The Holy Name is Everything

Every week many of the Mayapur devotees meet twice or more in the evening.
The youth is the most steady at attending these kirtans.
We mostly chant Hare Krishna together for as much as 4 hours. Some devotees come and go, others stay for the whole thing.
On one such evening we sang this bhajan, I am only giving you the translation here, it is very precious. I can post the Sanskrit upon request.

Madhuram Madhurebhyo (translation to an anonymous Sanskrit poem)

(1) More sweet than all other sweet things;
       more auspicious than all other auspicious things;
       the greatest purifier of all purifying things -

The Holy Name of Sri Hari alone is everything
harer namaiva kevalam

(2) The entire iniverse, from exalted Brahma down to the lowly clump of grass,
       is a product of the illusory energy of the Supreme Lord.
       The only thing that is reality, reality, again I say reality -

The Holy Name of Sri Hari alone is everything
harer namaiva kevalam

(3) That person is a true preceptor, or a true father,
       a true mother, and a true friend also
       only if they teach one to always remember -

The Holy Name of Sri Hari alone is everything
harer namaiva kevalam

(4) There is no certainty when the last breath will come
       and put an abrupt halt to all one's material plans;
       therefore it is wise to always practice chanting from very childhood -

The Holy Name of Sri Hari alone is everything
harer namaiva kevalam

(5) Lord Hari eternally dwells in that place
       where truly exalted, spiritually advanced souls
       sing in the mood of pure devotion -


The Holy Name of Sri Hari alone is everything
harer namaiva kevalam

(6) Aho! what a sorrow, what a sorrow!
       More painful tahn any other misery in the world!
       Mistaking it as mere piece of glass, the people have forgotten this jewel -

The Holy Name of Sri Hari alone is everything
harer namaiva kevalam

(7) It should be heard again and again with one's ears.
       It should be uttered over and over with one's voice.
       It should be perpetually sung and sung anew -

The Holy Name of Sri Hari alone is everything
harer namaiva kevalam

(8) It makes the entire universe seem insignificant as a blade of grass.
       It splendrously reigns supreme over all.
       It is full of eternally conscious divine ecstacy; it is supremely pure -

The Holy Name of Sri Hari alone is everything
harer namaiva kevalam

I am OK, You are OK, it's OK... or NOT

Sometimes in our devotional life dilemmas present themselves.

 I HEAR:

 "I follow the principles, it is ok to eat this, it is vegetarian, I know it has been prepared by non devotees but I will offer it and it looks very good.  It is ok; I will offer it to Krishna…  The unreadable ingredients are just flavors or preservatives, it is ok."

"It is ok to watch TV, it doesn't hurt anyone, it doesn't break any principles, it relaxes me, I know how to remember Krishna while doing these things, it is only a movie, come on...
Want to watch with us"

"It is ok to go out and party, I am not breaking any rules - most of the time...
It is my life, Krishna knows my heart, He knows I love Him."

I ALSO HEAR, FROM MY HEART::

"What is my priority?

What is the focus of my life?

Do I want to go back to Krishna in this life or... whenever I get there? “
Am I living a minimum or a maximum commitment to re-awakening my love for Krishna?

Scenic route or freeway?”

When taking the scenic route it may be said that the speed being less, there is some integral safety, accidents may not be as harmful. It may also be the mind expressing a futile attempt at dissuading us from fast tracking back to Krishna. There is a very real danger of wanting to make a few stops on the scenic route, visiting this pleasure that gratification, following the senses for yet another distraction; the focus can be easily weakened. direction can be lost. I am actually fed up with the body and mind’s constant suggestion to engage in the allurements of the scenic route I am fed up with the allurements of that route, cheating me from arriving sooner at my destination. What appears to be a safe journey is nothing more that flirting with maya, testing how strong we are in her presence. I already know the answer, I am weak, without Krishna's mercy and that of his devotees I stand no chance so why test, why flirt with maya? The beauty of my destination cannot be compared with its foggy reflection in this world. No more pit stop, no more scenic routes, I am gratefully developing disdain and contempt for these allurements.

"Please my dear Lord Krishna allow me to choose the freeway "

Do I want to be an "ok" devotee or do I want to be ecstatic, transcendental, serving Radha Krishna with unalloyed prema? The answer is clear for me. I am not satisfied to simply come to the human platform by proper behavior I want to get to my goal in this life.

Do I want to repeatedly endeavor in this material world? or am I eager to get out.

Today I pray:

“O son of Nanda, Krishna, king of the country of love, I appeal for your affection, I am your servant. I feel deep within myself that I have connection to you. I am subordinate to You, but somehow I am now in adverse circumstances. There are so many enemies within me trying to take me away from You. Therefore I cannot give my full attention to You and Your name.

