Vyasa-puja Speech

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare Hare I am a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a person who is a Hare Krishna. I am very happy to see all of you. I miss all of you and hope that sometime we will be able to see each other. Now let me speak a little bit about the occasion we gathered to celebrate. So we know that the Vedic literature emphasizes again and again and again the need for Guru, spiritual master. Tasmat Guruam Prapadita, Jigyasam Shreya Utthama. If you are interested to get the Shreya, or not obvious good, not immediate good, if you are not into prayers, which is something immediately pleasant, if you want to obtain something which is not immediately pleasant, but will bring you ultimate happiness, ultimate good, then you have to go to Guru. You have to go to a spiritual master and you have to learn under him. This is the verdict of Srimad Bhagavatam, this is the verdict of Upanishads, this is the verdict of Mahabharata. Again and again and again this point is stressed. The whole Mahabharata story starts with the three stories about three disciples. The disciple in Sattva-gun, the disciple in Rajya-gun and the disciple in Tamma-gun. And the three of them are very successful despite the differences in their starting points. Just because they exercise and practice their devotion to the spiritual master. and of course Shveta Shvatara Upanishad ends with this verse only those great souls can understand all these topics can really understand and by understanding we don't mean theoretical understanding that's very important who have devotion bhakti to God and who have devotion to spiritual master. So the natural question arises why? Why so much stress about this? And that's especially relevant topic for the inhabitants of great city of Bangalore or where there is a great temple in the hill, which propagates the different conception. When they say that there is actually no need to have the living spiritual master, It's enough if you develop some sentiment or devotion to Śrīla Prabhupāda or to some previous ācāryas. So let's try to analyze it in a very scientific way. We can see that there are different disciplines, scientific disciplines in this world. And some scientific disciplines don't so much require the presence of the living mentor. You know, you can, strictly speaking, you can learn mathematics or even law, maybe less, but you know, physics, even chemistry, without teacher guiding you. Of course it's easier when there is somebody who knows, you can ask him questions or doubts and he can explain some difficult things to you in a simple way, he can understand what is your misunderstanding. It's easier even in this case, but these disciplines are primarily theoretical. And because they are primarily theoretical and they don't require the realized knowledge, you can learn them by reading handbooks, by paroksha gyan, so to speak. You just read the books and you try to understand these books and you try to, you know, maybe even teach these books to others and then you memorize these books. And that's what is required. But as soon as it comes to some practical, applied disciplines, there is no option of not having some living mentor who will teach you. For example, medicine. Ravi Kirti can correct me if I'm wrong, but you cannot really become a good doctor just by learning the handbooks in the medical college. Yes, you can obtain some theoretical knowledge, but when it comes to reality, it will be very difficult for you to apply it. And of course, in case of modern medicine, it may be possible even without so much practice in the real world, because modern medicine is primarily mechanistic. And therefore, it's possible to become somewhat good without really practice. But, you know, you cannot become a good surgeon without learning under the guidance of a surgeon. You cannot become a good piano player without a good piano player being your teacher who will show to you how to do this. And, you know, as soon as we come to this area of practical application, when we have to have not just theoretical knowledge, but deeper kind of knowledge, the knowledge which is based on realization, we immediately start understanding why the personal guidance is necessary. Now, what is the science behind it? The science behind it is very simple. The understanding behind it is very simple because when you are studying under somebody who has some experience, his experience is being transmitted into your heart more or less directly. His samskaras are coming to your heart. His experience which is there, which is accumulated through his hard work and his tapasya, austerities and everything else comes in a very natural way. You know I have a very interesting first-hand experience of this, I had a friend and we started practicing Krishna consciousness together with him and he was not a good, you know, he loved to lead kirtans but he absolutely had no clue how to do it. And as much as he loved to lead Kirtan, everyone else hated when he started singing Kirtans. Everyone was just running away from the room where he would start because his voice was terrible, his intonation, his musical abilities were terrible. terrible. And then, you