Repentance and Forgiveness Open the Spiritual Senses

Transcript

0:17Mahaprabhu’s kirtan is understood by the heart, not by logic

Hare Krishna. Thank you so much for the kirtan, for letting me sing in your company. Abhinandana Prabhu ki jaya! Today is Ekadashi—it is auspicious to sing for a long time. But durdaivam idrisam ihajani nanuragah. Unfortunately, that’s how things are: life is so tangled, so many things keep happening around us, and yet one longs so much to join the kirtan of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, where Nityananda Prabhu dances, where Haridasa Thakura dances. Though he is trinad api sunicena, a Vaishnava humble to the highest degree, he still dances like a man possessed. All the associates of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu truly enjoy life in kirtan.

1:50It is all so amazingly arranged. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is Krishna Himself, Nityananda is Balarama Himself. And all the associates from Vrindavan have appeared in the kirtan of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Those forms are eternal, and these forms are eternal, and all of them are simultaneously different and one. This whole philosophy is impossible to grasp; here logic is full of contradictions. That is why the kirtan of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the holy name of the Lord—all this is known by the heart, not by logic.

2:57The Lord cannot be grasped through the senses. That is why our heart needs sweetness, ruchi, needs emotions, spiritual realizations, revelations. Otherwise, why live? When we worship the Deities, when we serve the Vaishnavas, when we sing kirtan, when we read the Bhagavatam or the Bhagavad-gita, when we discuss all these things, the philosophy of Krishna consciousness, when we carry out our duties and when we simply live—the essence of it all is bhava, the development of loving feelings for Krishna.

3:59To cry in separation from Krishna is to reach the goal

I was listening to a lecture by my spiritual master. He was reading Srimad-Bhagavatam with Srila Prabhupada’s purport. And there our dear Srila Prabhupada writes that if a person cries in separation from Krishna, he has reached the goal. His Holiness Gour Govinda Swami also said that we must cry—we must cry. But durdaivam—I am so unlucky, so unfortunate!

4:27Tears are the sign of a soft heart

Because crying is the sign of a soft, juicy heart. A dry heart has no tears. A soft, juicy heart has juice in it—it can be squeezed out. And a devotee first cries in repentance. He feels so ashamed before Krishna, before the spiritual master, before the devotees, before the acharyas—ashamed. Mat-tulyo nasti papatma naparadhi ca kascana, parihare ’pi lajja me. I have nothing else to offer You, dear Lord, except this feeling of shame. For I am an offender and a sinner; there is no one worse than me.

5:11Deeply realizing all this, the devotee weeps in anutapa, in his repentance before the Lord: aparadha-sahasrani kriyante ’harnisam maya… ksamasva madhusudana. O Madhusudana, please forgive me! Day and night I commit aparadha after aparadha, offense after offense. Sahasrani means “thousands of offenses.” Aparadha-sahasrani kriyante ’harnisam—night and day. Not only by day, but also by night.

5:57All this goes on every day. This is my sadhana—committing aparadhas. Or rather, this is where I have succeeded; here I am on the level of bhava—spontaneous, offensive bhava. All I see around me are faults. When others suffer, I rejoice. When others manage something better than I can, I offend them. That is how my life goes by. Realizing all these vices in his heart, the devotee repents—this is anutapa.

7:01Tears of repentance purify the heart

And so the heart is purified as the devotee weeps, realizing his sins, realizing his unfitness to serve the Supreme Personality of Godhead in any way—svayam bhagavan Krishna of Vrindavan. It is so far away! Where is Krishna, and where am I? A distance as long as infinity. Yes, Krishna says that He is in the heart of every living being. Of course, the one Absolute Truth is manifest as Krishna, Bhagavan in Vrindavan, and as Brahman, and as Paramatma, and as Paramatma He is in the heart of every living being. But durdaivam—I am so unlucky, so unfortunate, that I cannot realize this. I am immersed in maya.

