The following first appeared on Religion Dispatches. Read more and sign up for their free newsletter here.

By Beatrice Marovich

Some humans are deeply passionate about their meat. They love it, they gnash their teeth for it. In her 2006 spiritual travelogue Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert confessed a kind of affinity with the sensual Tuscan culture of meat. Shop windows in the Italian town, she writes, are loaded with sausages “stuffed like ladies’ legs into provocative stockings” or the “lusty buttocks” of ham. The net effect, she suggests, is the emanation of a “you know you want it” kind of sensuality. Make no mistake. Meat—the flesh of non-human animals—is a force of desire in human life.

But is there an ethical argument in favor of flesh consumption? That is, can a meat-eating human find solid moral ground for her more carnivorous appetites? Is there a soul-cure for the stomachache that comes from eating the body of another sentient creature? Are these questions that the vast storehouses of religious traditions can help us navigate?

In a culture where plates are piled high with the spoils of profligate factory farming, it would seem that the growing surge of vegans and vegetarians have claim to the moral high ground. One might even make the argument that religious vegetarianism is one of the few things that makes modern religions look good. But not everyone is satisfied with this solution. “Ethically speaking, vegetables get all the glory,” Ariel Kaminer lamented in the New York Times, playing the role of the paper’s esteemed Ethicist. And so, in an attempt to buck this trend the paper launched an essay contest in March of this year: in search of the ethical argument for meat.

Essays were judged by a star-studded panel that included vocal vegetarians like Peter Singer and Jonathan Safran Foer as well as more cautiously omnivorous foodies such as Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman. Controversy ensued over the fact that the panel was comprised entirely of men. But, gender issues be damned, results were published in late April. Six essays made the cut. The final stage was to give Times readers four days to vote on their personal favorite. Almost 40 percent of voters appeared to favor the ethical argument in favor of in vitro meat. “Aside from accidental roadkill or the fish washed up dead on the shore, it is perhaps the only ethical meat,” essayist Ingrid Newkirk baldly proffered.

If Peas Can Talk…

The argument that stirred me most, however, was one of the lower-scoring essays—earning a mere 10 percent of voter approval. Interestingly, it wasn’t really an argument in favor of meat at all, so much as it was an attempt to dramatize the moral stakes of the practice.

“We would be foolish to deny that there are strong moral considerations against eating meat,” philosophy professor Bob Fischer begins. Eating meat is clearly, from an ethical perspective, “wrong” on several counts. But morality is an ideal, he notes, something we aim for, and fall short of. This makes the moral world “tragic,” as he puts it. Moral work is a tragedy, played out on a cosmic stage. Rather than wallow in remorse, he sees this as reason to be suspicious of “any proposal that would steer us through these complexities too quickly.”

When it comes to the consumption of meat, in other words, our human hands have long been dirty. This isn’t a discouragement to stop striving for the good. But a moral proposal that promises to wash our filthy fingers spotlessly clean—in seconds flat—is suspect. Because they will still be dirty. The pressing moral question, of meat, becomes: given that human hands are obviously soiled, what can be done with these polluted tools?

The easy answer, most often, is: go vegetarian. If it feels wrong to eat meat, then stop eating it. Why waste time, really? Just go vegan. Start cleaning your hands by refusing to eat your fellow creatures. The ethical argument for meat, in other words, is an impossibility. Ending flesh consumption is one step in right direction, toward a kinder future. Some might argue, however, that the argument from empathy is a slippery slope argument. Vegetarians will surely protest. But philosopher Michael Marder, writing recently for the Times, points to research on pea plant communication as evidence of a kind of plant subjectivity. The title of his column begs the incendiary question: “If peas can talk, should we eat them?”

There are, perhaps, some practitioners of the Jain tradition who would give a resounding “no.” Strict ascetic practices in Jainism disavow not only the consumption of meat, but the practice of farming—because of the damage that agricultural tools to do the earth. The consumption of root vegetables may be prohibited (as you would be yanking the vegetable to its death), as well as the consumption of a living pea shoot, which can (as Marder suggests)talk.

These practices find their basis in ahimsa—the Sanskrit term that describes a posture of nonviolence toward all living creatures. The power of ahimsa can be genealogically traced into the vegetarian strains and variants of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. Is it when we turn to the wisdom of religious traditions that we finally find the spiritual purity we’re looking for? The sort that can clean our dirty hands from the inside out, starting with our nasty and brutish souls?

A Screaming Silence

My own thinking around religion and animals, particularly around the conundrum of eating them, was complexified at a recent conference, put on by the Graduate Student’s Association in Columbia’s Religion Department. The consumption of animal flesh was not the primary subject matter of “Pray, Eat, Kill: Relating to Animals Across Religious Traditions,” but it was perhaps the most absorbing. It was also the subject of Wendy Doniger’s keynote address. The legendary scholar of myth and religion dipped back into ancient text, citing myriad strange injunctions regarding the consumption of food in The Laws of Manu. What she finds, in these codes, is not only an attempt to deal with the old, and apparently always agonizing, moral pain of eating animal flesh. She also spoke of references, in these ancient texts, to the “screaming silence” of vegetables.

Doniger finds, in other words, a long history of reflection on the basic brutality of eating, rooted in a reflection on this concept of ahimsa. But, interestingly, what she finds is that this sympathy and compassion for animals did not always lead to the condemnation of eating animal flesh.

The fact is, religious ethics are practices that are crafted in conversation with culture and geography. There have been times when the meaning of ahimsa, or practices of animal compassion, have taken a backseat to necessity. Geoff Barstow, for example, spoke of the 18th-century Tibetan Buddhist Jigme Lingpa who displayed an extreme form of compassion for animals (addressing them as his mother). He believed that meat was a poison that bore a heavy karmic burden. But he stopped just sort of commending vegetarianism. Meat was, as Barstow put it, a kind of “necessary evil.” Was this in recognition of the fact that there simply aren’t a lot of vegetables to be had in the mountainous regions of Tibet?

Is the purity (or the arid ethical high ground) we might be aiming for a myth, itself? Is it possible to both consume and remain morally chaste? Doniger suggests that, perhaps, the most common and lasting effect we can see—as reverent humans attempt to deal with the moral ambivalence of eating meat—is that they make lists. They attempt to rationalize this ambivalence, to find a way of controlling its power. The Laws of Manu are filled with long lists of things you can and cannot eat (mushrooms, solitary animals), things you can and cannot do with animals (sacrifice is good, unlawful slaughter is bad).

Such lists are not unique to the Hindu tradition. Indeed, we see both simple and complex dietary regulations in a host of traditions and cultures. Even here in the U.S., we have “secular” regulations that prevent us from eating dogs. Many of us follow our own little personal hodgepodge of injunctions that (we believe) contributes to a more sustainable form of life, or a healthy planet.

In a larger sense, the thicket of little rules and regulations seems absurd. The “real” question, it seems, is whether or not to eat animals at all—whether to have all or nothing, flesh or no flesh. But such universal injunctions seem problematic to me. Human history is littered with smaller lists, smaller injunctions, created in ethical conversation with a particular context.

When we look back at the stages set by the history, via religion, I think we will see this moral drama—the encounter of human and non-human animal—played out in many different ways. In the messy, violent, ambivalence this encounter generates, and the stopgap measures put in place to resolve it, we see thousands of small (often contradictory, often bizarre) solutions. We might read thousands of lists! But this is not a sign of our human failure. Rather, I think we can see it as an encouragement to keep making those small lists.

Morality is a messy business—why should we expect its rules to be singular, or simple?

The only constant is change. It’s the most basic fact of human existence. Nothing lasts, nothing stays the same.

We feel it with each breath. From birth to the unknown moment of our passing, we ride a river of change. And yet, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, we exhaust ourselves in an endless search for solidity. We hunger for something that lasts, some idea or principle that rises above time and change. We hunger for certainty. That is a big problem.

It might even be THE problem.

Religions are often built around this heartache for certainty. In the face of sickness, loss and grief, a thousand dogmas with a thousand names have risen. Many profess that if only the faithful hold fast to the “rules,” the “precepts” or the “doctrine” then certainty can be obtained.

Fate and future can be fixed through promises of freedom from immediate suffering, divine favor or everlasting salvation. Scriptures are transformed into unwavering blueprints for an unchanging order. These documents must live beyond question lest the certainty they provide crumble. When human spiritual endeavor devolves into these white-knuckle forms of clinging they become monuments to the fear of change and uncertainty.

It would be symmetrical if I could point to science as the pure antidote to the rigid rejection of uncertainty. Science, in the purest forms of its expression as a practice, holds to no doctrine other than that the world might be known. In the ceaseless pursuit of its own questioning path, science asks us to allow for ceaseless change in our ideas, beliefs and opinions. It’s this aspect of science that I value more than any other.

But science does not exist alone as practice. It’s also a constellation of ideas that exist within culture and those ideas can gain value, in and of themselves, without connection to actual practice. In this way science becomes something more and less. For some people the idea of Science offers a trumped up certainty that yields its own false defense against the rootlessness that roots of our existence.

My co-blogger Marcelo Gleiser put it beautifully two weeks ago when he wrote, “what is pompous is to think that we can know all the answers. Or that it’s the job of science to find them.” When science as an idea is used to push away the tremulous reality of our lived existential uncertainty then it, too, is degraded. It becomes just another imaginary fixed point in a life without fixed points.

Of course it doesn’t have to be this way. The world’s history of spiritual endeavor contains many beautiful descriptions of authentic encounters with uncertainty. Ironically these often serve as gateways to the most compassionate experience of what can be called sacred in human life.

Buddhism’s First Noble Truth, which focuses specifically on the reality of change and suffering, serves as one example. In the Christian tradition works like the “Cloud of Unknowing,” a 14th century paean to the importance of experience over doctrine or dogma, serves as another. Dig around in most of the world’s great religious traditions and you find people finding their sense of grace by embracing uncertainty rather than trying to bury it in codified dogmas.

For science, embracing uncertainty means more than claiming “we don’t know now, but we will know in the future”. It means embracing the fuzzy boundaries of the very process of asking questions. It means embracing the frontiers of what explanations, for all their power, can do. It means understanding that a life of deepest inquiry requires all kinds of vehicles: from poetry to particle accelerators; from quiet reveries to abstract analysis.

Though I am an atheist, some of the wisest people I have met are those whose spiritual lives (some explicitly religious, some not) have forced them to continually confront uncertainty. This daily act has made them patient and forgiving, generous and inclusive. Likewise, the atheists I have met who most embody the ideals of free inquiry seem to best understand the limitations of every perspective, including their own. They encounter the ever shifting ground of their lives with humor, good will and compassion.

In the end, embracing uncertainty is to embrace a quality I have written about many times before: mystery. These lives we live, surrounded by beauty and horror, profound knowledge and pitiful ignorance, are a mystery to us all. To push that truth away with false certainty, falsely derived from either religion or reason, is to miss our most perfect truth.

We are, after all, just “such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

This article originally appeared, here.

In honor of Swami B. V. Tripurari’s 63rd Vyasa Puja celebration, the following is adapted from a lecture given by Huston Smith in 2003 in honor of Victor Danner, a colleague, friend, and guide of Smith’s.

By Huston Smith

I would like to etch the master-disciple relationship—in Sanskrit the guru-chela relationship and in Arabic the sheikh-murid relationship—by contrasting it with the relationship between teachers and students. To keep from rambling, I will itemize the contrasts, but as there is no logical sequence in the order in which I will be discussing them, I shall not number them but demarcate them by placing a bullet before each point. Having now announced my trajectory, I am ready to set out.

