*My Mission Canto Eleven Volume One*
Sri guru charanakamalebhyo namah
From the time we wake up until the time we rest at night we endeavor our best in our service to Guru and Lord Krsna, meticulously adhering to the scriptural guidelines the Lord has so mercifully given us. We enter into our writings with this mindset, not expecting anything in return other than the opportunity to serve the Lord by trying our best to enlighten the innocent souls of this world. We don’t write in hopes of profit, but cherish the inner treasure of meditating on the Lord’s pastimes. We are not materially motivated and aren’t interested in obtaining a recognized position, and we are not envious of anyone.These things need be said because it has come to our attention that people are envious of us for our strictly adhering to the scriptural standard. I’ve also heard that we repeat spiritual philosophy, but I’m giving commentary on various scriptural episodes and the solution for emancipation is one, to serve the Supreme Lord with all thy heart and all thy soul. The Srimad Bhagavatam is a history of different spiritual teachers spreading spiritual philosophy emphasizing on the goal of human life, i.e. to adopt spiritual practice as a way of life, hence the Srimad Bhagavatam gives many examples of all kinds of people who renounced material life and received liberation from rebirth and death. That’s why the scriptures seem to repeat the same points. These repetitions are not to be considered childish, because the Lord is teaching by repeatedly showing that He is a loving God, and the way to connect with Him is by developing a personal relationship with Him. He gives many examples of extending His grace by accepting people that have proven they are His devotees by developing relationships with them, as illustrated in His transcendental pastimes. God is often referred to as a loving God, but scriptures of other religions don’t reveal the Lord’s pastimes, which is why Srimad Bhagavatam is the best scripture. Even though Lord Krsna’s pastimes may seem like childish play to the untrained eye, they are actually the loving pastimes the unlimited Lord has with His unalloyed devotees. Similarly, the repetition of spiritual rules is considered unnecessary to the untrained eye, but unless the pathway to God is drummed into the head, the mind finds excuses to wander back to mundane activities. Hence, the scriptures emphasize instructions for improving the soul, and in step with this mood, we introduce the worship of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Krsna, Whom our unbroken chain of disciplic succession descended from. We carefully pondered the ancient Vedic spiritual philosophy, topped with traditional Vaisnava etiquette that we have put into the ‘My Mission’ section of our publications to best inform readers what it is in our heart that drives us forward. Our humble mission is to correctly reestablish real spiritual life by informing interested people wanting to know what true spiritual life is and how to follow it, which will indeed lead them to the spiritual world. Our humble Spiritual Master’s mission was to spread Lord Krsna’s name outside India anyway he could, because he wanted to inform people all over the world that Lord Krsna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He also wanted to inform people of their original home, called the spiritual world, and that they should strive to return there; and because of his endeavors many people in the world know about Lord Krsna. To keep our disciplic succession intact, our great Spiritual Master, Srila Prabhupada, mercifully passed the torch of disciplic succession to us, and we accept the task of carrying that torch, because the Supreme Lord’s spiritual law that the chain of spiritual disciplic succession must continue, must be upheld. We realized the Lord decided to use us for this mission from the intense feelings we received in our heart. We received the realization that now that many people around the world know about Lord Krsna, it is our job to establish the correct way to serve Him. Hence, our humble mission is to put everything about spiritual life along with the proper etiquette to serve in, in its correct manner. The Lord uses pure souls as His instruments to establish His further plans, thus awarding the next step of spiritual life to the needy public. The Lord never gives up helping the public, but continues by introducing newer plans through His pure devotees to make sure each of His new plans are enriched each time. Unless a situation warrants His direct attention, He doesn’t directly descend to earth to establish His will, but works through a pure soul by convincing him what to do and how to act.
One of our goals in life is to establish spiritual rules, philosophy and etiquette correctly, at least in writing, so one day people may read them and want to follow, and we don’t desire anything in return for doing so. We don’t seek a notable position, a place in history, wealth for personal use, fame or adoration from anyone. We aren’t interested in any politics, especially the crab mentality politics of putting someone down so they can rise above them to be recognized etc. We simply speak and follow the true spiritual path that leads the sincere soul to the spiritual world, but we do warn innocent people to beware of heretics that twist Vedic philosophy to satisfy their whims to gain respect and donations from others to enjoy a lavish lifestyle. The mind cannot serve two masters, i.e. the Lord within, and an outward enjoying mood. Any spiritualist with an enjoying spirit who is attached to lavish living is not a sincere devotee, because a real devotee enjoys within. To become a sincere devotee one should be totally free from such mentality and lifestyle.
