# Back to Godhead Magazine #56 *2022 (01)* Back to Godhead Magazine #56-01, 2022 PDF-View Welcome Prayer is an important part of our spiritual life, but some of us might feel unsure how to go about it. Or in our endeavors for spiritual progress, we might naturally want to know how we can improve in this devotional practice. Like most aspects of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, we can look to the *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* for guidance. Vraja Vihārī Dāsa has done that in this issue with his article “How Do We Pray to Kṛṣṇa?” In his Founder’s Lecture, Śrīla Prabhupāda takes up the topic of making spiritual progress, as he speaks about “Levels of Realization.” Two articles deal with competing ideas. Caitanya Caraṇa Dāsa asks “Are People Innately Good or Innately Bad?” Philosophers have argued in favor of each position, and there seems to be evidence of both. Mukundamālā Dāsa, in “Types of Equal Vision,” raises the interesting fact that although Lord Kṛṣṇa labels the material world a place of suffering, His pure devotees may see it as filled with happiness. How to see divine justice in the world was the challenged faced by Gaura Kumāra Dāsa when his daughter was born with Down’s Syndrome. He reveals the progression of his thoughts in “Does Kṛṣṇa Not Love Her?” Hare Kṛṣṇa. —*Nāgarāja Dāsa, Editor* Letters This letter is to show my appreciation for the article in the July/Aug 2021 issue by my godbrother the stellar author Śrīmān Satyarāja Dāsa describing how the famous musician Alice Coltrane encountered the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, the *mahā-mantra*, and Śrīla Prabhupāda personally. Although a long-time jazz aficionado who was certainly familiar with the legendary John Coltrane, I was not aware of Alice Coltrane’s close relation with Kṛṣṇa music and philosophy. I knew of her music, flavored with the spirit of India, but this nicely detailed account really put things in perspective. The further descriptions of Jayaśacīnandana Dāsa having the amazing opportunity to play with not only Alice but also the great tabla player Zakir Hussein was most pleasing as well. Kṛṣṇa is all-attractive, and I remember the late jazz artist Nina Simone being present at an evening *ārati* and kīrtana in the Henry Street temple in Brooklyn, NY, around 1972 or 1973. The kīrtanas were awesome, with devotees like Bharadrāja Dāsa leading the chanting. I had the chance to play mṛdaṅga and lead sometimes. So many great memories from that time. I would have loved to meet Alice Coltrane, but thanks to this article I feel like I got to know her. BTG has never missed a beat thanks to the devotion and hard work of all the devotees there. All glories to your service. Daśārha Dāsa Via the Internet *Anxiety* I’m a nineteen-year-old from India, and I’m facing the problem of anxiety and panic attacks. Can you please help me come out of it? Aniket Via the Internet Reply: We are sorry to hear about your problem. The material world is really showing its difficulties lately. The only real solution is to find peace inside ourselves, through the soul and the Supreme Soul, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. He has been waiting for us to turn to Him. Sometimes He has to make us miserable so we become desperate for relief and find our shelter only in Him. He has given us the process of chanting His holy names and hearing about Him to revive the lost consciousness of our eternal loving relationship with Him. This place is not our real home, and Kṛṣṇa wants us back. Chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa *mahā-mantra* and following Kṛṣṇa’s instructions will purify us and qualify us to enter the spiritual world. Even now we can experience that world and its eternal pleasure by the *bhakti* process of serving Him with love and devotion. We encourage everyone to read Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books, associate with Kṛṣṇa’s devotees, and chant and hear His holy names. These activities soothe the soul and help us transcend all our bodily demands and problems. You may also need to seek professional help. But please visit your local temple or practice *bhakti* in your home. Early morning is most effective time for spiritual practices, when the mind is more likely to be free of distractions and more able to concentrate on hearing Kṛṣṇa’s name, taking it into your heart. Pray to the Lord to help you contact Him. He will hear your requests. *Transforming Life* I want to transform my life in every way. I need assistance. Please help me to know what I should do. Ashish Kumar Singh Via the Internet Reply: We have all been suffering in the material world for many lifetimes. So we need to do something different this lifetime to make sure we don’t have to come back again and again. Kṛṣṇa and His representatives teach us exactly how to transform our consciousness from material to spiritual by the process of *bhakti*, or devotional service to the Lord. We have to purify our consciousness of the conception that we are the all and all, that we are meant to enjoy in these bodies. We are actually meant to please Kṛṣṇa, God, with all that we do, think, and desire. We have to learn to do everything with the aim of placing His pleasure before ours. We are part of Him, and if He is pleased then we will be truly happy, eternally. Our material desires are never satisfied and create anxiety, hankering, and lamenting. Only if Kṛṣṇa is in the center of our lives will we be satisfied. The wonderful process of chanting and hearing the glories of the Lord is the most effective way to give us the taste of enjoyment we want. To learn the philosophy of *bhakti*, please read Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books, visit ISKCON’s centers, and try chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa *mantra*. These activities will work wonders in changing your life for the better. They will gradually awaken your God consciousness, the loss of which is at the core of all our troubles. Your choice of association is critical for your spiritual advancement, so seek out people who are happily devoted to the service of Lord Kṛṣṇa. *Demons and Devotees* In devotional service, demons are not allowed; only good people are allowed. So how can we come to Kṛṣṇa if we have demoniac tendencies? In devotional practice, so many traps are there. How can we overcome them? Vamsi Via the Internet Reply: Souls in this world are influenced by the modes of passion and ignorance and sometimes take to sinful, demoniac activities or lifestyles. Fortunately, Lord Kṛṣṇa has come as Lord Catianya to deliver even the most fallen. In His biographies we hear about Jagāi and Mādhāi, two men so wicked that it was said that the secretary of Yamarāja, who punishes the sinful, could not record their sinful activities fast enough. But they were delivered by the mercy of the holy name and the Lord Himself. So everyone is not condemned, despite the demoniac influences on us. The Hare Kṛṣṇa *mahā-mantra* is Kṛṣṇa Himself, and it can purify even the dirtiest hearts. Also, contact with the pure devotees of Kṛṣṇa, in person or through their teachings, can change one’s destination very quickly. Even in the Western countries, where everyone is engaged in sinful activities, many people have quickly given up all bad habits after hearing the philosophy of Kṛṣṇa consciousness delivered by the Lord’s representative. Yes, there are many obstacles to spiritual progress, but they can be conquered by this saṅkīrtana movement. There is no doubt about this. *Why Believe?* Why should I believe what you have to say? Is there any evidence to make me believe in you? Dayanand Kumar Via the Internet Reply: The real business of human life is to follow the teachings of the Supreme Lord and His representatives. The Lord will reveal His representative to the sincere seeker of the truth. For our benefit, we should be submissive to hear the glories of the Lord from His representative and engage in the Lord’s service. Use your human intelligence to inquire from spiritually elevated pure souls and ask how you can become purified. This requires some humility and discrimination. Read Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books and test what they have to say. They can change your heart, touch your soul, and begin to reveal your real position as an eternal lover of the Surpreme Lord, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. He is in your heart waiting for you to turn to Him. He is anxious to have you back home with Him. Give it a try. Chant and glorify Him, render service to Him, and you will discover the evidence you seek. Founder's Lecture: Levels of Realization *Śrīla Prabhupāda explains that our Kṛṣṇa consciousness will progress in stages if we follow the prescribed devotional practices.* Nairobi—October 27, 1975 *Levels of Realization* Before we can relish higher stages of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, we must steadily practice the prescribed items of devotional service. > kīrtanya-tīrtha-yaśasaṁ > puṇya-śloka-yaśaskaram > dhyāyed devaṁ samagrāṅgaṁ > yāvan na cyavate manaḥ “The glory of the Lord is always worth singing, for His glories enhance the glories of His devotees. One should therefore meditate upon the Supreme Personality of Godhead and upon His devotees. One should meditate on the eternal form of the Lord until the mind becomes fixed.*” —Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 3.28.18 This is called meditation. Yāvan here means that as long as the mind is disturbed and deviates from our subject of meditation, we should practice this *kīrtana*, or singing the glory of the Lord. Caitanya Mahāprabhu advises that the devotee should chant always, twenty-four hours, kīrtanīyaḥ sadā hariḥ. Here it is said, “It is worth singing.” Why? *Puṇya śloka yaśaskaram*. Even if you do not fix up your mind—*kīrtana* means fix up your mind—but even if you do not fix up your mind, then you are still a gainer. The more you glorify the Lord, the more you become pious, simply by *kīrtana*. It is not necessary that you understand, but if you go on chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa *mahā-mantra*, then you become pious. *Puṇya-śloka*. One of Kṛṣṇa’s names is *Puṇya-śloka*. Simply by chanting “Kṛṣṇa” you become pious. *Dhyāyed devaṁ samagrāṅgam*. The *dhyāna*, the meditation, should begin from the lotus feet of the Lord. As soon as you begin *kīrtana*, first of all concentrate your mind on the lotus feet. Do not all of a sudden jump up to the face. Be practiced to think of the lotus feet, then still higher, the knees, then the thighs, then the belly, then the chest. In this way, at last go to the face. This is the process. It is described in the Second Canto of the *Bhāgavatam*. The process is how to think of Kṛṣṇa. This is meditation. By *kīrtana* it becomes very easy. If you chant the Hare Kṛṣṇa *mahā-mantra* twenty-four hours like Haridāsa Ṭhākura . . . That is not possible. So chant as much as possible. This lecture is also *kīrtana*. We are talking about Kṛṣṇa, reading about Kṛṣṇa, reading Kṛṣṇa’s instructions in the *Bhagavad-gītā*, or reading Kṛṣṇa’s glories in the *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam*. They are all *kīrtana*. It is not that simply when we sing with musical instruments, that is *kīrtana*. No. Anything you talk about Kṛṣṇa, that is *kīrtana*. *Kīrtanīyaḥ sadā hariḥ.* Vacāṁsi vaikuṇṭha-guṇānuvarṇane. Mahārāja Ambarīṣa always engaged his words in describing the glories of the Lord. This is the character of Mahārāja Ambarīṣa. Whenever he would talk, he would talk about Kṛṣṇa. This is kīrtana. He won’t talk about anything else. *Sa vai manaḥ kṛṣṇa-padāravindayoḥ*. Whenever he would think, he would think of Kṛṣṇa—His lotus feet, His body, His hands, His flute. This is meditation. And trance means when your mind is so fixed up on Kṛṣṇa or Viṣṇu that not for a second is your mind deviated from Kṛṣṇa’s form. That is called trance. Not artificially. You can practice it. If you see Kṛṣṇa daily in the temple, if you worship, if you offer your obeisances, naturally you will think of Kṛṣṇa twenty-four hours, and that will make you more pious, because without being pious, nobody can think of Kṛṣṇa. To be pious means there is no reaction of sinful life. It is all squared up. That you can do at any moment. Kṛṣṇa takes charge. Kṛṣṇa says, *ahaṁ tvāṁ sarva-pāpebhyo mokṣayiṣyāmi*: “I will deliver you from all sinful reactions.” *(Gītā* 18.66). He can do that. He can nullify one’s destiny. Everyone, beginning from the small microbe, the indragopa, and up to Indra the king of heaven—so from this Indra to that Indra—all different types of living entities are suffering, not enjoying, the resultant action of their past sinful life. This is material existence. Everyone is suffering, but Māyā is so kind that she misleads the sufferer to understand that the suffering is enjoying. This is Māyā. Actually, everyone is suffering, but he is misled to think that he is enjoying. So if we keep ourself always in contact with Kṛṣṇa, then we become pious more and more, and as soon as our sinful reactions of life are counteracted by these pious activities, we begin to understand Kṛṣṇa. Yeṣāṁ tv anta-gataṁ pāpam. Without being sinless, nobody can understand Kṛṣṇa. So this process should be continued. *A Different Kind of Form* Devam, in today’s verse, means the Supreme Lord. Samagra means the whole; aṅgam means body. Samagrāṅgam. If He has no body, if He is formless, if He is *nirākāra*, then where is the question of aṅgam? He has *aṅgam-samagrāṅgam*—but He hasn’t got a form like us. That is the meaning. When in the *śāstra* it is said that God has no form, it means that He has no material form. He has form; otherwise how can I think of His form? Kṛṣṇa’s form is not like us. If you take my statue or any other statue and if you pray or if you offer food, that does not go actually to the person. But Kṛṣṇa’s aṅga, His form, is nondifferent from Kṛṣṇa. Foolish people may say, “These men are offering food to a marble statue. Everyone knows.” No. It is not the fact. The fact is that Kṛṣṇa is omnipotent. He can accept your service by becoming a marble statue. Because you cannot see Kṛṣṇa by your present eyes, He has appeared before you just like a marble statue. But He is not a marble statue. We must know that. If we think, “Here is a marble statue, and if I commit some offense, who is going to see?” this is the wrong conclusion. He is Kṛṣṇa personally present here in a form we can see. It is His mercy. It is called arcā-vigraha, “a form for worship.” Kṛṣṇa is everything. This marble is also Kṛṣṇa’s energy. He can accept your service from any part of His energy. The marble is His energy, the water is also His energy, the air is also His energy—everything. Without Kṛṣṇa nothing can exist. He is omniscient, all-powerful. He can accept your service through His energy. This is *arcā-vigraha*. *Samagrāṅgam*. Kṛṣṇa has got form, **aṅga*m*, but His *aṅga* is different. His *aṅga* is *sac-cid-ānanda*, eternal and full of bliss and knowledge. Kṛṣṇa and His direct expansions are *ānanda-cinmaya*, blissful spiritual consciousness. When Kṛṣṇa is in the *rāsa* dance, the gopīs He is enjoying with are expansion of His energy, and you will find, therefore, that Kṛṣṇa is there with each and every gopī. That is another kind of expansion—Kṛṣṇa in innumerable forms simultaneously. We should not take Kṛṣṇa’s dancing to be like our ball dance. No, that is a mistake. If we understand Kṛṣṇa’s dancing, then we become liberated. It is said in the *Śrīmad-*Bhāgavatam** that instead of reading some books of this ball dance, if you read about Kṛṣṇa’s dancing, then what will be the result? The result will be *kāmam hṛd-rogam āśv apahinoty acireṇa dhīraḥ* (*Bhāgavatam* 10.33.39). Every one of us has got lusty desires, but if actually one is advanced and hears from a realized person the meaning of Kṛṣṇa’s *rāsa* dance, then the result will be that hṛd-roga-kāmam—one’s heart disease—will be vanquished. We have got a heart disease. “Heart disease” means lusty desire. *Hṛd-roga-kāmam apahinoti*: “It becomes vanquished.” If one actually hears Kṛṣṇa’s *rāsa*-līlā, then no more material lusty desires. This is the result. *Rāsa-līlā: Only for the Advanced* But unless we are advanced spiritually, we should not indulge in hearing about the rāsa-līlā. Then we shall commit offense. We shall think, “Kṛṣṇa is dancing like us.” How is Kṛṣṇa dancing? Kṛṣṇa is dancing with each and every *gopī*. Can you do that? Then how can you say, “Kṛṣṇa is dancing like us”? Every *gopī* is thinking, “Kṛṣṇa is dancing with me.” How it is possible? There are many rascals who imitate. “I am Kṛṣṇa, and I can also dance like that.” No. It is *ānanda-cinmaya-rasa-pratibhāvitābhiḥ*. This manifestation, demonstration, is not of this material world. *Ānanda-cinmaya-rasa*. When Kṛṣṇa was dancing, all the *gopī*s left their material body by the side of the husband, but they went to dance. That is the spiritual body. That is not the material body. So don’t indulge in such a way. “Kṛṣṇa’s dancing and our dancing is the same.” Then you will be mistaken. That will be an offense. We have to become advanced in spiritual understanding. So-called artists indulge in painting Kṛṣṇa’s pictures, His dealings with the *gopīs*. That is not very good. That is misleading. People may think wrongly, and actually that happens. If without being mature, without being advanced in spiritual consciousness, if one tries to understand or see *kṛṣṇa-līlā* with the *gopīs*, then he will be misled. Therefore Caitanya Mahāprabhu, you will find, rigidly discussed this *kṛṣṇa-līlā* with a very confidential devotee, Rāmānanda Rāya, not with others. He never discussed with Sārvabhauma Bhaṭṭācārya or Prakāśānanda Sarasvatī. With them he discussed Māyāvāda philosophy, but not *kṛṣṇa-līlā*. *Kṛṣṇa-līlā* He discussed with Rāmānanda Rāya, a most confidential devotee. And to understand Kṛṣṇa, Vyāsadeva has devoted nine cantos. And then, from the Tenth Canto, he begins *kṛṣṇa-līlā*. Kṛṣṇa-līlā is the face of Kṛṣṇa, the smiling of Kṛṣṇa. So here we have to practice to see the different parts of the body gradually from below. We first of all see His lotus feet. That is described. The two feet are called the First Canto and Second Canto. In this way we must go. Everything is very scientifically arranged. If we take it chronologically, according to the instruction of the śāstra, then it will be very easy. *Understanding “In Truth”* > manuṣyāṇāṁ sahasreṣu > kaścid yatati siddhaye > yatatām api siddhānāṁ > kaścid māṁ vetti tattvatāh “Out of many thousands among men, one may endeavor for perfection, and of those who have achieved perfection, hardly one knows Me in truth.” We should understand *tattvataḥ*, “in truth.” That *tattvataḥ* means bhaktyā mām abhijānāti yāvān yaś cāsmi *tattvataḥ*: “One can understand the Supreme Personality as He is only by devotional service.” *(Gītā* 18.55) *Tattvataḥ*. Only through devotional service. What is devotional service? Prahlāda Mahārāja said: Hearing [*śravaṇam*] and chanting [*kīrtanam*] about the transcendental holy name, form, qualities, paraphernalia and pastimes of