Why There Is No Taste for Chanting Hare Krishna

Transcript

0:01Jhulan-yatra and the mood of bhava

I have been asked to say a few words of Krishna-katha. We are celebrating Jhulan-yatra, a special festival when we worship Radha-Madhava in a special mood, swinging Them on a swing. This is a Vrindavan tradition, the Vrindavan mood. Bhagavan Sri Krishna Himself says:

0:43Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita: one who has understood that I am the cause of all causes, of everything material and spiritual, mattah sarvam pravartate—everything comes from Me… Iti matva—if a person has understood this, he worships Me, he performs bhajan. “Bhaja” means worship, bhakti. Bhajante mam budha bhava-samanvitah—intelligent people, absorbed in bhava. Samanvitah means that as a result of such understanding they are overcome by a certain mood—bhava, emotions. Emotions! And when we swing Bhagavan Himself on a swing, a completely special mood switches on here, completely special emotions.

1:55Signs of a beginning devotee

But most of us are very much beginning devotees, really very, very new. How can we tell? Because we stay offended at people for a long time. Not just offended—we stay offended for a long time, we get angry, we get drawn into political analysis of who is right and who is to blame, we feel a passion for sense enjoyment. Perhaps someone has even got rid of passion, say, for sex life. Maybe someone has got rid of it, or maybe someone has just dampened it a little by the force of illness or age—it happens differently for everyone.

3:00Krishna, describing the characteristics of a sadhu, lists such elevated qualities and stresses in every way: samah sarveshu bhuteshu—he treats everyone equally, the sadhu, the devotee. And a beginning devotee is one who wants to become a devotee, one who is not yet spontaneously absorbed in this bhava. Bhava means a strong emotion: as soon as a person hears the word “Krishna,” his heart beats faster, he breaks into a sweat, the hairs on his body stand on end. Just “Krishna”—or something connected with Krishna: he hears, perhaps, the name of his guru or of Krishna’s devotees. And when he hears “Krishna,” it stirs a whole range of emotions in him. He just heard the name of Krishna! A devotee is one who has a steady taste for chanting the holy name. A steady taste, sweetness—the sweetness of the holy name.

4:55The holy name dances on the tongue

Srila Rupa Gosvami writes about this—my God, how sweet this holy name is!

Tunde tandavini ratim vitanute—when it is on the tongue, the holy name, simply on the tongue… Tunde tandavini—it dances on the tongue, the holy name. Not just some sound, but it dances on the tongue—how poetically, how sweetly it is put! Srila Rupa Gosvami… Sri-chaitanya-mano 'bhishtam… svayam rupah kada mahyam dadati sva-padantikam—when will this Rupa Gosvami give me his shelter, he who understood the very essence of Sri Chaitanya’s mood? It is a combination of emotions, and this emotion expands. Simply when a person pronounces the holy name, he feels the taste of that sound. A delicious sound!

6:00This taste spreads into every cell of the body, because physically our body consists of atoms, of cells, and there is constant movement there. Nothing ever stands still, everything is constantly moving, moving, moving. Now, this movement can be cramped by nervous stress, breakdowns, resentments, depression, fears, panic. A person can lose sleep and peace. In the Srimad-Bhagavatam Lord Kapiladeva says that this happens because a person is hostile toward other living beings, simply feels hatred toward them and does nothing to fight it.

6:43But for an intelligent person who feels the taste, the holy name dances on the tongue—ratim vitanute, it increases rati, that is, it increases the flow of grace not only, as we say, in the subtle or spiritual body, but in the physical one too. Grace itself spreads through the entire physical body. And then trouble is no trouble, illness is no illness and an enemy is no enemy.

7:37“I want to have thousands of such tongues, millions! I want to taste this holy name with my mouth.” With the mouth, he says: I want to have millions of mouths. Karna-kroda-kadambini ghatayate—and when through the ears, when this sound, this sound vibration, appears in the ears… The holy name can be tasted—its sweetness can be tasted—with the tongue and the ears, in fact with all the senses.

7:58The holy name is a chintamani stone

Nama chintamanih krishnash chaitanya-rasa-vigrahah—the very essence, the embodiment of chaitanya-rasa. Nama chintamani—this is sweetness, the sweet holy name. Nama chintamani—like a precious stone, not even precious, but magical. When a chintamani stone in the material world touches iron, any metal, wood—it doesn’t matter—it turns everything into gold. But the chintamani of the spiritual world is something that turns everything it touches into prema.

