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Bhakti Yoga-Devotional Service to the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna

Bhakti Yoga-Devotional Service to the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna
Gopis performing Devotional Service to the Lordships Sri Sri Radha Krishna

No reason to feel alone!


No reason to feel alone!

02 Jul 2014 by  Leave a Comment

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 10 May 2014, Bhaktivedanta Manor, England, Caitanya Caritamrta Adi-Lila 8.31)

Lord caitanyaOur position is that we cannot see Krsna; we forget him all the time and don’t see him, and then we think,‘Oh, Krsna, why have you left me alone?!’ Come on! The day you came to the material world, Krsna came with you in the heart as paramatma. He never left us alone, not for a moment; he is always with us, seated on the lotus in the heart.

In the concluding words of the Caitanya Caritamrta –  I like those concluding words – you can read them in the last book of Antya-lila, Srila Prabhupada describes that Krsna is actually personally seated in the heart of his devotee – and he is not alone! Krsna is there in all his various forms and expansions, so it is getting pretty crowded there!

Imagine all the Deities are packed together in the heart. And Prabhupada says, ‘That is not all: Krsna is even present there in the form of the spiritual master and in that way,’ he said, ‘my spiritual master is always present, is always with me.’ Isn’t that nice? I find that so powerful, that final statement in the end.  In that way, we can see that we are never alone as Lord Caitanya is with us every moment


--
Yours
Dinesh

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The lonely vaisnava


The lonely vaisnava

01 Jul 2014 by  5 Comments

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 08 June 2014, Stockholm, Sweden, Srimad Bhagavatam 2.5.14)

unhappy2I used to think, before I came to Krsna consciousness, that now I would join a movement of very like-minded people and that I would feel very intimate friendship. Then, I was shocked to see that that person who I kind of detested for his views, he also had joined! (laughing)

I thought, “How is this possible? Not this guy! How is it possible that he became a devotee!?” Well, because of the universal nature of Krsna consciousness, people of all kinds, from all walks of life, even from opposing world views, can join the Krsna conscious movement and therefore it is not always easy to have that kind of intimate friendship with everyone. We do not!

Some devotees never get beyond colleagues. We do have some friends also, in this movement. With colleagues, it can get very impersonal and very distant with virtually no affection; and therefore we can feel alone, especially if we have not deeply developed our relationship with Krsna. If we have deeply developed our relationship to Krsna, then there we find a satisfaction that nourishes us even when we are alone with people. Then once one is nourished in that relationship, one has to bring it back down to the social platform and begin to develop real relationships with people. But without first going up to Krsna – and first up to Krsna means developing a relationship of attachment to Krsna, intimate interaction with Krsna and always feeling that he is interacting with you – without that, we are on the normal social platform! Then we will only be able to deal with people who are kind of like-minded, and others remain strangers even when they chant Hare Krsna. Then we are a movement of strangers with a few friends because how many people can you relate to, anyway?

Srila-Prabhupada3When we go up in attachment to Krsna and really interact with Krsna closely at every moment, and we bring that down into our relationships with others, then we can become like Prabhupada! He had that capacity. He was not limited by his social background and he could be completely relevant to hippies in America although they were culturally so different and in such a different stage of life and so on… Prabhupada was so relevant and that is what I am talking about because he went to the root of the things. Yes, unless we have that, we will just still be alone because we will just still associate on the level of like-mindedness and the normal social dynamics will still apply. That is what I see and it is all over the world. Loneliness is becoming an issue in our movement…




--
Yours
Dinesh

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Friendship is important

Friendship is important

27 Jan 2014 by  1 Comment

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, June 2011, Stockholm, Sweden, Lecture)

yellow-rose-waterI think that the only thing that can really bond us together is friendship. Just common acceptance of Krsna as the Supreme Lord will bring us together from time to time – we will come together at the temple and festivals – but friendship will take us so much further. Because it is in friendship, real friendship, that we are going to stimulate each other so much more than by just being colleagues!

I have often given this example of how we can be together like colleagues. We are all devotees of Krsna and we are all colleagues. We are all devotees in the same temple, we are all colleagues. We are all chanting Hare Krsna, we are all colleagues. We are all dancing in the kirtan party as colleagues. But when there is no friendship, it is not enough.

If there is friendship, then friendship is different. Friendship is like a family spirit. When your colleague is not performing well, it disturbs your work, and you say, “Get it together! You know, they’ll throw you out of here one of these days if you don’t get it together.”

That is what you say to a colleague but to a family member, you say, “When in the world are you ever going to get it together? But we can’t throw you out because you’re part of the family.”

