Understanding rasa-lila – The Spiritual Scientist: Recent Episodes
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[Bhagavatam class at ISKCON, Denver, USA]
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Transcription :
Transcribed by: Sadananda Prabhu
Understanding rasa-lila 8 – Appreciating Krishna’s mystifying reciprocation
Today we come to the conclusion of our discussion on the Rasa-lila. It is a very exalted subject, and I will quickly review what I discussed in the last eight sessions, before I come to the conclusion. The first session was about how the supreme ashraya becomes ashrita; that Krishna, in order to perform his lila, voluntarily comes under the control of Yoga Maya, although he is above everyone and everything. So, “God doesn’t delight in his majesty but longs for intimacy.” and this is the extraordinary revelation about God’s personal nature in the tenth canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam. In the second session I talked about how Krishna asked the gopis when he calls them by his flute sound, “Why have you come here?” The mood there is, that Krishna is ensuring that for the sake of following para-dharma or the supreme religion or the religion to devotion to him, the apara dharma or our worldly duties are not casually neglected or trivialized. Then I talked about how the yagnik brahman patnis go back, but the gopis don’t go back; and that is also their exalted devotion. Then, in the next session I talked about how the gopis approach Krishna and are ready to give up everything for him, but Krishna gives them up.
In the Radhaasthami class I talked about how Radharani’s name is concealed as well as revealed. So, the Bhagavatam is telling what it is not telling. The Bhagavatam is spoken in such a way that neither Sukhadev Goswami or Parikshit Maharaj will get distracted from what the essential purpose is. If Parikshit Maharaja hears about his father’s death, he may get distracted. So, the description of the Kurukshatra war is not revealed. Also, if Sukhadev Goswami speaks too much about Radharani, he will get distracted out of ecstasy. So, that is also avoided by mentioning Radharani’s name indirectly by him. We had four sessions on the Gopi-geeta which we went verse by verse, discussion how the gopis were giving various reasonings and were begging Krishna to come back; and then Krishna returns. When he returns, at that time the gopis are delighted. They take Krishna’s hand in their hands and seat Krishna in the center of a circle putting their own chaddar below him like an improvised seat. Then they take his foot and put it on their laps and they are messaging him. The sight of Krishna coming back is so extraordinary for them that they are not sure whether it is real or not. They want to touch Krishna so that they can make sure that this is really Krishna there.
There are left wing and right wing gopis. There are some gopis who accommodate Krishna with whatever he does. The difference between Radharani and Chandarvali is said to be the difference between submission and demand. That Radharani can get upset with Krishna, and when [...]
[Bhagavatam class at ISKCON, Denver, USA]
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Transcription :
Transcribed by: Sadananda Prabhu
Understanding Rasa-lila 7 – Gopi-gita 3
In the last two sessions we discussed how the gopis are giving different reasons for begging Krishna to return. Here again the gopis refer to the lotus feet of Krishna. They will refer to the lotus feet again in the last verse which is the nineteenth verse, but the focus for reference is different. Here the gopis are saying, “Your lotus feet fulfil the desires of those who bow down to them, and this lotus feet are so glorious that even Brahmaji, the one who is born with the lotus flower worships them. These lotus feet are considered as the ornament of the earth, and when somebody is in distress, they are the appropriate object of meditation. This is because they can give the supreme satisfaction, and therefore O Lord, please offer those lotus feet to our hearts. Our hearts are filled with distress right now.”