Lord Viṣṇu, remembering them, serving the lotus feet of the Lord, offering the Lord respectful worship with sixteen types of paraphernalia, offering prayers to the Lord, becoming His servant, considering the Lord one’s best friend, and surrendering everything unto Him (in other words, serving Him with the body, mind and words)—these nine processes are accepted as pure devotional service. (*Bhāgavatam* 7.5.23) We have to follow these nine principles of devotional service, especially *śravanam, kīrtanam*, and *arcanam*—worshiping the Deity. Even if you follow one, that is sufficient, but there are nine different processes. As far as possible we shall execute everything, and at least śravanaṁ kīrtanaṁ viṣṇoḥ smaraṇam pāda-sevanam *arcanam*. *The Importance of Deity Worship* Arcana is very important. For the *kaniṣṭha-adhikārī*, the devotee in the lower stage, *arcana* is very, very important. The devotee in the higher stage also offers worship, but such a devotee is able to Kṛṣṇa everywhere. But a neophyte devotee cannot do so. Some people say, “Why should you go to the temple? Kṛṣṇa is everywhere.” Kṛṣṇa is everywhere; that is a fact. But that vision is for the *paramhaṁsa*, one who is very, very advanced. The *kaniṣṭha-adhikārī* cannot see like that. Like a parrot, he can say, “Kṛṣṇa is everywhere.” But he must be educated to know “Here is Kṛṣṇa in the temple.” Otherwise it is simply blasphemy that “Kṛṣṇa is everywhere.” That’s a fact, but where is your realization? Kṛṣṇa is within your heart. Have you got that realization? Can you talk with Kṛṣṇa? Kṛṣṇa says, “I talk.” *Dadāmi buddhi-yogam tam* *(Gītā* 10.10). Kṛṣṇa gives intelligence. Kṛṣṇa is giving, but have you got that realization? These are all facts—that Kṛṣṇa is everywhere, Kṛṣṇa is within your heart, Kṛṣṇa is within the atom. But where is your realization? Therefore you have to begin realization by arcana. That is very essential. The more you become expert in arcana, then the more you become realized, and the more you become advanced. So therefore the *kaniṣṭha-adhikārī* has to raise himself. Lord Kṛṣṇa tells Uddhava: > arcāyām eva haraye > pūjāṁ yaḥ śraddhayehate > na tad-bhakteṣu cānyeṣu > sa bhaktaḥ prākṛtaḥ smṛtaḥ “A devotee who faithfully engages in the worship of the Deity in the temple but does not behave properly toward other devotees or people in general is called a *prākṛta-bhakta*, a materialistic devotee, and is considered to be in the lowest position.” *(Bhāgavatam* 11.2.47) By executing this *arcana*, gradually you advance. But if you simply remain in the *arcana*-viddhi, or the *arcana* process, and you cannot understand who is a *bhakta* and what to do with others . . . That is also a *bhakta*’s duty, not that simply we shall remain engaged in *arcana*. We must know how to respect devotees, how to do some service to others also. That is *madhyama-adhikārī*. If you simply become satisfied that “Now I am initiated and I am offering *arcana*. I have become perfect”—no, the perfection is still awaiting. You have to understand who is a devotee. You have to understand how to give service to the innocent. If you do not know that, then if you simply become packed up by arcā-vigraha-sevā, or *arcana*, you will remain on the material platform. Prākṛtaḥ means material. One may be trying to go to the spiritual platform, but—*na tad-bhakteṣu cānyeṣu*—he may simply remain in arcana and not preach. Anyeṣu means those who are innocent. Lord Kṛṣṇa describes those who are *madhyama-adhikārī*, or in the middle stage: > īśvare tad-adhīneṣu > bāliśeṣu dviṣatsu ca > prema-maitrī-kṛpopekṣa > yaḥ karoti sa madhyamaḥ “An intermediate or second-class devotee, called *madhyama-adhikārī*, offers his love to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is a sincere friend to all the devotees of the Lord, shows mercy to ignorant people who are innocent and disregards those who are envious of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” *(Bhāgavatam* 11.2.46) By *arca-vigraha* worship, by śravana-kīrtana, by making proper advancement, you will understand the position of Kṛṣṇa, Iśvara. And *adhīna*. *Adhīna* means those who are working for Kṛṣṇa. They are called tad-*adhīna*. *Adhīna* means subordinate. Every devotee is subordinate. Nobody is equal to Kṛṣṇa. If we think otherwise, then it is mistake. A devotee is *dāsa*. Dāsa means servant. A servant is always the subordinate. Therefore a Vaiṣṇava says, “I am *dāsa*.” He never says, “I am master.” Nobody can be superior to Kṛṣṇa or equal to Kṛṣṇa. To think that one can be is a mistake. The Māyāvāda philosophers think, “Now I have become equal to Kṛṣṇa. I am also Kṛṣṇa.” That is rascaldom. Kṛṣṇa, God, is never equal to anyone. Asamaurdhva. Asama means “not equal,” and urdhva, “always the top.” We should remain tad-adhīna, always under Kṛṣṇa. That is our perfection. Kṛṣṇa is the protector of all living entities. A father is always anxious to see that his children are well protected; similarly, Kṛṣṇa is also always anxious to give protection to His subordinates. But if the subordinate denounces Kṛṣṇa—“I don’t want Your protection”—then suffer your *karma*. That you are doing. Those who are in the material world are suffering. Why? They have given up the protection of Kṛṣṇa. They are thinking, “We can protect ourselves. What is the use of Kṛṣṇa?” This is called *dharmasya glāniḥ*. This is deviation from the natural way of life, when you give up the protection. Our Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is meant for going back to that protection, for going back home, back to Godhead. Thank you very much. Useless Endeavors for Peace *This exchange between His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda and some of his disciples took place in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 2, 197*4. Disciple: Śrīla Prabhupāda, in a recent study by U.S. agricultural officials, they found that it’s uneconomical to eat meat. It takes so much energy and man hours to raise and transport and slaughter the cows that it’s very wasteful. Śrīla Prabhupāda: Wasteful, yes. Therefore I say they have no brain. They are all rascals. Rascal leaders. A little labor in agriculture will be sufficient to produce the family’s food stock for the whole year. You work only three months, and you get sufficient food for your whole family. And in the remaining nine months, you chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. But these rascals will not do that. They will work hard like asses simply for eating. Nūnaṁ pramattaḥ kurute vikarma yad indriya-prītaya āpṛnoti. They will not accept an easy life. Disciple: In that agricultural report it said that if people were to eat all the grains they give to the cows and animals, they could get twenty times more calories than by eating meat. Śrīla Prabhupāda: Yes. Wrong civilization, rascal civilization. And this is due to this rascaldom called nationalism—“This is my land.” At any moment a person will be kicked out by death, but still he claims, “It is my land.” Janasya moho ’yam ahaṁ mameti. This is the illusion. Nothing belongs to him; still he is fighting, “This is mine. This is mine.” “I” and “mine”—identifying oneself with the body and wrongly conceiving that “This is mine.” This is the basic principle of a wrong civilization. Nothing belongs to us. I have come here to Switzerland. Suppose I remain here for one month and I claim, “Oh, this is mine.” What is this? So, similarly, we come to this world as guests. We come to the womb of a mother and live here for seventy years or so. And we claim, “This is my land.” But when did it become yours? The land was there long, long before your birth. How has it become yours? But people have no sense. “It is mine—my land, my nation, my family, my society.” In this way they are wasting time. These things have been introduced by Western civilization. In the Vedic civilization there is no such thing as nationalism. You won’t find it there. Have you seen the word “nationalism” in the *Bhagavad-gītā*? No such thing. Nationalism is the idea of tribes. In Africa there are still groups of tribes. Nationalism is the most crude idea of civilization. It is nothing but developed tribalism. Modern man is not advanced in civilization. This nationalism is another form of tribalism, that’s all. Disciple: Today, so-called civilized people are actually just cannibals because they maintain themselves on eating the cow. Śrīla Prabhupāda: Yes. And they are suffering. Therefore you’ll find that in recent history, every twenty-five years there is a big war with mass slaughter of people. Nature does not tolerate animal slaughter. Now India has learned to slaughter animals, imitating the Western countries. And now there is war between India and Pakistan. During two wars between Pakistan and Hindustan, millions of people were killed unnecessarily, without any gain. Disciple: Just recently India exploded an atomic bomb, and now Pakistan is hurrying to get an atomic bomb also. Śrīla Prabhupāda: Yes. This is going on. Disciple: The Indian government promised that nuclear energy would be only for peaceful purposes. Śrīla Prabhupāda: No, what do they know about peaceful conditions? They are all rascals. They do not know what a peaceful condition is. The actual peaceful condition is described in the *Bhagavad-gītā* (5.29): > bhoktāraṁ yajña-tapasāṁ > sarva-loka-maheśvaram > suhṛdaṁ sarva-bhūtānāṁ > jñātvā māṁ śāntim ṛcchati “A person in full consciousness of Me [Kṛṣṇa], knowing Me to be the ultimate beneficiary of all sacrifices and austerities, the Supreme Lord of all planets and demigods, and the benefactor and well-wisher of all living entities, attains peace from the pangs of material miseries.” This is peace. Unless there is Kṛṣṇa consciousness, where is peace? There cannot be peace. All rascaldom. *Na māṁ duṣkṛtino mūḍhāḥ prapadyante narādhamāḥ.* These rascals and fools—*māyayāpahṛta-jñānā*—have lost all knowledge. How can there be peace? Their endeavors for peace are all useless. A Pause for Prayer O Gopīnātha, my mind is crazy and does not care for any authority. It is always senseless and has remained in the dark pit of worldly affairs. O Gopīnātha, I have accepted my defeat. All of my various endeavors were useless. Now You are the only hope. O Gopīnātha, how shall I make any advancement when my mind has come under the control of the powerful senses and does not abandon its attachment to materialism? O Gopīnātha, after sitting down in the core of my heart and subduing my mind, please take me to You. In this way the horrible dangers of this world will disappear. O Gopīnātha, You are Hṛṣīkeśa, the Lord of the senses. Seeing me so helpless, please control these senses of mine and deliver me from this dark and perilous worldly existence. —Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura Selected verses from the song Gopīnātha Are People Innately Good or Innately Bad? *Many of us think that people are basically good; many of us think the opposite.* *An analysis of what made Rāvaṇa incorrigible.* The Rāmayaṇa describes how Rāvaṇa acted devilishly for most of his life and refused to reform despite repeated good advice and strong warnings. His incorrigibility raises an important question about human nature. Are some people innately bad? That raises a bigger question: Are people in general innately good or innately bad? Let’s consider both possibilities. *Are People Innately Good?* Most of us would like to believe that people are basically good. At the very least, we would like people to believe we are innately good. And if we want others to believe that about us, shouldn’t we return the favor and believe that they too are innately good? Of course, what we believe about people doesn’t in itself change the ground reality about how people are. Even a little experience of life shows us that people can behave badly, even obnoxiously. If we have never been scarred by encountering such people, then we may be among the few who have lived protected from the world’s harsh realities. To gain a sense of those realities, we need look no further than the daily news: jumping out at our eyes will be reports of people committing violence, murder, even genocide. Still, many of us may hope that though those people are behaviorally bad, they may still be innately good. Our hope echoes the contemporary ethos, which frequently champions the innate goodness of the individual. When presented evidence of people behaving terribly, many in the mainstream media and academia advocate some form of social determinism. This is the theory that people are largely products of their social situations, which can include educational, economic, and political factors. Social determinism holds that before these factors start acting on them, they are born as blank slates. If some of them grow up to behave badly, the theory attributes such behavior to their hostile externals. Those externals affected and afflicted them so much as to make their bad behavior understandable or even unavoidable. Within this worldview of social determinism, the solution to bad behavior lies in social engineering. If we change people’s situations, providing them access to education, employment, and a supportive political environment, their innate goodness will manifest. And in support of this vision, it’s true that many people, when provided a better environment, do reform and flourish. But then, many other people don’t change. When placed in better environments, they just misuse and abuse the facilities thus provided to continue their bad behavior. Moreover, the idea of social determinism neglects the often-observed reality that two individuals with similarly bad backgrounds go along hugely different life-trajectories. One becomes resentful or revengeful, turning to violence. The other becomes responsible and resourceful, creating through all his or her surrounding darkness a path of light to a bright future. Another problem with social determinism is that many bad people didn’t have an especially bad past. For example, many people who become terrorists come from good families, and are well educated, well endowed, and well-to-do. A good example of such a bad example is Rāvaṇa. He was born to a sage, had studied scriptural wisdom, and was never short of wealth. Yet he became reprehensibly evil. What made him that way? To attribute it to something external to him is to be blind to reality; something inside him was severely messed up. Given that observation and experience strongly contest the idea that people are innately good, let’s look at the opposite idea. *Are People Innately Bad?* Considering this idea can be scary. After all, we are social creatures, and we need to live with people, almost constantly. If people were innately bad, then we would have to live under constant threat of being cheated and attacked and destroyed; that would make any kind of communal living unpleasant, if not unbearable. And since each one of us is included within the ambit of the term “people,” this idea would imply that we too are innately bad—a decidedly disconcerting prospect, to say the very least. Though even the best of us sometimes succumb to wrong actions, we like to believe that we are basically good. If we didn’t believe that, living with ourselves would be difficult. If we considered ourselves innately bad, we might start loathing and detesting ourselves, and that would make our life largely unlivable. Though we may hesitate to accept that people are innately bad, we may unhesitatingly accept a milder version of that idea: some people may be innately bad—sociopaths, for example. But such characterization dodges the difficult question: given that they are also humans, what exactly differentiates them from the rest of humanity? Might affixing to them some label such as sociopaths be a convenient way of putting ourselves on a high moral ground? When we thus treat them as the other, drastically different from us, are we just sparing ourselves the mortification of looking too closely at them, lest we see our own lowest side reflected in them? Could there be something innately dark in everyone, with that darkness manifest to an extreme degree in people we label sociopaths? *Two Levels of Innateness* Can our hope that people are basically good be reconciled with the reality that people can sometimes be behaviorally bad? Yes, by understanding innateness at two levels, as Kṛṣṇa explains in the *Bhagavad-gītā*. These two levels correspond to two levels of reality in our inner world: the soul and the mind. At our core we are spiritual beings, souls. And we have a mind, the tool for the soul to liaise with the physical body and the outer world. The soul has the potential for virtue, but the mind often has a propensity for vice. Our hope that people are innately good is true with regard to the innermost core of our being: our intrinsic divinity. As souls, we are parts of God. Because of that divine connection, we have the potential for virtue at the center of our being. And that holds true for everyone, no matter how depraved their present external behavior. But if someone’s outer actions are drastically different from their inner potential, where does that difference come from? Is there something within us that makes us act viciously? Yes, there is. Within our mind is a propensity for vice. The strength of that propensity depends on how dark the impressions accumulated in our mind are. These impressions have been formed by our past actions, in both this and previous lives. The foregoing implies that we are not born as blank slates, with our minds containing no impressions. Nor are we born as clean mirrors, with our minds reflecting the purity of our divine core. The slate of our mind is tainted with many impressions from our past lives. And because we all have done different actions in our past lives, we have our individual natures that fall somewhere along the spectrum from divine to demonic. We are born with a demonic nature if we have acted badly in our previous lives, thereby filling our mind with dark impressions that impel us in this life toward similar dark actions. We are born with a divine nature if we had done good deeds in our past lives, thereby filling our mind with good impressions that inspire us to do similar good deeds in this life. Significantly, our actions aren’t determined by our past impressions alone. Those impressions impel us; they don’t compel us. We always have free will, for it is intrinsic to the soul. How we tend to use our free will is shaped by both our mental impressions and our social situations. Let’s understand how both these factors shape our actions. *Why Someone Becomes Incorrigible* Let’s compare our innate potential for virtue with an electric current. That current of our potential has to go through our mind to manifest as virtuous actions. But our mind, with its many impressions, may or may not allow that current to be transmitted. Those impressions may act as conductors, semiconductors, or insulators for our intrinsic spirituality. People whose impressions act like conductors seem innately good. Those whose impressions act like insulators seem innately bad. In most people, the impressions may act like semiconductors. Again, to