At the same time I feel, from the deepest place in my heart, that you are my master. You are all and everything to me. My heart will never be satisfied without Your companionship, so I appeal to You.  I am under unfavorable circumstances. I am suffering. And without your grace I do not find any relief from my present imprisoned condition.”

 (as quoted in a lecture by H.H. Mahanidhi Swami from Caitanya mahaprabhu’ 5^th Siksastaskam prayer)

One steady step at a time, walking towards Radha Krishna's service and love,
your servant, gopi-bhartuh pada-kamalayor dasa-dasanu-dasah

Vyasa Puja

 Srila Prabhupada chanted
on my japa beads in June 1972.

  I didn't always live in Mayapur.

Once I was a teen, bewildered as to
the meaning of life,
the purpose of it all.
It was then that I came in touch with
Srila Prabhupada.

On his Vyasa Puja day, I reflect on
these memories
and how my life progressed since.
The following is my offering to
Srila Prabhupada on this day.

 

All glories to you, Srila Prabhupada!

nama om vishnu-padaya 

krishna-preshthaya bhu-tale 

shrimate bhaktivedanta- 

svamin iti namine 

namas te sarasvate deve 

gaura-vani-pracharine 

nirvishesha-shunyavadi- 

pashcatya-desha-tarine 

jogyatā-vicāre, kichu nāhi pāi, tomāra karuṇā-sāra 

“Your mercy is all that I am made of…” 

karuṇā nā hoile, kāndiyā kāndiyā, prāṇa nā rākhibo āra 

“If you are not merciful unto me, I can only weep, 

and I will not be able to maintain my life.” 

In this way, Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur sings. I will not pretend to understand love on the level of Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur’s. However, today, the meaning of his words has reached a new depth in my heart.

As I look at my life, it has been touched by your mercy at every turn, right from my youth. When finding no meaning to life, I would have just as well invited death, you rescued me with knowledge and gave my life a purpose. Then over the years, whenever I got comfortable in this illusory world, forgetting, loosing focus, de-prioritizing my beliefs, my convictions, you reminded me and drew me closer. You repeatedly sent me guides to remind me of the purpose of this life. Again and again, you invited me to take part in your mission, in some insignificant way. Today, I seek your blessings to be able to do my part by becoming a true representative, a true lover of God. 

Your mercy is inherent to my life, as I know it. Your mercy IS, all that I am made of. Yet, here I am trying to offer something to you, like a child spending the parents’ money on a gift for them, or the offering of Ganga water to Ganga mata. I have nothing to present, nothing to give, nothing but this life, which justly already belongs to you.

You are always there guiding me, from a distance. Vani is always the way of association for me, books, lectures, and messengers: representatives, husband, children, seniors, juniors, friends, strangers, other Gaudhya vaisnavas, whomever you chose to remind me of your teachings at any particular moment.

I can offer you thanks, but even if I were to offer thanks incessantly for the rest of my life, even if I had a thousand mouths to do it with, it would not change the debt I have with you. I thank you and give you my life repeatedly, please engage me in your service, grant me the intelligence to be useful.

My dearmost Srila Prabhupada, as I go through life, mechanically engaging in attempts at devotional service, mechanically following your basic instructions, while internally following my own whim, I find myself ridden with envy for my god-brothers and god-sisters, and even nieces and nephews, who seem to have such spontaneous love for you. Allow me to find a way to serve them in spite of my all-encompassing and tenacious pride, which persists at polluting all my attempts. I hanker for the guru bhakti they cherish in their heart. Where is that love for guru that reveals eternal love for Radha Krishna? Where is my guru bhakti? The feeling evades me. Let me serve you unconditionally without regards for self, with spontaneous affection.

Today everyone is offering praise to you and I stand in awe at your immensely magnanimous compassion and dare to beg for yet one more drop of mercy: Please bless me with this elusive love for guru. Let my steel framed heart become unlocked, free to learn to serve the vaisnavas and their Masters eternally.

Please once again bestow your mercy upon me.

karuṇā nā hoile

kāndiyā kāndiyā

(prāṇa nā rākhibo āra)

Anything of any consequence, of any value in my life is due to your compassion on this minute entity. Therefore, my life is yours. I beg you to consider utilizing it in your service and glance favorably on your rebellious and unqualified servant.

Your eternally indebted daughter

One step at a time, walking towards Radha Krishna's service and love,

your servant,  

gopi-bhartuh pada-kamalayor dasa-dasanu-dasah

RACISM & KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS

The other day someone brought up the topic of experiencing racism. It made me reflect on the topic. What is racism? Am I racist? Have I ever been the recipient of racist behaviors? Is there racism in our society? What would it be like to be discriminated upon due to something unchangeable, the body you received from Krishna – understanding it to be a result of your past activities, pious and impious, your desires.

