Суд над Бхагавад-гитой / Attempt to ban Bhagavad-gita

For years together, I have observed among many of the
esteemed members of the Krishna consciousness movement
(from top to bottom) the regrettable misconceptions, oversight,
sheer disinterest or total neglect surrounding the token
importance (if any) assigned to the performance of hari-nama-
sankirtana within the society of devotees. I am thus compelled
to humbly remind all concerned that this soul-stimulating,
dynamically absorbing, congregational preaching mode of self
realization, nama-sankirtana-yajna, should increasingly
complement transcendental book distribution and all other
aspects of devotional life with a serious view to bringing the
bliss back into the lives of the bungling bhaktas. It is not that
just because we have joined Lord Caitanya’s hari-nama-


osankirtana movement we therefore don’t need to bother
ourselves to go out on hari-nama-sankirtana. How can we expect
to get ruci for something we scarcely do? Shuddha-nama-kirtana-
ruci is not so cheap that merely by official, institutionally
regimented token gesture or lame lip-service we should expect
to achieve the thing. We have to go deeper, beyond the call of
duty, beyond the ceremonious filing in and filing out of the
stipulated “temple programs.” When Mother Yashoda was
trying to bind Bala Krishna to the grinding mortar, she was
mystified to find that she was again and again two fingers short
of success. One finger represents a devotee’s steadfast extra
endeavor, the other Krishna’s divine dispensation, His special
mercy. Alongside whatever other services we may be doing on
any level, all of us, irrespective of organizational echelon, would
do well to assiduously find or make the time to both privately
and publicly d more hari-nama-sankirtana and see the long-
lasting internal (personal/communal) and external
(outreaching/para-upakara) results. If our authorities disallow,
discourage, disparage, or in any way hamper our focus on the
performance of yuga-dharma hari-nama-sankirtana, then they
are not our authorities. If our gurus instruct us not to
concentrate our energies and resources on the performance of
yuga-dharma hari-nama-sankirtana, then, with all due respect,
they are not our gurus. We should be prepared to disobey the
instructions of millions of “gurus” who in any way dissuade us
from surrendering to the yuga-dharma. Hari-nama-sankirtana is
the best and most powerful process for awakening one’s taste
and attachment for the Holy Name. One who fortunately gains
authentic shuddha-nama-ruci and intelligently amasses
stockpiles of solid background experience in the matter of
relishing the nectar of nama-sankirtana-rasa will most likely
never depart from the path of unalloyed devotional bhajana.

Without having the impulse to enthusiastically practice the
religion of this age, hari-nama-sankirtana, what Vaishnava or
Vaisnavi can claim to have shuddha-nama-ruci?

Without having extensively engaged in vigorous, daily
protracted performances of the yuga-dharma, hari-nama-


sankirtana, what Vaishnava or Vaisnavi can honestly claim to
have ascended to the terrace of prema?

Without purposely promoting the daily promulgation of the
yuga-dharma, hari-nama-sankirtana, what devotional community
can viably proclaim its intent to elevate its members to life’s
ultimate perfection?

Without deliberately stimulating and fostering the
worldwide daily promulgation of the yuga-dharma, hari-nama-
sankirtana, what institution can claim to be truly representing
the sankirtana movement of Shri Caitanya Mahaprabhu?

Distribute books. Distribute books. Distribute books. But
who is reading the books? Read books. Read books. Read
books. But without practically implementing by sensibly
dedicating a substantial portion of life’s time and energy to the
direct performance of yuga-dharma hari-nama-sankirtana, what
individual or group of individuals can claim to have rightly
comprehended and applied the devotional science enunciated
in the scriptures proliferated by the Gaudiya Vaishnava Acaryas
through disciplic succession?

When deeply considered from the standpoint of a
madhurya-bhakta, hari-nama-japa-yajna can be likened to the
most intimate nikunja-seva of Yugala-kishora. It is tantamount to
Radhe Shyama’s mercifully coming to personally accept one’s
solitary services and enjoy Their pleasure pastimes at one’s own
kunja. Sankirtana-yajna performed privately behind closed
doors, as was done by Lord Gauranga and company at
Shrivasangana, can be compared to Radha and Krishna’s more
intimate rasa-lila relishment among Their inner circle of friends.
Similarly, public nagara-sankirtana smacks of the less intimate
maha-rasa-lila performances, where outsiders (rivals) and
newcomers (sadhana-siddhas) are admitted. Rasa-lila delight
(nama-sankirtana) essentially serves as a kind of foreplay, an
“appetizer” to profoundly stimulate in both Krishna and His
beloveds a mutual attraction for more advanced, deeply
amorous, most esoteric private conjugal pastimes (nama-japa).
The rasa-lila performances (nama-sankirtana) can never be
complete or very meaningful without ultimately arousing the
Lord’s intensified passion for reciprocating the individual gopis’