impel is not to compel. Even if people have internal impressions that impel them to behave in particular ways, those internals alone don’t determine their behaviors; their externals too shape whether they act on their impressions. A culture that cherishes and celebrates virtue would deter the demonic from acting out, at least openly or brazenly. A culture that glamorizes power and pleasure, without considering how they are secured, would remove such deterrents. Within the culture’s broad trends, the specific association that people seek or get will also shape how they act. By good association those given to vice may turn toward virtue, whereas by bad association those given to virtue may turn toward vice. Thus the culture’s overall value system and the individual’s specific association combine to shape their actions. How does this analysis apply to Rāvaṇa? Because of a curse he had received long ago from sages known as the Kumāras, he had innate demonic tendencies. In this life he was born of an inter-species union between a brahminical sage (a human) and a demon princess (a Rāksasa). He acquired a few of his father’s qualities, such as the capacity to study scripture. But he took on most of the qualities of his demonic maternal lineage. More than his parentage, his character was shaped by his choices. He chose to act on his demonic impulses till they defined his character completely. Though he performed severe austerities, his intent was not to purify his inner impressions, but to increase his outer power. Whatever powers he got by performing those austerities, he abused them to act on his demonic impulses even more destructively. Conceivably, he could have controlled his impulses if he had listened to good advice. But along with his great power came great arrogance, which made him neglectful, even scornful, of wise counsel. And when that heady combination of power and arrogance was ignited by the explosiveness of lust, a time bomb was set in place. It started ticking when he abducted Sītā. And it exploded when he was killed by Rāma. *How the Inner War Turns Out* Inner impressions and outer influences often interact in complex ways to shape particular people’s actions. The propensity for vice can manifest in the unlikeliest of places. For example, though Vāli was the son of Indra, the king of the celestials, he let himself be misled by anger and arrogance. Consequently, he ended up persecuting his own brother and seizing his brother’s wife for himself. Conversely, the potential for goodness can manifest in the unlikeliest of places. For example, though both Rāvaṇa and Vibhīṣaṇa were raised in the demonic family of their mother, Vibhīṣaṇa grew up to be a saintly devotee. And his virtue was recognized and rewarded by Rāma, who enthroned him as Rāvaṇa’s successor. As the king of Lanka, he led the citizens of that island to far better days than the temporary prosperity provided by Rāvaṇa. The *Bhāgavatam* describes how one of the heroic assistants of Rāma, a monkey general named Dvivida, many years later turned against Kṛṣṇa and coveted the gopīs of Vrindavan, Kṛṣṇa’s consorts. The same monkey who had fought in the Rāmāyaṇa to unite the Lord with His consort, Sītā, later became so distorted that he fought against that very Lord, now appearing as Kṛṣṇa, because he wanted Kṛṣṇa’s consorts for himself. Dvivida’s perversion was caused partly by bad association. He befriended the demon Narakāsura and ended up indiscriminately adopting that demon’s ways. These examples show that the impressions we are born with won’t necessarily stay with us lifelong; our behavior at one stage in life may give way to a different kind of behavior at another stage. Even within the same stage, our nature can be in a state of flux; we are capable of both being reformed by good association and good actions, and being deformed by bad association and bad actions. All these subtleties highlight the problems with simplistic solutions to complex social problems. Some people attribute all behavioral problems to a failure in social engineering, which, they allege, is caused by the corruption of those in power, especially the politicians. While many politicians do place personal profit above social welfare, no class of people has a monopoly on vice. Indeed, if those very critics were given the power that politicians had, they too may well end up as corrupt as the politicians they condemn. To assume that anyone in power got there and stays there because of their venality is to be cynical to the extreme; it is to deny the commitment and capability that are often needed to succeed in any area of life. The point here is not to defend politicians, but to defend ourselves from the twin temptations of playing blame games or advancing pat solutions. Instead, we need to take responsibility to do our part to bring out our potential for virtue and to help others do the same. Additionally, we can even encourage others to become similarly responsible, by facilitating the necessary social arrangements. *How Social Change Can Aid Inner Change* Though social engineering is not the sole solution, that doesn’t at all mean external conditions don’t matter. To place the responsibility for changing oneself entirely on the individual is to veer too much to the other extreme. External factors do shape human behavior. Consider people who are largely given to their vicious propensities. Nothing may stop them from doing ghastly things, even when such acts create a horrible destiny for them in the future and hurt others immensely in the present. Such people just need to be stopped by force and punished by law. That’s why every civilized society needs a strong police force and justice department. In the Rāmāyaṇa’s context, Rāvaṇa’s incorrigibility was the reason Rāma had to mount a war to end Rāvaṇa’s reign of terror. Suitable social structures are needed not just to punish wrongdoers, but also to deter people from changing for the worse. If there is no rule of law, ordinary people may indulge in petty wrongdoings, and petty wrongdoers may degenerate into deadly criminals. Social systems can also aid people in changing for the better. Some people may be ready to bring out their potential for virtue, but not if it will get them into big trouble socially. For example, very few of Lanka’s residents had the courage of conviction that Vibhīṣaṇa had to go against their king, Rāvaṇa. But when Vibhīṣaṇa was enthroned as the king of Lanka, they started acting virtuously under his righteous rule. These examples convey the role of social change in fostering inner change: it is not the sole cause, but it can be a strong catalyst. The individual is the locus of responsibility, and supportive social structures can better help the individual act more responsibly. *Knowing Whom to Help and How* No matter how people are behaving presently, the potential for virtue exists in everyone. Given time, opportunity, encouragement, and some tough love, that potential will manifest. It may manifest through a dramatic change of heart in this very life, or it may manifest through a gradual awakening that may take several lifetimes. *Bhakti-yoga* is a time-honored process for unleashing our potential for virtue and for purging ourselves of the propensity for vice. It is especially potent because it relies not just on our finite power to change ourselves but also on God’s infinite power to help us change. No wonder *bhakti* wisdom proclaims that human nature, however distorted it may be presently, is always reformable. Still, there’s a big condition: the willingness of that individual to reform. Without that readiness, no one can help, not even God. Even Rāma couldn’t reform Rāvaṇa. Though the potential for goodness exists in every heart, that potential doesn’t manifest automatically; it needs to struggle against the propensity for vice. That struggle calls for committed cultivation and untiring vigilance: cultivation to nurture our good side, channeling whatever good impressions we have; and vigilance to check our propensity for vice whenever it starts surfacing. If someone doesn’t have such readiness, we can’t do much to help—the person’s higher side may stay lost to the world and even to that person’s own awareness in this life, at least for the foreseeable future. When we want to help others, we can’t be merely sentimental; we need to remember that we can only help them if they want to be helped. If they aren’t ready to listen to good advice, we may need to keep a distance from them so that we don’t become dragged down by them. Of course, we can and should pray for their welfare, but we may also need to recognize that we can’t help them reform, at least in their present condition. Nonetheless, the one person whose reformation we can most control is we ourselves. If we work to our best capacity, each of us can make a positive difference, certainly in our inner world and possibly in our outer world. *Caitanya Caraṇa Dāsa serves full time at ISKCON Chowpatty, Mumbai. He is a BTG associate editor and the author of twenty-five books. To read his other articles or receive his daily reflection on the Bhagavad-gītā, “Gītā-Daily,” visit gitadaily.com.* Who Is Worthy of Giving Shelter? *Even the most independent-minded among us must sometimes seek help from others.* by Gaurāṅga Darśana Dāsa A capable, merciful, and attentive person can effectively protect surrendered people. Gajendra, the king of elephants, went for a pleasure trip in the Ṛtumat garden in the heavenly Trikūṭa mountain area. As he was happily sporting there in a lake with his wives and children, suddenly a crocodile caught his leg in its jaws. He struggled with all his strength to release himself. Even the demigods were astonished to see this unusual fight. Being helpless, unable to save himself from danger, Gajendra was extremely afraid of being killed. Introspecting in that predicament, Gajendra concluded that the other elephants—his friends, relatives, and wives—could not do anything to rescue him. So he was inspired to seek shelter of God. By God’s grace he remembered a prayer he had memorized in his previous life. The following verse *(Bhāgavatam* 8.3.17) is a part of that prayer glorifying the all-merciful Lord Kṛṣṇa. The explanation follows the verse. > mādṛk prapanna-paśu-pāśa-vimokṣaṇāya > muktāya bhūri-karuṇāya namo ’layāya > svāṁśena sarva-tanu-bhṛn-manasi pratīta- > pratyag-dṛśe bhagavate bṛhate namas te *Surrendered Like Me (mādṛk prapanna)* Why should one surrender to someone else? Can’t we be independent? Everyone experiences that there are problems in this world. We try to solve them by our own efforts, and to some extent we are successful. But material solutions are temporary, because the problems arise again and again. To permanently solve them, we need help from superior powers. So, like Gajendra, we should surrender to God (*mādṛk prapanna*). This proposal, or rather this conclusion of all scriptures, may not seem palatable to an average human engrossed in material pursuits. Many people do not even believe or realize they are unnecessarily undergoing material difficulties. But they might understand the following. *Entangled Animals (paśu-pāśa)* Gajendra was an animal (*paśu*). Śrīla Prabhupāda says that everyone who identifies with the material body can be called a *paśu*. Just as Gajendra was caught by the crocodile, every conditioned soul is bound by the noose (*pāśa*) of *māyā*, or God’s illusory energy. *Māyā* comprises three material modes that bind a bewildered soul in the cycle of repeated birth and death. Unlike an animal, a human being is provided with a higher intelligence to come out of it by seeking shelter of God. *Seeking Deliverance (vimokṣaṇāya)* We seek liberation (*vimokṣaṇāya*) from material bondage by surrendering to God, and He reciprocates mercifully to the degree we are eager for deliverance. Although a pure devotee wants only to render unalloyed service to God, without expecting anything in return, including liberation, circumstantially a devotee may ask some favor from the Lord for self-preservation to continue to serve Him without obstructions. So one who desires deliverance from miseries or obstacles in life should fervently seek help from God. But why only God, why not someone else? *Only the Liberated can Liberate (muktāya)* We should seek help from a capable person. If we have fallen into a deep well, we can be pulled out only by someone outside the well. If we are drowning, we cannot be saved by another drowning person. When none of Gajendra’s strong elephant associates were capable of saving him, he sought help from God. Only God can liberate an entangled person because God is never entangled; He ever liberated (*muktāya*). Most people in this world are entangled by *māyā* to a lesser or greater degree. And those who are not are so only due to the mercy of God, who reciprocated their desire to get disentangled. The Lord’s eternal associates are also never entangled. Therefore, only the omnipotent God and His pure devotees have the capability to liberate a person bound by material miseries. But is capability the only criterion? *Unlimitedly Merciful (bhūri-karuṇāya)* One who has a million dollars certainly has the capacity to help a poor person in need of ten dollars. But without the willingness to help, the rich person wouldn’t help the poor one. The basis of such willingness is one’s merciful attitude. God is not only supremely capable, but unlimitedly merciful too (*bhūri-karuṇāya*). This combination of God’s mercy and capacity makes our surrender fruitful and the most effective means to drive away all miseries. But are capacity and mercy sufficient? *Attentive to the Devotees (namo alayāya)* We may be capable and merciful, but unless we are attentive to the needs or difficulties of others, we cannot help them. Being omnipotent and omniscient, God is always aware of our problems. His awareness is due to His attentiveness. When we offer prayers, He attentively listens to us. Being our well-wisher, He aims and endeavors to deliver us from material life, even before we pray. He is never lazy in regard to our deliverance. Someone might ask, “How can God be so attentive to our needs? He stays so far from us in His spiritual abode.” *Stays Right in the Heart (sva-aṁśena sarva tanu-bhṛn manasi)* Although God eternally stays in His spiritual kingdom, He also expands Himself as the Supersoul, or Paramātmā (*sva-aṁśena)*, in the hearts of all embodied beings (*sarva tanu-bhṛn manasi*). Even if the living entity commits abominable actions and becomes an insect or worm in stool, the Lord doesn’t ignore him or her. He stays right within the heart, giving knowledge, remembrance, and forgetfulness. *Directly Observes (pratīta pratyak-dṛśe)* Staying within the hearts of all, the Lord directly and attentively observes the desires, needs, and difficulties of everyone and mercifully solves the problems of those who surrender unto Him. *The Unlimited Lord Kṛṣṇa (bhagavate bṛhate namaste)* And that God (*bhagavate*) is none other than Lord Kṛṣṇa, who is unlimited and the greatest (*bṛhate*), and is the source of all incarnations. He is capable, merciful, attentive, observant, and the closest well-wisher of all of us. So Gajendra sought shelter of the Supreme Lord Kṛṣṇa, the merciful deliverer of all. Hearing the helpless appeal of Gajendra, the Supreme Lord quickly came on the back of His bird carrier, Garuḍa, killed the crocodile with His disc weapon, and saved Gajendra. Lord Kṛṣṇa is always ready to save us from any difficulty at any time. But are we ready enough to seek His protection like Gajendra? Gajendra was exclusively dependent on the Lord, having no other source of protection. Seeking inspiration from Gajendra, let us humbly express our dependence on Kṛṣṇa. Everyone is caught by the crocodile of eternal time and may die at any moment. The best course, therefore, is to seek shelter of Kṛṣṇa and be saved from the struggle for existence. To reach this understanding is the ultimate goal of life. *Gaurāṅga Darsana Dāsa, a disciple of His Holiness Rādhānath Swami, is dean of the Bhaktivedanta Vidyapitha at ISKCON Govardhan Eco Village (GEV), outside Mumbai. He is a member of the ISKCON Board of Examinations (BoEx). He is a* śāstric *teacher and is the author of* Gita Subodhini, Bhagavata Subodhini, Caitanya Subodhini, Disapproved but Not Disowned, Bhagavata Pravaha*, and other books.* Degree Matters, But Only to Some Degree *Education and knowledge are often not the same thing.* *A perspective on modern education.* Albert Einstein said, “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything one learned in school.” This quote depicts the weariness of the education system prevalent back in his time, a system not very different from what we have today. Yet almost as if by second nature, we equate education with wisdom. Education and the subsequent degree received are seen as a trophy, a proof of one’s wisdom and knowledge, one’s ability to make a difference in the world. While that is true to an extent, from the standpoint of values and ethics the world has not seen any significant uplift in recent years. The word “education” is derived from the Latin word educare, which means to bring up, rise, nourish, train, or mound. It stems from the idea of bringing out a person’s innate qualities and powers and giving him or her scope to develop and be nourished. When someone’s innate qualities are nourished and developed, the positive impact he or she can have on the world will be truly meaningful. Far from fulfilling its true purpose, the scenario with the education system nowadays has taken a very sad turn. Today, more degrees are being awarded than required in all industries combined. The result? Unemployment, or employment in a sector completely unrelated to one’s domain of education. And within all this, values and ethics appear to be a distant dream. Whether the fault is the quality of education being offered or the receptiveness of the student, the result is that today’s education system seems inadequate even for the basic skill development that is supposed to be a natural result of education in a recognized institution. *Education or Knowledge as a Means to Spiritual Enlightenment* When Śrīla Prabhupāda spoke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he knew that the university was one of the topmost places of education, attracting top scholars from all over the world. So he asked his audience if the university had a department that studied the soul. For him, mundane education and mundane scientific research, however materially advanced they may be, always occupy a place subordinate to the science of the soul and the science of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. In his purport to the second verse of the ninth chapter of *Bhagavad-gītā*, Prabhupāda writes: “There are so many departments of knowledge all over the world and many huge universities, but there is, unfortunately, no university or educational institution where the science of the spirit soul is instructed.” Prabhupāda envisioned a society in which all our abilities, including our intellectual prowess, could be utilized in the service of Kṛṣṇa, enabling everyone to come to the platform of perfection through one’s natural occupational tendencies. This society, in which Kṛṣṇa is at the center of our endeavors, is spoken about in *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* (1.2.13): > ataḥ pumbhir dvija-śreṣṭhā > varṇāśrama-vibhāgaśaḥ > svanuṣṭhitasya dharmasya > saṁsiddhir hari-toṣaṇam “O best among the twice-born, it is therefore concluded that the highest perfection one can achieve by discharging the duties prescribed for one’s own occupation according to caste divisions and orders of life is to please the Personality of Godhead.” In any society there is inevitably a division of roles in that some of the people are the brain of the society (intellectuals), some are administrators, some belong to the agrarian and the business classes, and finally, some to the labor class. And the success of this division of roles is when all the classes cooperate with each other for the highest purpose, which is to please the Supreme Personality of Godhead. *Is Education Enough?