8:09Mantra-hinam kriya-hinam bhakti-hinam janardana, yat pujitam maya deva paripurnam tad astu me. I have no qualification at all. Mantra-hinam—a deficiency: I don’t know how to chant mantras properly. I don’t know how to act properly, how to perform the various Vaishnava rituals—kriya-hinam. Bhakti-hinam—with devotion I have big problems too.

8:50Devoted to Krishna or to maya?

I am devoted to the external energy of the Lord. I am very devoted to maya. I am the servant of Krishna’s servant: maya serves Krishna, and I serve maya. But in spite of all this, please count my service to You as paripurnam—as though it were perfect, as though it were all real, as though I were truly a devotee when I stand on the altar fanning Your Deity. As though I were a devotee! When I put on Vaishnava clothes—dhoti, kurta, chadar—and fan You, when You see this circus, Krishna, smile, please smile.

9:33You said in the Bhagavad-gita that You accept only what is offered with devotion, but in my case it is bhakti-hinam janardana. So count my worship, my singing, my whole bhajan in fact—poisoned by the thirst for puja and pratishtha, honor and fame—and all my other activities, count all this as paripurnam. Tad astu—let it be as though it were all real.

10:40Sins come out through tears of repentance

And so, gradually, through these tears, through repentance, the sins come out. Above all, a person deeply repents for all the troubles, offenses and misfortunes he has caused other living beings. He deeply realizes his pitiful condition.

11:30Signs of repentance

And the sign of repentance is this: the one who, perhaps just five minutes ago, was your enemy, the one you resented, becomes an object of worship—the one from whom I hope for mercy, the one I ask for forgiveness, and it pains me that I made him suffer.

12:06Pretended bhakti is a lack of love for others

Krishna says that one who worships Me and shows respect, yet is malicious toward the bodies of other living beings, practices vidambana-bhakti, pretended bhakti.

12:30Such a person can never find peace and calm. That is why there is no sense in treating others with malice, in cultivating malice in the heart—there is no sense in it at all. One must resolutely make the effort and repent.

13:00First one receives mercy, then one weeps

But the thing is, these tears of repentance don’t just roll down by themselves. First a person must receive mercy, and only then will he cry. To cry, above all, with the heart—it doesn’t have to be physical tears. As I heard from my spiritual master: not necessarily physical tears, but to cry spiritually.

13:11The key problem of modern society is the lack of ability to forgive other people. The key problem of Kali-yuga. It is very hard. Naturally, people make mistakes and hurt each other. And we too suffer pain from the people around us—all kinds of pain: physical, but above all emotional. Yet our inability to forgive people is perhaps the greatest scourge of material existence in this world. It’s hard. Pride presses in from every side. People feel like victims, they step into that role: “I am actually the victim.” And that is why it is hard for them to repent.

14:40How can a “victim” repent?

How can a victim repent? A victim needs mercy, compassion, love, care, apologies. A victim needs people to come, kneel down before him, offer a thousand obeisances and say, “Forgive me, I know not what I do.” And the victim will say, “You’re being hypocritical.” Even when people apologize: “I can see his motives. He has some selfish interest—that’s why he’s apologizing.”

15:07The trouble is that people cannot forgive one another. In Kali-yuga they are truly unable to do it. What a misfortune! That is why there is no taste for the holy name. And all the other spiritual things simply get blocked. Like a person who has fallen ill: that’s it, he can’t run, enjoy himself, jump around; he can’t sing properly, for example, because his throat hurts. So there is something to repent of—that there is no forgiveness in the heart.

16:12The beauty of an ascetic lies in the ability to forgive

Tapasvinam ksama rupam—the beauty of an ascetic lies in his ability to forgive. Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita also uses this word more than once—ksama, forgiveness. It is a synonym for tolerance. When Mahaprabhu says taror api sahisnuna—to be tolerant like a tree—it means the ability to forgive other people. So if something comes flying at us from someone, physical or emotional, we should pray, aware of our inability to forgive. Things are arranged in such a way that we slip into this victim state and can do nothing about it. It intoxicates.