In Krishna Consciousness, there is NO RACISM.

Am I? Are we situated in Krishna consciousness?

What is RACISM?

I started with the dictionary.

RACISM:

a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

RACE:

a group of persons related by common descent or heredity.

It made me think in a broader way about racism. It is not a question of colour but of “common descent or heredity”. I guess when you look at it this way there are so many more “races”. The Brahmans, street sweepers, ksatriyas…. They also have a common decent and heredity.

According to the example of Caitanya Mahaprabhu, these designations are not too important. He was born in a brahmana family yet he instructed Ramananda Raya who belonged to the sudra caste and also Haridas Thakur, born a Mohamedan. Caitanya Mahaprabhu said to Ramananda Raya (C.C. Madhya 8.128):

kibā vipra, kibā nyāsī, śūdra kene naya

yei kṛṣṇa-tattva-vettā, sei 'guru' haya

"Whether one is a brāhmaṇa, a sannyāsī or a śūdra — regardless of what he is —

he can become a spiritual master if he knows the science of Kṛṣṇa."

Purport by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

… Actually the brāhmaṇa is supposed to be the spiritual master of all other varṇas, or classes, but as far as Kṛṣṇa consciousness is concerned, everyone is capable of becoming a spiritual master because knowledge in Kṛṣṇa consciousness is on the platform of the spirit soul. To spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness, one need only be cognizant of the science of the spirit soul. It does not matter whether one is a brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, vaiśya, śūdra, sannyāsī, gṛhastha or whatever. If one simply understands this science, he can become a spiritual master….

Am I RACIST?

My first spontaneous answer is: “of course I am not”. Racism is ugly … so I look deeper, to make sure. Do I relate to others based on their inherited body? or do I see them as an embodied spirit soul. Do I judge people based on their vehicle, the armor around their soul? Do I see others in relation to their place of birth, their upbringing, the way they dress or do I look at the spirit soul inside, the same 1/10,000th the tip of a hair, covered with more or less layers of dressing in one colour or another. Do I fully accept everyone as they are, understanding they are not the covering I see before my eyes, not their vehicle?

Regardless of discomfort in admitting it, I am not totally free from this finer racism. I yet have to see Krishna brightly shining in everyone’s heart, equally.

“The humble sages, by virtue of true knowledge, see with equal vision a learned and

gentle brāhmaṇa, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcaste].”

(BG 5.18)

Somehow there are still times when I forget who is standing in front of me – an atma with Paramatma covered by a body – and relate to others as the body they are wearing.

Work in progress I will get there.

Have I ever been the recipient of RACISM?

I almost automatically replied that I had no experience of racism. I think I answered too hastily.

Am I ever seen or treated as woman?

Am I ever seen or treated a white Westerner?

Am I ever seen or treated as less intelligent, fat ugly, pretty....?

Am I ever seen or treated older?

Am I ever seen or treated as a married woman?

Am I ever seen or treated my children’s mother?

Am I ever seen or treated my husband’s wife?

While many of the above description may be true and even the proper way to be addressed according to social customs, they are not uplifting.

.

Why is that?

They are all relatively true assumptions of my vehicle... not Me.

I am none of the above.

Not anymore than a black man is black.

I am not this body neither is the black man his body. I am simply passing through this body just as I passed through the body of a child and that of a youth, just as I will pass into another body at death. I am something else than this body.

naham vipra na ca narapatir napi vaisyo na sudro

naham varni na ca grhapatir no vanastho yatir va
kintu prodyan nikhila paramananda-purnamrtabdher
gopi-bhartuh pada-kamalayor dasa-dasanu-dasah

" I am not a brahmana, nor a ksatriya; I am not a vaisya nor a sudra, I am not a brahmacari, nor a householder, not a vanaprastha, not a sannyasi. But since Lord Sri Krsna, the maintainer of the gopis and the overflowing ocean of nectar, is the only source of universal, transcendental bliss,

I claim to be a servant to the servant of the servant of His lotus feet."
(Caitanya-caritamrta, Madhya 13.8, Padyavali 74)

The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon,

nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.

This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble,

and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, present everywhere,
unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same.

It is said that the soul is invisible, inconceivable and immutable.

Knowing this, you should not grieve for the body.
BG 2.23-25

Is there RACISM in our society?

Srila Prabhupada often compared the devotees to mangoes, ripe ones and green ones. yes there are green mangoes in our society.

As long as the mango is green there is a sour taste. We can compare the remnants of racism and finer racism, this identification with the body to this sour taste. The sour taste of the green mango is symptomatic of his immaturity and of its impending growth. As it ripens it disappears.