That is different. That is friendship and in that friendship there is trust. We know we are going to be accepted. We don’t have to have a masquerade where everyone acts out to be a pure devotee in a Hare Krsna community. We can just be more honest. If there is friendship, we can just be who we are and still be accepted. In that way, we can get some real human support which is what we need!


--
Yours
Dinesh

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Creating friendships

Creating friendships

03 Jul 2014 by  1 Comment

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 11 April 2014, Cape Town, South Africa, Lecture at House Program)

KKS_friendshipIn a small temple, with predominately congregational devotees – that means devotees who are maintaining a life outside the temple and who have limited time and energy – I think we should appreciate the time spent together and maintain relationships. Because especially in a congregational gathering, more than ever, we need friendship. You know, it is like if you have a little military army living in a temple and all are on a mission. Even if there is no such friendship, still all are together in the same mission. But when you do not have that kind of driving energy then the only reason to come together is for friendship. So that is a big challenge but I think that is the key.

Like, we are here tonight, at somebody’s house and that is very nice, that is how it should be. If devotees have not been in your house for a while then you must start thinking about it and arrange for them to come. Even if your house is small, it does not matter – squeeze in somehow or other – because bonding is important. So we need to stay close and in an congregational setting, friendship is a big element, if you want to be with people. If you do not really want to be with them then you are not going to be with them. In the temple, whether you want to be together or not, you have to be for mangala aarti. But in a congregation, if you do not want to be together then why would you be? You only go to programs that you want to.

In friendship, you have to conquer people, do something to win them over. You have to do something that touches their heart, and then we have real friendships. Friendship can never be taken for granted and it is not cheap, but that is what we need. I guess, you can say big things about friendship but you can also make it very simple. In one way, a very simple approach is to not give each other a hard time – sort of, make it easy for each other and it counts for everybody, even at home! You know, friendship begins at home, if we just sort of try and make it easy for each other, that would help.

Devotee: Maharaj, does that not defeat the high thinking society ideal?

It depends on what you call easy. I did not mean that we should lose the purity but we should accommodate each other a lot and be sensitive to each other’s needs, that is what I meant. Making it easy for each other means that we should think of everybody’s needs, and not just of our own, then that creates friendship. So we try to think of the needs of others.


--
Yours
Dinesh

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The vigilant eye of the vaisnavas

The vigilant eye of the vaisnavas

10 Dec 2011 by  

(Kadamba Kanana Swami Govinda Valley, Austrailia, 2011) Lecture – S.B.3.25.27

When a community makes a commitment, that's when the community can support each other in that way, and that is needed. It doesn't matter what shape that community exists but that is one function of sadhu sanga. We often think that the association of devotees is meant for inspiration. It's like:

"I need devotee's association to feel inspired and whenever I am with the devotees then I am so inspired".

But we see in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, where a situation occurring, where Vallabhacharya came to visit Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, and was Vallabhacharya proud of his learning (he was a great scholar) and said that he had written a commentary on Srimad Bhagavatam. He mentioned that he was not in agreement with Śrīdhara Svāmī who was the original Bhagavatam commentator. So Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu had no appreciation for that, because he had Śrīdhara Svāmī at a highest regard. Threfore, Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu did not want to hear the commentary of. Vallabhacharya. So when Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu didn't want to hear, then no body wanted to hear – not a single devotee was ready to hear and Vallabhacharya would go around saying:

"Please, listen to my commentary, since you will find it very interesting".

"No, sorry……I have no time….I really have to go".

Everybody would make excuses and some said:

"No way!"

And some were blunt, but one devotee was very soft by nature, namely Gadādhara. Gadādhara was one of these soft natured person and Vallabhacharya had just cornered him and overpowered him with his energy by saying:

"You will hear my commentary".

Gadādhara said:

"No, please!"

" Yes! You will!"

And he took his right hand and started reading to Gadādhara who was thinking:

"Oh, my god what will happen now? Lord Caitanya will surely understand, because he knows my heart and that I don't want to hear it. But the devotees will never tolerate that I heard the commentary, because they are not so tolerant".

So that particular passage is interesting because that shows another aspect of devotee association, and shows the intolerance of the devotees. Or what is sometimes referred to as peer pressure….or you could say something like the village mentality. Now we are living in the village and if you act different in the village then the whole village is down on you! So everyone is living in fear of the villagers.

So the devotee community is something like that…it's like living in a village, and we are a bit worried about being seen by the neighbours because they know that you're going to cop it. Those dynamics are actually healthy – we need a bit of that…..we need a bit of the vigilant eye of the vaisnavas, so to keep us from becoming degraded, since the tendency to glide down is very strong…..very strong!


--
Yours
Dinesh

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