16:57And here is the next problem: I can’t even tell anyone that I have this thirst for puja and pratishtha. I don’t even have anyone to talk to about it, because everyone offends me—some more, some less; some are simply unworthy, some have fallen too low compared to me. A person closes himself off and chants “Hare Krishna.” But there’s no one to talk to about his difficulties—not even a friend.

17:58To complain in the mood of a victim—that’s what friends are for. But to say, “How can this be? I want to make progress in Krishna consciousness. I see some worms living in my heart. I can’t understand what’s going on. I would like to progress—what do I need to do?” And so everything just stays preserved like that. And so it goes, life after life—mama janmani janmani.

18:45Because when tears of repentance come, they are a gift of Lord Hari. “Hari” means “the one who takes away what is inauspicious.” A person repents and cries—and in this way he washes away his anarthas. That is how he passes through anartha-nivritti.

19:40To pass through anartha-nivritti, one must learn humility

If a person wants to pass through anartha-nivritti, it means he wants to learn to live by the principle: if they strike you on the left cheek, turn the right. He doesn’t live by that principle yet, but he wants to learn to live that way. He doesn’t want to become a guru, doesn’t want to become a senior, doesn’t want to attain prema-bhakti—he wants to learn plain humility, tolerance. Simple things, very simple. And he sets himself this goal, of course, not for this life, but at least for the next ten lives in human forms. Because he clearly understands: while the sincere souls around him go upward and receive four-armed forms, I will quite probably—the analytics, the expert opinion says so—receive a four-legged form. With a tail. So he is ready to wait patiently.

20:37He waits patiently, tasting the fruits of his sinful activities, yet continuing to serve the Lord humbly.

20:59The sadhaka serves humbly, following the rules and regulations. A beginning devotee, a sadhaka—that is, one who is not yet on the level of bhava—serves the Lord simply by carrying out the prescribed duties, especially the duties of daily practice, dinacharya, the daily routine: he gets up early, bathes, chants the holy name very attentively. Because for Krishna to shower His mercy, and for repentance and all the subsequent elements of emotional, spiritual life to appear, one has to ask Krishna for support, show Him—not just ask, but show Him—that I am His servant.

22:03“Krishna, I am Your servant”—and servants are cared for

And servants are usually cared for. Krishna, I am Your servant, and servants are usually cared for. Pratijna tava govinda na me bhaktah pranasyati, iti samsmrtya samsmrtya pranan sandharayamy aham. You said, O Govinda, na me bhaktah pranasyati—“My bhakta will never perish.” And I, samsmrtya samsmrtya, constantly remembering this… Smriti means “memory.” Pranan sandharayami—I sustain my life only by remembering what You said: “My devotee will never perish”—that You protect the devotees.

22:44Devotion must be expressed in action. Faith without works is dead. Our first work is attentive chanting of sixteen rounds of the Hare Krishna maha-mantra. “Attentive” means that I sit and chant, stand and chant, walk and chant—and do nothing else. This is a serious declaration to Krishna: I claim the role of His servant. The servant of the servant of the servant of the servant. When I say “servant,” I mean the servant of the servant to the billion-trillionth power. The servant of the servant of the servant of the servant—and once more to the trillionth power. That is what the word “servant” means.

23:26Srila Prabhupada told us, “You must chant at least sixteen rounds and follow the four principles,” but first of all sixteen rounds, because even the four principles come by mercy. Especially which of the four? Meat-eating is especially hard to give up. Yes, with feasts like these, even on Ekadashi!

24:21Krishna gives the strength to follow principles and forgive

Of course, the strength to follow the principles, the strength to forgive, to humble ourselves—all this we receive from Krishna. From Krishna, from Krishna. And when the tears of repentance wash away the sins… These tears are antiseptic: since they are the Lord’s mercy, they are spiritual tears; they don’t contaminate, they simply wash the sins from our heart. This is anartha-nivritti, ceto-darpana-marjanam—the process of cleansing the mirror of consciousness takes place. And gradually we begin to perceive Krishna, even while in this world: to look at Krishna’s Deity differently, to hear Krishna’s holy name differently, to listen to krishna-katha differently.