I have great hopes that all acidity will become transformed as we endeavor to chant the holy name without offense and gradually grow into full juicy ripe mangoes, humble sages, pure vaisnavas seeing everyone with equal loving vision…

One step at a time, walking towards Radha Krishna's service and love,

your servant, gopi-bhartuh pada-kamalayor dasa-dasanu-dasah

BIRTH – DISEASE – OLD AGE – DEATH

I lay in bed fighting an infection, nothing severe but the mind wanders. I had this before in Canada, let’s see how it unfolds here in the Dham.

What am I to learn from it?

I pray for the blessings of Caitanya Mahaprabhu who still dances in ecstasy daily in the field beside my room with his Harinam party after leaving Srivas's house, or walks as a child to Jagadisa and Hyranya's house just across the Jalangi looking for Visnu maha prasad rice on ekadasi. I bow before this most merciful Lord and His associates, who have allowed this soul their shelter.

These thoughts come to mind.

This body whom I have serve for so many years, is an impostor, a traitor.

Everyday of my life I serve this body. being convinced it is the self. In exchange for promises of happiness I serve this body. It is constantly competing for my attention. If by Krishna's causeless mercy, I meet with a moment of sanity wherein I engage in true Krishna smaranam, it quickly calls me to attention.

“I am tired, I am hungry,
I am uncomfortable,
I need to do something, blah blah blah....”

Time has come that I should know better than to identify with it. Who is this body parading as the self? Identifying with this body, mind and intelligence must be the hardest disease to fight. Only by Krishna’s mercy is there any hope of recovery.

Feeding it, resting it, cleansing it, clothing it, lodging it, taking it out on walks, listening to the wanderings of the mind, satisfying the intellect with trivial speculations and unnecessary understandings. Too much service is being rendered already from the so called master to its vehicle. How has the vehicle become the master? Did "I" allow this? Did "I" engineer this parody?

Now that I am getting older, it is claiming more attention. Maybe a doctor will assuage the suffering I am undergoing. May be a friend will listen to my wining complaints in hope of lessening my awareness of the pain. Not being satisfied with my service, it now seeks to employ others. It is a last effort, desperate effort to get more attention in this life than I am able to provide alone.

When will it surrender to being a medium, only a vehicle for me to render service. When will I teach it its position, instead of identifying with it? It never gets enough attention. It is pursuing Krishna’s position, the center, the cynosure of all eyes. I am servant, eternal servant, never God. This ego is false, temporary, sick. I am not this body. Aham brahmasmi, Sat Chit Ananda, one tenth thousands the size of a tip of a hair and full of eternity knowledge and bliss. Not full of pus, blood, mucus trying to be god…

This body is an embarrassment?... Really?

After tricking me into believing it was my private kingdom to reign over and enjoy, will I now have to submit to endless poking and prodding by teams of professionals exploring areas of this vehicle I vaguely knew existed. Even this embarrassment I am feeling is certainly due to identification... just as I thought I was beginning to see clearly. I still have far more work to do.

I pray for the day when this false, temporary, sick ego leaves me alone, alone with my eternal Friends, serving not it, an illusory sense of self but serving Radha and Krishna selflessly, with no attention to discomforts associated with the mind or an ill, awkward and aging body.

Dear Nrsingha deva I need your protection from my worst enemy.

He resides in and around me.

I am surrounded by this false, sick ego.

Let me find freedom from its demands and entanglement at your lotus feet.

Allow me to shed this covering interfering with my closeness to Your divine service.

Birth, disease, old age, and death may they bring me to the right destination, free from this seemingly eternal cycle. I pray to learn my lesson(s) in this life.

Back home in this life?

Today is one year since my God-brother Grahila left us to go back to Krishna. Hours before his departure in talking to a God-brother he said: "I am sorry that you have to stay and suffer, soon I will be there." It was with great anticipation for his eternal destination that he gave up eating and drinking, gave up maintaining a broken vehicle and finally departed on Papamochani ekadasi. All glories to Grahila prabhu.

Everyone who was there, felt from the core of their heart that he, an ordinary (!) faithful disciple, lover of Srila Prabhupada, achieved his goal, Krishna's eternal service and company.

Krishna let me accept the discomforts associated with this body
as a means of purification, bringing me closer to eternal service to Your devotees.

Battle is over, I raise the white flag. I raise both arms in prayer \0/.

In this moment, I surrender, as YOU wish.

I thank You for this opportunity to seek Your shelter in this most holy dham, wherein I now, and now again, welcome this purification. I pray for clarity of consciousness so that I may always welcome purification.

One step at a time, walking towards Radha Krishna's service and love,

Your servant.