The Nectar Chronicles: Part 6

Inspired by the "Nectar of Devotion" lecture series given by His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada from October 20-November 13, 1972 at the Radha-Damodara Temple in Vrndavana, India

All of these lectures are available for download at ISKCON Desire Tree.

Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu says that bhakti is like an ocean of nectar, and just by tasting one drop, we can understand the essential qualities of the ocean.

Speaking this evening to his tender young disciples, Prabhupada adds to this:

"Just like by tasting one drop of sea water we can understand the taste of the whole ocean, similarly Caitanya Mahäprabhu described a small portion of Bhakti-rasämåta-sindhu. Bhakti rasa amåta. Bhakti, devotional service, there is a rasa, taste, and the taste is amåta, eternal."

Thus, our vision must become eternal, and what we desire, what we strive to achieve and to be, must also become eternal. The bhakti-marg is the only surefire, bonafide method to achieve this permanent grace. It is a path laid out to us by the acaryas and which is not bound by any material limitations we may put on it.

We must become ahaituki-the servants of Krsna that do not serve Him out of any material cause or motive, but out of a deep, dynamic, realized spiritual love. Prabhupada adds:

"This is real bhakti. Therefore this bhakti word is applicable only in relationship with God, or Kåñëa. In the material world, there cannot be any use of the word bhakti. Because here the so-called devotional service is motivated. So this bhakti word is monopolized by Kåñëa, and nobody else"

It is a monopoly that cannot be torn apart by cunning and keen anti-trust lawyers. It is a monopoly of sweetness on the very core of our hearts that is the very essence of our being and the very essence of reality. It is the most favorable thing we can possess and express, and this is the key: to serve Krsna favorably as He desires.

Like Arjuna, we face a great battle, an internal battle against our own demons, against our own strict bondage in pride, envy, lust, illusion, and comfort. Like Arjuna, we may come up with so many so-called logical, reasonable, and compassionate reasons not to engage in our battle, which appear favorable to us.

But like Arjuna, using the best expression of our minute free will, we must listen to the words of Krsna, to the words of his teachers, seeing and hearing of their examples, of His glories, in order to understand that what is favorable for us.

Prabhupada says:

"So we have to see what is favorable to Krsna, not sense gratification, not favorable to me. Or to my country, or to my society. No self-interest. Only Krsna's interest. That is bhakti."

In the Adi-Lila of the Caitanya-Caritamrta, Krsnadasa Kaviraja Goswami writes:

The desire to gratify one's own senses is kāma [lust], but the desire to please the senses of Lord Kṛṣṇa is prema [love].

In the purport, Prabhupada writes:

All the regulative principles in the Vedas pertaining to desires for popularity, fatherhood, wealth and so on are different phases of sense gratification. Acts of sense gratification may be performed under the cover of public welfare, nationalism, religion, altruism, ethical codes, Biblical codes, health directives, fruitive action, bashfulness, tolerance, personal comfort, liberation from material bondage, progress, family affection or fear of social ostracism or legal punishment, but all these categories are different subdivisions of one substance — sense gratification. All such good acts are performed basically for one's own sense gratification, for no one can sacrifice his personal interest while discharging these much-advertised moral and religious principles. But above all this is a transcendental stage in which one feels himself to be only an eternal servitor of Kṛṣṇa, the absolute Personality of Godhead. All acts performed in this sense of servitude are called pure love of God because they are performed for the absolute sense gratification of Śrī Kṛṣṇa. However, any act performed for the purpose of enjoying its fruits or results is an act of sense gratification. Such actions are visible sometimes in gross and sometimes in subtle forms.

This is our battleground: the fertile space of the material mind, imagination, and intelligence in which all these gross and subtle desires for sense gratification can grow. If we allow them to grow, then our own capacity to act in such a way that is favorable to and for Krsna will be clouded over.

This path of full, loving surrender to Krsna, as prescribed in the Bhagavad-Gita, is the only way to remove these weeds from our heart and from our being. Chanting the Holy Name, avoiding offenses, following the rules and regs, and most importantly, taking shelter of our spiritual master and spiritual authorities, if done with sincerity and determination, guarantees our success.