25:17It is no longer just bedtime stories. Because, of course, in the initial phases of devotional service the Krishna book, the various stories from the Bhagavatam—all this is just bedtime stories: durdaivam idrisam ihajani nanuragah. I’m like, “Well, yes…” But no. Something, somehow, somewhere, of course, bubbles—bul-bul-bul—but no: there is no experience of bhakti, no realization, no bhakti, and so no perception of Krishna.

26:10Krishna-katha cannot be heard with material ears

He does not reveal Himself to the material senses. You cannot hear krishna-katha with material ears. As this quotation already sounded: atah sri-krishna-namadi na bhaved grahyam indriyaih. You cannot hear the Krishna book or the stories of the Bhagavatam with ordinary ears, even if you hear them. You cannot hear Krishna’s holy name with ordinary ears. You cannot see Krishna’s Deity with ordinary eyes.

26:42You need the ointment of love, but to begin with at least the ointment that the spiritual master applies: om ajnana-timirandhasya jnananjana-salakaya—the ointment of spiritual knowledge. You simply need mercy. None of this is grasped with material ears.

27:20Repentance purifies perception

But when repentance purifies a person’s heart, everything around you somehow happens differently. A different sensory perception, something completely different. It is like Bhaktivinoda Thakura, who saw the Yogapitha, the temple at the birthplace of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. He was with his son, Kamala Prasada, and there was also a friend of Bhaktivinoda with them. And when Bhaktivinoda saw this effulgent temple, he said to his son, “Did you see it?” He beheld it simply with his eyes. The son said, “Yes, father, I saw it,” and he too stood in complete ecstasy. “And did you see it?” A clerk was standing nearby. “See what?” “Well, the temple—did you see it?” “A temple? What temple?”

28:06That’s all. That’s how they stand: one bhakta with folded hands by the altar, and another bhakta with folded hands by the altar. One in a dhoti, and the other in a dhoti or a sari. One has tilaka, the other has tilaka. One has a bead bag around his neck, the other has a bead bag around his neck. One chants sixteen rounds, and the other sixteen. One is called something-“das,” and the other is also called something-“das.” One, say, has a sacred thread hanging, and the other has one too. Or even the other way round: one has a thread hanging, while the other has no thread at all, just a single strand of kanthi-mala.

28:50And so he says to the one with the thread, “Did you see?” “See what?” “What do you mean, what? Krishna!” And that’s it: at the sight of Krishna, or at the sight of Krishna’s representatives, Sri Guru and the Vaishnavas, something just clicks in him—and that’s it. And what is happening to him? Nobody knows what is happening to him. Only Krishna knows. Krishna is in the heart. It is spiritual energy. Everything looks the same, everything is the same, yet one is in Krishna consciousness, and the other is in illusion, even though outwardly they practice the same thing.

29:32In general, a big problem is the preaching lines that are heard at the start, such as: “Chant the holy name just once, and all your sins will be destroyed”… This is a fact, it’s true; it is not an exaggeration of the glory of the holy name. But our acharyas, commenting on such statements, say: “It must be chanted without offenses.”

30:35Earning a trillion is easier than chanting without offenses

In other words, what they are actually saying is: you can buy this holy name by chanting it once, but you have to pay a trillion dollars. Because earning a trillion dollars is easier than chanting the holy name without offenses. If you read the list of the ten offenses—that’s it, it sits right here. And burning it out with a soldering iron, or working on it with a chisel, or pulling it out with pliers—doesn’t work. “Krishna, Krishna”—doesn’t work. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati said: it sounds like “Krishna,” but in reality it is not the holy name.

30:57So for wretched souls like us, this kind of propaganda is a stimulus, an inspiration to practice: “Just chant and be happy.” But the trouble is that a person joins a religious organization and hears that Mahaprabhu is the most merciful, Nityananda is even more merciful, Srila Prabhupada is more merciful still, and you are lucky to have ended up at their lotus feet. Yes, yes, yes, it’s all true.