A few years ago an Italian born disciple of a western guru put a very telling thought into words to us, he said, “If you are born and raised, trained and learned in this culture and you can be accused of sinful behavior, one can only imagine how dirty minded the people are who come from a completely dirty and sinful background?” Indicating a sinful minded person needs to cleanse their mind of such filth; meaning a fly needs to reform itself from always thinking about stool like activities; and not a soul who has lived a clean life, all of their life.A clean soul doesn’t need to be cleansed, but just needs to continue living clean.
We are determined to put everything Vedic in its proper perspective no matter how much we have to tolerate; how long it will take; or how much criticism we will face, because Lord Krsna has totally convinced us to solemnly focus on putting everything right regarding His spiritual process. This is our mission and we hope that sincere seekers will understand our humble mood and help.
Spiritual life is a descending process from God, whereas everything else on earth ascends. For example, all earthly languages, all earthly beliefs, all customs, civilizations and plans are material and were derived by ascending through trial and error, therefore these are of little help if any of understanding and/or reaching the Lord, because they are all material and thus adverse to the true way or acquiring knowledge about God. Material facilities can be utilized to uplift devotees to a higher level where they may be better able to grasp the true concept of ‘love of God,’ but these things must be abandoned once the devotee gets a glimpse of what real devotion and love of God means.
All the learned saints and sages agree that Devanagari (Sanskrit) is the language of God, is spoken by the demigods in heaven, and that it has descended from there to earth. Sanskrit means ‘purified language’ and as such, when the Lord appears He speaks Devanagari and seems to use other languages. For example, many people in one state in southern India say that the first language on earth was Tamil, andthat it was established when Lord Siva played his damaru (a small drum). Thus, according to them Tamil is the original language because it was used on earth before Sanskrit came and therefore is the language of God, but there is no mention of this in the ancient Vedic scriptures. Bengalis say that Begali is the language of God because it was spoken in the eternal land of Navadvip, but no ancient Vedic scripture mentions the term ‘eternal Navadvip’ anywhere.Whereas all the ancient scriptures written five thousand years ago, as well as all the ancient commentaries on them wereall written in Sanskrit, and that is because everyone spoke Sanskrit then.Unless this was true, how could Ramananda Raya, whose language was Tamil as is spoken in south India, communicate with Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu? And Prakasananda Saraswati of Baranasi, and the learned Kesava from Kasmir, certainly didn’t speak Bengali, but they both discussed spiritual philosophy with Lord Chaitanya. We don’t have anything against Bengali or any other earthly language,but we accept and support ancient Vedic evidence. And as Sanskrit was the principle language at that time, it is widely accepted that Lord Chaitanyawas a great pundit and He communicated in Sanskrit.
As time passed the people of Vrindaban passed away and the area became so overrun with vegetation it became dense jungle,and no one knew where Vrindaban was anymore until Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu located it. He also identified the holy places where Lord Krsna performed His pastimes; and His direct disciples, the six Goswamis, established them as the historical places of pilgrimage in Vraja. They brought people from different parts of India and repopulated Vraja by giving them land and all else required to live. These people developed and spoke a language that is now called Vrajabhasa, and is also spoken outside of the Vraja area. Now many people think that Vrajabhasa is the language of Lord Krsna and spoken in the eternal spiritual world, but this is also not supported by the ancient scriptures.Hence, by all scriptural accounts, Sanskrit is the language of God.
Srimad Bhagavatam is the storehouse of nectar and very relishable, which is why after completing the tenth Canto we continued on to the eleventh Canto. In this Canto Srila Vyasadeva described liberation, because it is the result of the tenth Canto, which is filled with the nectar of Lord Krsna’s transcendental appearance and pastimes. The eleventh Canto introduces the quality of transcendental philosophy to the reader by which they should conclude that their duty as a human being is to work to obtain liberation from this world by following the practical path prescribed in this Canto to develop the soul. Thus, the tenth and eleventh Canto are interrelated, because the message in the eleventh Canto is to develop the cause—the proper attitude and process of executing devotional service—to obtain the effect—which is to obtain love of Godhead, as revealed in the tenth Canto. In other words the eleventh Canto prescribes the effective prescription,whereby the reader can receive the result of love for the Lord as described in the tenth Canto. As stated in the Skanda Purana, yatha nirodho sri Krsna-candrasya hrdayam tathaikadaso bhagavato lalatah, “The tenth Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam represents Lord Krsna’s heart, and the eleventh Canto represents Lord Krsna’s forehead.” In this way both Cantos are interconnected and non-separable.