In the Nectar of Devotion, Prabhupada writes:

"One has to learn Kåñëa consciousness or pure devotional service from the authorities by spontaneous loving service."

And he adds in tonight's lecture:

"This service should be spontaneous, not forced. Just like a father loves his son spontaneously. A young man likes to love a young girl spontaneously. So bhakti should be like that. As soon as one hears the name of Krsna, immediately, spontaneously, he should be ready to serve Him. That is pure devotion. Not that forced. In the beginning, we have to force, that "You rise early in the morning. There is mangala ärätrika. You have to perform it." But when this function will be done spontaneously, "Oh, this is the time to offer mangala ärätrika to my Lord..." That is wanted."

Fake it until you make it...become conscious before you come Krsna Conscious. We have to force ourselves in the beginning because we are in such an unnatural state of mind, so far from and so much covered from our original state. Our meditation on chanting the Holy Name must be to train our unwieldy mind to always think of Krsna. We must fill our mind, our intelligence, and our very being with the Holy Name.

And in our sincere efforts to serve His devotees, our fellow spiritual warriors in this great battle of our times, we will learn humility, we will face the necessary purification, and we will taste the bliss of authentic loving exchanges and relationships, a taste that is truly beyond this world.

Further from the Nectar of Devotion:

"This devotional service is a sort of civilization. It is not simply inaction for people who like to be inactive or devote their time to silent meditation. There are many different methods for people who want this, but civilization of Krsna consciousness is different. The particular word used by Srila Rüpa Gosvämi is this connection is anusilana, or cultivation by following the predecessor teachers, or äcäryas. As soon as we say 'cultivation,' we must refer to activity. Without activity, consciousness alone cannot help us.' "

Prabhupada adds:

"I have to do this. My Lord will be pleased. So I have to do this." Activity. But if I have no idea what is Lord, what does He want, how He's pleased, if we do not know all these things, naturally there will be no activity."

The method is simple: to know Krsna we must simply hear about Krsna from the authorized source, the book bhagavat and the person bhagavat, then our dormant natural state of attraction to Krsna will arise. Prabhupada concludes with these words:

"So anyone who is working for spreading Krsna consciousness, he has no other motive than to satisfy Krsna. He has no other motive than to satisfy the representative of Krsna.

The Wisdom of Radhanath Swami: The Sincere Footsteps At Our Doorsteps:

"The Sincere Footsteps at Our Doorstep"

From a darshan with the monks of the Bhaktivedanta Ashram, NYC, on 7-23-09

As our humble temple here in the East Village blossoms into The Bhakti Center, a front-line dynamo of progressive outreach and spiritual shelter for the denizens of the universal capital of the material energy, Manhattan, we look for guidance to the realized teachers whose vision propels us forward in a task with so many sublime qualities spiced with grand challenges both expected and unexpected.

The path we must tread is a careful one, requiring the balance of a tightrope walker with the sincere open-bigheartedness of the selfless saint, complete with the layered and authentic sophistication demanded here in one of humanity's most vibrant aesthetic playgrounds

His Holiness Radhanath Swami is one of the great inspirations behind the expansion of our project, following firmly and with great devotion in the footsteps of his beloved spiritual master, our eternal well-wisher and original neighborhood spiritual pioneer and patron, A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada.

In this very same neighborhood where Srila Prabhupada's mission first took root, where the timeless practice of loving devotion to God, bhakti-yoga, first made its presence felt in the contemporary Western world, Radhanath Swami now offers us his energy and presence to fulfill a promise he sees coming over the horizon.

It is a new wave of seekers, a renaissance of authentic children of the Divine ready for real spiritual culture, looking for a community of selfless love, deep wisdom, intelligent realizations, and total mind/body/soul connect that could change the shape and course of the world.

It is our duty to serve this new movement with open hands and hearts, with the warm family atmosphere of a delicious dinner topped with soul-stirring music, with the space to allow tired bodies to stretch out and become renewed, and most importantly of all, with the gift of the soul's eternal life of bliss, the art of bhakti.

Radhanath Swami, in his discourse with us, revealed that we carry within our hearts the deposit of Srila Prabhupada's mission here in NYC, a mission whose depth and openness is so rare in today's world that thrives and collapses in on itself in the name of strife, ruthless competition, and immoral and impersonal understandings of our relationships with each other.