■ What brings students to their teachers is a body of knowledge or a skill that the teacher has mastered and to which the student aspires. Feelings, positive and negative, naturally enter, but they are byproducts of this central objective that brings them together. It is not primarily the teacher as a person who is respected, but what he possesses and can deliver to the student. Comparably, it is not who the student is as a complete person that interests the teacher, but his willingness and ability to learn—other sides of his selfhood are beside the point. The entire relationship is born from, and lives by, shared interest in the object of study. This means that both parties in the relationship are replaceable. Students can shop around for teachers and drift from one to another, and teachers will welcome new generations of students. The situation in the master-disciple relationship is otherwise. Here the personhood of both parties is central. (It would be less precise to say the personalities of both parties, for “personality” tends to suggest the public image that the party in question presents to the world.) The master does not enjoy the disciple’s esteem because he conveys something that is useful in any utilitarian respect. Nor is it a distinguishable attribute of his total self that he seeks to transfer to the disciple—to repeat, a specifiable skill or body of knowledge. What is significant for the disciple is the master’s total self, whose character and activity are unique and irreplaceable. In this crucial respect it is like love. More accurately, it is love in the purest sense of that word, though it is risky to use that word which has been rendered almost useless through its preemption by commercialism (hot dogs “made with a little bit of love”), sex (“making love”), sentimentality (racks of Valentine cards), and innumerable other debasing inroads. Like the master/disciple relationship, authentic love is focused on a unique, irreplaceable person. With the exception of St. Paul in his classic description in First Corinthians, I know of no one who describes authentic love better than Thomas Aquinas, and as his description almost says in nunce what I am using this lecture to spell out, I shall summarize it here.

Love is more unitive than knowledge in seeking the thing, not the thing’s reason; its bent is toward a real union. Other effects of love are: a reciprocal abiding of lover and beloved together as one; a transport out of the self to the other; an ardent cherishing of another; a melting so the heart is unfrozen and open to be entered; a longing in absence, heat in pursuit and enjoyment in presence. In delight, too, there is an all-at-once wholeness and timelessness that reflects the total simultaneity of eternity; an edge of sadness; an expansion of spirit; a complete fulfillment of activity without satiety, for “they that drink shall yet thirst.”

■ Students make up their minds and intend to study, whereas disciples are called to discipleship. One thinks immediately of the tax collector Zachaeus who, perched in a tree to get a glimpse of Jesus in the passing throng, heard Jesus tell him to come down, and when he obeyed found himself transformed into an entirely different being. Or again, we think of the beautiful story of the flower scavenger Sunita, who became a renowned member of the Buddha’s sangha when the Buddha, “seeing the marks of arhatship shining in his heart like a lamp in a jar,” said to him, “Sunita, what to you is this wretched mode of living? Can you endure to leave the world?” Callings such as these bring disciples to their master because in some mysterious, not fully explicable way, they seem to emanate from the master’s completeness. Through this completeness, the master enters and becomes an essential part of the disciple’s existence.

■ Continuing with the contrasts, the teacher and student, united as they are through a bond of work on a common task, form a series of links in which the student in his own proper time will himself become a teacher with talents that might surpass those of his own teacher, but this is unlikely in the case of the disciple. I cannot think of a single case in which a disciple who on becoming a master thought that his bond with his disciples fully equaled the master-disciple cosmos that his own master forged. The teacher heads a school which can gather strength through the work of his successors, whereas the master forms a circle around himself which authentic disciples do not dream of fully replicating. They can radiate some of the charisma they receive from their master, and may attract disciples of their own, becoming thereby masters in their own right. But it will not be the same universe they shared with their own master, and they see it as imitating, not rivaling, the original universe they inhabited.

■ In higher education here teaching typically goes hand in hand with research and publication, teachers can pursue that side of their careers without students, whereas disciples are indispensable for masters to be such. I break in to insert a parenthesis here. To prevent my thesis from suffering death by a thousand qualifications, I am trying to keep the line between master and teacher clear, but obviously there are overlaps—the two do not constitute watertight compartments. Even professors who are chiefly invested in research can find graduate seminars stimulating, and students sometimes cathect to their teachers as if they were masters, as I did in my undergraduate years when for several years one of my professors served as a father figure and role model for me. But having acknowledged such overlaps, I revert to the difference at issue here, which is that the master-disciple relationship centers in mutuality in principle, where the teacher-student relationship does not. The master only becomes a master in his relationship to his disciples, and only through perceptive and comprehending disciples does he become fully aware of his mastership. We find an example of this in the Bhagavad-gita which revolves around the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna on the eve of the battle on the Kuruksetra plains that was scheduled to begin the next morning. At the start of their discussion, Arjuna (the prince of the forces of righteousness) is in the superior position, and Krishna is his charioteer. Their standings are reversed, however, when Arjuna, overcome by the thought of killing his kinfolk, is brought to a state of paralyzing existential bewilderment. When he asks Krishna what he should do, he begins his move toward discipleship, questioning being the first duty of discipleship in Hinduism. Given this opening, Krishna seizes the opportunity and immediately takes control of the situation. Not wasting a word, he tells Arjuna that he is a fool. His bewilderment is caused by false premises and phony arguments. Hearing these blunt words, Arjuna very quickly takes on Hinduism’s second requirement of discipleship—submission—and acknowledges that he had been careless in regarding Krishna as no more than his friend and kinsman, oblivious of the fact that he was God incarnate. Here again we see the disciple ordaining the master to mastership. The master reads the confirmation of his calling in the eye of his disciple at the same time that the disciple hears destiny calling him through the master.

■ Pulling together much of what has been said thus far, we can say that the teacher gives of his knowledge and ability, whereas the master gives—not of himself as we are likely to say, as if his gift could be isolated from the wholeness of his being, but himself, period. What he is to the disciple he is through the presence of his total selfhood in his every word and deed, right down to what is seemingly trivial. (One thinks of the disciple of the Maggid of Mezeritch who traveled a great distance simply to observe how the rebbe tied his shoelaces.) The master has become who he is through his own efforts (as inseparably infused with God’s grace) and the result, as I say, is always deployed in its completeness. Disciples never perceive that completeness; to do so would require being the master. Disciples are able to see, moment by moment, only a facet of the totality as vectored by their respective points of view. Nevertheless, at some level of their being, they sense the presence of the wholeness, as when Jesus’ words are heard as being spoken by “one having authority.”

■ The teacher as researcher and writer survives in his published work; it is this that constitutes his visible legacy. The master survives only in those who have experienced his impact and bear witness to it. Others can only surmise the full extent of that impact. The disciple testifies to what the master was to him; as he has seen the master, so he paints his portrait to imprint it on his memory and report it to others. But he alone knows the full force of what produced the portrait; others can only glean from it what they can. The other disciples do likewise, for the desire to share what they have known burns in them all and they are eager to tell others of their firsthand experiences. But, as I have noted, though the master’s selfhood is single, it imprints itself on his disciples in dissimilar ways, thereby playing out of the adage that beauty is (in part) in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps the clearest example of the multiplicity of portraits that result is the four Gospel accounts of Jesus which have recently been supplemented by apocryphal accounts such as the Gospel of Thomas—Mark presenting Jesus as wonderworker, John as transparently divine from the start of his mission, Thomas as an Essene, and so on. Each story becomes a legend, and once in place takes on a life of its own which is progressively trimmed to the generic archetype of the master to make it more easily apprehended. In reaching out thus to future generations, the stories become traditions that weave their way into the fabric of history.

■ The master must live in the constant awareness of time’s ephemerality. Only this moment, these circumstances, can disclose this aspect of his total self. The Greek word kairos, which carries connotations of the fullness of time, is decisive here, for no eternity can bring back what was missed in the moment of transmittal. Only the sacred hour begets the sacred impact, and many hours will be needed to try to piece together retrospectively as much of it as possible. This makes timing crucial in the work of the master. It does not require that he carefully calculate what he will do or say; in each moment, at his ease, he gives what the moment calls for. All of the sweetness of moment, with its contextual requirements that are set within horizons that include the apprehension of approaching death, loosen his heart and tongue, and it is as though nothing had been before and nothing will ever be again, and through the frailty of the moment there shines the light of the eternal. A mundane corollary of this is that teachers, when absorbed in their work, tend to resent interruptions, whereas the master’s mission consists of nothing but interruptions. It is not hyperbolic to say that dedicated teachers are consumed by projects that they set for themselves, whereas masters consume themselves in simply doing what is at hand, and in so doing they fill the world with light.

Read the entire address, here.

Jaya Sri Guru-parampara!

When I was teaching in gurukulas, the students would occasionally find out that another child didn’t like one sort of food or another and would tease them: “Eww—you don’t like mangoes? That means you don’t like Prabhupada and Krishna!” These eight- or nine-year-olds were probably joking, or half-joking, to the extent that kids are capable. But when adults insist, in the rudest language, that other devotees who don’t share their opinions on one detail or another regarding devotional practice or association are faithless, or even demons, they are not joking. And it’s not funny.

Rather, they are simply demonstrating the narrow-minded attitude and cramped thinking discouraged by Srila Prabhupada himself. Unfortunately, we see a great deal of such narrow-mindedness in discussions among devotees over the course of our association, both face to face and in online discourse. I have found it to be perhaps the most discouraging, most corrosive attitude among devotees. I believe it would immeasurably improve the quality of devotee association, and perhaps even the devotees’ preaching efforts, if, rather than seeing other devotees of Krishna in such a pinched, miserly way, we tried instead to imbibe and exhibit the kind of broad, generous vision of others that Srila Prabhupada himself exemplified.

Those devotees who have spent any time on the internet over the last few years have most likely observed a number of controversies that often appear to be focused more on approaches to preaching than anything else. Sannyasi A rips into Sannyasi B for having the temerity to write on Bhagavad-gita. Sannyasi C conducts a campaign against Sannyasi D, accusing him of being infected with “New Age” ideas. Then he goes after Sannyasi E for engaging in mundane welfare work in the name of preaching. Others in turn criticize Sannyasi C for being stuck in the Middle Ages with regard to a number of social issues. A good number of ISKCON leaders consistently vilify those who have accepted instruction from preachers outside the GBC’s control, calling them guru-tyagis or worse, often pushing them outside ISKCON altogether. Many devotees criticize the BBT and its staff for continuing to edit Srila Prabhupada’s books. Defenders of the BBT’s managers and staff, on the other hand, sometimes belittle those who see themselves as simply standing up for the purity of Srila Prabhupada’s books.

And I don’t want to give the impression that this problem is exclusively, or even primarily, a problem among ISKCON’s devotees. It’s no secret that many preachers from one mission have over the years disparaged pretty much everyone who didn’t surrender to their guru, whom they touted as the most advanced devotee on the planet, sometimes as the only pure devotee around. And leading preachers in another mission used their blogs for years to harass preachers from other missions who did not serve under their guru, using downright cruel facsimiles of humor. More recently, these same leaders now find themselves embroiled in succession conflicts, which some of them broadcast all over the Web, publicly accusing their perceived opponents of all sorts of impropriety and a laundry list of offenses. And then we have a number of Web sites whose specialty seems to be publishing any and every complaint against leaders of ISKCON and pretty much every other Gaudiya mission. And so it goes, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

What’s more, we engage in all this bickering in public, across the internet! What does this say to the countless students who type “Hare Krishna” or some such search phrase into their search engine as they work on that term paper? To someone who might have purchased a book about Krishna consciousness, or to the father wondering if he should let his child visit a temple or stay at an ashram? It seems we can establish dialog and discuss contentious matters cordially with academics, with Christians, with Jews, perhaps with some Muslims and Buddhists, and even some atheists, but we can’t talk with another devotee who disagrees with us by even less than one percent without getting into a fight. And sometimes we do so in the most intemperate language. One can only imagine how Gaudiya Vaishnavism must look to those whose experience of it is limited to what they see on the internet.

What seems to be missing here is discourse driven by the kind of vision Srila Prabhupada showed throughout his lifetime of spreading Krishna consciousness. Let us see, for example, how he responded to discord among devotees in a letter he wrote to Kirtanananda in 1973:

Now this displeasing of god brothers has already begun and gives me too much agitation in my mind. Our Gaudiya Math people fought with one another after the demise of Guru Maharaja but my disciples have already begun fighting even in my presence. So I am greatly concerned about it. . . .