The main reason the Lord descended was to help living entities receive liberation from the material world. He descended in this world looking like a human being to perform attractive dramatic pastimes to please His devotees. Upon discovering this, a person learns the kind of liberation they should seek; and this is spoken about in the eleventh Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam. Liberation is more vividly explained in this Canto, even though much about it has already been discussed. The study of Srimad Bhagavatam acts as a hammer hitting the flickering mind, thus turning the person towards steady devotional service to the Lord. Srimad Bhagavatam is a benediction to sincere devotees who seriously execute devotional service, but it doesn’t work on superfluous people or hypocrites because they are pretenders and their hearts aren’t really in it.
The Nyaya Sastra states, pratyakse kim pramanam, “If the proof is evident and can be directly authenticated, what need is there to investigate elsewhere for further proof?” We personally experienced the proof that people who adopt the Vedic path but do not follow its teachings do not spiritually advance. For example, when we were writing our Vaisnava Kantha Hara we experienced unwanted behavior from people who were posing to be devotees. At that time we had disagreements with our god-brothers and were forbidden to live at our Guru’s temples, so we accepted an offer to stay at a cabin at a remote place in West Virginia from one of our American Caucasian followers, but the property didn’t belong to him. One of our American Caucasian god-brothers (still alive) accompanied us there because he knew we were innocent of the charges our other god-brothers brought against us, so he agreed to work as our secretary to help us with the book. After we had stayed there for some months working on the book, another of our god-brothers (still alive) who was running a temple in the Washington D.C. area at the time spoke on the telephone to the property owner where we were staying (also living) and told him to tell us to get us off his property. As an intimidation tactic, the property owner invited some bikers to the property and they began shooting guns to scare us off. At first we thought the blasts were from fireworks, but then realized what was really happening. Our god-brother that was working with us got so scared for his life that he started shaking like he had Parkinson’s disease. Then, one of our new Caucasian students who has since taken spiritual initiation, jumped up and hurried to the property owner and pacified him. The next day the Sheriff came to evict us and as we were being evicted, the property owner told the Sheriff that his spiritual leader told him to, “Immediately do whatever it takes to get him off your property.” Upon discovering the culprit behind this drama, we reached our god-brother at the Washington D.C. area temple and asked him why he would do such a thing. We asked him, “You and I don’t know one another, I have never done anything against you or spoken against you; I have never lived at the same temple property as you; we have never spoken to one another before; and we haven’t even sat together before, so why would you do such a thing against us?” He said some unintelligible thing that didn’t make any sense, then we said, “This enmity you have for us cannot be from this life because we didn’t do anything against you, therefore it must be from our past life.” He disagreed saying there is no such thing as having enmity from a past life and other stunning things, considering this was coming from a person wearing Vedic devotional dress amazed us, and then we left. This is our eye witness account that spiritual life doesn’t work on a person who didn’t follow the Lord’s instructions as stated in the Vedic scriptures; what more proof is needed? Such heretics don’t really believe in Vedic life, even though they’d externally adopted the Vedic spiritual process and followed it for a few decades. In essence, we can see that a person who follows without faith doesn’t even progress to the point of accepting a past life and reincarnation, which is a part of the foundation of our philosophy. Wearing devotional clothing may be enough to dupe innocent people, but a glass is just a glass unless it’s filled with nectar.
As stated in the Niti Sastra:
Kacah kancana samsargad dhatte marakatim dyutim
Tatha sat-sannidhanena murkho yati pravinatam
“Just like a piece of glass cut like a diamond can be mistaken for a jewel if set in a gold ring; similarly a showboat spiritualist may look like a nice devotee if garbed in devotional clothing; and a fool may seem learned if living with and dressing like learned devotees.”
This episode illustrates that a person must be sincere at heart and must seriously practice devotional service if they expect to reap the desired result from following spiritual life.