We live in a city that has tasted the terror of what happens when faiths collide with one another, seemingly because of spiritual differences but actually based in the economic, political, and social realities of our time that never seem to fail in causing us to gnash and bear our teeth at one another like wild animals desperate to protect their territory.

The rare depth and openness of our mission, Prabhupada's mission, comes in the desire to help everyone, without discrimination, reach to their spiritual core. The bhakti tradition tells us that this core, the essence of our soul, is a condition of eternal knowledge and bliss, in service to the Divine, to Krsna, and to each other.

It is a condition which belongs to everyone equally, and which is beyond all sectarian strife and material misunderstanding. Radhanath Swami explains this eloquently himself in describing his first encounter with the mission and words of Srila Prabhupada in Bombay in 1970, in this excerpt from his biography The Journey Home.

Radhanath Swami writes:

"He confidently explained how true religion was not the property of any sect, caste, or creed, but the nature of all living beings. Our nature, he said, is to love God, but this love has been forgotten since time immemorial. Such love of God must be unconditional to completely satisfy the self.

'We are spirit souls,' he said, 'but in ignorance, we identify this temporary body with the self.' He went on to explain how the cause of all suffering was forgetfulness of our relationship with God, and how this consciousness could be easily awakened by the chanting of God's names.

In a voice brimming with compassion, he pleaded with the audience to take this message seriously. 'This process,' he said, 'which revives our dormant love of God, is called bhakti-yoga.'"

Srila Prabhupada himself explains this essential nature of his mission in a 1968 letter to Roland Michener, the governor-general of Canada. Prabhupada writes:

Our society (the International Society of Krishna Consciousness) is a non-lucrative organization, whose purpose is to promote the well-being of human society by drawing its attention to God. We are a non-sectarian society, and our members include people from Christian, Jewish and Muslim as well as Hindu faiths. The aim of our society is not to found a new religious sect, but to invoke the living entity's dormant love of God, and thus provide the human society of all faiths with a common platform of clear theistic knowledge and practice.

Members of our society may retain their own respective religious faiths, as our society is meant to establish a clear, practical common formulation of the common ideal of all theists, and to defeat the unnecessary dogmatic wranglings that now divide and invalidate the theistic camp. This common ideal of theism is to develop love of God.

In my own experience so far here in the city, encounters with the spiritually inclined have revealed a real eclectic mix of philosophical and practical viewpoints. It leaves me alternately enthused and confused, excited knowing that so many are ready and willing to bring real spiritual change into their lives and into the lives of others, but also wondering what is our specific approach, true to our tradition, that we can give and serve to this eclectic bunch of seekers.

I asked Radhanath Swami about this concern, and in his typical sweet simplicity, he told us that we should simply have faith that the attractiveness of bhakti, the attractiveness of the essential universality of the soul and its relationship to the Divine that we all share, will break and shine through any ideas that we are too different or specific to be able to share what we have.

In his own words, Radhanath Swami says we should, with taste and discretion, "love them for who they are." It will not do us any good to wage any theological battles, to establish some kind of supremacy in the turf war of religions big and small.

It should not concern us to try and prove that we have the right message and understanding. If we know, and if we feel, that the fruits of bhakti have sprouted and warmed our hearts, and have filled our lives with immense meaning and satisfaction, no matter who we are and where we come from, then it is just simply our own personal example and the example of our community that will allow our new friends to enter into a relationship of trust with us.

In this way, we can begin to serve them with the jewel-like gifts of the bhakti atmosphere, the life of selfless devotion that is the foundation of the real spiritual life and the key to the door that gives our full relationship with God and with each other.

As Radhanath Swami concluded with:

"Our anesthesia is making friends, and the bridge will be hospitality and friendship. Unless people open their hearts, our philosophy does not enter. We have to show people that we care about them.

There will be an explosion of Bhakti in Manhattan. We have to stay together and work together."

By his blessings, and by our effort, and by your support, we can begin to soak the streets of NYC in the essential understanding of the real bliss of a life centered on the soul and on service. And if it happens here in NYC, the hub of the wheel of anything that happens on this Planet Earth, it will happen everywhere else.

http://www.radhanathswami.com/

http://www.thejourneyhomebook.com/

http://www.radhanathmaharaj.net/

Radhanath Swami's Facebook page

His MySpace page

...not like the land of Egypt from which I had come out...