31:43But imagine Krishna sitting and watching on Zoom—there’s a computer program like that—watching all the different religions, you know, different religions: Islam, Christianity, Vaishnavism—so many different ones! Vaishnavas are not only the followers of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Nityananda and Prabhupada. Yet we are so conditioned that even the Gaudiya Math, we think, are no longer Vaishnavas: “Oh no, that’s not it anymore, it’s all wrong there. What’s going on there? Where did it all go wrong, guys? Where?”

32:27And the Christians—come on, they’re all in hell already! It’s all been assigned: all the hellish planets are taken up by Christians. And the Muslims—they’re meat-eaters, that’s even lower than hell. But we have received the mercy of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu! So we’ll commit Vaishnava-aparadhas, stuff ourselves, break the principles a little—and convince ourselves that you are saved because you have believed.

33:13And so the Lord sits and watches on Zoom. The Christians—take any organization: the Seventh-day Adventists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses… Who else is there? The Baptists, if you like, the Orthodox, the Catholics and so on. Then Islam—there are plenty of different sampradayas there too. And Vaishnavism among them. He looks at these and at those—and it’s the same with everyone. All of them: “For I have believed in Allah,” “For I have believed in Jesus,” “For I have believed in Mahaprabhu.” And under the mask of this “for I have believed,” I live as I please, because I don’t know how to forgive. All of that, making an effort—it’s not my thing.

33:57I live as I please, because I have believed, and when all this is over, I will go to Krishna in the spiritual world, to Krishna in the spiritual world, to the gopis. Of course, all the women imagine themselves as gopis. And the men imagine themselves as half gopis, and half cowherd boys after all—or at least some little tulip growing by the road where Lord Krishna walks, herding His cows. Oh, come on, where are you going? From where? What tulips?

34:43What a maya, O Lord, how cleverly she has fooled you! She brought you into a religious organization, and you, wretched one, drove it into your head that you have believed, and you don’t want to do anything, don’t want to work on yourself, you want to live any old way—and at the same time you think everything is fine with you. Woe to you! Maya, maya, maya. That’s how it is—durdaivam. And so Krishna watches: everywhere, in every religious organization, the same thing is happening. And everyone wants to convert everyone else to the true faith. To the true faith! Not to just anything, but precisely to the true faith we want to convert them.

35:45Learn to love people

First learn to love people. At least love people. I’m not saying… all right, learn to love at least fifty percent of people. Well, at least twenty-five, at least five percent, at least half a percent, at least one hundredth. All right, at least love the people in your own city. All right, at least learn to love the people on your own street. At least on your own street, at least in your own home, learn to love people. Wretched one, learn to love people at least in your own home!

36:12“No, I’ll shed tears for the whole world, but in my own home let me play the victim, because they always offend me, they don’t fulfill their dharma, they do everything wrong.” How nicely they’ve hooked you, my friend! That’s it. And Krishna remains independent of all these things. He does not interfere in the material affairs of living beings, unless it comes sincerely, from the heart.

36:55And then, when such a wretched soul nevertheless receives the mercy of Sri Guru and with his tears washes the sins from his heart, taste awakens, sweetness, and the Lord reveals Himself.

37:32The sound of Krishna’s flute is always available

For Krishna is always playing His flute. The sound of Krishna’s flute is available always—forever. Not only at some particular time, say, at ten to one. No, Krishna has arranged it so that a qualified soul can always hear the sound of Krishna’s flute. And what could be sweeter than Krishna’s flute? And if a person does not hear Krishna’s flute, it means durdaiva—a terrible calamity, a misfortune.

37:58That is why Prabhupada writes: “Whoever has learned to cry in separation from Krishna…” This crying in separation from Krishna will come after all these stages of purification. When a person attains bhava and prema, he weeps in separation from Krishna. He feels the Lord so intensely in his heart and in his life; for him the image of Krishna is so clear—the beautiful, transcendental form of Krishna! For him Krishna’s holy names are no longer just some practice.

38:42Our acharyas explain how Radhika chants the Hare Krishna mantra. When She says “Hare,” She of course does not mean Radhika—She means Krishna, who has stolen Her mind. When She says “Rama,” She means Krishna, who gives Her the sweetest pleasure. And then comes viraha—the state of separation. Mahaprabhu… These are all such confidential things. We can speak about them at least theoretically, just to attract mercy.