* But is education in and off itself enough for self-realization? No, say the Vedas. While listing the qualities that constitute knowledge, Kṛṣṇa mentions amānitvam (humility) and adambhitvam (pridelessness) as the first two (*Bhagavad-gītā* 13.8). It is pertinent to note that high education or philosophical expertise are not even in the list of these qualities mentioned by Kṛṣṇa. Queen Kuntī goes one step ahead and says that qualities like beauty, high birth, and education are hindrances on the path of *bhakti* *(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 1.8.26). This is indeed a strong thing to say, given that she herself belonged to the Kuru family. The reason for her stance, Vaiṣṇava commentators explain, is that material accomplishments like beauty, high education, and good birth can make us proud of possessing them, and pride is unfavorable to the path of *bhakti*, Kṛṣṇa’s words above being the testimony. The blinding potency of pride that these accomplishments bring is enough to keep us bound to this world forever. And truly, more often than not, the education we receive in today’s world does not, in any way, push us to inquire into life’s ultimate truths. When Lord Caitanya was traveling throughout South India, He met a brāhmaṇa at Śrī Rangam. This brāhmaṇa was trying to read the *Bhagavad-gītā*, when it was apparent that he could not read the Sanskrit properly. The other brāhmaṇas in the temple were having a good laugh at this. But what caught Lord Caitanya’s eye was that the brāhmaṇa was shedding tears of love as he was reading the Gītā. When asked by Lord Caitanya the reason for his tears, he said, “My *guru* told me to read the *Bhagavad-gītā* daily. Though I’m not able to read the Sanskrit properly, I’m trying to make an effort as per the order of my *guru*. When I remember the magnificent form of Kṛṣṇa as He was instructing Arjuna, I am filled with ecstatic happiness.” Hearing this, Lord Caitanya embraced the brāhmaṇa and declared that He considered him the foremost scholar of the *Bhagavad-gītā*, because he had the most important qualifications to understand the Gītā’s message—humility and devotion. *The Importance of Education* The beauty of the path of *bhakti* is that whatever we possess can be engaged in the service of God. There is no need to reject or give up something we are good at to advance spiritually. When we use our accomplishments in the service of God, the accomplishments, though temporary, become spiritual. Ultimately, the distinction between material and spiritual is the consciousness with which we perform our actions. Prabhupāda stressed this point time and again by quoting Rūpa Gosvāmī from *Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu* (1.2.255): > anāsaktasya viṣayān > yathārham upayuñjataḥ > nirbandhaḥ kṛṣṇa-sambandhe > yuktaṁ vairāgyam ucyate “When one is not attached to anything, but at the same time accepts everything in relation to Kṛṣṇa, one is rightly situated above possessiveness. On the other hand, one who rejects everything without knowledge of its relationship to Kṛṣṇa is not as complete in his renunciation.” The more we are able to connect our actions to Kṛṣṇa, the more spiritual they become, although they may externally seem identical to materialistic actions. The Vaiṣṇava kings of bygone ages like Yudhiṣṭhira, Parīkṣit, and Kulaśekhara had this consciousness when they ruled their subjects. Considering their subjects children of God, they would strive for their subjects’ material as well as spiritual well-being and happiness. Thus, though each of us has to act in some way, the path of *bhakti* offers a sublime way to spiritualize our actions. Also, Kṛṣṇa says in the *Bhagavad-gītā* (3.21), > yad yad ācarati śreṣṭhas > tat tad evetaro janaḥ > sa yat pramāṇaṁ kurute > lokas tad anuvartate “Whatever action is performed by a great man, common men follow in his footsteps. And whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues.” By the dint of his or her education, someone may be able to influence many people. If such a person takes to spiritual life, that will inspire many more to turn towards spirituality. In that way, education and a subsequent position in the world can work to encourage common people to turn to God and improve their lives, thus fulfilling the highest goal of the varṇāśrama system, which is to please Lord Kṛṣṇa. The examples of Prakāśānanda Sarasvatī and Sārvabhauma Bhaṭṭācārya are worth noting here. Both of them were highly learned in the nondualistic interpretation of the Vedas and were greatly respected as Vedic scholars by common people. But after their hearts were transformed by their conversations with Lord Caitanya, thousands of people followed suit and took to *bhakti* the way they did. *Adding One to the Zeroes* As Martin Luther King, Jr., rightly said, “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” There is a general lack of a sense of direction in what we do. When we turn towards spirituality, our skills get a positive direction towards which they can be engaged. As Prabhupāda often said, all our accomplishments are like zeroes, but when we worship Kṛṣṇa with them, we add a one to the list of zeroes, giving value to all of them. So if one has an inclination to pursue higher education, then one can certainly do so and at the same time, maintain one’s spiritual values and pursue one’s spiritual goals. This way, one can use one’s higher education and spiritualize it in furthering the mission of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Thus, whatever situation we are in, educated or illiterate, whether we possess a degree or we don’t, we can take shelter of God and move upwards in our journey of self-realization. *Jitendra Savanur got connected to Kṛṣṇa consciousness through ISKCON Pune’s youth forum. He holds a master’s degree in computer science. He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, and works in the technology division of Goldman Sachs.* Types of Equal Vision *From different perspectives, the material world can be seen as a place of misery or of pure delight.* by Mukundamālā Dāsa Although Lord Kṛṣṇa says that the material world is a place of misery, His pure devotees see it in a different light. We live in a world of variety. This variety extends to all areas of life—we see people of different colors, habits, economic backgrounds, social upbringing, religious practices, etc. Every individual comes with a unique package of these features of life. We all use our assets and talents in various ways while living in this world. The conditioned soul, with a given set of senses, enjoys a certain mix of this variety under the influence of the three modes of material nature. This variety extends all over the creation. The universe, according to Vedic scriptures, is divided into fourteen planetary systems with different gradations of life. The residents of the higher planetary systems enjoy a highly refined form of enjoyment, all in the mode of goodness. Their indulgence is nondestructive and harmonious with their existence. The residents of the lower planetary systems also enjoy pleasures of various kinds, but their indulgence is in the mode of ignorance, which means the pleasures are destructive in nature, involving violence and exploitation of others. *Seeing the Common Essence in Variety* From philosophers, thinkers, and social reformers, we frequently hear about equality and brotherhood. The *Bhagavad-gītā* also talks about equality and equal vision. When it comes to looking at life and people of this world, an enlightened person sees everyone equally, irrespective of the differences in the externals. In the *Bhagavad-gītā* (18.20) Kṛṣṇa says, “That knowledge by which one undivided spiritual nature is seen in all living entities, though they are divided into innumerable forms, you should understand to be in the mode of goodness.” Śrīla Prabhupāda explains this point in the purport: A person who sees one spirit soul in every living being, whether a demigod, human being, animal, bird, beast, aquatic or plant, possesses knowledge in the mode of goodness. In all living entities, one spirit soul is there, although they have different bodies in terms of their previous work. . . . Differences are perceived in terms of the body; because there are many forms of material existence in conditional life, the living force appears to be divided. Such impersonal knowledge is an aspect of self-realization. And according to Kṛṣṇa, a person endowed with such knowledge is a paṇḍita: “The humble sages, by virtue of true knowledge, see with equal vision a learned and gentle brāhmaṇa, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcaste].” *(Gītā* 5.18) In the purport, Śrīla Prabhupāda explains: A Kṛṣṇa conscious person does not make any distinction between species or castes. . . . These differences of body are meaningless from the viewpoint of a learned transcendentalist. This is due to their relationship to the Supreme, for the Supreme Lord, by His plenary portion as Paramātmā, is present in everyone's heart. Such an understanding of the Supreme is real knowledge. As far as the bodies are concerned in different castes or different species of life, the Lord is equally kind to everyone because He treats every living being as a friend yet maintains Himself as Paramātmā regardless of the circumstances of the living entities. Because such a person has equal vision towards all, he is able to remain equipoised in all circumstances—honor and dishonor, heat and cold, happiness and distress, fame and infamy. Such a person becomes very dear to Kṛṣṇa. *(Gītā* 12.18–19) *Seeing the Negative in All Situations* When it comes to looking at the world we live in, a Kṛṣṇa consciousness person sees with the equal vision that the world is a temporary place characterized by different levels of misery. Although we experience varieties of pleasures in this world, we know that these pleasures are not going to last forever; they are going to end someday, sometime. But the soul by nature is full of bliss—*ānandamayo ’bhyāsāt.* It is hankering after unlimited, unending joy. Unfortunately, this world is not the place that will allow us to fulfill this desire. That’s what Kṛṣṇa says in the *Bhagavad-gītā* (8.15) about the material world: *duḥkhālayam aśāśvatam*—it’s a miserable and temporary place. This principle applies everywhere in the material world, in all the fourteen planetary systems of the universe. Generally, the higher we go in the universe, the better the living conditions become, in terms of facilities, luxuries, and duration of life. Ordinarily, one would consider promotion to the higher planets desirable, and that’s what a major section of Vedic instructions encourage people to aspire for. But a devotee of Kṛṣṇa is not carried away by such fleeting forms of luxury. Lord Kṛṣṇa says, *ā-brahma-bhuvanāl lokāḥ punar āvartino ’rjuna*: Right from the topmost planet in the universe down to the lowest regions, all are places of misery, characterized by repeated birth and death (*Gītā* 8.16). The devotee understands that all material pleasures, because of their inherent temporary nature, are not worth pursuing. Śrīla Prabhupāda writes, “He considers promotion to heavenly planets (*tridaśa-pūr*) just another kind of phantasmagoria. In other words, a pure devotee does not place much value in the destination of the *karmīs* (the heavenly planets) . . . .” *(Bhāgavatam* 4.30.34, Purport) The devotee therefore aims for the eternal, the spiritual, that which is beyond all dualities. > paras tasmāt tu bhāvo ’nyo > ’vyakto ’vyaktāt sanātanaḥ > yaḥ sa sarveṣu bhūteṣu > naśyatsu na vinaśyati “Yet there is another unmanifest nature, which is eternal and is transcendental to this manifested and unmanifested matter. It is supreme and is never annihilated. When all in this world is annihilated, that part remains as it is.” *(Gītā* 8.20) Kṛṣṇa then says, in the next verse, *taṁ prāpya na nivartante tad dhāma paramaṁ mama*: Once we achieve this nature, we don’t need to come back to the material world again and again. If the material world, with all its attractions and allurements, doesn’t give a devotee the chance to remember Kṛṣṇa and render devotional service, the devotee considers such a place worse than hell. *Seeing the Positive in All Situations* One may consider the above vision too pessimistic, making one unable to appreciate the beauty and other good things of this world. But the enlightened person has a different view of the world. A devotee who can remember Kṛṣṇa and render service to Him in this world doesn’t mind going to even the most horrible place within the universe, including hell. Lord Śiva reveals the attitude of a pure devotee to his wife, Pārvatī, in the *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* (6.17.28): > nārāyaṇa-parāḥ sarve > na kutaścana bibhyati > svargāpavarga-narakeṣv > api tulyārtha-darśinaḥ “Devotees solely engaged in the devotional service of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Nārāyaṇa, never fear any condition of life. For them the heavenly planets, liberation and the hellish planets are all the same, for such devotees are interested only in the service of the Lord.” Śrīla Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī, a great Vaiṣṇava *ācārya*, talks about the outlook of a devotee towards the material world. He writes, *viśvaṁ pūrṇa-sukhāyate*: “This world is full of happiness.” Why? Because the devotee sees this world as a wonderful opportunity to render service to Kṛṣṇa. Thus we see that a Kṛṣṇa conscious person is not foolishly hopeful about life in this world but understands its inherent miserable nature. At the same time, the devotee is never depressed in life but remains joyful and ecstatic because of seeing the Kṛṣṇa connection in everything. As Lord Kṛṣṇa says, “For one who sees Me everywhere and sees everything in Me, I am never lost, nor is he ever lost to Me.” *(Gītā* 6.30) *Mukundamālā Dāsa is a member of the BTG India editorial team.* Primal Pronouns: Kṛṣṇa, the First Person —and the Third One, Too *Why does Lord Kṛṣṇa sometimes speak of Himself as “He” rather than “I”?* By Satyarāja Dāsa Curiously, when Kṛṣṇa speaks to Arjuna about God, He sometimes seem to be speaking of someone other than Himself. Throughout the text of the *Bhagavad-gītā*, Lord Kṛṣṇa refers to Himself with the appropriate pronouns: “I,” “Me,” “My,” and “Mine.” But periodically He advises Arjuna to “surrender to the Lord,” as if the Lord were someone else. That is to say, He refers to Himself in the third person. This begins as early as 2.44 and can be found again in 2.49, 2.51, and 2.64. Additionally, He sometimes talks about “the Supreme” and uses other terms to indicate the Supreme Godhead in a way that seems somewhat removed, but He is clearly talking about Himself. (Such verses are found at 5.6, 5.10, 5.15, 5.17, 5.21, 5.24, 5.25, 5.26, 6.7, 6.10, 6.27, 6.28, 8.9, 8.10, 8.13, 8.24, 9.15, 14.19, 15.3–4, 15.5, 15.17, 16.18, 17.14, 17.26–27, 18.46, 18.61, 18.62, and others.) Although many of these third-person references can be understood in terms of context, others are not so easily explainable. Perhaps the most conspicuous of these is 8.22, where Kṛṣṇa says, “The Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is greater than all, is attainable by unalloyed devotion. Although He is present in His abode, He is all-pervading, and everything is situated within Him.” This is Kṛṣṇa speaking. Isn’t He talking about Himself here? Why use the third person? And in 18.62, near the *Gītā’s* end: “O scion of Bharata [Arjuna], surrender unto Him utterly. By His grace you will attain transcendental peace and the supreme and eternal abode.” A little confusing. “Him” and “His”—isn’t Kṛṣṇa referring to Himself? In *Gītā* 3.9–10 Kṛṣṇa talks about doing work as a sacrifice for Viṣṇu. Is sacrifice only valuable when offered to Kṛṣṇa in His form as Viṣṇu and not when directed to Kṛṣṇa Himself, the original Personality of Godhead? Of course, referring to Viṣṇu here makes sense because in the Vedas sacrifice is mentioned specifically in terms of Viṣṇu. So Kṛṣṇa is merely going along with an already established convention. Still, text 15 carries us further down the road of potential confusion, for there Kṛṣṇa says that the Vedas come from “the Supreme Brahman,” or, in Prabhupāda’s translation, “the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” Why doesn’t Kṛṣṇa just say, “The Vedas come from Me”? Chapter 13 seems to present a similar problem. In the beginning of that chapter, Arjuna asks Kṛṣṇa about matter and spirit, particularly in terms of prakṛti (nature) and puruṣa (the enjoyer, the soul). Thus, when Kṛṣṇa explains Brahman (all-pervasive spirit), which He says is subordinate to Him, He defines it and its various permutations as separate categories of divinity. Consequently, in verse 14, for example, we find, “Everywhere are His hands and legs, His eyes, heads and faces, and He has ears everywhere. In this way the Supersoul exists, pervading everything.” And in the next verse Kṛṣṇa speaks in the third person as well: “The Supersoul is the original source of all senses, yet He is without senses. He is unattached, although He is the maintainer of all living beings. He transcends the modes of nature, and at the same time He is the master of all the modes of material nature.” And the chapter continues on like that. But here context seems to legitimate Kṛṣṇa’s grammatical choices. *Paramātmā: The Third Person* A key verse in understanding all of this occurs much earlier, in 6.31, where Kṛṣṇa says, “Such a *yogi*, who engages in the worshipful service of the Supersoul, knowing that I and the Supersoul are one, remains always in Me in all circumstances.” He and the Supersoul are one, He says, and yet they are obviously different as well. This gives us a hint as to why He occasionally uses third-person pronouns at various points in the text. Although it may not be true across the board, He does tend to use them when referring to His expanded Self. In fact, this very point was highlighted for me by scholar Graham M. Schweig (Garuḍa Dāsa), whose translation of the **Bhagavad*-gītā* is titled *Bhagavad* Gita: The Beloved Lord’s Secret Love Song: It is unambiguously clear to me. And very simple. When He uses the first-person pronoun, He is referring to His very self, His intimate and ultimate identity as Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the Puruṣottama. But when referring to the divine as the Puruṣa (paramātman), He employs the third person. This is seen even in the 18th and final chapter, *tam eva śaraṇaṁ gaccha, sarva-bhāvena bhārata*! “In that one take shelter with your whole being, O son of Bhārata!” Schweig echoes the great teachers of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition. Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī (sixteenth century), for example, briefly mentions why the Lord sometimes refers to Himself in the third person: It is to distinguish between His primary form, as the original Godhead Himself, and His secondary form, as the all-pervading Paramātmā. While commenting on *Bhagavad-gītā* 7.30, Śrī Jīva writes in his *Kṛṣṇa-sandarbha* (*Anuccheda* 82, Texts 8 and 19; translation by Kuśakratha Dāsa): (8) That the form of Śrī Kṛṣṇa supersedes the form of the Supersoul is implied in the following verse of *Bhagavad-gītā* (7.30), where Lord Kṛṣṇa *sa*ys: “Those in full consciousness of Me, who know Me, the Supreme Lord, to be the governing principle of the material manifestation, of the demigods, and of all methods of *sa*crifice, can understand and know Me, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, even at the time of death.” We may note the use of the word “*sa*” [with] in the words “*sādhibhūtādhidaivam*” [the governing principle of the material cosmos] and “*sādhiyajam*” [the governing principle of all *sa*crifices] in this verse. The word “*sa*” in these compound words indicates that the word understood to be in the instrumental case in these compounds is considered secondary, and the word expressed by the whole compound is considered primary. This is confirmed in the following *sūtra* of *Pāṇini* (*Aṣṭādhyāyī* 2.3.19): “*sa*ha-yukte ’pradhāne.” From this we may understand that the form of Śrī Kṛṣṇa is most important, and the form of the Supersoul is only secondary. (19) . . . Very eager to explain this supreme secret of the *Bhagavad-gītā*, His eyes full of tears of love for His devotee, Lord Kṛṣṇa, with folded hands, instructed Arjuna (18.65): “Always think of Me and become My devotee. Worship Me and offer your homage unto Me. Thus you will come to Me without fail. I promise you this because you are My very dear friend.” By repeatedly using the word “mām” [unto Me], Lord Kṛṣṇa has emphasized that we should not just worship the Supreme Lord in a general way, but specifically the Original Form of Kṛṣṇa should be worshiped. The result of worshiping Śrī Kṛṣṇa is also explained by the Lord: “Thus you will come to Me without fail.” By following this instruction one becomes an eternal associate of the Lord, never to be separated from Him. In this way Śrī Jīva indicates that the Paramātmā feature of the Lord is Kṛṣṇa’s indirect expansion and, as such, is considered secondary. Apropos of this, Kṛṣṇa uses first-person pronouns, such as *mām*, only when referring to Himself in His original form and not when referring to the Paramātmā. In a similar vein, Vaiṣṇava theologian Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura (seventeenth century) writes in his commentary on 8.22, paraphrasing Kṛṣṇa’s words: “That Supreme Person, who is just my *aṁśa* [expansion, limb], cannot be known by other means, which have in them desires for *karma* or *jṅāna-yoga*.” In other words, the Supreme Person referred to in this verse is Kṛṣṇa’s expansion, i.e., Viṣṇu, Paramātmā (the Lord in the heart), and not Kṛṣṇa in His original form. Accordingly, He does not use first-person pronouns in this case. That He is here referring to His Paramātmā feature is indicated by the word “all-pervading,” which is more characteristic of the Supersoul than of the Lord in His original form. Thus Viśvanātha Cakravartī indirectly tells us that in addition to the main point of the verse—that only by devotion unmixed with *karma* (work) or *jñāna* (knowledge) can one attain the Lord—Kṛṣṇa speaks in the third person when He refers to His *aṁśa*, or expansions. *Kṛṣṇa and Paramātmā: One and Different* With this as a backdrop, Kṛṣṇa’s occasional use of third-person grammar becomes more understandable. Viśvanātha Cakravartī indirectly mentions this again in his commentary to the seventeenth and eighteenth verses of the *Gītā’s* fifteenth chapter, which he says refer to Paramātmā and Bhagavān, respectively. Significant to our discussion, and noted by Śrīla Viśvanātha, Kṛṣṇa refers to Himself in the third person in verse seventeen and in the first person in verse eighteen. Similarly, Kṛṣṇa refers to Himself in the third person in 18.62 and in the first person in 18.66. Verse 18.62 refers to God as the “controller of material nature,” which more directly harkens to the Paramātmā feature of the Lord, and 18.66, according to the commentators, refers to God in His highest feature. In his commentary on 18.62, Viśvanātha Cakravartī draws a clear distinction between antaryāmy-upāsakas and bhagavad-upāsakas, that is, worshipers of the Lord as the all-pervading Supersoul and as the Lord as the Supreme Person. Again, though these variant features of God ultimately refer to the same Supreme Person, for technical purposes one might acknowledge a distinction between them as well. Kṛṣṇa certainly does so throughout the *Bhagavad-gītā*. The *Gītā* includes four “nutshell” verses that elucidate its essential teachings. The last of these (10.11) is pertinent to our discussion: “To show them special mercy, I, dwelling in their hearts, destroy with the shining lamp of knowledge the darkness born of ignorance.” Here Kṛṣṇa speaks in the first person even though He is ostensibly referring to the Supersoul, or the Lord in the heart. According to Graham Schweig, this verse offers readers a special teaching: It is Kṛṣṇa, Bhagavan Himself, who is saying that He is the Supersoul and therefore highlights this point by using the word aham (“I”). Schweig elaborates: In this verse, Kṛṣṇa identifies himself as “The Self” dwelling within all hearts. It’s an absolutely exquisite verse. *Aham . . . ātma-bhāva-sthaḥ*, an appositively modifying phrase with the verbal personal pronoun aham. In this way, Kṛṣṇa can speak about the *purusha* in the third person and also identify himself as that very same *purusha*. That is his privilege, of course, as the supreme and all-inclusive person. Bhagavān is present in his emanating sustained manifestations; but these manifestations are not Kṛṣṇa in totality because there is more to Kṛṣṇa than the sum total of his manifestations. He is here saying that he is the source of those manifestations. The eighteenth-century commentator Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa further tells us that, in this verse, Kṛṣṇa is specifically referring to the special mercy He shows to His totally dedicated and single-minded devotees (*ekānti-bhaktas*). Śrī Baladeva informs us in other verses that for these *ekānti-bhaktas*, in particular, the Lord does not appear in their heart of hearts as the Paramātmā, as He does in other souls. Rather, for them He appears in His own original form (*svayam bhagavān*). This is why He uses first-person language in *Bhagavad-gītā* 10.11. *Intimacy and Formality* Although Kṛṣṇa varies His use of first-person and third-person language, the general rule is that when He is expressing intimacy, He talks in the first person, and when He is speaking in a more formal, Lordly way, He speaks in the third person, accommodating His various incarnations and expansions. Even in ordinary discourse one might sometimes refer to oneself in the third person. For instance, a father might tell his son, “You should obey your father.” Kṛṣṇa employs a similar strategy, since in His Lordly feature He is the father of all. Kṛṣṇa can legitimately refer to Himself in apparently contradictory ways since all of His incarnations and manifestations appear with Him and within Him. Indeed, They are Him. As Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī writes in his *Caitanya-caritāmṛta* (*Ādi* 5.128), “Kṛṣṇa’s incarnations and His original feature as the source of all incarnations are identical” *(avatāra-avatārī—abheda)*. Consequently, He may seem to adhere to a certain linguistic pattern at times, and at other times He may not. He is inconceivable and beyond limitation and constriction, and His language will at times reflect that. It should be noted that when Kṛṣṇa is present, all His manifestations are present too—all the avatāras, expansions, and so on. Consequently, according to His sweet will He can morph from one divine personality to the next—since they are all alternate forms of the same Supreme Person—and also exhibit Himself in His original feature as Kṛṣṇa. Still, He is the Supersoul or Nārāyaṇa or Viṣṇu or whomever He likes. Being omnipotent, He can seamlessly manifest Himself in any of His features at any time, like a kaleidoscope, and in those features He may speak as a lover, a friend, Brahman, the Supersoul, or whatever, without any discrepancy, since these are just various exhibitions of His unlimited, inconceivable Self. Thus, in various instances He speaks to Arjuna as friend, as God, as *guru*, as the universal form, or as the original Supreme Lord, flawlessly weaving from one aspect to the next according to what Arjuna needs to hear or experience. In the end, He manifests different aspects of Himself to facilitate the needs of the specific loving exchange in which He is engaged, in this case, with Arjuna. Since He perfectly knows the heart of everyone, He knows exactly what aspects of His Supreme Self need to be exhibited at any given moment: Godhood, majesty, friendship, intimacy, or love. “Does Kṛṣṇa Not Love Her?” *A father prays to find clarity and hope in the face of his daughter’s disabilities.* by Gaura Kumāra Dāsa Saddened by his daughter’s disabilities, a devotee gains clarity and hope through the teachings of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. “My dear Lord, if You love everyone equally and care for everyone, then why can’t she be like other kids?” I pondered, while my teary-eyed, nonverbal five-year-old daughter, Rādhākripa, pointed innocently to kids running, jumping, and playing joyfully at a local New York City park. The question had flashed in my mind several times in the last five years—when she was diagnosed with Down’s syndrome while in the womb, when she required a six-hour heart surgery at four months to fix her congenital heart disease, when she couldn’t crawl like other kids, and when she couldn’t and still can’t articulate words while struggling to make others understand what she has in her mind. I knew there were reasons for everything. So I prayed for answers that would, first, convince me that those reasons were just, and second, give me the required intelligence to guide her on the right path. I had been a practicing devotee for about fifteen years before our daughter was diagnosed. I thought I knew the philosophy well, but when reality hit me, I felt shallow, without realizations. Despite all the knowledge I had gathered, I could not convince myself that Rādhākripa’s situation was fair. On that particular day, as I felt helpless in my inability to answer questions about her disability, I looked up towards the clear spring sky, seeking answers from Kṛṣṇa. As I slightly lowered my line of vision, the sight of the tall buildings of the Manhattan skyline at a distance triggered my first lesson. The Manhattan skyline signifies the height of modernism, rooted in material success, wealth, and sense gratification. I thought: Almost everyone in the Big Apple is seeking three primary material blessings—opulence, education, and beauty—in one form or another. But what hope is there for the gravely disabled, as they are not only bereft of these three so-called blessings but also destined to miserably fail in attaining success defined by high wealth (artha) and sense gratification (kāma). Just as I was sinking deeper into sadness, seeing no hope in my daughter’s life, whose condition lists among the top disabilities in the world, a ray of wisdom through Queen Kuntī’s prayers dawned on me. A verse I was familiar with came powerfully to me with realization. In her prayer, Queen Kuntī mentions four things (janma—high birth, aiśvarya—wealth, śruta—education, and śrī—beauty) to be disqualifications for one’s spiritual growth: > janmaiśvarya-śruta-śrībhir > edhamāna-madaḥ pumān > naivārhaty abhidhātuṁ vai > tvām akiñcana-gocaram “My Lord, Your Lordship can easily be approached, but only by those who are materially exhausted. One who is on the path of [material] progress, trying to improve himself with respectable parentage, great opulence, high education and bodily beauty, cannot approach You with sincere feeling. *(Bhāgavatam* 1.8.26) Although this verse consoled me somewhat, my sadness was not from wanting my daughter to experience success at the topmost level. I just wished that she could be a normal girl like others. As I lowered my vision to the ground level, I saw people on the streets of New York—some black, some white, some Asian, some Hispanic. Most, I assumed, were driven by greed and self-centeredness, without a spiritual purpose, as are so many people today. Their only purpose was probably focused on attaining things that supposedly would make their material lives better, while actually getting them further entangled in those things. Did I want my daughter to be like them? *Looking Deeper* I decided to take my line of vision deeper, from external to internal. Deep within each of them, unknown to them, lies their pure soul, their real self, separate from their external dresses of colors and designations. Similarly, I pondered, isn’t the disease of my daughter external to her pure soul? The material disease is of the body. To degrade someone because of his or her bodily disabilities or to glorify someone because of material abilities is a misconception in the ultimate sense, as none of those categorizations describe the ātmā, the actual person. Shouldn’t we just acknowledge the diversity at the material level and accept the equality of all at the spiritual level? As I further pondered on why such material diversity exists among us, another verse dawned on me: > yāval liṅgānvito hy ātmā > tāvat karma-nibandhanam > tato viparyayaḥ kleśo > māyā-yogo ’nuvartate “As long as the spirit soul is covered by the subtle body, consisting of the mind, intelligence and false ego, he is bound to the results of his fruitive activities. Because of this covering, the spirit soul is connected with the material energy and must accordingly suffer material conditions and reversals, continually, life after life.” (*Bhāgavatam* 7.2.47) The verse helped me understand the cause of my daughter’s condition as **karma*-nibandanam*, “the bondage of *karma*.” This is substantiated elsewhere in Śrīmad-*Bhāgavatam* (3.31.1): *karma*ṇā *daiva-netrena jantur dehopapattaye*. This explains that by our *karma* we create our future bodies. Although we are products of our past, we need not be prisoners of our past. We can access Kṛṣṇa’s grace irrespective of our abilities or disabilities due to past *karma*. At a more practical level, of course, as parents we cannot justify our actions by just saying, “Oh, my daughter is suffering due to her bad *karma*.” My daughter’s *karma* must not come in the way of our dharma, or duty, towards her. As parents, our duty is to give her the best we can. And the best that we can give her is to help her get out of this mesh of *karmic* actions and reactions. *Connecting to the Ultimate Source* As I pushed my daughter’s stroller while thinking how we as parents could aid in getting her out of the *karma* cycle, a truck stopped in front of us with a sign that read “Mr. Appliance of NYC” and a picture of a dysfunctional refrigerator. It occurred to me that for a refrigerator to be utilized to its full potential, it must be connected to a power outlet. It could also be kept unplugged and used for multiple other purposes, like a cupboard for general storage, but that would not serve the ultimate purpose for which it was created. Similarly, to realize our full potential we must connect ourselves to the ultimate source, Kṛṣṇa. This can be done by redirecting our consciousness towards Kṛṣṇa, who will then not only reciprocate with our devotional dependence on Him, but also get us out of this karmic network. With reference to my initial question, yes, Kṛṣṇa does love us all, but he especially favors those who devotionally depend on Him. Our scriptures are replete with examples. Draupadī helplessly called on the Supreme Person, Lord Kṛṣṇa. Nārada Muni in his previous birth completely depended on the Lord after his mother’s sudden demise. Lord Kṛṣṇa says in the *Bhagavad-gītā* (9.29), > samo ’haṁ sarva-bhūteṣu > na me dveṣyo ’sti na priyaḥ > ye bhajanti tu māṁ bhaktyā > mayi te teṣu cāpy aham “I envy no one, nor am I partial to anyone. I am equal to all. But whoever renders service unto Me in devotion is a friend, is in Me, and I am also a friend to him.” What happens to those who are physically disabled but not devotionally dependent on Kṛṣṇa? Dhṛtarāṣṭra was not offered the kingdom initially due to his disability of material blindness, even though he was the elder son. In his later years he had several opportunities to be dependent on and devoted to Kṛṣṇa. But due to his spiritual blindness, he chose not to. In contrast, Bilvamaṅgala Ṭhākura was blind too, and Kṛṣṇa reciprocated with his dependence and devotion. Mantharā, who was deformed, turned a devotee (Kaikeyī) away from Lord Rāma and suffered. In contrast, Kubjā, also materially deformed, was glorified by Lord Kṛṣṇa for having a devotional heart. He praised her for her dependence on Him and for her service. *The Ultimate Treatment* I was slowly getting clarity by thinking about the futility of the material world, the purity of the soul, the efficacy of karma, and the need to ultimately depend on Kṛṣṇa. But I knew there was still one missing piece to the puzzle: What is the cure or treatment for my daughter, who is mentally and physically disabled? I found the answer in the *Mukunda-mālā-stotra* (verse 15) of the devotee-king Kulaśekhara: “O people, please hear of this treatment for the disease of birth and death! It is the name of Kṛṣṇa. Recommended by Yājñavalkya and other expert *yogis* steeped in wisdom, this boundless, eternal inner light is the best medicine, for when drunk it bestows complete and final liberation. Just drink it!” Taking these words of King Kulaśekara to heart, my wife and I decided to drive to our local temple for the weekly *kīrtana* night. As the *kīrtana* rose to a crescendo, we saw our daughter raise a hand spontaneously and joyfully. She could not sing, but I could see that she was experiencing joy by being devotionally dependent on the Lord through the holy name. What started as her tears of sorrow now turned into my tears of joy. I found her to be happier than all the other children in the park. I felt that we as parents had found a path for her. We have to give her more opportunities to connect with Kṛṣṇa through the holy name. After the *kīrtana*, as we walked back to our car, I raised my line of vision once again towards the night sky, beyond the New Yorkers on the street, way beyond the Manhattan skyline. Looking at the moon—a manifestation of Kṛṣṇa—I thanked Kṛṣṇa for not only answering my questions but also making me realize the final lesson of the day: The more we disconnect from Kṛṣṇa, the more we are all disabled in realizing our full potential. And the more we connect and redirect our consciousness towards Him, the more we will experience His loving embrace, despite apparent external disabilities. Śrīla Prabhupāda says that when we sincerely and determinedly practice *bhakti* with whatever abilities we have, Kṛṣṇa showers His blessings and ultimately embraces us, the soul. In a 1975 letter, he wrote: “There are many examples in history of persons who have been very much disabled physically, but still have executed Kṛṣṇa Consciousness. Still, up to date in places like Vṛndāvana, India, there are many persons who are blind, crippled, lame, deformed, etc., but they are determined to practice Kṛṣṇa Consciousness to their best ability. So, you should also do like that. Simply be determined to practice the process of *Bhakti-yoga* with whatever abilities you may have. If you are really sincere, then Kṛṣṇa will give you help.” *Gaura Kumāra Dāsa, a disciple of His Holiness Rādhānāth Swami, is chair of the computer science department at City University of New York (CUNY) and the temple president of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Matchless Gifts—ISKCON of 26 Second Ave. He holds a weekly program at New York University (NYU) and has cultivated many students on the path of bhakti-yoga.