Material nature means dissension and disagreement, especially in this Kali yuga. But, for this Krishna consciousness movement its success will depend on agreement, even though there are varieties of engagements. In the material world there are varieties, but there is no agreement. In the spiritual world there are varieties, but there is agreement. That is the difference. The materialist without being able to adjust the varieties and the disagreements makes everything zero. They cannot come into agreement with varieties, but if we keep Krishna in the center, then there will be agreement in varieties. This is called unity in diversity. . . . But, if we fight on account of diversity, then it is simply the material platform. Please try to maintain the philosophy of unity in diversity. That will make our movement successful. One section of men have already gone out, therefore we must be very careful to maintain unity in diversity. . . .

What we see here is an exhortation to a broader, more generous vision of how diverse devotees may serve the Mahaprabhu’s mission than some may be accustomed to. The basis of this generosity, Srila Prabhupada explains, is the generosity of spirit Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu teaches:

Following in the footprints of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu:

trnad api su-nicena taror iva sahisnuna
amanina manadena kirtaniya sada harih

“One should chant the holy name of the Lord in a humble state of mind, thinking oneself lower than the straw in the street; one should be more tolerant than a tree, devoid of all sense of false prestige and should be ready to offer all respect to others. In such a state of mind one can chant the holy name of the Lord constantly.”

We must always remember this verse and be as tolerant as the tree, as we execute the Krishna consciousness movement. Without this mentality we cannot be successful.

Srila Prabhupada’s letter suggests that tolerating difference is essential to the broad vision he urges his disciple to develop here. The word tolerance is well worth examining.

Devotees generally use tolerance in the sense of forbearance, putting up with something we see as unfavorable. We often speak of tolerating the urges of the mind and senses, of tolerating abuse from an unappreciative public, of tolerating the devotees who get on our nerves, of tolerating bodily pain or the itching of bug bites. This certainly answers to one of the two meanings the word has in English; moreover, it’s a useful understanding for practicing devotees. But it is neither the sole nor the primary meaning.

Most English dictionaries give the primary sense of tolerance as fairness toward practices, opinions, and perspectives different from our own; freedom from bigotry; a liberal, undogmatic attitude. This is certainly the sense in which Srila Prabhupada uses it in his letter to Kirtanananda, and it is the most useful sense of tolerance for truly progressive devotees in a diverse, worldwide movement. Unfortunately, this kind of tolerance among devotees is too uncommonly found.

Instead, we encounter scenes such as this: When visiting an ISKCON temple in a large US city a few years ago, I was subjected to one of ISKCON’s more prominent sannyasis asserting that all but one of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura’s disciples failed to appreciate their guru’s innovation of an organized institution for systematically propagating the teachings of Lord Caitanya. Therefore, he said, they all became either mayavadins or sahajiyas. (And he made such a blanket condemnation of Srila Prabhupada’s Godbrothers by way of ostensibly glorifying Srila Sarasvati Thakura on the anniversary of his disappearance.) Or we find ourselves embroiled in endless squabbles with members of another mission, who seem to regard everyone who does not share their degree of faith in a particular sadhu as the lowest of offenders. More recently I was involved in an online discussion with a number of my Godbrothers and sisters in which a couple of participants conducted protracted campaigns of vilifying another Godbrother and everyone who associated with him in the harshest imaginable language because he declines to submit to ISKCON’s GBC, including ISKCON policies contrary to Gaudiya Vaishnava siddhanta.

Srila Prabhupada sometimes told us that one definition of a brahmana is liberal, broadminded, generous, as opposed to the narrow-minded kripana, who is miserly and grudging—at best—in appreciating others with whom he does not closely identify. And he made it abundantly clear throughout his teaching campaign that the dominant attitude in our movement should be that of the brahmana.

We should note carefully, though, that the generosity expressed should not be a kind of Pollyannaism that pretends away the differences between different groups of devotees. I suggest, rather, that we behave, as Srila Prabhupada often exhorted, as a society based on love and trust. The problem is that leaders too often insist that we love and trust them, but they treat us as if we had little intelligence or sincerity. Love, trust, and cooperation are reciprocal activities, two-way streets. But if love and trust seem too lofty, too inaccessible, perhaps we could begin with simple mutual respect.

We need, of course, to be able to discuss the issues that seem to divide us, but we should discuss them respectfully. We can only do that, however, if we begin to turn away from a Manichean view of the world, including the world of devotees. That is a black-and-white view that my perspective, my approach, my mission, my guru, is good, and all others are inferior, if not bad, perhaps even evil. We see that, in American political discourse, this perspective has led to such toxic rancor and demonization that government has been all but crippled. And the same thing has happened in discourse among devotees. Embracing unity in diversity, on the other hand, means accepting and openly acknowledging that devotees whose approach to service may appear more liberal or conservative, or different in any way we find significant, may also desire to make the perfection of Krishna consciousness available to everyone. It means moving from black and white to shades of gray, but also beyond that to a full-color spectrum of approaches to preaching and practicing, as long as they don’t challenge the siddhanta established by our acaryas.

We should note that even discussed in a more civil manner, some ideas and policies will be rejected. As much as I may respect your sincere desire to serve Mahaprabhu’s mission, I may still find a particular policy ill advised, or even contrary to the siddhanta established by our acaryas. You may also find my reluctance to bow to your institution’s leaders’ authority narrow or short sighted, even obstinate. And we may very well feel compelled to say so. Moreover, our discussion may be quite vigorous because of the strength of our convictions. But we should be able to discuss these issues vigorously without casting aspersions on each others’ faith, denigrating each other’s accomplishments, or calling each other names. We should be more interested in generating light than heat. Perhaps we need fewer lessons in logic and argumentation and more guidance from Miss Manners!

So let us by all means discuss those differences, but let us strive to do so with a more nuanced approach than we too often see these days. After all, discussion aimed at understanding the conclusions of the scriptures strengthens our faith. Moreover, the focus of our disagreements is usually how to serve guru and Gauranga. I hope we devotees can learn to discuss with real respect, not the sham respect we see among today’s politicians. Doing so would be easier, of course, if we learn to respect each other’s service and contributions, regardless of institutional affiliation or differences in approaches. We must respect boundaries, as well. Good fences, the proverb says, make good neighbors. How far this is true is another discussion altogether. Where I’m from, on the island of Hawaii, we build rock walls, but they’re usually only a foot or two high, not sky-scraping walls topped with broken glass or razor wire. It’s easy to step over them to visit, as the mood there is “e komo mai”: come on over. My kuleana (responsibility) is taking care of what’s on this side of the wall, and yours is what’s on that side. And if bananas, avocados, or mangos from trees on my side hang over the wall, they’re yours. We devotees of Caitanya Mahaprabhu should be able to behave similarly, accepting responsibility for our own service, sharing generously, and respecting—but not worshiping—boundaries. Intruding on other missions’ affairs simply to break devotees’ faith should be avoided.

In our attempts to create a discourse of love and trust, we may recall Krishna’s praise of speech that does not cause distress, is truthful, agreeable, and beneficial as austerity of speech. And, bearing in mind that Krishna repeatedly praises nonviolence in Bhagavad-gita, devotees may want to consider approaches such as nonviolent communication. This helps us both express our own perspective honestly and clearly, while at the same time paying others respectful, empathetic attention. And when we do write, whether a book or an email, we should consider carefully a couple of things all conscientious writers learn: how we want to present ourselves, who our audience is (both our intended audience, and, given the reality of the digital world, who our audience is likely to become), and our purpose; what we hope to accomplish by writing a particular text. If we can do such things, we may find it possible to work together and realize Srila Prabhupada and Mahaprabhu’s ambitions for the sankirtana movement. Otherwise, we’re likely to find ourselves as divided by recrimination and name-calling as the leaders of the two main political parties in the US are today. And our efforts will likely prove no more effective.

I don’t intend that this brief essay serve as a manifesto, or that it be read as a comprehensive treatment of the problem I identify here, which is not that we devotees disagree among ourselves, but that the manner in which we publicly express our disagreement poisons our relationships and undermines the culture of bhakti. This is merely an essay, in the more formal sense of an attempt—here, an attempt mainly to begin a conversation. Read it as an opening gambit, if you like. It will also likely serve as the beginning to a longer, more comprehensive project I have been considering for some time. Meanwhile, I hope devotees will feel free to continue the conversation by offering their own insights and experiences.

Let us imagine together how much more easily the world may be able to appreciate the teachings of Sri Caitanya when his followers no longer publicly bicker like eight-year-old children. I hope we can all become humble enough to accept that devotees with perspectives different from ours may certainly love and honor Srila Prabhupada, our guru-varga, and Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu as much as we—and to treat them as such. A broader vision, colored by the love and trust that should come naturally to progressive Vaishnavas, will show that diversity of perspectives and approaches to be an asset, not a liability. At least addressing each other as if we had such a vision may be a step in the right direction. We may then begin to see how Mahaprabhu’s sankirtana movement is enriched by that diversity, which may provide a broader range of appeal to the larger society, which is in such dire need of the Vaishnavas’ mercy.

The following article is excerpted from the introduction of Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving.

Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something one “falls into” if one is lucky? This little book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of people today believe in the latter.

Not that people think that love is not important. They are starved for it; they watch endless numbers of films about happy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundreds of trashy songs about love—yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything that needs to be learned about love.

This peculiar attitude is based on several premises which either singly or combined tend to uphold it. Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable. In pursuit of this aim they follow several paths. One, which is especially used by men, is to be successful, to be as powerful and rich as the social margin of one’s position permits. Another, used especially by women, is to make oneself attractive, by cultivating one’s body, dress, etc. Other ways of making oneself attractive, used both by men and women, are to develop pleasant manners, interesting conversation, to be helpful, modest, inoffensive. Many of the ways to make oneself lovable are the same as those used to make oneself successful, “to win friends and influence people.” As a matter of fact, what most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.

A second premise behind the attitude that there is nothing to be learned about love is the assumption that the problem of love is the problem of an object not the problem of a faculty. People think that to love is simple, but that to find the right object to love—or to be loved by—is difficult. This attitude has several reasons rooted in the development of modern society. One reason is the great change which occurred in the twentieth century with respect to the choice of a “love object.” In the Victorian age, as in many traditional cultures, love was mostly not a spontaneous personal experience which then might lead to marriage, On the contrary, marriage was contracted by convention—either by the respective families, or by a marriage broker, or without the help of such intermediaries; it was concluded on the basis of social considerations, and love was supposed to develop once the marriage had been concluded. In the last few generations the concept of romantic love has become almost universal in the Western world. In the United States, while considerations of a conventional nature are not entirely absent, to a vast extent people are in search of “romantic love,” of the personal experience of love which then should lead to marriage. This new concept of freedom in love must have greatly enhanced the importance of the object as against the importance of the function.

Closely related to this factor is another feature characteristic of contemporary culture. Our whole culture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange. Modern man’s happiness consists in the thrill of looking at the shop windows, and in buying all that he can afford to buy, either for cash or on installments. He (or she) looks at people in a similar way. For the man an attractive girl—and for the woman an attractive man—are the prizes they are after. “Attractive” usually means a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market. What specifically makes a person attractive depends on the fashion of the time, physically as well as mentally. During the twenties, a drinking and smoking girl, tough and sexy, was attractive; today (1956) the fashion demands more domesticity and coyness. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of this century, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious—today he has to be social and tolerant— in order to be an attractive “package.” At any rate, the sense of falling in love develops usually only with regard to such human commodities as are within reach of one’s own possibilities for exchange. I am out for a bargain; the object should be desirable from the standpoint of its social value, and at the same time should want me, considering my overt and hidden assets and potentialities. Two persons thus fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. Often, as in buying real estate, the hidden potentialities which can be developed play a considerable role in this bargain. In a culture in which the marketing orientation prevails, and in which material success is the outstanding value, there is little reason to be surprised that human love relations follow the same pattern of exchange which governs the commodity and the labor market.