Earlier the theme was: “Please offer our lotus feet to our hearts.” There it was, “If you think that there are any lusty desires in our hearts, those lotus feet will destroy them.” There the theme was the purificatory potency of the lotus feet. Here it is more of the desire-fulfilling potency of the lotus feet. The mood is similar in both; those who bow down, those who offer their obeisance’s, those who respect those who worship. There it is said that they destroy all sinful reactions. Here it is said that whatever is the desire, they fulfill that. Now it is clear for the gopis that their only desire is, “Krishna please come back, please appear before us.” And to reinforce their glorification of the lotus feet and their own conviction about the potency of the lotus feet, they are drawing from different sources, and they say that, “Actually, in this world we have different desire-fulfillers.” At one level it is said that the devatas are desire fulfillers, and that is why people pray to the devatas, but among the devatas, Brahmaji is considered to be the foremost; not in terms of administrative functionality – that is Indra – but in terms of seniority, maturity, sagacity etc. So, it is said that he is also appealed to whenever people are in distress. Whenever the devatas are in distress they go to Brahma and Brahma offers prayers to Vishnu. The gopis are saying, “The gods fulfill our desires but you fulfill the desires of the God’s, and thus your lotus feet are capable of fulfilling the desires of those who are desire-fulfillers. Similarly, another desire fulfiller in this world is the earth itself. In the first canto it is described that when Maharaja Yudhisthir was ruling, at that time, the earth was fulfilling all desires through abundant natural prosperity. So, Kama also is used in a positive sense, that we have natural desires in the world and these desires are fulfilled by the earth. But here it said [...]
[Bhagavatam class at ISKCON, Denver, USA]
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Transcription :
Transcribed by: Sadananda Prabhu
Understanding Rasa-lila 6 – Gopi-gita 2
We are continuing our discussion on the Gopi Gita. In various ways the gopis are begging to Lord Krishna to reappear in front of them. Here they are offering their prayers in a way that might appear sensual but is actually transcendental. The gopis in the previous verses prayed to Krishna, “If you think that we are proud, then just your appearing before us and revealing your smile to us can destroy our pride.” Then the gopis say to Krishna, “If you think that we have come to you because of lust and our own desire for pleasure and not out of a desire to serve you, then also O Lord, you have to power to remove that lust from our hearts.” Then the Lord says, “O part! Why should I remove it.” The gopis said, “Because you have that potency. That whatever sinful reactions or desires are there in a person’s heart can be removed by offering obeisance’s to your lotus feet.” So, pap can refer to sinful desires or sinful actions, and it can also refer to sinful reactions. All of these can be removed by the Lord if we surrender to him. That is the potency of his lotus feet. So, the gopis said, “You have the potency.” And they say, “It is so amazing that this lotus feet are actually following the cows.” The cows when they go to the forest, Krishna goes after them. So, the gopi’s are contemplating that those lotus feet which has such potency of freeing everyone from sinful reactions, they are acting as simply the servants of the cows and following the cows. Krishna is the cowherd; not that he takes the cows but the cows also take him. When the cows want to go in a particular direction for grazing and if there is no danger, then Krishna allows them to go there. That they are following the cows. There can be so many cowherds in the world. What is so special about Krishna being a cowherd? Because he is Sriniketanam; he is actually the Lord of the goddess of fortune. Those lotus feet are marked by the symbols of the goddess of fortune. It is he who is so opulent that he is doing this humble act of following the cows and of herding the cows, and we may say that the cows are devotees of Krishna, and that’s why Krishna is following them. The logic is, “Krishna please come back.” So, the gopis are saying, “Krishna! Please come back. If at all there is lust in our hearts you remove that lust.” Krishna says, “Why should I remove it?” then the gopis say, “Because you can purify us, and you give mercy even to the cows when you follow them, although you are the Lord of the goddess of fortune. The gopis said, “The cows are great devotees. O Krishna, it [...]