* Book Excerpt: Basic *Yoga* *Sutras—*The Inner Practice *Mind Waves: Insights on Patañjali’s vṛttis with help from the Gītā and the Bhāgavatam.* by Śravaṇīya Devī Dāsī A look at the five *vṛttis* of the mind discussed in Patañjali’s *Yoga* *Sūtras*. Excerpted from *Basic Yoga Sutras—The Inner Practice*. Copyright © 2019 by Sravaniya DiPecoraro. Published by Barefoot Philosopher Press (an imprint of L&K Company, Hong Kong). Available in paperback, Kindle and ePub on Amazon.com. This excerpt retains the book’s style for Sanskrit words and other considerations. Author’s overview: This book is for seriously inquisitive *yoga* students, written in their own language. In contrast with the volumes of literature already available regarding the *Yoga* Sūtras of *Patañjali*, the book provides keys for understanding the essential metaphysical and spiritual teachings of *yoga*, thus enabling the reader to overcome the problems of life and ultimately attain the wholeness of self-realization. *Vṛttis* I.5. *vṛttayaḥ pañcatayyaḥ kliṣṭākliṣṭāḥ* “There are five varieties of mind waves, which are either miserable or non-miserable.” In material consciousness, non-miserable is mistaken for happiness. Think about that. According to what Patañjali is noting here, there is no happiness in the material world, only intermittent non-misery. This somewhat harsh reality is confirmed in many places in both *Bhagavad-gītā* and *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* wherein these miseries (*kleśa*) are classified into three categories: • *adhyātmika—*miseries pertaining to the body and mind • *adhibhautika*—miseries pertaining to the difficulties imposed by society, community, nation and other living entities • *adhidaivika*—miseries inflicted upon us by natural disturbances from earthquakes, famines, droughts, floods, epidemics These are the threefold miseries of material existence. “Actually the living entity does not take birth nor does he die, but he has to fight with the stringent laws of material nature throughout the entire span of his lifetime. He must also face different kinds of miserable conditions. Despite all this, the living entity, due to illusion, thinks that he is well situated in sense gratification.”—SB 4.27.16, Purport In his younger days my spiritual master Śrīla Prabhupāda was a follower of Mahātmā Gandhi. Many years after Gandhi’s assassination he wrote: “Material plans for material happiness have no value, but under the spell of the illusory energy we consider them extremely valuable. There were many politicians, social reformers and philosophers who died very miserably, without deriving any practical value from their material plans. Therefore, a sane and sensible man never desires to work hard under the conditions of threefold miseries, only to die in disappointment.”—SB 7.13.31, Purport “So we cannot violate the laws of God, or *dharma*. Then we’ll be punished. The punishment is there, awaiting, by the laws of nature. *Daivī hy eṣā guṇa-mayī mama māyā duratyayā* (BG 7.14). The laws of nature are to punish you. So long you are not Kṛṣṇa conscious, the laws of nature will go on punishing you—three kinds of miserable conditions: *ādhyātmika*, *ādhibhautika*, *ādhidaivika*. This is the law. *Prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ* (BG 3.27). You are thinking independent, but that is not the fact. We are dependent, completely dependent on the laws of nature. And laws of nature means laws of God.” – Śrīla Prabhupāda Lecture, Vrindavan, September 4, 1975 > kvacic ca śīta-vātādy-anekādhidaivika-bhautikātmīyānāṁ > daśānāṁ pratinivāraṇe ‘kalpo duranta-cintayā viṣaṇṇa āste. “Being unable to protect himself from the threefold miseries of material existence, the conditioned soul becomes very morose and lives a life of lamentation. These threefold miseries are miseries suffered by mental calamity at the hands of the demigods [such as freezing wind and scorching heat], miseries offered by other living entities, and miseries arising from the mind and body themselves.”—SB 5.14.25 It may be worth noting that, at the time of this writing, journalism seems focused on bringing misery to the forefront of our attention. The decades-old *mantra* goes “If it bleeds, it leads.” Fomenting fear and directing derision are part and parcel of the media’s business of herding the masses this way and that. So much money is involved. And make no mistake, their influence is overwhelming. “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” –Napoleon Bonaparte Which brings us to our next subject of interest in our journey of understanding. Knowledge ~ Real and Unreal I.6. *pramāṇa viparyaya vikalpa nidrā smṛtayaḥ* These mind waves are categorized as • Accurate cognition (*pramāṇa*) • Erroneous knowledge (*viparyaya*) • Imagination (*vikalpa*) • Sleep (*nidrā*) • Memory (*smṛti*) I.7. *pratyakṣa-anumāna-āgamāḥ pramāṇāni* “Correct knowledge is direct, inferred or proven as factual.” Correct knowledge is based on three kinds of proof: 1. Direct perception 2. Logical inference or deduction based on a correct premise 3. Testimony from authoritative sacred scripture (*śāstra*) or realized persons (*sādhu*) Since the senses are imperfect, one’s knowledge is correspondingly affected. This is why more than one witness is preferable for corroboration in any proper investigation. In the same way, identifying a correct premise requires verification. Rational deduction based on a wrong assumption can lead to mistakes, bad policy, chaos and failure. The most reliable source of real knowledge is the third option—often referred to as *guru*, śāstra and sādhu. What is spoken by the spiritual master is revealed in holy scripture, handed down in an unbroken line of teachers and supported by other sages. This is the best process of verification, the lens for seeing things as they are. I.8. *viparyayo mithyā-jñānam-atadrūpa pratiṣṭham* “Illusory or erroneous knowledge is based on non-fact or the non-real.” Viparyaya is something that has become more familiar lately. George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four presented a country named Oceania with its official motto: “War is Peace” “Freedom is Slavery” “Ignorance is Strength” In other words, misinformation that is 180 degrees opposite of the truth is *viparyaya*. I.9 *śabda-jñāna-anupātī vastu-śūnyo vikalpaḥ* “Verbal knowledge devoid of substance is fancy or imagination.” Vikalpa includes gossip, hearsay, popular superstitions, myths, propaganda, slander & lying. For example: As Mark Twain pointed out, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Lies and damned lies are speculations including phrases such as • Perhaps… • Maybe in the future… • Experts say there might be reason to expect… ? Don’t you think . . . everybody knows that . . . I’m sure you would agree that. . . • Inappropriate comparisons with little in common. •Adjectives that give a compelling impression (bias) Statistics: • Polling data • Predictions made by “experts” using numbers, intended to bolster a specious and otherwise unsupported theory Creating specific thought waves in the population induces certain behavior. If the leadership is virtuous and good then the impressions made will be beneficial and uplifting. Unfortunately that is not the case in post-modern society, where those with the highest salaries make their money “helping” others who are suffering—after implementing policies and promoting habits that have caused much of the suffering in the first place. “Nearly every theme or image that crosses your path in daily life was put there for a reason, often by an interest who paid a lot of money to place it there.”—Sharyl Attkisson, The Smear And so Edgar Allan Poe’s advice is helpful: “Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.” Having grown up in the 1950s, I remember it well. I.10. *abhāva-pratyaya-ālambanā tamo-vṛttir-nidra* “Sleep is the non-deliberate absence of thought-waves or knowledge.” This is self-explanatory, although it may be worth noting that some living entities influenced by the mode of ignorance prefer to remain asleep rather than deal with the inconvenient demands of time and space. I.11. *anu-bhūta-viṣaya-asaṁpramoṣaḥ smṛtiḥ* “Memory is the unmodified recollection of words and experiences.” Unmodified is the key word in this *sūtra*. In my experience, the older one gets the more difficult it seems to avoid modifications to remembrances, hence the expression “If memory serves me well.” The line between smṛti and *vikalpa* is thin indeed. It will be seen from the foregoing that not all vṛttis or thought waves in the mind are reliable. Indeed, four out of the five listed are not. Think about that for a moment. This is why intelligent discrimination (*buddhi*) is so important; one must be able to sort through the pop-up windows in the mind, find the ones that are true and relevant and close the others. *Buddhi* can be awakened through **yama* ni*yama**, the inner practice of *yoga*—cultivation of the mode of goodness. In passion and ignorance the desires and urges of the mind and body predominate consciousness, circumventing and eventually shutting down the function of intelligence. *Vastuyāthātmyajñānāvarakaṁ viparyaya-jñāna-janakaṁ tamaḥ*: under the spell of ignorance, one cannot understand a thing as it is. He may even be a famous *yoga* teacher and speak utter nonsense, such as “one cannot actually practice *yama* and ni*yama*, only *āsana* and prāṇā*yama*.” And some will nod their heads, smile and calmly carry on. Success or failure at elevating consciousness depends on *yama* and ni*yama*—that is, voluntarily accepting and regularly practicing certain restraints on one’s own actions and behavior. Such discipline is self-imposed, difficult at first but gradually becomes habit. When practiced under the direction of a bona fide *ācārya* (one who teaches by his example) this results in spiritual realization and extraordinary character, which manifests in this way: “Humility, pridelessness, nonviolence, tolerance, simplicity, approaching a bona fide spiritual master, cleanliness, steadiness and self-control; renunciation of the objects of sense gratification, absence of false ego, the perception of the evil of birth, death, old age and disease; nonattachment to children, wife, home and the rest, and evenmindedness amid pleasant and unpleasant events; constant and unalloyed devotion to Me, resorting to solitary places, detachment from the general mass of people; accepting the importance of self-realization, and philosophical search for the Absolute Truth—all these I thus declare to be knowledge, and what is contrary to these is ignorance.” —Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, BG 13.8–12 *Śravaṇīya Devī Dāsī was initiated by Śrīla Prabhupāda in 1971. She was instrumental in getting Bhagavad-gītā As It Is translated into Chinese. She has taught hatha yoga in the Far East since 1983 and in the early 90s was the first professional yoga teacher in Hong Kong. Learn more about her on her website, BarefootPhilosopher.press, or on her Facebook page, Barefoot Philosopher.* Śrīla Kavi-karṇapūra’s Works and Life *An introduction to one of the greatest poets of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition.* by Tattvavit Dāsa Kavi-karṇapūra is revered by the Gaudiya Vaiṣṇavas as one of their best poets, blessed with his extraordinary poetic talent by Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu Himself. The Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition’s most influential Bengali work, Śrī *Caitanya-caritāmṛta*, completed in 1615, does not mention Orissa’s temple of Jagannātha, where Śrī Caitanya worshiped, becoming empty for twenty-four years (1568–92), thirty-five years after Śrī Caitanya left the world (in 1533). An Afghan army in Bengal invaded Orissa and plundered the temple in Puri. For centuries, the temple had been the pride and symbol of Orissa’s rulers. The Oriyan king Gajapati Prataparudra Deva favorably served Śrī Caitanya in Puri for twenty years, before passing on in 1540—two years before the teenaged Vaiṣṇava poet Kavi-karṇapūra completed his first book, *Caitanya-caritāmṛta-mahā-kāvya*, a Sanskrit poem wherein devotees mourn Śrī Caitanya’s absence and share consoling memories of His life. Although in the 1570s Kavi-karṇapūra wrote major works, there is no hint of the political tumult in his devotional writings in praise of Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Śrī Caitanya, because he writes about the relatively peaceful Bengal and Orissa of Śrī Caitanya’s time (1486–1533). However, his main account of Śrī Caitanya’s life, the drama Caitanya-candradoya (“The rise of the Caitanya moon”), in 1572, recalls not just a lost time but a now lost temple culture. Kavi-karṇapūra saw himself as continuing the literary culture of Puri. He did not live there, but as a baby and as a young boy, when visiting Puri with his father he had extraordinary encounters with Śrī Caitanya. About these, he wrote that Śrī Caitanya’s compassion was the source of his “splendor of speech” (*vāg-vibhūti*), as he called his own style of poetry. Before hearing more about him, however, consider the culture he himself continued. *A Culture Linked to Poetry and Theology* The Puri culture hinged on praising Kṛṣṇa and hearing about Kṛṣṇa’s divine play—two main practices of devotion illuminated in texts like the *Bhāgavata* *Purāṇa*, the most influential sacred text in east India when Śrī Caitanya moved to Puri in the early sixteenth century. Some of the Vaiṣṇavas were writing Sanskrit poetry and drama in praise of Kṛṣṇa and Viṣṇu that adhered to strict rules of literary embellishment to infuse rasa: the emotions belonging to the world of the main characters, and also a reader’s or audience’s heightened experience of the emotions. Rasa is drawn from a long history of dramaturgy and poetics. Kavi-karṇapūra derived his understanding of the rasa theory from the works of the eminent preceding authors and critics. With originality he reworked and adapted their ideas, writing about devotional rasa not out of an interest in the earlier mundane literature, but rather because the borrowed notion of rasa is useful in analyzing devotional experiences. The characters of Kavi-karṇapūra’s poems—God and His devotees—are eternal, so the poems both have rasa and produce it. In the Caitanya theology a key concept is devotional rasa, the tastes and humors in the relationships between Kṛṣṇa and His transcendental associates. What makes the accomplished and respected Kavi-karṇapūra unique in the poetic tradition of Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism is that he also wrote its most elaborate and probably most influential work on literary theory, the *Alaṅkara-kaustabha*. Kavi-karṇapūra’s work on poetics proper sees rasa as the soul of poetry and explains how poetic language can embody this soul. His poetic masterpiece is *Ānanda-vṛndāvana-campū*, his longest, most sophisticated poem about Kṛṣṇa’s play in Vrindavan. Kavi-karṇapūra’s writing style conveys theological ideas but also is intended to touch the reader and contribute to the realization of *rasa*. Through what is known as *śabdārtha-vaicitriya* (“a marvellousness of sound and sense”), he evokes and articulates specific emotions (*rasa*) while also conveying particular theological ideas about God, devotion, and the community of devotees. Prior to Śrī Caitanya, composing Sanskrit poetry had gone on for some centuries in South India, and a blending of devotional and secular courtly poetry had flourished in Bengal and Orissa. Jayadeva, a poet in the twelfth-century court of Bengal, composed the pioneering *Gīta-govinda*, a work that catalyzed the rise of Kṛṣṇa devotion in Bengal and beyond. By the late thirteenth century *Gīta-govinda* was sung daily to Jagannātha in Puri as part of the grand temple’s ritual culture. For centuries Jayadeva’s poem inspired innumerable similar works. During the reign of Gajapati Prataparudra Deva (1497–1540), the prominent court poet Rāmānanda Rāya Paṭṭanayaka became one of Śrī Caitanya’s closest companions. So the “lively literary culture at the court was reflected in the circle of Śrī Caitanya’s disciples,” writes Rembert Lutjeharms in his study of Kavi-karṇapūra’s poetic works, A Vaiṣṇava Poet in Early Modern Bengal. (p. 4) Thus the disciples’ interest in the Sanskrit court poetry—and Bengal’s “vibrant culture of vernacular poetry in praise of Kṛṣṇa”—was nothing new. (p. 15) “What is remarkable about the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava interest in poetry, however, is the importance the practice of poetry gained in the tradition’s theology and the importance of theology for their practice of poetry.” (p. 5) Theology was crucial to devotional poetry, since a work that erred theologically could not establish the conclusions of the ocean of devotional service to Kṛṣṇa (*bhakti-siddhānta-sindhu*)—a point made in a story that Lutjeharms opens his book with: Svarūpa Dāmodara, Śrī Caitanya’s secretary, screened each literary work’s mood, theology, and composition before deciding whether it was fit to present to Śrī Caitanya. *(Caitanya-caritāmṛta* 3.5.91–158) Śrī Caitanya’s disciples, especially Rūpa Gosvāmī, frequently used poetic concepts in theological treatises, and cited poetry alongside sacred texts to establish theological truth. More than eighty literary works written by Śrī