The third error leading to the assumption that there is nothing to be learned about love lies in the confusion between the initial experience of “falling” in love, and the permanent state of being in love, or as we might better say, of “standing” in love. If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of sudden intimacy is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, sexual attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting. The two persons become well acquainted, their intimacy loses more and more its miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of the initial excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not know all this: in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being “crazy” about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness.

This attitude—that nothing is easier than to love—has continued to be the prevalent idea about love in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love. If this were the case with any other activity, people would be eager to know the reasons for the failure, and to learn how one could do better—or they would give up the activity. Since the latter is impossible in the case of love, there seems to be only one adequate way to overcome the failure of love—to examine the reasons for this failure, and to proceed to study the meaning of love. The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering.

What are the necessary steps in learning any art?

The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one—my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art—the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for carpentry—and for love. And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power—almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving.

Could it be that only those things are considered worthy of being learned with which one can earn money or prestige, and that love, which “only” profits the soul, but is profitless in the modern sense, is a luxury we have no right to spend much energy on? However this may be, the following discussion will treat the art of loving in the sense of the foregoing divisions: first I shall discuss the theory of love—and this will comprise the greater part of the book; and secondly I shall discuss the practice of love—little as can be said about practice in this, as in any other field.

The following lecture was originally published in The Harmonist in 1936, on the advent day of His Divine Grace Om Vishnupada Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura.

saksad-haritvena samasta-sastrair
uktas tatha bhavyata eva sadbhih
kintu prabhor yah priya eva tasya
vande guroh sri-caranaravindam

In the revealed scriptures it is declared that the spiritual master should be worshiped like the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and this injunction is obeyed by pure devotees. The spiritual master is the most confidential servant of the Lord, thus let us offer our respectful obeisances unto the lotus feet of our spiritual master.

Gentlemen, on behalf of the members of the Bombay branch of the Gaudiya Math, let me welcome you all because you have so kindly joined us tonight in our congregational offerings of homage to the lotus feet of the world teacher, acaryadeva, who is the founder of this Gaudiya Mission and is the President Acarya of Sri Sri Visva Vaishnava Raja Sabha—I mean my eternal divine master, Om Visnupada Paramahansa Parivrajakacarya, Sri Srimad Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Maharaja.

Sixty-two years ago, on this auspicious day, the acaryadeva made his appearance by the call of Thakura Bhaktivinoda at Sri Ksetra, Jagannatha Dhama at Puri. Gentlemen, the offering of such an homage as has been arranged this evening to the acaryadeva is not a sectarian concern, for when we speak of the fundamental principle of gurudeva or acaryadeva, we speak of something that is of universal application. There does not arise any question of discriminating my guru from your’s or anyone else’s. There is only one guru, who appears in an infinity of forms to teach you, me, and all others. In the Mundaka Upanisad (1.2.12) it is said:

tad-vijnartham sa gurum evabhigacchet
samit-panih srotriyam brahma-nistham

In order to learn the transcendental science, one must approach the bona fide spiritual master in disciplic succession, who is fixed in the Absolute Truth.

Thus it has been enjoined herewith that in order to receive that transcendental knowledge, one must approach the guru. Therefore, if the Absolute Truth is one, about which we think there is no difference of opinion, the guru cannot be two. The acaryadeva to whom we have assembled tonight to offer our humble homage is not the guru of a sectarian institution or one out of many differing exponents of the truth. On the contrary, he is the jagad-guru, or the guru of all of us: the only difference is that some obey him wholeheartedly, while others do not obey him directly. In the Bhagavatam (11.17.27) it is said:

acaryam mam vijaniyan
navamanyeta karhicit
na martya-buddhyasiyeta
sarva-deva-mayo guruh

One should understand the spiritual master to be as good as I am. Nobody should be jealous of the spiritual master or think of him as an ordinary man, because the spiritual master is the sum total of all demigods.

That is, the acarya has been identified with God Himself. He has nothing to do with the affairs of this mundane world. He appears before us to reveal the light of the Vedas and to bestow upon us the blessing of full-fledged freedom, after which we should hanker at every step of our life’s journey.

The transcendental knowledge of the Vedas was first uttered by God to Brahma, the creator of this particular universe. From Brahma the knowledge descended to Narada, from Narada to Vyasadeva, from Vyasadeva to Madhva, and in this process of disciplic succession the transcendental knowledge was transmitted by one disciple to another till it reached Lord Gauranga, Sri Krishna Caitanya, who posed as the disciple and successor of Sri Isvara Puri. The present acaryadeva is the tenth disciplic representative from Sri Rupa Goswami, the original representative of Sri Caitanya who preached this transcendental tradition in its fullness.

The knowledge that we receive from our gurudeva is not different from that imparted by God himself and the succession of the acaryas in the preceptorial line of Brahma. We adore this auspicious day as Sri Vyasapuja- tithi because the acarya is the living representative of Vyasadeva, the divine compiler of the Vedas, Puranas, Bhagavad-gita, Mahabharata, and Srimad-Bhagavatam. We cannot know anything of the transcendental region by our limited, perverted method of observation and experiment. But all of us can lend our eager ears for the aural reception of the transcendental sound transmitted from that region to this, through the unadulterated medium of gurudeva or Sri Vyasadeva. Therefore, gentlemen, we should surrender ourselves today at the feet of the representative of Sri Vyasadeva for the elimination of all our differences bred by our unsubmissive attitude. It is accordingly said in the Bhagavad-gita (4.34):

tad viddhi pranipatena
pariprasnena sevaya
upadeksyanti te jnanam
jnaninas tattva-darsinah

Just approach the wise and bona fide spiritual master. Surrender unto him first and try to understand him by inquiries and service. Such a wise spiritual master will enlighten you with transcendental knowledge, for he has already known the Absolute Truth.

To receive transcendental knowledge, we must completely surrender ourselves to the real acarya in a spirit of ardent inquiry and service. Actual performance of service to the Absolute under the guidance of the acarya is the only vehicle by which we can assimilate transcendental knowledge. Today’s meeting for offering our humble services and homage to the feet of the acaryadeva will enable us to be favored with the capacity of assimilating the transcendental knowledge so kindly transmitted by him to all persons without distinction.

Gentlemen, although it is imperfectly that we have been enabled, by his grace, to understand the sublime messages of our acaryadeva, we must admit that we have realized definitely that the divine message from his holy lips is the congenial thing for suffering humanity. All of us should hear him patiently. If we listen to the transcendental sound without unnecessary opposition, he will surely have mercy upon us. The acarya’s message is to take us back to our original home, back to God. Let me repeat, therefore, that we should hear him patiently, follow him in the measure of our conviction and bow down at his lotus feet for releasing us from our present causeless unwillingness for serving the Absolute and all souls. Sitting at the feet of the acaryadeva, let us try to understand from this transcendental source of knowledge what we are, what is this universe, what is God, and what is our relationship with him. The message of

Sri Caitanya is the message for the living enitites and the message of the living world. He did not bother himself for the upliftment of this dead world, which is suitably named martyaloka, the world where everything is destined to die. He appeared before us four hundred and fifty years ago to tell us something of the transcendental universe, where everything is permanent and everything is for the service of the Absolute. But recently Caitanya Mahaprabhu has been misrepresented by some unscrupulous persons, and the highest philosophy of the Lord has been misinterpreted to be the cult of the lowest type of society. We are glad to announce tonight that our acaryadeva, with his usual kindness, saved us from this horrible type of degradation, and therefore we bow down at his lotus feet with all humility.We are happy that we have been relieved of this horrible type of malady by the mercy of His Divine Grace. He is our “eye-opener,” our eternal father, our eternal preceptor, and our eternal guide. Let us therefore bow down at his lotus feet on this auspicious day.

Gentlemen, although we are like ignorant children in the knowledge of transcendence, still my gurudeva has kindled a small fire within us to dissipate the invincible darkness of empirical knowledge. We are now so much on the safe side that no amount of philosophical argument by the empiric schools of thought can deviate us an inch from the position of our eternal dependence on the lotus feet of His Divine Grace.

Gentlemen, had he not appeared before us to deliver us from the thralldom of this gross, worldly delusion, surely we should have remained for lives and ages in the darkness of helpless captivity. Had he not appeared before us, we would not have been able to understand the eternal truth of the sublime teaching of Caitanya Mahaprabhu.

Personally, I have no hope for any direct service of the coming crores of births in the sojourn of my life, but I am confident that some day or other I shall be delivered from this mire of delusion in which I am at present so deeply sunk. Therefore let me with all my earnestness pray at the lotus feet of my divine master to allow me to suffer the lot for which I am destined due to my past misdoings, but to let me have this power of recollection: that I am nothing but a tiny servant of the Almighty Absolute Godhead, realized through the unflinching mercy of my divine master. Let me therefore bow down at his lotus feet with all the humility at my command.

Abhay Charan Das
For Members, Sri Gaudiya Math, Bombay

Part two of Srila Sridhara Maharaja explaining the significance of Vasanta-pancami.

The Appearance of Sri Raghunatha Dasa Goswami

Then, the fourth personality is Sri Raghunatha Dasa Goswami. He was born nearly five hundred years ago in Krishnapur village, Hooghly District. He came in the Kayastha caste. His father, Hiranya Majumdar, was a very rich man. His father had one brother, Govardhana, but Raghunatha was the only child. His father and uncle were state landowners. At that time, they collected 20 lakhs (2,000,000) rupees in taxes. Twelve lakhs was to be paid to the king, and their net income was 8 lakhs.

Raghunatha heard about Mahaprabhu after his sannyasa. Hiranya and Govardhana had association with Advaita Acarya, and they used to make an annual contribution to all the superior Sanskrit scholars and their schools, in Bengal, of the time.

When Mahaprabhu went back to Sri Advaita Acarya’s house after his sannyasa, Raghunatha Dasa came and saw him, and became mad with love of Krishna. His heart was completely melted by Mahaprabhu’s beauty and charming personality, his devotion and his teachings of devotion for Krishna. Mahaprabhu himself was also aware of this. Raghunatha would not leave Mahaprabhu, but the Lord told him, ”Go home. Don’t be over-enthusiastic; control yourself. Keep your divine love for Krishna within your heart, and don’t express it outwardly. Don’t advertise it. Very soon the time will come when Krishna will guide you. He will make a way for you. Don’t allow any external show but keep it within your heart.”

sthira hanya ghare yao, na hao batula
krame krame paya loka bhava-sindhu-kula

“Compose yourself and go home – don’t be a madman. One reaches the shore of the material ocean gradually.”

Then, he later came into the association of Nityananda Prabhu in Panihati. Nityananda Prabhu said to him, “Give a feast here for my followers. You are the son of a rich man, so manage to give a feast here for my followers.”

Raghunatha did so, and Nityananda Prabhu was very satisfied. He also blessed him, saying, “Very soon your bright day will come.” And he addressed his devotees, “See this young boy—he has immense wealth; in abundance he has everything required for a young man’s enjoyment, but he does not care for it. Krishna’s grace has come down into his heart, so he does not care for anything of this world; but he’s mad to leave his home of material grandeur and become a street beggar. He has become mad for Krishna. Just see this high ideal—devotion, attraction. Love of Krishna has made him mad. He is very, very fortunate. This royal dignity and prosperity cannot please him.”

Anyway, he returned home. But one day Hiranya and the others noticed that he no longer entered the inner section of the house. He began to stay in the outer section only. His father and other guardians thought that his condition had become very grave, so ten men were engaged to keep guard that he may not leave.

One day in the early morning before sunrise, the family guru, Yadunandana Acarya, suddenly entered the house. Finding Raghunatha in the outer section of the house, he met him and requested him, “I am going out for some important business, but there is no one to worship my deity. So please ask one brahmana disciple in my name to serve the deity for a day or two during my absence.” As Yadunandana Acarya left, Raghunatha went with him. The guards saw him going with the family guru, so they did not interfere. On the way, Raghunatha requested the guru, “You may go ahead with your business, and I shall request the gentleman to do the worship in your absence.”