desires for most confidential sequestered loving services (nama-
japa). Such consummate experience of the deepest personal
reciprocation with the Lord naturally inspires His lovers to
replay nightly the rasa dance in such a way so as to further
more and more intensified intimacy with Him again and again.
Likewise, the consummate experience of genuine, unvitiated
solitary absorption in shuddha-nama-japa unsurprisingly
promotes in a true sadhaka a powerful impetus to exuberantly
dance and chant in ever-inspirational hari-nama-sankirtana on a
daily basis. Such is the synergic correlation between nama-japa
and nama-sankirtana that both reciprocally serve to enhance
the value of one another. Rasa-lila, as a cooperative group effort
to please the Lord, truly tests as well as reveals to Lord Krishna
the enchanting beauty and sweetness of the selfless loving
service attitude of a gopi. As He sees and increasingly
appreciates the beauty and purity of her unstinting,
transcendentally altruistic or para-upakara-punctuated love,
Krishna naturally feels especially inclined to intimately share
Himself with her in ways otherwise unimaginable. Such beatified
cognition of the extent of her beloved Lord and Lady’s special
mercy upon her own unique person naturally moves the sakhi
to share her exhilaration with her confidential associates and
maidservants. Without gaining the advanced experience of such
intimacy, she would hardly have very much to impart to
anyone. The proof of her advancement is seen in her redoubled
purposeful compulsion, on the basis of her own loving ecstasies,
to extensibly encourage others to embrace the same success
formula as she embraced.

In other words, when Krishna notices a sankirtana
devotee’s concerted endeavors to magnanimously share the
priceless treasure of Krishna consciousness with others via the
congregational chanting of the Holy Name, then from within He
dynamically enhances to the profoundest degree an individual’s
personal confidential relishment of hari-nama-rasa through the
medium of nama-japa. Hari-nama-sankirtana, when
enthusiastically performed to satisfy guru and Gauranga,
dynamically dissolves any residual scraps of egocentricity
within the heart of a pure devotional candidate, enabling one to


deeply endear oneself in all intimacy to the Holy Name. When
Hari Nama Prabhu becomes attracted to the benevolence and
sweetheartedness of a devotee, He becomes naturally inclined
to constantly keep the devotee’s company. Krishna-nama is an
all-blissful, all-sentient person. We must always remember that
love is a two-way street. Constant chanting of the Holy Name is
a matter of mutual attraction. Love-birds of a feather flock
together. It can never be a forced affair. The internal revelation
of the beauty and sweetness of reciprocal loving radha-Krishna-
nama-bhajana certainly further enthuses a softhearted devotee
to repeatedly share with others the nectar of the Holy Name
through the medium of loud congregational chanting and
dancing. When, as a pure-hearted hari-nama-bhajananandi, one
dives into the ambrosial ocean of hari-nama-japa, one
progressively surfaces in the nectarous ocean of nama-
sankirtana – and then resurfaces with renewed strength, relish
and realization in the ocean of japananda. Thus, Hari-nama-
sankirtana dynamically promotes the selfless sacrificial service
attitude essentially required for profoundest absorption in vraja-
radha-Krishna-nama-bhajana.

Although it is seen that self-sacrificing shuddha-nama-japa
and empowered hari-nama-sankirtana stand alternately as
inspirational impetuses to each other, it must further be
recognized that nama-bhajana ultimately finds its profoundest,
most exuberant exaltation in the loud congregational chanting
of the Holy Name. This statement, made with reference to the
consideration of the supramundane expansion of Krishna’s
transcendental bliss, is not at all intended to undermine or
sidestep the fundamental importance of an individual’s regular
chanting of nama-japa. Rather, the intention is to illustrate how
nama-bhajana achieves magnified power from the interpersonal
support gained by doing hari-nama-sankirtana in the association
of saintly swan-like devotees. Analogously, the consummate
union of the Divine Couple forms the central jewel in the
necklace of all conjugal pastimes of the Lord. Nevertheless, lila-
vilasa, as described in Rupa Gosvami’s Ujjvala-nilamani, though
preludial to the impending fulfillment, the final conclusion of the
whole affair (samprayoga), nevertheless transcendentally


tantalizes the Lord with a pleasure far surpassing that of the
ultimately achieved conjugal union itself. The appetizers are, in
certain respects, transcendentally more powerfully stimulating
and super-excellently flavorful than the forthcoming feast.