[Bhagavatam class at ISKCON, Denver, USA]
Video:
Transcription :
Transcribed by: Sadananda Prabhu
Understanding Rasa-lila 5 – Gopi-gita 1
Today morning we are discussing one of the sweetest sections in the Srimad-Bhagavatam; that is the prayers of the gopis to Krishna. The backstory is that the gopis left everything to come to Krishna when he called them by playing his flute, and then after passing the test by which he tried to dissuade and send them back, they determinedly at least stayed on. And just as they were about to celebrate the divine dance of love with Krishna, and as they were about to enter into the deep ecstasy, Krishna disappeared. In great agony the gopis kept searching for Krishna everywhere but they couldn’t find him anywhere. Finally realizing that Krishna had disappeared they decided to come back to the banks of Yamuna, and there, called out to Krishna. These are the prayers which the Gopi’s offered to Krishna although Krishna is not present there in front of them. They know that Krishna was hearing them and they are calling out, “Krishna, please come back.” The acharyas state that uvaca is singular and ucuhu is plural. So, gopya ucuhu means that the gopis are speaking this collectively. Does it mean that all of them are reciting these verses in chorus? No. Jiva Goswami explains in the Gopal Campu that each verse is actually recited by one gopi but that gopi is speaking as a representative of all the gopis. So, there is an individual devotion being expressed by their prayers, and along with that there is a collective appeal that is resonated through each prayer. And based on the mood of each verse Jiva Goswami actually identifies each gopi and which verse is sung by which gopi. In that way he goes quite deep. We can thus see that each of the verse has a distinct thought, but along with that is also an intense common prayer; that prayer is, “Krishna please come back. Please appear before us.” So, through different directions, different reasons, different arguments and different ways of appealing, the gopi’s are constantly telling Krishna, “Please come back. Please come before us.” We will go over these prayers one by one to get a feel of the sweetness of these prayers. This verse states: Jayati te dhikam, janmana vraja…. In this verse the gopis are saying, “Krishna, since you have appeared in this place of Vrindavan, Vrindavan has become even more glorious. It is already glorious but now it has become even more glorious since you have appeared in this forest of Vrindavan. Why it has become so glorious? It is because you have appeared over here and the goddess of fortune has come and made Vrindavan her permanent residence.” The goddess of fortune actually is considered to be canchala or restless. She doesn’t stay in any one place for too long. People who are wealthy in one generation may just become a pauper in another generation. What to speak of [...]
[Radhashtami Bhagavatam class at ISKCON, Denver, USA]
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Transcription :
Transcribed by: Sadananda Prabhu
Understanding Rasa-lila 4 – Radharani’s apparent pride expresses her selfless love
On this extremely auspicious day of the appearance of Srimati Radharani, it is our fortune to have some opportunity to discuss some of her infinite glories. Radharani is the consort of Krishna and we have been discussing this pastime of Rasa Lila for the last few sessions, and here the pastime comes to a very dramatic stage. In this particular verse the various gopi’s are looking at the footmarks and they are observing and inferring something from that observation. The background is that Krishna called the gopi’s to perform pastimes with them. On that autumnal night seeing the beautiful flowers blossoming in the sky, and with the sky being given a reddish tinge by the rising moon, Krishna’s heart became filled with the desire to have loving pastimes with his devotees, and thus he played his flute. All the gopi’s left everything and came running towards Krishna thus demonstrating by their action the concluding verse of the Bhagavat-gita: “sarva dharman paritajya mam ekam sharanam vraja” The gopis gave up all their other dharmas and duties and just came running towards Krishna. Krishna tested theme by instructing, “You should not be here in the night like this. You have your duty at your home. Please go back.” And the gopi’s said, “Krishna! The purpose of all our duty is to ultimately devote ourselves to you. Now if we have come to your lotus feet how can we go back? Our whole heart, whole being and whole life is meant just for you Krishna.” And when they fervently express their resolve to offer their entire being to Krishna – even apparently against Krishna’s, then Krishna revealed his true will and welcomed them. Then they started performing the rasa lila where Krishna and the gopi’s started dancing together. Krishna expanded into many forms. With each gopi he was there, and as he was reciprocating love with each of the gopi’s, it is said that the gopi’s became proud, and as soon as they became proud, Krishna disappeared from there. The gopi’s became devastated and mad because they left everything for Krishna, and now Krishna had left them. They didn’t know what to do and they started running here and there and calling, but they couldn’t find Krishna anywhere. When they couldn’t find Krishna, they started calling out to all the creatures in Vrindavan asking them if they had seen Krishna. They asked the deer, the trees, the birds, tulasi etc. They were calling out, “Have you seen Krishna? Please tell us where is Krishna.” And when they were fervently calling out, they couldn’t see and nobody responded to them, and then as they were looking around they saw some footprints, and then they saw that actually there were not one but two sets of footprints over there. They saw that Krishna had gone with someone and there were many [...]