The guru left. Raghunatha took advantage of the situation. Perhaps he requested that man to do the service, but he started off in the direction away from Puri. He knew that as soon as they realized at home that he wasn’t returning, they would send men to search for him on the way to Puri. So for the whole day he walked in the opposite direction. In the evening he stopped at a cowherdsman’s house, took a little milk from him and passed the night in the cowshed. Then in the morning he started for Puri.

When his guardians found that Raghunatha had not returned home, they heard from the guards that he had gone with the family guru. They went to the guru’s house, but Raghunatha was not to be found. Then they thought that he must have left for Puri, and they sent ten men to that side. They returned without finding him. In this way, Raghunatha cleverly managed to escape. For twelve days he walked to Puri, taking food here and there for only three of those days. On the other days no food was necessary. He was helped by divine love, surcharged.

He had already heard that Mahaprabhu was at the Gambhira, the Kasi Misra Bhavan. He went there, and in the courtyard fell flat in obeisance unto Mahaprabhu. Mukunda Datta announced to the Lord, “Raghunatha has come.” Mahaprabhu said, “Yes, look after him. He has come with great difficulty, walking and walking without food. Take care of him for a few days. Then, he will manage for himself.”

That was the direction of Mahaprabhu. For a few days Raghunatha took prasadam there. After that he began to beg at the gate of the Jagannatha Temple. The parents now thought it was impossible to bring him back, and they did not make any further attempt. But they sent some money with one brahmana and two servants, instructing them to hire a house and offer Raghunatha a place to stay, and see that their son may not die without food. They tried their best, but Raghunatha continued to subsist on alms. Over a period of two years, Raghunatha invited Mahaprabhu to take prasadam at that house, and the Lord did so for his satisfaction. After that, Raghunatha left that idea, thinking, “This is only to produce some name and fame for me. Mahaprabhu is not pleased with such prasadam.”

Svarupa Damodara was the dearmost attendant of Mahaprabhu, and a very good scholar as well. Raghunatha was also a scholar; we find that later he left the world beautiful poetry in Sanskrit. Mahaprabhu gave Raghunatha over to the charge of Svarupa Damodara, saying, “I request Svarupa Damodara to take your charge, and he will advise you what will be necessary for your devotional life.”

But suddenly one day, Raghunatha approached Mahaprabhu: “Why have you managed to take me out of my house, and what is my best benefit? If you please tell me in your own words, my heart will be satisfied.”

Mahaprabhu said, ”I have given you over to the charge of Svarupa Damodara. He is more qualified than even myself. Still, if you want to hear something directly from me, then I say in brief:

gramya-katha na sunibe, gramya-varta na kahibe
bhala na khaibe ara bhala na paribe
amani manada hanya krsna-nama sada la’be
vraje radha-krsna seva manase karibe

“Don’t indulge in worldly talk, don’t hear worldly talk. Try your best to avoid mundane matters. Don’t eat delicious dishes, but take whatever ordinary food may come of its own accord; and don’t dress luxuriously. Always try to take the name of Krishna with the attitude of giving respect to others, without expecting respect from anyone. Be humble, but never aspire after respectful dealings from others. In this way, try to take the name of Krishna constantly. And within, try to serve Sri Sri Radha-Krishna in Vrindavana. Mentally, be in Vrindavana rendering service to Sri Sri Radha-Krishna lila.”

Mahaprabhu told Raghunatha that this was the essence of His advice to him. Then, He again took Raghunatha’s hand and offered it to the hand of Svarupa Damodara. He said, “I am giving you to the charge of Svarupa Damodara. He is the best spiritual teacher. He will take care of you.”

After Raghunatha’s arrival in Puri, Mahaprabhu stayed there continuously for sixteen years. After that, Mahaprabhu departed from the world. Raghunatha left Puri and went to Vrindavana, thinking, “I have what is to be had; now I only want to see Vrindavana dhama once, and then I shall leave this body by jumping from the highest peak of Govardhana.” With this idea he went to Vrindavana, but there he came into contact with Sanatana Goswami and Rupa Goswami; he found the beginning of a new life. He thought, “What is this? Mahaprabhu has not departed. He is living in them.”

Mahaprabhu delegated Rupa and Sanatana with the power to preserve the devotional current they had received from him, and to present it in a new light. They were asked to prove by drawing upon different scriptures that Mahaprabhu’s teachings are the very gist and purpose of all the scriptures. As is stated in Bhagavad-gita, vedais ca sarvair aham eva vedyah: “The attempt of every revealed scripture is to show me as the highest center. I am the Absolute.” So Mahaprabhu said, “Krishna is the Absolute. With the help of the different Scriptures and historical reference—by all means possible—try to prove that Krishna is svayam-bhagavan, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and that Vraja lila, Vrindavana lila, is the highest achievement.”

The two brothers had already begun that work when Raghunatha came into their association, and he found, “Oh! Mahaprabhu is here.” He abandoned the idea of leaving this world, and joined Rupa and Sanatana as their disciple. Mahaprabhu had already ordered Sanatana Goswami, ”My followers are very poor and helpless. You’ll have to look after them whenever they come to Vrindavana. You’ll have to be the caretaker of all my disciples that come to Vrindavana.” So Raghunatha came to Sanatana Goswami, and Sanatana took care of him. Raghunatha was so self-forgetful that one day as he was sitting on the banks of Radha kunda and taking the name, a tiger came just beside him to drink water, but Raghunatha paid no attention. Suddenly, Sanatana Goswami came upon the scene. He was astonished. Up until then Raghunatha had lived under the shade of a tree, but Sanatana said, ”Please construct a hut to live in. Don’t disregard my request; I entreat you to do this.” Then from that time he managed to construct a small dwelling and stay there. His abnegation, vairagya, was incomparable. Sanatana, Rupa, and all the Goswamis’ indifference to worldly enjoyment was extreme, but Raghunatha’s abnegation surpassed all.

When he was in Puri, sometimes he would beg prasadam at the gate of the Jagannatha Temple, and sometimes he would take prasadam at a chatram or free kitchen where rich men distribute prasadam for beggars. But then he thought, “I am taking what is due to others’ karma.”

The unsold Jagannatha prasadam is given to the cows of Jagannatha Puri. But when it becomes so stale that it emits a bad odor, even the cows cannot eat it. So now Raghunatha would wash that Prasadam with sufficient water, and adding a little salt he would eat that. Mahaprabhu heard about this, and one day when Raghunatha was taking that prasadam Mahaprabhu approached and suddenly took some and ate it. He said, “Oh! I have tasted many times the prasadam of Jagannatha, but such sweet prasadam I have never taken anywhere!”

So, what is the taste in prasadam? It is not mundane. Raghunatha had such intense faith in Prasadam that he lived on apparently rotten things with a little salt, and he was the son of a family of kingly opulence. So much indifference was in him. And in his last days in Vrindavana, he would pass each day taking only a pot of ghol , buttermilk. This is not possible for a man of flesh and blood. Great souls like the Goswamis are really personalities come down from the other world, and so it was possible for them to show the ideal of abnegation. It is not possible for ordinary humans of flesh and blood to observe such a degree of abnegation without dying. But the Goswamis created the standard and ideal by such vairagya. At the same time, Raghunatha studied Rupa Goswami’s presentation of the highest type of rasa or devotional Sentiment: madhura-rasa. By our association with this day and by our humble attempt to discuss all these matters, we may be benefited in the achievement of our goal. This is the day of the advent of such great personalities.

Departure of Sri Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura

Today is also the day that Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura departed from this world. Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura appeared about 180 years after the Advent of Sri Gaurangadeva. He composed a commentary on Srimad-Bhagavatam and many other books to help the devotees coming later in the sampradaya . He was such a great acarya. In his own special way, he has dealt elaborately with many spiritual matters, giving the proper approach. He was the scriptural dispensation of Sri Rupa-Sanatana, etc. By his grace, Sri Baladeva Vidyabhusana composed the Gaudiya Vaishnava commentary on Vedanta-sutra, Sri Govinda-bhasya . From such great masters there is much to be read.

Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti was born in a brahmana family in Devagram of Murshidabad district. He was a great scholar of Sanskrit. He came in the line of Sri Narottama Thakura and gave us extensive scriptural writings to help us very precisely and elaborately to know about the pastimes of Mahaprabhu and Radha-Krishna, Vrindavana, Navadvipa, and the guru-parampara . The Gurvastakam we chant daily was written by him, as well as many other important works. Srila Rupa Goswami wrote Sri-Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, or The Nectarean Ocean of Devotional Joy, and Srila Visvanatha wrote Sri-Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu-bindu, or a drop of that ocean. And from Sri Rupa’s Sri-Ujjvala-nilamani, The Brilliant Jewel of the Supernatural World, or Krishna in madhura-rasa, he gave Ujjvala-nilamani-kirana, or a ray of that jewel. In this way, he has given volumes of books and poems. As Sri Rupa Goswami gave the astakaliya-lila of Krishna, or twenty-four hour service engagement with Sri Sri Radha-Govinda, Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti has similarly given in Caitanya-lila twenty-four hour engagement in the service of Sriman Mahaprabhu. So he has done great service to the sampradaya and profusely bestowed his mercy upon us.

Sri Pundarika Vidyanidhi

By Srila Bhakti Raksaka Sridhara Deva-Goswami

In the following excerpt from Sermons of the Guardian of Devotion: Volume Two Srila Sridhara Maharaja begins to speak about some of the numerous events that make Vasanta-pancami an especially holy day.

The Appearance of Srimata Vishnupriya Devi

Today is the Holy Day of Vasanta-pancami, the fifth day of the light fortnight of the moon, month of Magha, when Krishna is worshiped with the new flowers of spring. On this day, the holy advent of Srimati Vishnupriya Devi occurred. Her father was Sri Sanatana Misra of Navadvipa, who was a brahmana and great devotee of Lord Vishnu. Srimati Vishnupriya Devi is the eternal consort of Sri Gaurasundara in his feature of Gaura-Narayana, and according to Sri-Gauraganoddesadipika, she is directly Satyabhama in Krishna’s Dvaraka lila.

She was the second wife of Sriman Mahaprabhu in the householder period of his pastimes. From childhood, she was devout in the divine service of the Lord. Kasinatha Pandita was the intermediary in her marriage to Mahaprabhu. She was the ideal of divine self-surrender at the lotus feet of Mahaprabhu. When she was only fourteen, Mahaprabhu took sannyasa, and after that she lived the rest of her life in penance. From early morning she would chant the holy name the whole day, and for every mahamantra that she chanted, she would put one grain of rice into a clay pot. After chanting her quota, she would take that rice and cook it and offer it to the Lord. That was all she would take for her subsistence, so gradually she became emaciated. She passed her days in this way.

Her brother was her guardian after Saci-devi departed, and ultimately she had a murti of Mahaprabhu, and she would worship him in that form. And since the time of Vishnupriya, that worship is being continued up to the present in the temple here in Navadvipa known as ’Mahaprabhura Badi’ (the home of Mahaprabhu). So this day of the year is connected with her holy memory, and we may achieve her grace if we honor this time in her name, discussing her pastimes. She will be propitiated and Sri Caitanyadeva will also be pleased with us, giving us a step forward in our transcendental march towards him.

The Appearance of Sri Pundarika Vidyanidhi

Today is also the appearance day of Sri Pundarika Vidyanidhi. He is considered to be Vrishabhanu-raja of Varsana, Vrindavana, the father of Srimati Radharani. Sri Pundarika Vidyanidhi was born in a brahmana family at Chattagram, and he bore the title “Vidyanidhi” on account of his scholarship. Apparently he was a man of luxurious habits. In those days, people who could afford it would have a house in Navadvipa on the banks of the holy Ganges river; they would from time to time visit Navadvipa to regularly bathe in the Ganges and remain for some time in this Holy Place, and then return to their homes to continue their livelihood. So, Pundarika Vidyanidhi also had a house in Navadvipa.