9:07I worship such a Lord Govinda, whose abode is made of chintamani stone. In the commentary on these words it is explained: everything in the spiritual world is made of prema, and whatever you touch, it increases Krishna-prema. Wherever you look, it increases it; whatever you hear, it increases your Krishna-prema. That is what chintamani is.

9:56Nama chintamanih krishnash chaitanya-rasa-vigrahah—the very form of rasa. Purna—everything is in this holy name, completely; everything is in the holy name. Shuddha—the purest, never contaminated by anything. Nitya-mukta—always situated on the transcendental level, never contaminated by anything. Abhinnatvan nama-naminoh. Why? Because the nami is the one who owns the name, the master of the name. Nama is Krishna, rupa is Krishna, lila is Krishna.

11:00That is why devotees feel the strongest emotion—devotees like Rupa Gosvami and his sincere followers. The strongest emotion, because this emotion is aroused by the contact of the tongue and ears with this, as we say technically, sound vibration. But it is a magical sound vibration, a magical substance made of sound and nondifferent from Lord Krishna Himself—the very essence of our shelter: sri-krishna sharanam mama. Karna-kroda-kadambini ghatayate karnarbudebhyah spriham—I long to have millions of ears, it is so sweet. Millions of ears! Chetah-prangana-sangini—touching our consciousness… The mouth creates the sound vibration, the ears hear the sound vibration, and through the ears the holy name penetrates the very depths of our heart.

12:30Why the holy name first tastes like sand

Cheto-darpana-marjanam. To begin with, of course, we don’t feel any of this, because a process is going on, the long process of cleansing the heart—anartha-nivritti. And it is very hard to hold on here: faith is lost again and again. So many falls, so many failures, so many stumbles and disappointments, because chanting the holy name is like chewing sand. I have mixed everything up: I have mistaken the diamond of the holy name—I look at it and think it is just a piece of broken glass.

13:32But for now that is normal. Although, of course, it is absolutely abnormal that we feel no taste for the holy name. From the point of view of the Bhagavatam, from the point of view of our acharyas, it is abnormal in the extreme.

14:38The root of the problem: a lack of humility

Jiva Gosvami, and after him Srila Prabhupada, all our acharyas explain: alas, an offensive mood—offenses to the holy name, offenses to devotees—deprives us of the possibility of feeling this taste. A lack of humility. The only problem is a lack of humility, the only problem of the sadhaka. And the problem is precisely that humility cannot be understood logically. You cannot understand it with your logic, you cannot understand it by watching others. To understand what humility is, you have to show humility. How this happens is truly a mystery; it is very difficult.

15:41That is why a humble person will certainly always chant the name of the Lord—in his social life, in his spiritual life. But how is that? How can we understand it? A clear sign that a person is not humble is that he feels no taste, no steady taste for chanting the holy name. By the fruits, by the symptoms, we can judge the causes. By the symptoms we judge the causes. It’s just like medicine: we also get ill sometimes, we see some symptoms and try to determine the cause from those symptoms—what the problem is, what the problem is.

16:43So, from them we can be sure that the problem is exalted pride. Not just pride, but exalted material pride, arrogance, vanity and all the other words that describe a complicated conceit. And not understanding what humility is gives rise, unfortunately, to this material disease, to material suffering and to a lack of qualification, of adhikara—the qualification to feel ruchi, bhava, the sweetness of the holy name, the sweetness of beholding the Deities, the sweetness of swinging the Deities, the sweetness of taking in the divine philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita, the divine song, and even more so the sweetness of Sri Krishna’s Vrindavan-lila.

17:48Vrindavan-lila opens only by mercy

Because to enter Vrindavan-lila, even a pure heart is not yet adhikara, not yet the qualification. Even a pure heart: even when a person treats all living beings equally, laments for nothing, desires nothing, even when he has already stepped onto the path of mad-bhaktim labhate param—still, this is not yet the qualification to enter Vrindavan-lila. Because entering Vrindavan-lila by, simply put, material means is basically impossible. Only by utterly inconceivable mercy, mercy that logic can in no way grasp—the mercy of Sri Guru and Sri Krishna—can we get access there.

