transcendence.  The Divinity and His associates are on the same transcendental plane, and their glories are  always sanctified by the action of yogamaya, or the internal potency of the Lord.  The devotees of the Lord are always transcendental, even if they are sometimes found to have fallen in their behaviour’

[A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Srimad Bhagavatam 1.11.38 Purport]