Here, in Gaura-lila, Gadadhara Pandita was the representation of Srimati Radharani herself. At that time, Gadadhara Pandita was a young boy. He was younger than Mahaprabhu. Mukunda Datta was a follower and admirer of Mahaprabhu Sri Caitanyadeva, and he also came from Chattagram, the village of Pundarika Vidyanidhi. He knew Pundarika Vidyanidhi to be a man of higher religious type, that is, a Bhagavata type or Krishna bhakta. But outwardly Pundarika Vidyanidhi lived a life of luxury. He was a well-to-do man, a general zamindar (state landowner). Mukunda Datta naturally knew him when he came to Navadvipa, since he hailed from the same place. Mukunda Datta went to Gadadhara Pandita and asked him, “Would you like to have the darsana of a Vaishnava?”

From childhood Gadadhara Pandita was very fond of Vaishnavas and Krishna nama. He had much fondness for Nimai Pandita when the Lord returned from Gaya. Previously he was very much afraid of Nimai Pandit, because whenever they met, Nimai Pandit would always tackle him with some apparent quarrel about etymology or something of that nature. So, after returning from Gaya, when Sri Caitanyadeva expressed his devotional aspect, he said one day, “Gadadhara, from your very childhood you are a devotee of Krishna, and my days have been wasted discussing grammar and mundane literature. But you, Gadadhara, my friend, your life is very successful. You have fulfillment of life. From the beginning you are fond of Krishna nama.” So, from the beginning Gadadhara Pandita’s heart was towards Krishna. Therefore when Mukunda Datta asked him, “Would you like to see a Vaishnava who has come from afar?” the reply came, “Yes, yes, I shall go; take me there.”

So Mukunda Datta took Gadadhara Pandit to Pundarika Vidyanidhi. And what kind of Vaishnava was Pundarika Vidyanidhi? He was sitting on a luxurious bedstead, smoking a very ornate and valuable pipe. His head was adorned with beautiful oiled curly locks, and many valuable pastes were anointed on his body. Two attendants fanned him on either side. Gadadhara Pandit thought, “Mukunda has brought me to this luxury loving man sitting on the bedstead and smoking? What type of Vaishnava has he brought me to see?” He was disappointed at heart, and Mukunda could guess it. Mukunda Datta was a very good singer, and in a very sweet tone he sang this sloka of Bhagavatam :

aho baki yam stana-kala-kutam
jighamsayapayayad apy asadhvi
lebhe gatim dhatry ucitam tato ‘nyam
kam va dayalum saranam vrajema

This sloka was chanted by Mukunda in a very sweet tone, and this created a wonderful effect in Pundarika Vidyanidhi. The Bhagavatam says, “Who else but Krishna should we approach? Who can be so kind, so gracious? There is limitless grace in him. Why? Baki, Putana, came to kill him in a treacherous way, taking the garb of dhatri, a motherly garb. In this way she came to try and kill him; yet Krishna gave her a position as a nursemaid in his group of assisting mothers. So gracious is the Lord. Who else can we approach for our good?”

This is the meaning of the verse. “She painted deadly poison on her breast, and came to suckle the boy Krishna. So treacherous was her action. In the garb of motherly affection she tried to murder the boy, and she was given such a high position as an attendant of his mother. She was elevated to the motherly group. Such grace, such mercy he showed, without considering or passing judgment on the worth of that action. So other than that kind-hearted and gracious Krishna, where else should we go for shelter?”

This entered the heart of Pundarika Vidyanidhi and began to vibrate, and produced such force that he was stunned; then shivering began, and madly gesticulating, he began to pull his hair and tear his silken dress, kicking over the tobacco and pipe. His rich bedding and dress were ruined, and he began to roll on the ground and cry, kam va dayalum saranam vrajema: “In whom shall we take shelter other than Him?” Then Gadadhara Pandita thought, “Oh, I have committed a great offense in my mind, thinking that he was not a Vaishnava, because of his fashionable dress and style. Really, how great a Vaishnava he is—what a wonderful effect the memory of Krishna caused in him!”

Then Gadadhara Pandit revealed his mind: “Mukunda, I have committed an offense against this great Vaishnava. What will be my fate? When I first saw him, I shunned him; I committed an offense. I think that if I take mantra from him, become his disciple, then he may forgive all my offenses. There is no other way to be absolved from this Vaishnava aparadha. I shall have to inform my Lord Gauracandra, Nimai Pandit, about this.” So they left the place of Pundarika Vidyanidhi, and Gadadhara went to take Nimai Pandit’s permission to become the disciple of Pundarika Vidyanidhi.

Before anyone knew that Pundarika had come from Chattagram to Navadvipa, and even before Mahaprabhu had met him, Mahaprabhu was seen to suddenly cry, “Bap Pundarik! Bap Pundarik! ” In the mood of Srimati Radharani, Nimai was taking his name. Bap means father. So he was calling, “Father, Pundarika! Father, Pundarika!” Nimai Pandit was chanting like this, in the mood of Radharani.

When Gadadhara made his proposal to Mahaprabhu, the Lord immediately replied, “Yes, very good proposal. Go and accept him at once.” Gadadhara Pandita represents Radharani in Gaura-lila, and Pundarika is Radharani’s father in Krishna lila: the guru is like the father, and the disciple is like the child. So Mahaprabhu at once approved and Gadadhara took initiation from Pundarika Vidyanidhi. He was none other than Vrishabhanuraja, and Gadadhara was the incarnation of Radharani in Gaura-lila.

Pundarika Vidyanidhi would not take a bath in the Ganges because he could not tolerate that his feet would touch the holy Ganges river. Before daybreak, he would go to the Ganges and take some of the water on his head. He did not go to the Ganges by day, because he could not tolerate to see persons who would dive into the water or spit there and contaminate the pure, holy water by misusing it. Before worship, prayer, etc., the general pandita section may bathe in the Ganges and fast to purify their bodies of sin. But Pundarika Vidyanidhi would rather drink some Ganges water prior to his daily worship and duties, thereby teaching us the proper worshipful respect due to the Ganga.

In Puri, his dearmost friend and associate was Sri Svarupa Damodara. When he went to Puri, he felt some pain in his heart that the priestly servants of Jagannatha dressed the Lord in starched cloth, which is generally considered impure. When cloth is manufactured by hand loom, the thread is soaked in boiled rice water which acts as a paste to hold it firm in the loom. That cloth is considered impure, and must first be rinsed in water before offering it to the Deity. But in Puri, that was not the practice. They directly used starched cloth for dressing Lord Jagannatha, and Pundarika Vidyanidhi could not accommodate this.

That night, he dreamt that both Jagannatha and Balarama came to him and dealt slaps to his cheeks, saying, “You have come here to point out the defects in my servitors? What is this?!”

They both began to slap him, and the dream was so intense that when he rose in the morning he found that both his cheeks were inflamed. He expressed to his most intimate friend, Svarupa Damodara: “My dear friend, Svarupa Damodara, such is my position. I had this objectionable feeling in my heart towards these servitors, so Jagannatha and Balarama have punished me in this way. See the swelling on both cheeks!”

Such was the nature of Pundarika Vidyanidhi. In essence, we are told that he is the father of Srimati Radharani, incarnated here as Pundarika Vidyanidhi. A slight holy association of this day, his appearance day, will help us a great deal in our advancement of spiritual life.

The Appearance of Sri Raghunandana Thakura

Thirdly, this is also the birthday of Raghunandana Thakura. He was born in a place named Srikhanda, near Katwa, in a Kaviraja family, a lineage of Ayurvedic doctors. Raghunandana was the son of Mukunda Kaviraja, who was such a notable doctor that even kings called for him for treatment. Raghunandana was a bachelor his whole life. His figure was extraordinarily beautiful, and he was very fond of dancing. From the beginning he was, of course, a natural devotee.

The family of Mukunda Thakura worshiped their ancestral Deity at home. Once, when Raghunandana was a growing boy, who had perhaps only recently received the sacred thread and admission to worship, his father asked him, “I’m going out and won’t return in time. You please worship the deity and feed him—offer bhogam for his food.”

When he was away, Raghunandana’s mother cooked many items and brought them to the temple, and asked Raghunandana to offer them to the deity. Generally the doors are kept closed during worship, so behind the closed doors Raghunandana offered and prayed to the Lord , ”Please take these dishes I am offering you—please eat.” But the Sri Murti did not answer or come forward to eat. Raghunandana began to cry. ”My father will rebuke me! He has requested me to feed you, and you are not eating. I’ll be punished. You have to take this food!” The sincere boy began to cry in such a way that Krishna had to eat. Raghunandana was satisfied, and came out from the deity room. His mother came to remove the prasadam.

“What is this? All the plates are empty!”
Raghunandana replied, ”You asked me to feed the deity. He has taken.”
His mother said angrily, ”You, boy, you have eaten it! The deity doesn’t eat. We offer, everything remains, and afterwards we take the prasadam . You wicked boy, you have turned out to be such a rogue, you have eaten everything.”
“No, no, I did not eat, the deity ate everything.”
“This is impossible, you foolish boy! Do you want to make a fool of me? This can never happen!”
He began to cry, ”No, I’m speaking the truth.”
“Alright, let your father come, and I shall ask him to punish you.”
Mukunda returned, and Raghunandana’s mother complained, ”Your boy has grown to be such a rogue! He says the deity has eaten.”
Raghunandana also petitioned his father, ”Yes, the deity has eaten. He would not take in the beginning, but I began to cry, and then he ate.”
“Is this true?”
“Yes, it is true my father, I am not lying.”
“Can you show me?”
“I shall try.”

So he was given another chance to worship, and from a hidden place his father could see that the Deity had actually taken the food.

Such a devotee was Raghunandana Thakura. When he danced in sankirtana, it was such a charming scene that even Mahaprabhu was attracted. During the Jagannatha Ratha-yatra seven special groups would chant and dance, and in the party from Srikhanda we find that Raghunandana was the dancer. So today is the day connected with the memory of Sri Raghunandana Thakura, who is considered to be Pradyumna avatara . Many more incidents occur in his pastime; I have only touched on them. It is also said that near the banks of the lake Madhu-puskarini there is a Jambu tree, and according to his wish two Kadamba flowers bloom on that tree every day for the worship of his deity. Many miracles are found in his pastimes.

Mantralogy is a New York-based collective owned by Saci-suta, Keli-lalita, Gauravani, and Rasa-acharya. They strive to stimulate the kirtana scene by promoting the bhakti lifestyle alongside their professionally produced albums and their clothing line. They are probably best-known for their releases of Gauravani and As Kindred Spirits’ Ten Million Moons and The Mayapuris Mridanga, but that’s only a small part of what they have come out with and many new releases are on their way.

I got intrigued by their approach to sharing the teachings and lifestyle of bhakti because it brings out so clearly the never-ending tension between conserving and renewing, caution and risk-taking, dynamism and stagnation. This tension seems to be especially heightened in relation to ancient spiritual traditions that have to answer to the challenges of the constantly changing  modern times: how to re-present the basic elements of the path to better affect people’s lives without re-presenting one off the path altogether? Often the line between renegade and reformer is a fine one. Here I offered Gauravani and Mantralogy a chance to draw the lines themselves instead of having others do it for them.

Gurunistha dasa: What was the reason for forming Mantralogy and what is your mission statement? What are you trying to accomplish?

Gauravani: In a very simple way, Mantralogy is meant to support and grow the subculture surrounding mantra music, sacred music. Saci-suta and Keli-lalita had started Equal Vision Records originally as a Krishna Core record label doing hardcore music. That was primarily devotees teaching bhakti through punk rock music. Over time their record label has become more mainstream, but their passion for bhakti and for music that transmits bhakti and shares bhakti in a relevant way has not changed. And so when we all met we had the opportunity to talk about some more ideas and the idea came up to do this creative company that was built around the idea of creating, sustaining, and supporting the subculture of mantra music.

Gurunistha: It says on your website that you “seek to combine the edgy punk rock attitude with the ancient uplifting philosophies and culture of conscious living and music.” How do you harmonize the two seemingly opposing influences? What is similar about punk rock and kirtana?