[Bhagavatam class on 10.29.48 at ISKCON, Denver, USA]
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Transcription :
Transcribed by: Sadananda Prabhu
Understanding rasa-lila 3 Arrogance keeps us locked in ourselves, both apara-dharma and para-dharma get us out of ourselves
Hare Krishna. Today morning we are continuing our discussion on understanding the rasa lila. In yesterday’s session I talked about how Krishna is calling the gopi’s to paradharma in order to focus completely on devoting oneself to Krishna. At the same time, he doesn’t reject paradharma. It means that the duties that we have in this world are not to be rejected. I will continue this theme today and we will discuss what is that unifies and harmonizes para and apara dharma. But before we go into that, let’s look at the narrative of the pastime. So, Krishna calls the gopi’s and tells them, “Why have you come here? Have you come here to look at the beautiful trees and the beautiful Vrindavan forest? If you have seen, then go back. It is not safe for you to be here. It is not appropriate for you to be alone here in the forest. You have duties to your family. And then the gopi’s very beautifully replied. They said, “Krishna, you are the Lord of our Lord, you are the husband of our husband, you are the one for whom everyone lives, and for your sake we have left everything, and we have come to surrender to you. How can we go back?” The gopi’s fervently appealed to Krishna and he describes very attractively his beauty, his potency and his divinity, and thus they say that they are actually not going to go back. On seeing their resolve Krishna is pleased. Initially, when the gopi’s come, there is one Krishna and there are many gopi’s who are rushing, and the gopis reply to Krishna’s talk, and then Krishna is pleased with their determination, and then he starts preparing to perform the rasa dance with them. And when he is performing the rasa dance Krishna expands. Krishna has the potency by which he can do as he wants. So, Krishna starts expanding more and more. He has innumerable forms. There are so many gopi’s and Krishna manifests along with all those gopi’s.
In the Venkatesh Subrabhatam there is beautiful verse which describes how by the sweet sound of his flute the gopi’s hearts became conquered and overpowered. There are hundreds and thousands and millions of gopi’s who came there, and Krishna’s beauty was such that it superseded the beauty of millions of cupids. “Koti” refers to one crore. There are so many gopi’s and Krishna’s beauty exceeded the beauty of millions of cupids; and then that one Krishna expanded into innumerable forms to perform pastime with each of the gopi’s to make every gopi feel that he is personally with her. And thus, he satisfied the heart of all the gopi’s and he granted immense happiness to the heart of each gopi. The gopi’s thought, “And there is no Lord whom I [...]
[Bhagavatam class on Srimad-Bhagavatam 10.29.18 at ISKCON, Denver, USA]
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Transcription :
Transcribed by: Sadananda Prabhu
Understanding rasa-lila 2- How Bhagavatam establishes para-dharma without trivializing apara-dharma
Today we continue our discussion on the Rasa Lila. Yesterday I talked about how the inconceivable nature of the Rasa Lila can be understood by understanding how the supreme asraya becomes the asritaha; how one who is the shelter of all the existence takes shelter of Yoga-maya. Today we will be taking some verses from this Rasa Panchadhyaya, and I will deeply describe the story line in between, and then I will elaborate on the verses as well as the overall theme.