From another angle, it may be remembered that, in the
course of Her pleasure pastimes, wherein Shyama’s happiness is
the very foundation of Her own, Radha’s personal endeavor to
mercifully engage the other sakhis rewards Her with a happiness
far more relishable than the happiness derived from Her own
private meetings with Her beloved Lord. The simple truth is that
Lord Krishna is far more easily attracted, pleased, and
conquered by the cooperative group effort to congregationally
petition His benevolence upon an assembly of individuals
through the process of sankirtana than by an individual’s
solitary or separatistic endeavor. All these things are simply
beyond material calculation and have to be appreciated and
realized by practical samadhi, or pure devotional absorption.
Any experienced self-sacrificing kirtaniya can positively attest to
the greatly encouraging ananda-maya influence and, even more,
to the intensity of internal heartfelt spiritual enrichment noticed
upon the sincere qualitative and quantitative performance of
nama-sankirtana-yajna. It is for this reason that within the
society of devotees more stress should be given to hari-nama-
sankirtana, in pursuit of an enhanced Krishna conscious love,
trust, and enlivenment among the groups of individuals who
make up the society. Again I emphasize: As hari-nama-japa is
required for strengthening the individual devotee, so hari-nama-
sankirtana is essential for strengthening, revitalizing, unifying,
and purifying the Vaishnava community. Moreover, such
cooperative group endeavor to uplift and enliven the Vaishnava
community further enhances the breadth and depth of the
Krishna conscious experience in the community’s individuals.

If we sincerely desire to deepen and redouble our taste for
chanting the Holy Name, then we would do very well to
faithfully consign our intelligence to the instructions of our
predecessor Acaryas, take shelter of Gaura-Nitai, and do more
hari-nama-sankirtana! If we recognize the enormous need to
practically expand the ocean of transcendental fortune and bliss


to touch the lives of other pious souls, in the matter of
increasing and maintaining Krishna’s family of devotees, then
we would surely do well to take shelter of Gaura-Nitai and do
more hari-nama-sankirtana! If we at all acknowledge the
intermutual need to expedite the purification of our Vaishnava
relationships then we would all do very well to concertedly take
shelter of Gaura-Nitai and do more hari-nama-sankirtana! If
we seriously want to go well beyond the bodily concept of life,
to realize the highest constitutional spiritual identity of the self
(vraja-svarupa), then we would do very well to set all worldly
considerations aside, take shelter of Shri Caitanya Mahaprabhu,
and do more hari-nama-sankirtana! If we truly desire the
perfection of the vraja-bhavas, by which we could ever hope to
attain the pleasure pastimes of the Lord in the topmost realm of
Vraja, then we would do very well to do more hari-nama-
sankirtana! If we at all see the need to expedite our progress to
the terrace of vipralambha-bhava-maya-vraja-prema for the
pleasure of guru and Gauranga, in consonance with the very
purpose of Their mission, then we would do very well to do
more hari-nama-sankirtana! If we, honestly confessing any
delinquency in the matter of its performance, sense a deficiency
in the evolvement of our individual and collective pure
devotional experience as per insight, revelation, and realization,
then we would, by all means, do very well to abandon all
apprehensions about the thing and simply do more hari-nama-
sankirtana! If we want the lifelong inspiration to carry on with
our transcendental book distribution in a most viable way, then
we would certainly do very, very well to do more hari-nama-
sankirtana in order to deeply appreciate and enthusiastically
share the very essence of what the books are, in so many
words, purposely promoting! Given that we might, with a view
to accomplish the as-yet-to-be-realized final half of Srila
Prabhupada’s mission, deem the reestablishment of
varnashrama-dharma in present-day human society to be of
paramount importance, even still, we would do very, very well
to intelligently put the horse before the cart and concertedly, all
the world over, do more mass hari-nama-sankirtana – to
practically increase the piety and spiritual consciousness of the