Gauravani: Actually they are extremely similar, because they both have an element of revolution. And the ultimate revolution was the revolution that was brought into the streets of India 500 years ago by Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the revolution of consciousness, the first statement of which was that “I am not this body.” It is so revolutionary. Because so many great people throughout time have created revolutions with a simple idea, like we are all equal in the eyes of God, or that race should not separate the rights of an individual, but an even more revolutionary statement is that not only is there no difference between black and white, but you are actually not even that body. That body is just a vehicle, an experience for your soul. That is an even greater revolutionary statement. So art, music, poetry has always been the backbone of revolution. Right now the world is experiencing a revolution: in the way we eat, people are eating organic food, food grown locally; in the way we dress, organic cotton, sustainable fabrics; our politics, we are trying to be more kind; energy policy, moving away from things like nuclear energy to more sustainable kinds of energy like wind, solar . . . Even the way we worship. We are trying not to just be spiritualists in a church or in a temple but to be spiritual in our lives, in the way we deal with our children, the way we deal with our spouses, our community; it’s a revolution. I mean, that’s what the 60s were all about, a convergence of all these seemingly disparate influences, country music and folk music, gospel and blues, philosophy and youth energy and politics, it was all coming together around this idea of a revolution of equality. But this revolution is even more important than the revolution of the 60s because this is a revolution of consciousness. This revolution that we are all experiencing now is going to come together like a real tsunami of consciousness.

Gurunistha: So you believe it’s actually going to be a worldwide movement?

Gauravani: It’s already happening. The only thing is that people like us, revolutionaries like us, need to see and facilitate the connections. Someone asked me at Yoga Journal about mantra music and how I define it and I said, “I consider Christian rock a form of mantra music.” Because what is Christian rock? Young people they want to worship Christ in a way that they can understand. They don’t want to be living in their parents’ or some ancient version of Christianity; they want relevant Christianity. So it is all the same, whether it’s kirtana from India, or whether it’s Christian rock, or it’s gospel music, or native traditions it is all the same. It’s a revolution in making spirituality real and relevant, right here, right now.

Has it become the mainstream? No. Okay, but arguably, this world is a place where people are facilitating their own desires, so it will always be a place where anything that is against that is an outsider philosophy, against the norm. So I agree with that, I suppose, but that is not our mood at Mantralogy. Our mood is, just like within 18 days the Pandavas had completely destroyed all the demonic forces and the whole world was handed to them, and said: here you go, now do something wonderful with it, so our mission is, tomorrow morning everything is going to change, it’s all right around the corner, its coming. (laughter) And if we live our whole lives like that and ultimately we look across the room at each other and we are old guys playing our drums and singing our songs, that’s okay too. But at least it will be a revolution of consciousness. Even if it doesn’t manifest externally, the most important thing is that we are able to really make it manifest inside our hearts.

Gurunistha: Mantralogy has been the trailblazer of making Gaudiya kirtana more appealing and marketable to the masses. And it seems like you’ve been really successful in making it available for non-devotees and devotees alike. But apparently some devotees have felt that it’s too commercial. I was interested to hear what their accusations were and how you deal with that kind of a thing?

Gauravani: How do you answer a question like this? (laughter) Here is what it comes down to: there are often two extremes to any idea, that is the way of the world that; that is the way of the accepting and rejecting of the mind. There is one side and there is another side. So people like me and most of the crew at Mantralogy, our idea is to be in the mood of the munificence of Caitanya Mahaprabhu, which is that the fruits grow and they fall and if people take them they take them, you do what you can. You’re not worried about the problems but more trying to make the opportunity available.

I guess there are so many things that people could criticize about what we do. They could say that we are all allowing for there to be money in exchange for kirtana. They could say that we are chanting with people who are not pure. We are supporting and encouraging people who don’t have a strong spiritual practice, or they could say that someone like me, I’m a musician, what qualification do I have to chant the holy name? I have no taste, I have no deep understanding, I have no experience. I just have a little bit of love for other musicians and chanters, I like doing it, and I like to share it with people. So there are a lot of things to criticize and I’ve come to the conclusion that probably many of the criticisms are true. So that’s not the problem, the problem is not that they are not true. The problem is, what do you do with these things that people have highlighted?

My sense is that each of us, according to our nature, has some service to render in the world, and that rather than looking at our difficulties, looking at things that we don’t like with each other, what we should try and do is choose those few things that we really appreciate about each other and fan the flames. I’ve had criticism from some people who don’t know me; I’ve had criticism from some very close friends. But I’ve also had encouragement from both of those groups. To be very honest with you, it took me this last year through a dark time, where I was really questioning everything, questioning myself, questioning what I was doing, and questioning if I was creating some offense or difficulty for other bhaktas. And by the Lord’s sweet grace I have come through that. And now I’m not questioning so much because in the Bhagavad-Gita Krishna says how it ‘s better you do your duty improperly than you do some one else’s perfectly.

I’m sure I will learn, I am sure all of us at Mantralogy will look back 10 years, 15 years from now and say, “Boy, if we’d only known we would have done so many things differently!” But now we are just excited, we are happy to be doing this. We are grateful and we are moving forward.

Gurunistha: There seems to be a strong need for unity and non-sectarianism among the younger devotee crowd and they really seem to respond well to what you guys are doing. But it seems like a lot of them have this idea that the solution to the controversies and differences among the devotee community is to emphasize kirtana and de-emphasize philosophy. Because there’s a lot of room for differences and fights in philosophy and debate. What do you see as the solution to the problems within the Gaudiya community.

Gauravani: I would answer this question differently depending on who I am speaking to. The culture of the Vedas is a culture of respect, so even great sages who would disagree with each other would first hear each other out completely, and would do that in a cycle endlessly until some resolution was achieved. One would hear the other one out completely and then ask, “Have you finished? Okay, now let me address it.” Then the next sage would address, address, address and then ask, “Have you finished?” “I’ve said everything.” “Okay, now my turn”. They would go back and forth like this. If there is no resolution then lets break as friends and next time we come together we will again begin a discussion from this place. That letter that I just read I think addresses a little bit of the mood that sometimes in our eagerness and enthusiasm to do something we forget that the point is the people you are involved with. The point is, it’s supposed to be a practical opportunity to apply and learn the spiritual principles. If we get so caught up in the thing that we forget to build up the relationships then we’ve made the mistake.

And I think for our Vaishnava community, and frankly for the world–I really don’t see a difference between the two, which is an answer to the previous question–the fighting that goes on in the world, the fighting that goes on in all the different communities or families or relationships comes down to this idea that sometimes when someone disagrees with us we feel like it is our job to shame them. We do it in our politics; we do it in our interpersonal relationships. Disagreement can result in separation, but it shouldn’t necessarily result in shaming. Neither party should be shamed. There should be a sense of worthiness, that even though we disagree I respect you and I value your perspective and I give you encouragement and respect, even though I disagree. I think we in ourselves need to start by trying to cultivate a sense of worthiness, that we are children of God, that we are Krishna’s loved and cherished people. He loves us and he has seen us do things that we can not even imagine: terrible things, but still he loves us. So we should say okay I get it I am worthy. I need to act in a way that shows that I am worthy of God’s love. That is the key thing. We need to move away from this culture of shaming one another. If someone shows a weakness, vulnerability actually it is a great opportunity to express love and encouragement.

Gurunistha: Do you feel like there is more of trying to shame other people in religious circles? It seems like that sometimes.

Gauravani: It’s a good question. I think it can be seen like that. I don’t think so, but I think because religious organizations tend to have a shared set of rules and scriptures, that it’s easier to checklist whether someone is on or off. So it seems like there is more of a culture there. But I think people will find ways to shame each other. (laughter) Politics is full of it, there is so much mud slinging, it is just one person trying to shame the other guy so much that people won’t vote for him. It comes from the same place that terrorism comes from: deep fear, deep anger, and deep shame. That is why kirtana is the only thing that can defeat terrorism. Because kirtana wakes up your soul and you begin to use your voice, the voice of your soul, and you begin to hear yourself sing, singing these beautiful words and you hear yourself doing this worthy and beautiful thing, appreciated by those around you. It begins to grow a culture of appreciation and encouragement on a spiritual level, because in kirtana, whether someone can sing our not everyone is encouraged to chant. Everybody’s doing something, learning to play an instrument and embracing each other while they dance. We’ve all seen it, even people who don’t get along they dance right next to one-another, through kirtana those things fade.

Gurunistha: That brings me back to the original question. It does seem like you feel kirtana itself is sufficient to bring people together but what about the philosophical side? How much needs to be known about the philosophy behind kirtana? How effective is it if you don’t have a clear idea of what it’s about?

Gauravani: That is an important question. If you’re asking me, is it important to also take time to listen and hear and read and associate with people who are more knowledgeable than yourself to try to understand in a deeper way, yes absolutely. But my sense is also that chanting the holy name is like one of those little things that

the kids get, you put the little thing in water and it turns into a giant dinosaur! (Laughter) It’s all in there, you put it in water and it expands. So if you don’t take care of it properly you could probably ruin it, but basically the name is all you need. That is my understanding. There are so many different pieces. Like in the analogy of the seed, you have the sun, and you have the weather, and you have the rain, and certain temperature and a type of soil . . . But those things can’t be quantified, basically the name is golokera prema dhana…It’s this touchstone, the name Itself. I really believe it. Especially with the way Mahaprabhu did it in sankirtana. The name brings two devotees together and when you have two devotees together you have a sanga. That means you have association and loving service, and with loving service, you then have an opportunity to cleanse the heart and become humble through that service. This is all just through the natural experience of kirtana. Then through a humble heart you begin to have a deeper spiritual understanding to hear the name more properly. So it all comes but it comes from kirtana, sanga kirtana I think is the magic thing, the name is powerful, yes, it’s all in the name but sankirtan, that is the main thing, that is how I see it. This is why so many young devotees stress sankirtana over japa. This is a bit of a contentious issue, because many young people do japa, obviously everyone values japa as a personal connection to Krishna, but many young people are more attracted to kirtana than to japa. And people have criticized before, certain hard-line devotees, they say, “You’re just in kirtana so the guys can look at the girls and the girls can look at the guys; You’re just in kirtana to show off your mrdanga playing . . .” or whatever. But the point is, many people don’t think that these young kids could be at the mall, or they could be going on a date to the movies with the same girl they are in kirtana with, but instead they are in kirtana. So we just try to encourage. “You want to see this girl? Take her to the 24-hour kirtana at New Vrindavan, Agnideva prabhu will be there! Come, bring your girlfriend and sit with her for 24 hours of non-stop Harinam! (Laughter)

Gurunistha: That is a strong point, that if you guys didn’t do it the way you do it a lot of the kids would never go to the temple, they would never show up. It’s not attractive to them.

Gauravani: I think our job as representatives of Caitanya Mahaprabhu is to distribute the fruit. So if someone doesn’t want to take the fruit – you just do your best, you try to give it in a way that they will appreciate what it is. So we just try. Everyone has their own capacity, and there are people out there conversing with scholars in a language I don’t understand, and there are people who are immersed in puja, there are so many unlimited aspects of this beautiful, beautiful life and this world of bhakti and seva. So the main thing I think is that we should all appreciate each other and the different ways that we’re doing it, and help each other and care for each other, and if we see someone going into a place of difficulty we should reach out a hand, with a sense that they are worthy, not to create shame.

Gurunistha: Historically speaking it seems like there is like a moment of breach happening right now in the movement. The young Gaudiyas are breaking out of the old mold and the die-hard old school bhaktas resist that, but it seems like they can’t stop it.