The verse that we discussed yesterday said, “On seeing the beautiful atmosphere of Sharad, when Krishna saw the flowers in the sky of autumn, he decided to perform pastimes with his gopi’s.” The subsequent verses describe how he plays his flute; and the sound of the flute is so attractive that the gopi’s drop everything and just come running towards him. It is described later in the Gopi Gita how the gopi’s left everything for Krishna. Though all the relatives of the gopi’s were forbidding them from going out, still the gopi’s somehow managed to find a way and reached Krishna. Krishna saw the beauty of the forest and he went deep into the forest, and there he started playing his flute. Krishna has different flutes that he uses for different people. He has a separate kind of flute which he plays to produce some different kind of music. This flute he uses for the cows and the calves. When the cows are grazing outside, Krishna plays the flute music, and then they come back. There is another flute that he has for the gopa’s. When the gopa’s are about to go out in the forest, Krishna comes out from his house and plays the flute, and they all know that they are now meant to go with Krishna, and they come out. And there is a special flute called murali which he uses for calling the gopi’s. When the gopi’s hear this, immediately they know that Krishna is calling them. And when Krishna calls, they just leave everything to go towards Krishna. And as they rush towards Krishna, they are unmindful of everything; they are unmindful even of the thorns that are below them. Many of them are barefoot. They are unmindful of the fact that they have things to do in their homes. They are unmindful even of the fact that they are not dressed so attractively or they are not dressed so properly. I saw a note somewhere. It said, “When a wife says that I will be ready in five minutes or a husband says that he is going to be home in five minutes; both mean the same thing. Neither of them is going to be ready in five minutes.” So, generally, if woman want to go for a special occasion, they take a lot of time to dress [...]
[Bhagavatam class on 10.29.1 at ISKCON, Denver, USA]
Podcast
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Podcast Summary
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Transcribed by: Sadananda Prabhu
Understanding rasa-lila 1 – How the supreme Shelter (Ashraya) becomes sheltered (Ashrita)
In the next few series of classes I will talk about the Rasa Lila pastime and try to understand it; first in terms of Tattva and then in terms of Lila. The purpose is to appreciate the glories of Radharani as the topmost devotee of Krishna.
Tattva refers to philosophical truth and Lila refers to pastime. The chapters from 29th to 33rd in the Bhagavatam have been a subject of elaborate exposition by the Gaudia Vaisnava Acharyas. In fact, if you consider the Gaudia Vaisnava tradition, there are many books written on the tenth canto by our Acharyas. One category of books is the verse by verse commentary. The first verse by verse commentary in the tenth canto is written by an Acharya named Srinath Chakraborty. He wrote a book called Caitanya Manjusa which is a commentary on the Bhagavatam. Of course, Sridhar Swami wrote a commentary which was before Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. So, it is not exactly a Gaudia Vaisnava commentary. The Gaudia Vaisnava commentary refers to the commentary written by the Acharyas in the Gaudia Vaisnava tradition.
The Gaudia Vaisnava tradition is the tradition of Bhakti which was inaugurated by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. The Bhakti tradition extends back to thousands and thousands of years, and Bhakti itself is eternal. Bhakti refers to the soul’s inclination to love the supreme soul. This is universal existing across history, geography, culture and religion. It is expressed in different ways in different traditions, and it expressed specifically in the Bhakti yoga tradition in India wherein there are systematic methods for awakening one’s love for Krishna. This systematic explanation of Bhakti Yoga was enhanced and enriched by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu especially in terms of the emphasis of the revelation of the extraordinary activeness of the supreme reality. So, in the process of Bhakti there are three factors: there is the Bhakta, there is the Bhagavan and there is Bhakti. In any relationship there are the two people who are involved in the relationship, and there is the interaction and emotion that connects to people. Similarly, in the relationship with the supreme Lord there is Bhagavan who is the supreme, there is the soul, and there is the relationship that connects all three of them. Now this connection can manifest in different ways, just like in our own relationships we can relate with different people in different ways; for example, somebody might be a parent, a friend, a brother or sister, our colleague, our boss or our subordinate. Just as people can connect in different ways with different people, similarly, here it is described in the tradition that we can connect with Krishna in different ways. So, this pastime will begin with the focus on Krishna.
The Bhagavatam is a book which is narrated from the perspective of the omniscient narrator. If you read novels, they can be [...]