Caitanya’s immediate disciples survive. Given poetry’s undeniable importance to the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition, by examining Kavi-karṇapūra’s poetry “in the light of his own poetics and . . . his distinct theology” derived from his *guru*, Śrīnatha Paṇḍita, Lutjeharms’s book spotlights both the practice of poetry in the “tradition and pre-modern South Asia” and “the intellectual heritage of those early Bengali Vaiṣṇavas.” (pp. 16–17) *The Poet* Having considered the cultural contributions of Kavi-karṇapūra, now hear about the descriptions of him given in another chapter of Lutjeharms’s book. Kavi-karṇapūra (“he who adorns the poets’ ears”) is how Paramānanda Dāsa Sena was popularly known. His father, Śīvananda Sena, first met Śrī Caitanya in Puri, in 1512. Caitanya requested Śivānanda, who was influential and immensely wealthy, to provide for the Bengali devotees during their annual journeys to Puri to celebrate the cart processions of Jagannātha. Thereafter, using all his wealth to support the pilgrims, Śivānanda Sena became Śrī Caitanya’s respected and trusted follower, and the hagiographies depict him as one of the most selfless servants of Śrī Caitanya and the Vaiṣṇavas. Paramānanda Dāsa, Śivānanda’s third and youngest son, and his two brothers “naturally earned respect from the Vaiṣṇava community.” (p. 28) He speaks highly of his father, mentioning him several times as “his source of knowledge on Caitanya and his followers.” (p. 52) Śivānanda once hosted Śrī Caitanya at his home in Kumarahatta, the only place for which Śrī Caitanya specifically traveled to Bengal after He settled in Puri. Śrī Caitanya made this short trip because Kumarahatta was the birthplace of Īśvara Purī, His *guru*, and He stayed with Śivānanda’s family because He considered this family His own. *(Caitanya-caritāmṛta*, *Antya* 12.51) In or near Kumarahatta lived prominent Vaiṣṇavas: Śrīnātha Paṇḍita, Kavi-karṇapūra’s *guru*; Vṛndāvana Dāsa, the author of *Caitanya-bhāgavata*; Nityānanda (when he married—after charismatically and successfully marketing the devotionalism of Śrī Caitanya in Bengal); the retired Śrīvāsa Paṇḍita (at whose home in Navadvip Śrī Caitanya’s followers held their first devotional gatherings); Jīva Gosvāmī’s mother (after the death of her husband, she raised Jīva there, which was once her ancestral home); Jagadānanda Paṇḍita, an intimate companion of Śrī Caitanya in Puri; and Vāsudeva Datta, a gifted singer, known for requesting to take the whole world’s sins on himself. Kumarahatta’s cosmopolitan character “was thus not dominated by a single individual and a single devotional mood—rather, it became a confluence” of various forms of devotionalism. (p. 24) In 1576, Kavi-karṇapūra presented Gaura-gaṇoddeśa-dīpikā, a broad, unified vision of the companions of Śrī Caitanya living in the various communities of His movement (Kumarahatta, Puri, Navadvip, Santipura, and Śrīkandha). Through his father, Śivānanda Sena, he had extensive contact with these communities and most likely knew their leaders. Gaura-gaṇoddeśa-dīpikā “perhaps best reflects the ecumenical spirit he imbibed from his father,” who annually united Caitanya’s many followers. (p. 52) The book, based on the testimony of devotees in Bengal, Orissa, and Mathura, indicates how Kavi-karṇapūra and his contemporaries saw Śrī Caitanya’s companions. In two hundred verses, the book lists Śrī Caitanya’s associates and “provides their identities in Kṛṣṇa’s eternal play in the transcendent Vrindavan.” (p. 43) The work had a profound and pervasive impact. “Few texts have shaped the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition’s self-understanding so markedly,” and this is the book “by which he is perhaps most popularly known in contemporary Caitanya Vaiṣṇava circles.” (p. 68) Kavi-karṇapūra’s two works on Śrī Caitanya deeply influenced Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, the author of the *Caitanya-caritāmṛta*. (p. 63) Kavi-karṇapūra’s drama is the only hagiography quoted in the *Caitanya-caritāmṛta*. Most of the quoted verses praise Rūpa, Sanātana, and Raghunātha Dāsa, three of the six Vrindavan Gosvāmīs. Kavi-karṇapūra’s influence on Kṛṣṇadasa, however, went “beyond these dozen quotes. As [scholars] have pointed out, much of the second *(madhya-līlā)* and third part *(antya-līlā)* of the *Caitanya-caritāmṛta* can be traced back” to Kavi-karṇapūra’s narrative frameworks. (p. 63) Kavi-karṇapūra is revered by the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas as one of their best poets, “blessed with his extraordinary poetic talent by Caitanya himself.” (p. 7) Nowhere is Kavi-karṇapūra’s standing as a poet “as strongly established and praised as in the *Caitanya-caritāmṛta*, where three little anecdotes created the image all future Vaiṣṇavas had of him.” (p. 68) Kṛṣṇadāsa held Kavi-karṇapūra in high esteem because of what happened to him in Śrī Caitanya’s presence. Caitanya told Śivānanda Sena what to name the baby when he was still in the womb. The following year in Puri, when Śivānanda introduced the baby, Caitanya put his toe in the baby’s mouth. *(*Caitanya-caritāmṛta**, *Antya* 12.50) A few years later, on one occasion Caitanya repeatedly asked the child to chant the name of Kṛṣṇa, but the boy remained silent despite his embarrassed father’s attempts to induce him to say Kṛṣṇa’s name. Śrī Caitanya’s intimate companion Svarūpa Dāmodara addressed Śrī Caitanya and explained, “You have instructed this child to chant the name of Kṛṣṇa as a *mantra*, and he therefore does not say the name in front of everyone, but recites it within his mind.” *(*Caitanya-caritāmṛta**, *Antya* 16.71–72) A few days later, Śrī Caitanya asked the boy to speak, upon which Paramānanda Dāsa extemporaneously composed a Sanskrit verse in the āryā meter: > śravasoḥ kuvalayam akṣṇor añjanam > uraso mahendra-maṇi-dāma > vṛndāvana-ramaṇīnāṁ maṇḍanam > akhilaṁ harir jayati “The blue lotus on their ears, the kohl on their eyes, the sapphire necklace on their chest – all glories to Hari, the entire ornament of the women of Vrindavan.” (p. 30) That an uneducated seven-year-old exhibited poetic genius was taken by those present as a proof of the greatness of Śrī Caitanya’s grace, the glory of His mercy. *(Caitanya-caritāmṛta*, *Antya* 16.73–76) “Kavi-karṇapūra himself does not mention the incident, but he does claim to be blessed by Caitanya.” (p. 30) “Vaiṣṇavas depict him as an extraordinary devotee, who as a mere boy attained the grace of God and shared this divine gift with others through his poetry.” (p. 68) Aside from these few substantial anecdotes, almost nothing is told of his youth or adulthood. Later authors retold these incidents to explain Kavi-karṇapūra’s singular position. Viśvanātha Cakravartī, “the most influential theologian in the Caitanya tradition after the Vrindavan Gosvāmīs,” starts his commentary on Kavi-karṇapūra’s Ānanda-vṛndāvana by writing that Caitanya’s toe “invested the child with poetic powers, by giving him the essence of true poetry—devotional rasa . . . although ‘the skill of a divine poet’ . . . was not revealed until he was asked by Caitanya . . . and the boy composed extemporaneously the couplet in praise of Kṛṣṇa.” (pp. 31–2) The little known of Kavi-karṇapūra’s adulthood suggests that he probably married and lived in Bengal until the 1570s. His *guru* influence on him was profound, which suggests that he must have lived a considerable time with Śrīnātha in Kumarahatta. The biographies of Śrīnivāsa and Narottama Dāsa, who spread the teachings of the Vrindavan Gosvāmīs in Bengal at the end of the century, mention Kavi-karṇapūra as an honored guest at large devotional gatherings organized by them in four cities. He was also said to be present at the deathbed of Caitanya’s senior associate Advaita Ācārya. By examining the way the tradition variously viewed Kavi-karṇapūra, we see that he was the most prolific author among Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas in Bengal and among the most popular. He was the most prominent of several Bengali authors who wrote in Sanskrit, and he also wrote theology. He was the only author of that period to write two lengthy biographical works on Śrī Caitanya and, besides Murāri Gupta, the only other to do so in Sanskrit. The wealthy environment in which he grew up made possible his training in classical Sanskrit poetry, poetics, grammar, logic, and Vaiṣṇava theology. He wrote his first book as a teenager; in adulthood, with an immense command of Sanskrit, and at ease with the classical poetic conventions, he shone as a virtuoso, in graceful verses, ornate prose passages, and the ingenuity of dramatic action. *Early History of Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism* The *Caitanya-caritāmṛta* (1.10.107) lists Śrīnātha Paṇḍita, Kavi-karṇapūra’s *guru*, as the forty-ninth branch of “the Caitanya tree.” Kavi-karṇapūra writes about Śrīnātha Paṇḍita in the drama Caitanya-candradoya: Advaita introduced Śrīnātha to Śrī Caitanya, and Śrī Caitanya asked Svarūpa Damodara to befriend him. Advaita and Svarūpa Dāmodara were Śrīnātha’s teachers, so their theology passed from Śrīnātha to Kavi-karṇapūra. Kavi-karṇapūra’s work shows the development of the theology of these Bengali Vaiṣṇavas. The important works of the Vrindavan Vaiṣṇavas did not reach Bengal until near the end of the sixteenth century, and thus it’s unlikely that Kavi-karṇapūra knew the Vrindavan Gosvāmīs’ works when he completed his major works in the 1570s. The Vrindavan theology, being more systematic and comprehensive, shaped the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition from the seventeenth century onward, and the unique takes of the Bengali school were not further developed. Śrīnātha is best known as the author of a commentary on the *Bhāgavata*. Very few manuscripts of Śrīnātha’s almost forgotten *Bhāgavata* commentary survive. It was published only twice (most recently in the 1950s). It is undated but could be the earliest commentary on the *Bhāgavata* from the Caitanya tradition, and it certainly reflects the early intellectual development of the tradition in Bengal. The title of Śrīnātha’s commentary, Caitanya-mata-mañjuṣā, means “the treasure chest containing the ideas of Caitanya.” The hermeneutical strategy in Śrīnātha’s commentary is to show that the entire *Bhāgavata* teaches the ideas of Caitanya mentioned in its famous opening verse. Quoted and explained fifty times by Śrīla Prabhupāda, ISKCON’s founder-*ācārya*, it is often wrongly attributed to Viśvanātha Cakravartī, because Śrīnātha Paṇḍita was also known as Śrīnātha Cakravartī. The son of Vraja’s king [Kṛṣṇa] is the worshipable Supreme Personality of Godhead. His abode is Vrindavan. The lovely method of worship performed by the *gopīs* is the highest. The scripture Bhāgavata is the spotless means of knowledge, and love, *prema*, is the ultimate goal of life. This is Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s thought, and for us there is nothing other than this.3 Kavi-karṇapūra is “the first author to fully articulate the doctrine of the ‘five principles’ (*pañca-tattva*),” the quinary manifestation of Kṛṣṇa who teaches the world devotion. (p. 52) These five are Caitanya, the form of the devotee (*bhakta-rūpa*); Nityānanda, the Lord’s personal manifestation (*svarūpa-prakāśa*); Advaita, the Lord’s partial descent (*aṁśa-avatāra*); Gadādhara, the Lord’s potency who is a devotee (*bhakta-śakti*); and the Lord’s devotees headed by Śrīvāsa (*īśa-bhaktān*). Kavi-karṇapūra claims that this notion originates with Svarūpa Dāmodara. Śrī Caitanya is Kṛṣṇa Himself, now in the role of His own devotee; Nityānanda is Kṛṣṇa’s brother, Balarāma, or Saṅkarṣaṇa, the servant God who facilitates devotion; Advaita is Sadāśiva, the avatāra of Kṛṣṇa, who is both identical to and different from Kṛṣṇa; Gadādhara embodies Kṛṣṇa’s potency Rādhārāṇī, the embodiment of Vraja prema, love for Kṛṣṇa; and Śrīvāsa is Nārada, the great devotee. *Kavi-karṇapūra* is thus important for understanding the early history of Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism. He furthers the teachings of his *guru* and prominent Bengali Vaiṣṇavas, whose thought developed independently of the Vrindavan Gosvāmīs. *Kavi-karṇapūra*’s greatly respected works helped shape the tradition, though he was primarily a poet, not a theologian, as his title “*Kavi-karṇapūra*” attests. *NOTES* 1. Richard Eaton’s The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 describes the political clashes. Afghans came to Bengal in 1537 and overthrew the Shah Sultanate. Around that time Humayan’s Mughal army from Delhi also invaded Bengal. The Afghans fought Mughals for the rest of the century. Gajapati Prataparudra’s dynasty in Orissa quickly faded, so Mukundadeva, a former army commander, became the king in 1557; he allied with Humayan’s son and successor, Akbar, and was at war with the Afghans in Bengal. Eleven years later, the Afghans captured the Jagannātha temple, and they came to rule all of Orissa after Mukundadeva died. Akbar conquered the Afghani capital in northern Bengal in 1574, beginning Bengal’s Mughal era, which stabilized in 1610, during the reign of Akbar’s son. After the Mughal annexation of Orissa in 1592, Jagannātha (“Lord of the universe”) became reinstated in the temple. 2. Rasa literally means “taste” or “sap.” 3. For Śrīnatha to show that the entire Bhāgavata teaches these teachings of Śrī Caitanya, he “admits that he often offers novel interpretations and sometimes goes against widely established readings of the text,” but he justifies these by references to various scriptures and to specific authoritative grammatical rules or different breakings of the connected words. (p. 50) *Tattvavit Dāsa recently co-edited the revamped and revived ISKCON Studies Journal (Vol 12, 2021), published in Belgium. ICJ will appear annually. This article is part of a book review he wrote for the 2022 ICJ.* *Rembert Lutjeharms (Gopīnāthācārya Dāsa) is a teacher of Hinduism and Sanskrit and Research Lecturer at the Oxford Center for Hindu Studies and an editor of the Journal of Hindu Studies, published by Oxford University Press.* Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Volunteer *Lord Kṛṣṇa excels everyone in everything, including service to others.* by Viśākhā Devī Dāsī *Lord Kṛṣṇa makes promises, obliging Himself to fulfill them.* A volunteer freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task. In other words, a volunteer chooses to do something as opposed to being obliged or mandated to do it. I may not want to go to school or work, but I’m obliged to by the state and my parents, in the case of school, or financial obligations and family pressure in the case of work. In my free time, however, I may volunteer at a thrift store or church, the Salvation Army, or a youth soccer league. Then I’m doing something because I want to do it; I’m a volunteer. Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is not obliged to act. Since no one is equal or superior to Him, no one can mandate that He take part in any enterprise or undertake any task. So why does He come to this world and perform pastimes? Because He voluntarily chooses to. He makes Vrindavan His residence, and there He has sweet relationships and activities with His friends and relatives, with the cows, and even with the trees and other nonmoving entities. In this way Kṛṣṇa is the supreme volunteer, as He is neither obliged nor mandated to do anything He does. *Kṛṣṇa’s Self-Prescribed Duties* This, however, is only one of several ways to view Kṛṣṇa’s activities. Kṛṣṇa makes two famous statements in the *Bhagavad-gītā* that relate to whether or not He is the supreme volunteer. One is the following: > paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ > vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām > dharma-saṁsthāpanārthāya > sambhavāmi yuge yuge “To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium.” *(Gītā* 4.8) Kṛṣṇa gives Himself several tasks and responsibilities. In His own estimation He is duty-bound to protect saintly persons, to overwhelm the godless, and to redirect society toward abiding by dharma, or God-given laws. Moments later in the *Gītā* He says, > ye yathā māṁ prapadyante > tāṁs tathaiva bhajāmy aham > mama vartmānuvartante > manuṣyāḥ pārtha sarvaśaḥ “As all surrender unto Me, I reward them accordingly. Everyone follows My path in all respects, O son of Pṛthā.” *(Gītā* 4.11) Kṛṣṇa fully reciprocates with each of us. The more we turn to Him for shelter and inspiration, the more He turns to us to give that shelter and inspiration. In fact, Kṛṣṇa manifests Himself to His devotee in a way that exactly corresponds to that devotee’s affection for Him. Lord Caitanya said, “Different forms are manifested due to different attachments of different devotees. Actually the Lord is one, but He appears in different forms just to satisfy His devotees.” *(Caitanya-caritāmṛta*, *Madhya* 9.155) By appearing in these diverse ways, is Kṛṣṇa acting voluntarily or involuntarily? Voluntarily, because Kṛṣṇa has made an independent choice to be bound by the love of His devotees. Again from Lord Caitanya: “Lord Kṛṣṇa’s mercy is dependent only on affection. Being obliged only by affection, Lord Kṛṣṇa acts very independently.” *(Caitanya-caritāmṛta*, *Madhya* 10.139) Śrīla Prabhupāda comments, “Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is merciful, but His mercy does not depend on mundane rules and regulations. He is dependent only on affection and nothing else.” Sanātana Gosvāmī corroborates this understanding a number of times in his own commentary on his Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta: • “Kṛṣṇa’s most wonderful qualities are His concern for His devotees and His submission to their control.” (1.7.3–4, Commentary) • “Kṛṣṇa’s love for the gopīs deliberately shows to everyone the greatest feature of His transcendental personality—His voluntary submission to the control of His dearest devotees.” (1.7.84, Commentary) • Kṛṣṇa says, “I am ruled by their [the Vraja-vāsīs] desires.” Commentary: “He is proud of Himself for having the great treasure of the Vraja-vāsīs’ love.” (1.7.91) • And He says, “I can never fully repay these devotees, and so I am utterly indebted to them.” Commentary: “Kṛṣṇa is the all-powerful Supreme Lord. At His command are boundless energies, ready to fulfill His every desire. But He cannot repay His debt of gratitude to His devotees in Śrī Vṛndāvana. Thus He constantly looks for small favors He can do for them as tokens of His affection.” (1.7.93) Kṛṣṇa feels so obliged to His devotees that not only does He come to this world to protect them, but He comes in the particular form they desire. Sanātana Gosvāmī writes, “God in His original from is a young, playful cowherd, and in this form He enjoys His original pleasure. When the Supreme Lord appears in any other form, that appearance is secondary, manifested to satisfy particular devotees.” (1.7.154–155, Commentary) *Kṛṣṇa’s Promise* Reading of Kṛṣṇa’s powerful declarations of love for and voluntary submission to His devotees, I think, “Kṛṣṇa’s reciprocation of His devotees’ love is glorious and wondrous. But I’m not much of a devotee, I don’t love Kṛṣṇa, so all these statements don’t apply to me.” How much do these statements apply to beginners on the devotional path? Nārada Muni addresses this question in *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* (1.5.17): “One who has forsaken his material occupations to engage in the devotional service of the Lord may sometimes fall down while in an immature stage, yet there is no danger of his being unsuccessful.” From Śrīla Prabhupāda’s purport: “Even though one falls down from the prescribed duties of devotional service, he will never forget the lotus feet of the Lord.” If the fallen devotee doesn’t forget Kṛṣṇa, then Kṛṣṇa won’t forget His devotee, for that’s His promise: His relationships are fully reciprocal. In other words, the more I voluntarily and wholeheartedly engage in devotional service to Kṛṣṇa, free of interruptions and material motivations, the more He will voluntarily come closer to me, reciprocating my efforts and fulfilling my heart’s deepest yearning. He will do that because, voluntarily, He has promised to do so. And He is bound by His promises to His devotees. He cannot but fulfill those promises. *Visakha Devī Dāsī has been writing for BTG since 1973. The author of six books, she is the temple president at Bhaktivedanta Manor in the UK. She and her husband, Yadubara Dāsa, produce and direct films, most recently the biopic on the life of Śrīla Prabhupāda Hare Kṛṣṇa! The Mantra, the Movement, and the Swami Who Started It All. Visit her website at OurSpiritualJourney.com.