18:53We are given access. We are simply given access—just like with those Google files. If there is some Google Drive with some secret information in it—what Sri Radha and Sri Krishna are doing—then we need to get access. And that access can be obtained only if the owner wishes it. We cannot… We cannot comprehend Radha-Madhava, we cannot comprehend this Vrindavan-lila. It is supremely… It is the very summit, and in principle it is basically inaccessible to almost anyone. Rupa Gosvami concludes the last texts of The Nectar of Instruction, the Sri Upadesamrita, with this: it is hard to attain even for the greatest among the most advanced sadhus, as the commentaries explain.

20:19Of course, we are used to taking everything cheaply, and naturally we are used to taking this cheaply too. But if it has truly opened up to a person, he can no longer remain a normal person. It manifests, of course, to the highest degree: it is a state of absolute madness of love. Madness of love—love drives one mad, to the highest degree, completely.

21:14Through humility to harinama, through harinama to Vrindavan

There are no other options. We can enter Krishna-lila through the holy name, solely by mercy, by the inconceivable mercy of Lord Krishna manifest in the holy name. And access to harinama is possible only through humility, as Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself, the founder of this movement, says: trinad api sunichena. Through trinad api sunichena we come to harinama, through harinama we come to Vrindavan. And of course, harinama needs the help of Krishna-katha.

22:20The energy of bhakti and its carriers

When we hear the Srimad-Bhagavatam—hear it constantly, regularly, or read it… Let’s try to visualize this—bhakti, or jnana, knowledge as such—let’s say, with this word: it is a certain energy. Energy. But truly, it is Krishna’s energy: svarupa-shakti, hladini—all these are energies, the shaktis of Krishna, the Shaktiman, the one who possesses these shaktis and, by means of His many energies, performs various activities. Even we ourselves are Krishna’s energy: the jiva is Krishna’s energy, prakritim param, the superior energy.

23:24So, love, prema, bhakti, is also energy. And different energies come into contact with one another in different ways. The conditioned living being comes into contact with Krishna’s energies—these are bhumir apo 'nalo vayuh kham mano buddhir eva cha, ahankara, eight kinds: five gross and three subtle elements. And all this is daivi hy esha guna-mayi mama maya duratyaya: My gunas, My energy. Mama maya duratyaya—this is My maya; she bewitches and enchants the living beings who are in the material world.

24:10The living being comes into contact with different gunas, with different energy in the form of the gunas. And so, for example, food is a carrier of the gunas, sound is a carrier of one guna or another. People are in different gunas, places are in different gunas, thoughts are in different gunas, words are in different gunas—everything is in different gunas. These three divide again into three, and then again within them—this is how the great diversity of the material world is created. And in this way the living being, being Sri Krishna’s energy, anu, tiny, comes into contact with the vibhu, the living being of the highest category, Krishna, through His energies in the material world. But there are carriers. That is, we are essentially carriers of one quality or another for each other.

25:19That is why a book, too, carries a certain energy. It carries energy within it. And even, even the object itself, the vastu—the material book. That is why the traditional option is still recommended: even this object itself already radiates a certain energy—the energy of prema. So a book is a carrier of energy, a guru is a carrier of energy, of shakti.

26:04And when we hear from a qualified source—this is very important—nashta-prayeshv abhadreshu: practically everything inauspicious is completely destroyed if we hear regularly, from a qualified source, from an adhikari, a qualified devotee of Krishna. If we do this regularly, it helps the holy name enter our consciousness, enter our heart and work certain miracles in our heart. Miracles indeed, because a person’s own heart will seem a supreme miracle to him when he truly touches the holy name. His very own heart! As Lord Jesus Christ said: “The kingdom of God is within you.” Within—it is within, within. And by chanting with humility, receiving Lord Krishna’s mercy, a person beholds the great mysteries of God—simply by chanting the sounds of the holy name. How does this happen?

27:30No taste? Work on humility

Let’s rewind and repeat it once more: access to the holy name, to the real holy name, opens only through humility. So this is how we judge: if there is no taste, then we definitely need to work hard on humility. Hard. How? God only knows. Pray, pray, pray: “Krishna, I don’t know how, I don’t know, I don’t understand, I am completely at a loss.” And when it is “everything is clear to me”—that is a sad situation.

27:50Hare Krishna! Many thanks to the devotees for stopping me—I thought I still had time. You see, this energy of illusion gets me too… Thank you for your attention. Now we will have kirtan and the Jhulan-yatra festival. Srila Prabhupada ki jaya!