{"id":1292,"date":"2006-09-17T11:24:41","date_gmt":"2006-09-17T10:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=1292"},"modified":"2006-09-17T11:24:41","modified_gmt":"2006-09-17T10:24:41","slug":"impersonal-calamity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=1292","title":{"rendered":"Impersonal calamity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"By Hayagriva das (ACBSP)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I will never forget one lecture in which, as often happened, he was attacking a famous impersonalist commentary to the verse, \u201cOn Me fix thy mind; to Me be devoted; worship Me; revere Me; thus having disciplined thyself, with Me as thy goal, to Me shalt thou come.\u201d (Bg. 9.34) <\/p>\n

The impersonalist scholar commented: \u201cIt is not the personal Krsna to whom we have to give ourselves up utterly, but the unborn, beginningless, eternal who speaks through Krsna.\u201d Whenever Srila Prabhupada had Rayarama read this passage at a lecture, he would explode into a furious diatribe. \u201cJust see what a nonsense rascal. Krsna is standing there and says, \u2018To Me; worship Me.\u2019 And he, a very great scholar, says it is not to the personal Krsna but to some void. <\/p>\n

Just see what a rascal number one.\u201d After listening to this diatribe for about a month, Kirtanananda finally, at the end of a lecture, said, \u201cI don\u2019t see where he\u2019s actually wrong. Krsna is in all of us. So if we surrender to the unborn within all of us, then we attain the ultimate.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he went on in this way. Srila Prabhupada didn\u2019t say a word. Kirtanananda finally ran down, and Srila Prabhupada asked, \u201cAre you finished now?\u201d When Kirtanananda acknowledged that he was, Srila Prabhupada suddenly began to roar like the lion incarnation. \u201cKrsna is standing right before you and He says, \u2018You worship Me,\u2019 and you mean to say you do not worship Krsna? You mean worship some void, unborn? Krsna is before Arjuna and He says, \u2018On Me fix thy mind. To Me be devoted. Worship Me!\u2019 You do not understand? A nonsense rascal says it is not to Krsna, so you want to worship such a nonsense rascal? \u2018Not to the personal Krsna,\u2019 he says, and Krsna says, \u2018Worship Me.\u2019\u201d We all sat in shocked silence. <\/p>\n

Kirtanananda didn\u2019t say another word. I remember that I thought this attack very harsh, but Umapati thought it was justified. \u201cHe\u2019s right,\u201d Umapati said afterwards. \u201cNone of the commentators mention worshiping Krsna, but Krsna clearly says, \u2018Worship Me.\u2019 You\u2019ve read Bhagavad-gita before. Have you ever thought of worshiping Krsna?\u201d I had to admit that although I had read Gita three or four times before, worshiping Krsna had never entered my mind. <\/p>\n

Later I came to understand that most scholars and swamis avoid the clear command of this verse, although they teach from Bhagavad-gita. Indeed, the following year in San Francisco I bluntly asked one celebrated Swami Mayananda, \u201cDo you worship Krsna?\u201d He was sitting in a chair, and I was standing over him when I asked the question, and he jumped to his feet and shouted, \u201cNo! Why should I?\u201d His eyes flashed, and he was furious and he chided me that Krsna is nothing but the Self that is within all of us.<\/p>\n

Thus Srila Prabhupada\u2019s first job was to establish that the supreme aspect of the Absolute Truth is a person and that we are to worship this person. By and large we were mostly impersonalists addicted to inactivity. We were concerned about mukti, nirvana or liberation from all material action, but he deluged us with words and showed us how action for the sake of the Supreme is on the spiritual platform and is superior to inaction.<\/p>\n

This essentially is the message of Bhagavad-gita, for Lord Krsna tells Arjuna to fight, \u201cbut do it for Me.\u201d Srila Prabhupada said, \u201cWhen one works for Krsna and chants His name, he is already liberated and living on the spiritual plane. Just as one feels heat as soon as he touches something hot, one is liberated as soon as he enters into the service of Krsna.\u201d<\/p>\n

We all felt that we had just touched something very hot. Certainly no one doubted that our long slumber had been disturbed.<\/p>\n

By Hayagriva Prabhu, BTG #47 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"HareBy Hayagriva das (ACBSP)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Srila Prabhupada didn\u2019t say a word. Kirtanananda finally ran down, and Srila Prabhupada asked, \u201cAre you finished now?\u201d When Kirtanananda acknowledged that he was, Srila Prabhupada suddenly began to roar like the lion incarnation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}