39:26Jiva Gosvami, Gopala-champu. O Lord, how he describes the moment when Krishna meets the gopis at Kurukshetra! After Akrura took Krishna away from Vrindavan to Mathura, Krishna was killing demons—that whole story. First He finished off Kamsa, then He settled in Mathura, then they all moved to Dvaraka. And Krishna had many different affairs to attend to. He married one princess, then another—Rukmini, Jambavati, Satyabhama. Then He freed thousands of kings, then came the many palaces and that whole life in Dvaraka: elephants, horses, chariots, peacocks, luxury, wealth, and everyone treats Krishna with awe and reverence—the Vrishni dynasty, the Yadus.

40:28And in Dvaraka He enjoys all this. But in His heart He cannot really enjoy, because Krishna too feels viraha, separation from His beloved residents of Vraja: from His mother Yashoda, from His father Nanda Maharaja, from His beloved cows, from His bulls—each of them has a name. Krishna remembers how they low. When He focuses on His pastimes with His queens and everything else, it distracts Him. He would gladly return to Vrindavan, but Vasudeva and Devaki don’t want Him to go back. And since Krishna also regards them as His parents, He obeys His elders.

41:42Unfavorable for material affairs, favorable for austerity

And so, on the occasion of the eclipse at Kurukshetra, when Rahu covers the sun and darkness falls… What is unfavorable for material activity is very favorable for austerity, for yajna, for dana. That is why Krishna, together with the Vrishnis, sets off for Kurukshetra.

41:57And all the time that Krishna was away from Vrindavan, in Mathura and Dvaraka, dutas—that is, Krishna’s messengers—kept coming from Dvaraka. The dutas came constantly, usually in pairs.

42:18And when they came, all of Vrindavan, headed by Nanda and Yashoda, would gather and listen. Sometimes Krishna sent them a message; sometimes the messengers simply told them: “Now Krishna has killed such-and-such a demon, and then this and that happened, and then Balarama did such-and-such. And then they went off somewhere, and there they were attacked, and then He got married, and now He has a son, Pradyumna. And then this happened.” And they listened all the time. It was a kind of chat, a kind of correspondence between them, because the messengers, the dutas, only passed on information.

43:00And when Krishna received the news that there would be an eclipse and that it had to be observed according to dharma, at a holy place, a tirtha, He decided to go there. He sent dutas to Vrindavan, to Nanda Maharaja and mother Yashoda: “There is no other option. We can meet only there. Come there.”

43:23But the trouble was that Nanda and Yashoda were in such a depressed state—as, in fact, were all the other residents of Vrindavan. They had all dried up: all their life-sap, all their prana had left their bodies. They had withered from suffering. The same was true of all the gopis of Vrindavan, who felt the worst of all. The worst of all. In truth, they felt abandoned. They were in an utterly hopeless situation. But what could be done?

44:24They could not reconcile the image of the loving Krishna, who had given them so much attention and love when He was in Vrindavan, with this utterly cruel act He had committed toward them. And so they were in a state of constant unmada, the madness of love. They too had withered; their clothes were disheveled, soiled, worn out, grown old. Their hair was simply disheveled, and they were constantly in tears. They had lost their radiance.

45:11But one way or another they gathered their strength. Somehow… Mother Yashoda no longer had anything to hide. She asked Radhika and the other gopis: “You will come with me to Kurukshetra.”

45:31And when they arrived there… Jiva Gosvami in Gopala-champu describes this moment of meeting: how Krishna and Balarama first met mother Yashoda. There are such poetic, supremely wonderful comparisons there—altogether unimaginable poetry! Alas, we don’t know Sanskrit perfectly enough to read it like that. And it is impossible to translate such works—practically unrealistic.

46:21Srila Prabhupada ki jaya! Well then, dear devotees, now we will take prasadam, and all the answers will be revealed while honoring prasadam. Thank you very much for your attention. Hare Krishna.