On the other hand, if a person is sincere they can advance rather quickly. For example, a king from long ago named Katvanga Maharaja became self-realized within a short time because he was sincere at heart and seriously practiced spiritual life. As stated in the Niti Sastra, yadrsi bhavana yasya siddhir bhavati tadrsi, “Whatever degree of faith a person has in the spiritual process they are following, is the degree of result they will receive from that practice.” A person that is serious about their spiritual development should know that just by reading and writing spiritual books, mechanically chanting and dancing before the deities,translating scriptures, dressing like a devotee and/or living in a temple, is not nearly enough endeavor to attract Supersoul to transmit spiritual realizations to them. The key thing needed to attract the Lord is to be sincere at heart, and that is plainly evident by one’s behavior. As stated in the Padma Purana, ye sastra cintakah murkhah yah kriyavan sa panditah, “Those who study, read, work on, or even argue on the basis of scriptures are all fools if they don’t truly abide by their decree. Only those who truly believe the scriptural injunctions and sincerely put them into practice are the true readers of scripture and are the learned pundits.”
To expect a perfect result in any process, the person must trust the process will work for them in order for them to put their heart into it, which is why a person that sincerely wants to reach the spiritual world should meticulously follow what the scriptures teach us. For example, in this volume the importance of traditional Brahmana devotees is revealed, but people that follow spiritual life to make a living and thus are just making a show of devotional life don’t like or believe these Srimad Bhagavatam statements. So they misinterpret the scriptures to substantiate their concocted philosophy and pontificate that they are the only real Brahmana devotees and everyone else should be ridiculed and abandoned. Such a propensity has to be corrected in order to reap fruitful result from spiritual practice, and it is our mission in life to try to change the insincere by introducing the true path of spirituality correctly. As long as we exist in this world we will endeavor to make sure, by our speeches, writings, behavior and/or by teaching, that anyone seeking the real spiritual process can find it. We published books because a time may come when at least some people will want to read and understand what the real spiritual path is and practice it. We humbly request sincere people to come forward and help us in our mission so that the innocent souls of this world can be saved from spiritual slaughter at the hands of pretenders in their slaughterhouses of spiritual deception. The ancient Vedic scriptures state that a person shouldn’t even keep any connection with,nor live with or associate with spiritual deceivers. As stated in the Visnu Purana:
Tyaja durjana-samsarga kuru sadhu-samagamam
Bhaja laksmi-patim visnum bhukti-mukti pradayakam
“O human beings, if you are really serious about obtaining the ultimate goal of life please leave the association of heretics, rascals and showboat devotees, and associate with the real devotees of the Lord. If you follow this rule and chant the holy names of Lord Krsna (Lord Visnu), who rewards pleasure to His sincere followers while they’re alive and after death rewards them liberation, you will surely have success at hand.”
Even though Srimad Bhagavatam is the ocean of nectar and is filled with transcendental instructions revealing how a person can receive liberation by pleasing Lord Krsna, this volume will open the eyes of a sincere seeker a little wider by further describing more intricacies of spiritual life, because the instructions are clearer and more direct. Our books weren’t written directed to any particular person or any organization, but are written with the innocent spiritual seeker in mind who sincerely wants to receive liberation from this material world by practicing for only a short time. It’s better to have a little gold in hand than kilos of brass. We are open to everyone and anyone to participate with us at anytime, on any condition and in any situation. We don’t considering caste, color, creed, gender or nationality, we’ll embrace anyone, provided they are sincerely interested in adopting qualitative spiritual life. We will teach any one this spiritual science that is sincere at heart, and with it they’ll be able to receive spiritual success in a short amount of time.
Our blessings and appreciations go out to all the devotees who participated in bringing this volume out. They are our disciple Nanda Kumar das who diligently worked turning our words into fluid English; and our god-brother Sriman Kavijaja Prabhu and his wife Viki Knowles,who helped by proofreading the volume. And as always,our blessings go out to all the other disciples and devotees that participated in different ways to bring this volume out. May the Supreme Lord Sri Krsna, whom we humbly pray to with single-pointed intelligence bless these kind souls by fulfilling their desires while alive, and reward them His kingdom after they depart this material world. Jai Sri Radhe.
Dasanudasa,
Krsna Balaram Swami
Gaura Purnima day
March 19th, 2011
Tampa, Florida, USA