In the light of wisdom, we are able to honestly, with courage and clarity, at the previous foibles of our lives in such a manner as to express and instruct others so that they may not make the same mistake.

In this excerpt from "Seven-Story Mountain", Thomas Merton reveals to us that in our spiritual lives, we must dive deep within, with the desire for a wholesale change to turn our face to God, as we cannot live in the same way, in the same land, as we have done before....

"I had come, like the Jews, through the Red Sea of Baptism. I was entering into a desert...where I would have a chance to give God great glory by simply trusting and obeying Him, and walking in the way that was not according to my own nature and my own judgement. And it would lead me to a land that I could not imagine or understand

It would be a land that was not like the land of Egypt from which I had come out: the land of human nature blinded and fettered by perversity and sin. It would be a land in which the work of man's hands and man's ingenuity counted for little or nothing: but where God would direct all things, and where I would be expected to act so much and so closely under His guidance that it would be as if He thought with my mind, as if He willed with my will.

Baptism had brought with it the obligation to reduce all my natural appetites to subordination to God's will: 'For the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. And they who are in the flesh, cannot please God...and if you live according to the flesh, you shall die, but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live. For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the Sons of God.'

It took me time to find it out: but I write down what I have found out at last, so that anyone who is now in the position that I was in then may read it and know what to do to save himself from great peril and unhappiness.

And to such a one I would say: Whoever you are, the land to which God has brought you is not like the land of Egypt from which you came out. You can no longer live here as you lived there.

Above all, eat your daily Bread without which you cannot live, and come to know Christ Whose Life feeds you in the Host, and He will give you a taste of joys and delights that transcend anything you have ever experienced before, and which will make the transition easy."

The Nectar Chronicles: Part 5

Inspired by the "Nectar of Devotion" lecture series given by His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada from October 20-November 13, 1972 at the Radha-Damodara Temple in Vrndavana, India

All of these lectures are available for download at ISKCON Desire Tree.

Lecture #6
10-27-72

In these lectures by Srila Prabhupada, he is laying out the strongest of all foundations for the endurance and well-being of his neophyte disciples, a foundation firmly rooted in the timeless and inescapable wisdom of the Vedic sastra.

The essence of the Vedic way is to follow the parampara, to be formally and intimately linked up with this chain by the process of diksa, which allows one to transcend all external and internal obstacles, by the fire of one's own enthusiasm and faith, to be restored to one's original, natural spiritual position as the loving servant of Krsna and His devotees.

Prabhupada uses a wonderful analogy in describing the experience of someone who merges into the Brahman effulgence, showing that the Vaisnava is not someone who is interested in simply merging into the ocean, merging into the light, etc. Prabhupada says:

"So the rivers merging into the ocean. Then you must take further consideration that the superficial water mixing with the ocean is again evaporated. The water is evaporated by scorching heat of the sun. Just like now we see cloud in the sky. This is nothing but evaporated water from the sea. So the water which merged into the water and into the ocean of the, water of the ocean, now it is evaporated in the sky. And again it will fall down. And then again glide to the ocean. So this is called avagamana, coming and going, coming and going. But our Vaisnava philosophy is not to merge into the water, but keep your identity and go deep into the water. So that you may not be evaporated."

As a fully cognizant, independent, blissful, eternal drop of the Supreme, it is our greatest pleasure to enter the ocean of the spiritual world and dive deep into it, relating with Krsna and His devotees in this sublime "underwater" atmosphere in endless and increasingly pleasurable loving exchanges of service.

The key to the exchange and enjoyment of these exchanges in our eternal individuality, the personal character we bring to it. The varieties we share which make the "pleasure" of only merging into this ocean look cheap and thin.