* How Do We Pray to Kṛṣṇa? *Some guidance in executing one of the nine processes of devotional service.* by Vraja Vihārī Dāsa *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* presents prayers by great devotees of the Lord that can guide us in our own life of prayer. “Therefore, although I was born in a demoniac family, I may without a doubt offer prayers to the Lord with full endeavor, as far as my intelligence allows. Anyone who has been forced by ignorance to enter the material world may be purified of material life if he offers prayers to the Lord and hears the Lord’s glories.” (Śrī Prahlādā to Lord Narasiṁhadeva, *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam*, 7.9.12) I couldn’t grapple with the shocking news. “Cancer has spread fast; he has only a few more days in this body,” the doctor revealed to us. Our friend Stoka Kṛṣṇa Dāsa was thirty-four years old, and his wife had just delivered a baby girl. “This isn’t fair,” my mind protested. “He has just begun a new life.” As emotions of shock me and sadness churned in my heart, I gathered the strength to visit Stoka Kṛṣṇa. What could I tell him to comfort his heart? I was clueless. To my pleasant surprise, however, he was at ease. Amongst the many things he spoke to me that evening fifteen years ago, his realization of prayer still rings loud in my heart. “If we can’t thank God for all the gifts He gives us when we are healthy, we’ll fail to remember Him when He starts taking it all away.” We receive abundant blessings in our lives. Our health, finances, and family, besides many daily experiences, are God’s benedictions on us. However, one day it’s all going to end; everything we hold dear in our lives will be taken away from us. And our spiritual success depends on how grateful we are as we leave this body and enter the afterlife. But it is extremely difficult to practice gratitude when things we are attached to are snatched away from us, especially if we haven’t thanked God when we received them in the first place. Therefore scriptures teach us gratitude and appreciation as the essential elements of prayer. And prayer is a daily practice of sincere *bhakti-yogīs*. *Four Elements of Prayer* Often we mistake prayer to mean asking benedictions from God. But *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* reveals that before we ask God to give us what we want, we would do well to examine other components of prayer. A devotee of Kṛṣṇa learns to pray by studying the prayers of stalwart devotees. Queen Kuntī’s prayers in the First Canto of *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* teach us to first praise the Lord, then express our own disqualifications, then thank Him for all He has given us, and finally request Him for the blessings we seek. When Kuntī, the mother of the five Pāṇḍavas, saw that Kṛṣṇa was leaving them to return to His home in Dwarka, she was distraught. Kṛṣṇa had protected her sons during the fratricidal Mahābhārata war and at other times. She wished that Kṛṣṇa would stay with them, and in a desperate attempt to stop him from leaving Hastinapura, she offered her heartfelt prayers. But the first thing she did was not to ask Kṛṣṇa to stay; instead, she glorified Kṛṣṇa’s amazing power of independence, which He exhibits by remaining invisible to all living entities although He’s present in the hearts of all. Kuntī reveals that Kṛṣṇa is like an expert actor who is unrecognizable to the ignorant. She then presents her disqualification to know Kṛṣṇa. She says that she is a simple woman and only highly realized sages can know Him. Śrīla Prabhupāda writes in the purport to this verse that Kṛṣṇa knows one’s sincerity of purpose and one’s simplicity in accepting the Lord’s authority, as exhibited by Kuntī, and that these qualities are more effective than showy, insincere religious fervor. Kuntī Devī thanks Kṛṣṇa for all the help He provided her family. Often we express thanks to God for everything He has done for us, and this is usually said in a general sense. Kuntī, however, explains in specific details how Kṛṣṇa protected her and her sons from many dangers. She thus teaches that gratitude is shown more by a specific delineation of the Lord’s blessings upon us than by a general expression of gratitude. Remembrance of God’s specific kindness upon us helps us connect to His love on a deeper level. Towards the end of her prayers, Kuntī Devī asks Kṛṣṇa to break all of her material bonds and allow her to fix her mind exclusively on Him. She wants no distraction on the path of devotional service to the Lord. *Why Pure Devotees Don’t Ask for Material Blessings* Prahlāda displayed the same mood as Kuntī Devī. When the Lord asked him to accept a benediction, he plainly refused, saying he was not interested in a business relationship with God. He wanted to serve the Lord for His pleasure, and not for anything in return. Upon the Lord’s insistence, Prahlāda finally accepted a blessing, but not for himself; he asked that his father be pardoned and granted liberation. The Sixth Canto of *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* reveals the prayers of Vṛtrāsura. He emphatically declares that he doesn’t want an unrivalled kingdom or yogic powers. He desires neither liberation from the cycle of birth and death nor opulence greater than that of the heavenly abodes. He simply seeks to be united with God through loving service. Pure devotees of Kṛṣṇa refuse to take material gifts from Him because they know that all blessings in the material world are temporary and pregnant with suffering. This world guarantees repeated misery and impediments as we seek enjoyment. Misery can be defined as getting what you don’t want and not getting what you want. *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam*, in many instances, reveals this nature of the material world. For example, Mahārāja Aṅga was unhappy because his son, Vena, was cruel. Even as a child, Vena would kill his friends during casual play. Aṅga was so fed up in his failed attempt to reform his son that he renounced his kingdom. In stark contrast, Hiraṇyakaśipu was blessed with a saintly son, Prahlāda, yet he lamented that his son wasn’t an expert demon. How happy he and Aṅga would have been if they could exchange places! And we hear of King Citraketu, who despite having many wives was miserable because none of them could bear him a son. Each one of these persons described in the Bhāgavatam suffered by not getting what they wanted. Therefore Śrīla Prabhupāda gave us the best benediction to ask from God—the opportunity to serve Him selflessly. Dhruva had desired a kingdom greater than that of his grandfather, Brahmā, and he was determined to get great material wealth. Yet when the Lord appeared before him, he regretted cultivating these desires. He candidly told the Lord that by gaining an audience with Him, he was now getting a precious diamond although he had all the while been seeking only broken pieces of glass. *But I Am Not a Pure Devotee; I Have Material Desires!* Like Dhruva, we can begin our devotional prayers from the platform of honesty. If we have material desires, rather than artificially denying them, we can pray to God for the purification of our heart. And if the Lord desires, He will fulfill our wish. As a new apprentice in the temple ashram, I desired to secure the first rank in our monthly *Bhagavad-gītā* exams. I knew this was a silly desire to cultivate, given the fact that the brahmacārīs in the ashram had left all material pursuits simply to serve the Lord and His devotees. To compete with them, that too on a trivial exam, didn’t behoove me. I knew it wasn’t right. Still, my academic and competitive background urged me to compete with them. Unable to resolve this inner conflict, I approached my mentor in the ashram for guidance. His words of wisdom have guided me ever since. He said it’s better we honestly confess to God our desire, such as my desire to come first in the exams. However, he added, we can include a small petition at the end. We can tell Kṛṣṇa, “O Kṛṣṇa, I am so foolish that I seek to come first in these exams, and I really want this desire fulfilled. But, O Kṛṣṇa, please give me intelligence so that next time when I come in front of You, I request blessings that will be in my best interest. Let me seek benedictions that will help me come closer to You. Let me ask for things that will help me serve Your sincere devotees.” A prayer like this helps us authentically seek our desires, and yet we express our sincerity to seek something higher. *How Can We Grow in Our Prayers?* Aryaman was twelve years old when I saw him rush for his exams with his Deity of Lord Jagannātha in one hand and his pen box in the other. I asked him why he was taking the Lord for his school tests. He said he always carried his Lord with him. As soon as the examiner hands out the question paper, Aryaman first shows the paper to his Deity, who sits on the table, watching His devotee write the exam. After he has finished answering the tests, he again shows his answer paper to the Lord and then submits it to the exam monitor. This is a simple way he devised to become God conscious and evolve in his prayerful relationship with Kṛṣṇa. His parents have helped him creatively remember Kṛṣṇa in his own unique way. The essence of all the rules and regulations we practice in Kṛṣṇa consciousness is to always remember Kṛṣṇa and never forget Him. We can accept whatever works best to help us remember the Lord. Unlike Aryaman, for you it could be singing bhajanas or dressing the Deities or chanting the holy names or hearing *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* classes. Whatever works. Somehow or the other we need to fix our minds on Kṛṣṇa. Gratitude in daily life is yet another practical way to improve our prayers. If you are thirsty and someone offers you a cup of water, you’ll most likely say thank you. But isn’t God supplying unlimited water, air, heat, sunshine, etc., daily? Awareness of the daily gifts, especially what we have received in the last twenty-four hours, is an excellent way to keep our gratitude practices fresh and exciting. A question now stares me in the face: While Stoka Kṛṣṇa Dāsa could see God’s love even in his cancer, can I see Kṛṣṇa’s love in my good health? It’s time I celebrate God’s daily gifts with gratitude, for one day soon I’ll have to thank Him for a life that quickly passed and filled me with abundant blessings. But did I even realize I received so many blessings? *Vraja Vihārī Dāsa, a disciple of His Holiness Rādhānath Swami, has served full time at ISKCON Chowpatty since 1999. He has an honors degree in economics and a master's in international finance. He teaches Kṛṣṇa consciousness to youth and the congregation and has written four books. You can read his daily reflections at www.yogaformodernage.com.* From the Editor *Nityānanda Prabhu: Śrī Caitanya’s Eternal Brother* The Vedic scriptures say that in the beginning Kṛṣṇa alone existed—“alone” here being figurative, because Kṛṣṇa is never actually alone. He is always accompanied by His devotees, whether in Goloka Vṛndāvana or Vaikuṇṭha. And when Kṛṣṇa descends to the material world as various avatars, His closest associates come with Him. For example, when Kṛṣṇa Himself appeared on earth fifty centuries ago, He brought along His close friends and family and other prominent devotees of Goloka Vṛndāvana. The same is true of Kṛṣṇa’s descent as Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu some five hundred years ago. The Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava poet Śrīla Narottma Dāsa Ṭhākura has written in one song, “Anyone who has understood that the associates of Lord Caitanya are eternally liberated souls immediately becomes eligible to enter the abode of Kṛṣṇa.” All of Kṛṣṇa’s associates consider themselves His servants, so they take on roles in His pastimes in line with His wishes. For example, to relish His own role as a devotee of Kṛṣṇa, Lord Caitanya hid His identity as Kṛṣṇa. Therefore most of His dear associates who appeared on earth to assist Him in His pastimes as a devotee did not know, at least early on, who He was or who they were in their eternal identities in Goloka Vṛndāvana. One exception was Nityānanda Prabhu, who is Lord Balarāma, Lord Kṛṣṇa’s elder brother and first expansion. Nityānanda descended some years before Lord Caitanya, and He knew that at some point the Lord would begin His saṅkīrtana movement. Nityānanda Prabhu spent twenty years traveling to holy places, waiting for that moment to arrive. He was in Vrindavan when He understood (He’s God, after all) that it was time for Him to join Lord Caitanya in Bengal. In *Śrī* *Caitanya-bhāgavata*, Vṛndāvana Dāsa Ṭhākura writes that, like Lord Caitanya, during this descent Nityānanda Prabhu’s mission was to deliver the fallen souls of this age through the chanting of the holy names of the Lord. But even though He could have begun His mission earlier, on His own, He waited for Lord Caitanya to launch His movement, because He always considers Himself the servant of Lord Kṛṣṇa and felt it would inappropriate to take the lead Himself. The most prominent characteristic of Lord Caitanya is His magnanimity. Whereas Lord Kṛṣṇa, in His *Bhagavad-gītā*, demanded surrender, as Lord Caitanya He freely gave devotion to Himself to everyone He met. And although Kṛṣṇa rid the earth of the wicked by killing them, Lord Caitanya mercifully purified the wicked, killing their sinful tendencies but not their bodies. Once, however, Lord Caitanya was so provoked by an offense to Nityānanda by two reprobates that He was about to kill them, even invoking His invincible disc weapon. But Nityānanda Prabhu stopped Him, reminding Him that in this incarnation He was on a mercy mission in an age full of reprobates. Thus Nityānanda Prabhu is said to be even more merciful than the all-merciful Caitanya Mahāprabhu. A central principle of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism is that the goal of attaining service to the lotus feet of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa can be achieved only by the blessings of Caitanya Mahāprabhu, who is Kṛṣṇa in the mood of Rādhārāṇī, His greatest devotee. And to get the blessings of Lord Caitanya, one needs the mercy of Lord Nityānanda. Therefore Narottama Dāsa Ṭhākura sings, “Unless one takes shelter under the shade of the lotus feet of Lord Nityānanda, it will be very difficult to approach Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa.” Lord Nityānanda’s shelter is attained by service to the mission of His master, Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Hare Kṛṣṇa. —*Nāgarāja Dāsa, Editor* Vedic Thoughts In the material world the spirit of enjoyment of the living entities by dint of their own actions *(karma)* gradually fades by the laws of nature, and thus the illusory energy dictates in the ears of the conditioned souls that they should become one with the Lord. This is the last snare of the illusory energy. When the last illusion is also cleared off by the mercy of the Lord, the living entity again becomes reinstated in his original position and thus becomes actually liberated. His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 2.10.12, Purport The distance between our self and our gross and subtle bodies gradually diminishes when we chant the holy name, and we soon revive awareness of our original constitutional position. When we are thus self-realized, the Lord’s pure holy name will manifest in our heart, and we will directly see Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s transcendental form. Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura *Amṛta-vāṇī* 94 Only a very fortunate *jīva* [within the womb] praises the Lord and is delivered. Not all *jīva*s gain knowledge of the Lord in this way. Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī *Bhakti-sandarbha*, Anuccheda 151 All the Vedas, the smṛti scriptures, the character of those who know the Vedas, the conduct of saintly persons, and the satisfaction of the self are the roots [proofs] of *dharma*. *Manu-smṛti* 2.6 The sacred sounds, sights, and narrations of the spiritual realm are described in the Ṛg Veda, under which all the demigods have taken shelter. What benefit will persons who do not know this truth get from studying the Ṛg? Those who have realized this truth, however, revel in their great fortune. *Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad* 4.8 The Supreme Personality of Godhead is so kind to the conditioned souls that if they call upon Him by speaking His holy name, even unintentionally or unwillingly, the Lord is inclined to destroy innumerable sinful reactions in their hearts. Therefore, when a devotee who has taken shelter of the Lord’s lotus feet chants the holy name of Kṛṣṇa with genuine love, the Lord can never give up the heart of such a devotee. Śrī Havir Ṛṣi *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 11.2.55 One must conquer the modes of passion and ignorance by developing the mode of goodness, and then one must become detached from the mode of goodness by promoting oneself to the platform of *śuddha-sattva*. All this can be automatically done if one engages in the service of the spiritual master with faith and devotion. In this way one can conquer the influence of the modes of nature. Śrī Nārada Muni *Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam* 7.15.25 COVER: When Lord Viṣṇu appeared before Dhruva, He touched the boy’s head with His transcendental conch shell, empowering him to speak eloquent prayers. (Painting by Bharadvāja Dāsa, Muralīdhara Dāsa, and Jadurāṇī Dāsī.) BTG56-02, 2022