masses in order to even hope to make possible that which is
virtually impossible under the present so-called “for the people,
by the people” heinously roguish, demonic, world-domineering
corporatist governmental misleadership. Godless multi-national
money-mongering corporate elitists and other hard-core,
ruthless, raksasa-like terror-breathing global tyrants are not
going to politely wait for us, the members of the Krishna
consciousness movement, to finally, all over the world, wake up
to our inalienable right and responsibility to do more and more
mass hari-nama-sankirtana! Institutional management has
neither the authority to sanction nor the right to interdict or in
any way inhibit the performance of the yuga-dharma. The will of
Shri Caitanya Mahaprabhu ultimately pulls rank on institutional
authority. Please remember that in Kali-yuga the Supreme
Personality of Godhead descends from Goloka-dhama to protect
the sadhus and annihilate the demons by resoundingly
manifesting as His Holy Name on the tongues of His pure
devotees. The divine descent of kali-yuga-Krishna-avatara shri
hari-nama-rupa alone can effect the downfall of such insidiously
scheming, media-manipulating murderous men of Kamsa’s class!
Even if we prefer to pursue variant paths of spiritual perfection,
or even if our all-devouring exigencies cannot go beyond the
transitory urgency to “put food on the table” and “give peace a
chance,” all the same, we would definitely do very, very well to
have faith in the yajna for this age and simply do more and
more hari-nama-sankirtana! Let us not wait until the fag end
of life, when varieties of physical and mental decrepitude will
render our bodies inoperative, to wisely recognize this principle.
The urgency is enormous. The time is now! Now is the time for
revolution – a revolution of consciousness, a revolution of
priorities. All individual, communal, institutional, and inter-
institutional devotional inadequacies, anomalies, and inequities
– as well as all domestic, public, socio-political, governmental,
and inter-governmental irregularities of this age – can be
positively surmounted simply by intelligently administering
“heavier,” more frequent medicinal doses of life-giving yuga-
dharma shri-hari-nama-sankirtana. Once again, if we’re not part
of the solution, we’re part of the problem. We have busied


ourselves over the years, trying so many other ideas. Why not
sincerely concede to this one and be pleasantly surprised? We
hardly expect to revamp the mental climate of an entire society.
It is unlikely everyone will be genuine enough to rise to the
occasion and seriously implement, but the faithful individuals
who do will beyond a shred of doubt be recognized by Lord
Caitanya and immensely benefited.

The proliferation of transcendental literature is certainly
the best advertising front of the Krishna consciousness
movement. The idea is to canvass in such a way as to persuade
human society’s literate intelligentsia to join the fold of Lord
Caitanya’s sankirtana movement on the basis of convincingly
sound reason and philosophy. Transcendental book distribution
can be compared to a sakhi’s campaign to enlist new girls to
become dedicated followers of Maha-bhava-svarupini, Shri
Radhika. Certainly, no book distributor in the line of Rupa
Gosvami would be caught dead canvassing on behalf of
Candravali! Raga Manjari is perhaps the Lord’s best and most
reliable messenger, having opted to become His vamshi flute.
Knowing the purposes of her svamini’s inner heart, Raga Manjari
serves, in the form of the flute, to mercifully break the resolve of
Radha’s mana, or jealous pouting, forcefully facilitating the
fruition of her mistress’s deepest desires to intimately satisfy
Her beloved Shyama. She similarly serves to satisfy Radha’s
cupidity for expanding the sweet empire of Shyama’s love
dalliances, by artfully calling all the new sadhana-siddha-gopis
for maha-rasa at Vamsivata, near the Yamuna’s shore. The
sadhana-siddha-gopis, possessed of their fully actuated sac-cid-
ananda-siddha-deha and the adhikara for directly participating in
Lord Krishna’s prakata-lilas, having risen from the status of
ordinary human beings, for the first time enter the sacrificial
arena of confidential love dalliances with their beloved Lord
through the Vamsivata “gateway” at the time of maha-rasa. It is
well known that Krishna’s flute has manifest in Kali-yuga as Shri
Mridanga. The mridanga principle has expanded its influence by
appearing as brihat-mridanga, the printing press, which
facilitates mass production and proliferation of Vaishnava
scriptures. Broadcasted bhagavata-katha by means of


transcendental book distribution could, therefore, be suitably
likened to the call of Krishna’s flute, which purposely serves to
arouse intensified purva-raga, or preliminary attraction in the
hearts of the damsels of Vraja. The mercifully extended flute-call
(book distribution) magnetically allures the vraja-sundaris
(fortunate souls) away from their so-called husbands (all
superficially binding mundane considerations) to excitedly dash
off to join the rasa dance festivities (hari-nama-sankirtana).
Hence, they become progressively more and more qualified and
inspired to enter deeply into the intimate nikunja-sevas of the
Divine Couple (nama-japa). Again and again they anxiously
hearken to the overtures of the flute (bhagavata-kathamrita) and
become ever-more-irresistibly enchanted. Again and again they
skillfully shake the shackles of household encumbrances to
exuberantly sing and dance in rasa-lila delight (hari-nama-
sankirtana) in order to transcendentally enrapture the Lord of
all supramundane conjugal beatitude. Again and again they
blissfully receive and personally serve the Divine Couple at their
private pleasure groves within the all-enchanting forest of Vraja
(hari-nama-japa).