Gauravani: The way I see it, whether it is two people or two hundred people working together, you have to be like minded, you have to work with people you can work with. I see that actually, there are many older devotees who are trying to see how to begin to train and synergize with the younger devotees. That is the key thing I think, there are many people who are harmonic, resonant and we should work together. I was just speaking with Agnideva prabhu about helping him record his next album. I have a certain energy and creative enthusiasm and a certain technique and he has the same thing from his experience, and he is wiser than me, more experienced than me, so together we’ll be able to do something better than either one of us could do by ourselves. So that is the future. The future is people from not even Gaudiya traditions saying, “Oh, you want to do this and we want to do this. Let’s work together. You have a beautiful center and you want to learn Gita and we can teach Gita, let’s work together. Vegetarian cooking, we can serve you in some way; chanting, everyone working together. The way I see the mission of Mahaprabhu’s movement is, not to say “Oh, these guys have a nice thing we’ve got to have one of those. They have nice dancers, we need to have nice dancers!” I don’t see it like that. I see these guys are amazing at dance, lets try to find a way to introduce Krishna consciousness into their presentation in a way that will give them something better than what they had before and allow them to use all their expertise in a way that we never could to bring this message to everyone. I know Prabhupada used to say that he was building a society of brahmanas, and this is my humble understanding: a brahmana is a teacher, a facilitator. So rather than to take over society, our mission should be to find any place in society where we can serve with knowledge in a humble and heartfelt way and those people will very soon see that this is that touchstone, that transcendental gem that can transform all these wonderful qualities that they had and bring it to the next level. We’re not trying to stop people from doing what they are doing. We’re trying to transform what they are doing into something even better than what they originally imagined. So our mission as “brahmanas”–, you know I’m not even first initiated so I can’t say that. But our mission of attempting to be brahmanas is to see ourselves as facilitators and guides and to help people do what they do better. It’s and offering.

Gurunistha: The New York kirtana scene seems to be pretty active and growing.

I was particularly interested in how the New York City kirtana scene has evolved during the time that you have been part of it and what part have you guys played in its growth?

Gauravani: It’s growing all over the whole world. We were just in Australia. It’s booming in Australia, its booming in Trinidad, its booming everywhere. It’s growing. But in New York an interesting thing happened, sometimes people criticize me or Mantralogy for trying to be business-minded. The truth is actually  that we’ve been creating an encouragement to anyone who wants to take up kirtana to start chanting. So I notice that more and more regular people are starting practicing chanting, learning harmonium, learning drum and chanting. So that is one contribution we’ve made: to encourage people that you don’t need to be a musician, you can just be a regular old Joe or Lisa and chant, and learn, and enjoy. So that is something that I have seen really booming, growing fast. I like that a lot. The other thing I’ve seen a change in is we really try our best to introduce people to Caitanya Mahaprabhu in a way that helps them understand how vital he is to really getting deep into chanting. We’ve introduced people to the Siksastakam, we’ve introduced people to the story of Caitanya Mahaprabhu and to that deep crying and calling aspect of chanting which is not there so much in some of the light, just fun kirtanas. We are really encouraging people to go deep. That is also something people really resonate with.

Gurunistha: Is that something that’s absent in the rest of the kirtana scene?  Is it more like a big party otherwise?

Gauravani: I think it is a nice opportunity for people to get together. So I think people see it as a replacement for this group singing and chanting which has existed in all cultures of the world, which has just evaporated in western culture. Gathering together to make music is such a vital part of any community, which is gone. So people have used kirtana to replace that, but I think it is just a divine trick of Krishna, of God, to use that to reintroduce chanting. Because of course chanting in not just community music, chanting is reciting these super powerful sounds. So now we’re getting the chance to reintroduce the idea of really, really going deep and crying and calling as part of that experience. The other thing that we have done in New York especially is that we have really tried to encourage everyone to get together from different communities. We are trying not to have it be just Gaudiya chanters, Hare Krishna’s only. We are trying to say oh, you’re from here and you’re from here, lets all do this together. We’ll support you and you’ll support us and we will create a community around chanting.

Gurunistha: That seems to be something that helps other groups appreciate Gaudiyas more.

Gauravani: Sankirtana is our game man, we know all about bringing everyone together and chanting. But the Gaudiyas have a lot to learn from everyone else too. It’s nice, we can learn how to take care of our bodies a little better. We come from this ascetic tradition so we could take care of the body a little better to keep the kirtana going longer. Eating healthy, these things we can learn from all the beautiful yogis and how to do seva, how to keep things as they say in India very “pukka”, keeping things very nice and high class and having everything just right so it attracts the mind as well as the soul. There is so much sharing going on.

I should say that my Guru Maharaja is putting a lot of energy into this center on the Lower Eastside called the Bhakti center. They have a café now and they are doing nice vegan and vegetarian Prasad. We host a lot of the kirtans there, there are yoga classes. So it is a nice place where people from various traditions can come together and just get a very laid back but straight forward Vaisnava experience without so much of the usual associations of a temple or ashram.

Gurunistha: What do you see as the future of kirtan in general and that of Mantralogy?

Gauravani: You are the future of kirtan. I mean that. It was a joke, but I do mean that. Well let’s see what Krishna Caitanya Mahaprabhu have in mind.

Gurunistha: You don’t have any five-year-plans or anything like that?

Gauravani: Actually, I am here in New York for a series of meetings. We are always getting together to rethink this: how are we doing this, how are we doing that; How do we do this right. It’s hard since I am speaking on behalf of a team of people but I’m just one of the team of people. So from my perspective this is how I see it: the grassroots movement of kirtana should really be encouraged to grow. I really want to focus the next five years on putting energy into events like the 24hour kirtana, which are just really about getting together and really chanting and putting our hearts into it, and encouraging others to learn instruments and grow, grow, grow. More people, more opportunities, grow the grassroots side of it. The other thing we will be focusing on is really trying to create the kind of elements that give a subculture life: cool clothing, cool music. Things that people can bring into their “normal” life as a connection to this alter ego that they have, with the ultimate idea of unifying it all under one [persona], “This is who I am. I love kirtana!” So creating clothes that are cool to wear around when your going out or when your with your friends. Also teaching people how to play the instruments and sing the songs and creating good music, cool music they can listen to anytime; creating events that they are excited to go to and they want to bring their friends to and invite other people; create a subculture that will sustain the growth of this – that’s my focus . . .

That, and not pissing anyone else off.

Gurunistha: That’s a tough one!

The three young men—perhaps eighteen years old—huddled closely, speaking in whispers as they gestured towards the life-sized diorama. One shook his head while stifling a laugh amidst a playful, but hushed debate. The boys were gathered in front of a model of samsara, depicting the movement of the individual soul through a growing, maturing, and aging human body. Readying a rusty Bhagavad-Gita sloka and rustling up a bit of boldness, I inserted myself into the conversation and pointed decisively towards the figure that I thought best corresponded with the young men’s relative youth. I then, with a self-deprecating roll of the eyes, gestured to the more mature figure that might represent me.

Although I had done little more than extend a finger in the direction of some resin statues, I suddenly had a rapt audience. Not insignificantly, I was also a Caucasian westerner who had traveled all over these young people’s country of India, and who seemed (to the group’s collective amazement) to also know something of the philosophy underlying the fairly crude tableau that served as a backdrop for our meeting.

One of the men asked, “You have this [philosophy] in the USA?” I replied, with a hint of pride, that not only did we have the philosophy, but for several decades we have also had – in nearly every major city – deity forms that are only beginning to manifest in this particular region of India.

Not one to dominate a conversation, I asked my new acquaintances about their ambitions, schooling, and hometown. And not to my surprise, this group wanted just about everything that, at least on some level, characterized my life back in the U.S. Indeed, what eighteen-year-old in India is not excited by the economic developments in that country, new prospects for mobility of all kinds, and the demise of some of the most stringent socio-religious norms?

When I was younger, I might have cautioned this same group: “You won’t know what India is losing in its pursuit of ‘progress’ until it’s gone. Trust me. I’m an American. The west is a hellish place.” For various reasons, I did not conclude my interactions with this small but impressionable audience by issuing a grim prophesy. Rather, I wished them the best and took my leave with folded hands and a smile.

As I made my way onto the grounds of the architecturally staggering Radha-Krishna temple, I contemplated why I didn’t use my impromptu “authority” to decisively win those boys over on philosophical grounds. Did I lack faith? Has the intensity of my personal convictions waned? The group spoke reasonable English. I could have dropped the philosophical hammer and practically ensured that my new charges left the temple complex with no fewer than ten books and several meters of tulasi beads between them.

The more I reflected on that meeting, however, the less I worried about what I’d said (or didn’t say). I instead thought about the profound differences between the diffusion of Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy in the West and its diffusion in countries that are striving—in nearly every way—to become like the West in terms of standard of living, sophistication, and social character. That latter group of countries, although often imbued with a cultural richness, traditional set of values, and general moral turpitude long ago forfeited by the West, also embrace some ideas and beliefs that will not endure the tide of Western influence. That tide will dislodge things both good and much less good, as new and often well-reasoned information about history, psychology, and biology crashes into worldviews based on more ancient means of knowing.

In the meantime, however, outreach efforts by Gaudiya groups across the planet appear to have flourished in places that have not yet been exposed to the full face of powerful alternative views from academic disciplines and social movements. Such positions are not so easily brushed aside with a casual wave of the hand and a simple retort. But for the moment, even with little in the way of actual realization or expertise on my part, I probably had enough philosophical firepower in the holster (made credible by my unusual appearance among Indians) to leave a long-lasting, if not transformative impression.  Something about doing so, however, felt disingenuous. I moved on.

I haggled for an auto rickshaw outside the temple complex. As luck would have it, I negotiated a ride with a young driver who gave me a break on the price, perhaps in exchange for my (somewhat feigned) appreciation of his auto’s sound system and dance-club interior lighting. The pulse of deep bass from the vehicle was like the restless heartbeat of the young man in the driver’s seat. Although performing a humble job, he seemed to be looking to the future with optimism, rather than to the past with reverence.

Tearing through the city on three wheels, I realized how long it had been since I’d actually shared something direct about Gaudiya Vaisnava philosophy with a complete stranger, what to speak of with teenagers who, in America, constitute one of the more challenging demographics. I thought about what it would take to effectively share that deceptively simple point, “kaumaram yauvanam jara,” with worldly, educated, and reason-demanding people. Could I do it? Would I sound genuine and relatable? Do I possess the vocabulary? The answer, I’m afraid, was an emphatic “No.”

Yet moments before, perhaps I could have convinced my small congregation of the fallacy of the entire scientific paradigm and compellingly put forward the precise formula for skirting the influence of Kali Yuga. (All with one hand bound securely in my bead bag, no less!)

The issue began to take shape as my rickshaw wove through traditional obstacles like cows, careened past new threats like passenger cars, and negotiated new nuisances like pedestrians engrossed by their mobile phones. To share Gaudiya Vaishnavism in a way that will resonate with a world that is reaping the fruits (some ripe, some spoiled) of reason and science necessitates an understanding of the essential spirituality that serves as the tradition’s basis. It necessitates the development of a language and supporting realization that allows one to talk to (and sympathetically hear from) his or her own contemporaries. It requires that one come to terms with the worldview of the present, and from there to discern a point of entry. This is much more difficult than conquering three eighteen-year-olds with one’s relative worldliness and seniority, or charming them with a few carefully chosen barbs flung at the west.

As the towering temple receded into the distance, I recognized that I had not yet reached the threshold of realization required for sharing something important to me in a way that will matter and make sense to those in my immediate world. And I didn’t want to put forward anything less to those three young men at the temple. They (and I) will ultimately need to develop a firm, yet flexible faith that can deal with—rather than flatly deny—the intellectual and other challenges that arise as science- and reason-driven perspectives come to dominate.

In light of that almost inevitable dominance, I chose (and choose) to focus on Gaudiya Vaishnavism’s capacity to effectively respond to, accommodate, and even embrace new information and change. The application, potential appeal, and transformative power of the tradition are not tied to any place, to any time, or to any phase in any culture’s trajectory. Rather it is a participatory tradition, the relevance and essence of which is perpetuated in the hearts of the true sadhus and acaryas who inherit, process, and—after some time—share something very old, anew. I recognize, too, that I need to become an active agent in that process of realization and renewal, rather than someone who mechanically passes on a few foreign words, to a few foreign people.