Prabhupada continues:

"So our philosophy is that once going into the ocean, no more coming back.

janma karma ca me divyam

evaḿ yo vetti tattvataḥ

tyaktvā dehaḿ punar janma

naiti mām eti so 'rjuna

[Bg. 4.9]. That is our philosophy. If we once go in the spiritual world, we do not like to come back. We stay with Krsna and dance with Him, or play with Him, or serve with, serve Him as tree, as plant, as water, as cows, as land, as cowherd boys, as father, mother, or as gopis. This is our philosophy. Once we go to Krsna, we live forever with Him in either of these capacities. Let me live at Vrndavana in any capacity. It doesn't matter. But live there."
And Prabhupada writes in the Nectar of Devotion:

Let us offer our respectful obeisances to all the great devotees and äcäryas or holy teachers, who are compared with sharks in the great ocean of nectar and who do not care for the various rivers of liberation. Impersonalists are very fond of merging into the supreme, like rivers that come down and merge into the ocean. The ocean can be compared with liberation and the rivers with all the different paths of liberation. The impersonalists are dwelling in the river water, which eventually comes to mix with the ocean. They have no information, however, that within the ocean, as within the rivers, there are innumerable aquatic living entities. The sharks who dwell in the ocean do not care for the rivers which are gliding down into it."

"The devotees eternally live in the ocean of devotional service, and they do not care for the rivers. In other words, those who are pure devotees always remain in the ocean of transcendental loving service to the Lord and have no business with the other processes which are compared to the rivers that only gradually come to the ocean."

This simple grace cannot be found in the halls of speculation, logic, and argument. It is to be found and followed in the example of the acaryas, who stress the importance of mastering the art of the loving exchange, of becoming an adept in giving and receiving the highest sensation, the highest gratification.

Anything less, anything impersonal, is dry and desert-like in comparison to the dance of the Vaisnava sharks in the ocean of prema.

Again we return to the essential foundation to stand on: the inestimable and fully practical wisdom of sastra. Prabhupada quotes from the Caitanya-Caritamrta:

Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu continued, "'Dry arguments are inconclusive. A great personality whose opinion does not differ from others is not considered a great sage. Simply by studying the Vedas, which are variegated, one cannot come to the right path by which religious principles are understood. The solid truth of religious principles is hidden in the heart of an unadulterated, self-realized person. Consequently, as the śāstras confirm, one should accept whatever progressive path the mahājanas advocate.'" CC Madhya 17:186

It is Rupa Goswami's specific example that gives the heft, the bricks, the weight, the solidity to our foundation. Prabhupada shares with us two specific aspects of the words and examples of Rupa Goswami in relation to our duty.

First he shares Rupa Goswami's simple advice that our mind and activities should be satisfied and should not feel any unnecessary need or curiosity to devote time to other paths:

As Prabhupada shares:

"But Rüpa Gosvämi recommends that we should not be deviated by the arguments, karmis, jnanis and yogis. Let them do their own business. We do not care for them. We give them respect as far as possible, but we don't, don't accept the path of karma-jnana-yoga."

And from the Nectar of Devotion, Prabhupada shares with us the most essential point of Rupa Goswami's example; to think of ourselves as humble instruments in the hands of the acaryas with the only goal in mind as to how to best benefit our suffering brothers and sisters in all walks of life. Prabhupada writes:

"The author of Bhakti-rasämåta-sindhu, Srila Rüpa Gosvämi, very humbly submits that he is just trying to spread Krsna consciousness all over the world, although he humbly thinks himself unfit for this work. That should be the attitude of all preachers of the Krsna consciousness movement, following in the footsteps of Srila Rupa Gosvämi. We should never think of ourselves as great preachers, but should always consider that we are simply instrumental to the previous äcäryas, and simply by following in their footsteps, we may be able to do something for the benefit of suffering humanity."

We all look up to those who inspire us, who set the stage, who hit the game-winning shot, who perform the most courageous, impossible, and meaningful acts that last through the generations.

In Krsna Consciousness, this propensity can be dovetailed to the infinite degree. Let us always meditate upon and follow in the footsteps of those great teachers and personalities who acts and words are truly immortal, and who give us the nectar of immortality and the ability to give it to others.

We should simply pray for the determination, faith, and constant opportunity to engage in their service for the real benefit of ourselves and all living entities. There is no higher or better occupation in all of existence.

The Contemplative Side

"Contemplation is the highest expression of man's intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, an awareness of the reality of that Source."

Thomas Merton
New Seeds of Contemplation

The Merton Institute For Contemplative Living
The Thomas Merton Center and International Thomas Merton Society