know, we were separated for one year or so and then he came and I saw an amazing transformation. He was playing tabla perfectly, very expertly. He was leading nice kirtan, very melodious. His voice was changed and I couldn't understand how is that possible, how this transformation took place. And he told me that when there was a festival of India and Pandit Jasraj, you might have heard his name, a very great Indian musician, he came to Russia, at that time Soviet Union, and because he was fascinated by Indian culture, he started serving him on a personal basis. Somehow or other he got acquainted to him and he was helping him, translating to him this and that. And he said at the end, Pandit Jasraj was so pleased with me that he said, I'm blessing you and you will have a good musical ability. He said, he took me by hand and by him taking me by hand, I felt something really strange. And ever since I started playing tabla and singing. So the purport of this little story, somewhat miraculous story, of course we are all devotees and we like all these miraculous stories. So I will explain what is the real purport of it. The poor part of this story is that under the personal guidance we get samskaras much easier. And samskaras are needed for any practical discipline, for practice of any practical discipline. Again, theoretical disciplines, you need some memories, you need memorization of facts, this and that. But to do something practically like playing piano or playing music or doing surgeries, you need the experience of somebody and this experience, you can obtain this experience yourself. You can kill a few dozens of people by doing lousy surgeries. and at the end you will become somewhat good and you will stop killing them by, you know, putting some foolish things. But the same thing happened with you when you are under the guidance of somebody and when you see he is doing this. You know, like for example, yoga. You can learn yoga just by books. You see the photograph, this posture or that posture. But then when you have the teacher in front of you, there are two processes which are going on simultaneously. When this apprentices is taking place. One process is that the teacher will show you your mistakes. He will tell you this is what you are doing wrong. He knows how to do this. This is again my personal experience. I was taking some music lessons or rather singing lessons. And the expert teachers will tell you something very strange. And you hear this and you immediately understand what is your mistake and you change it. And it works. You know, he tells you, you know, your palate should be high. And, you know, if I tell you your palate should be high, you know, you have no idea what does it mean to make high palate. Pallet is palate, you know, how you do your palate high. But when the expert teacher will tell you your palate should be high, you immediately understand what it means. make your palate high and the sound become deeper and more beautiful rather than when you sing with the flat palate without making it a little high. So anyway, one way of learning when we have some personal association is to ask questions, is to confide the problems which we have and to seek the correction. And that's a very powerful tool because when we understand that we need to practice something, we immediately encounter some impediments, some obstacles in our path. And the obstacles could be easily overcome if somebody who has the experience teaches us how to overcome these obstacles, especially if he himself went through the same path and knows the problems which everyone encounters. And he can also teach you how to do correctly certain things, certain practical stuff. The second way, actually there are three ways. The second way of learning from a teacher is that when you just observe him. When you just see how he behaves, how he deals with certain situations, or how he, you know, the way he holds his scalpel, his knife by doing surgery, or how he, you know, just observing him, you get a lot of information. You know, when you read a sentence or a paragraph or even a chapter in a book, there is very limited information there. But when you see somebody doing something, it's, you know, many, many faults more information is coming to your mind. You may not understand it completely rationally, but on the subconscious way you still learn just by observing how another person is doing. Like for example, I observed, you know, it's actually a duty of a disciple to be very observant. He has to observe how his guru behaves. I learned a lot when I was just observing Sri Radhanath Maharaj. How he deals with other people, you know, how he's not in a hurry by dealing with other people. It's an amazing quality. He may be so much pressed by time, but still when he deals with somebody on a personal level, you never feel that he's in a hurry. You never feel it. You will feel as if his whole time is yours, belongs to you. Even though he may be pressed, at least generally, because sometimes the pressure is immense, How he just tries to enter into the personal contact. So that's another way. And of course, the disciples of Srila Prabhupada, they explained this. How they were observing Srila Prabhupada and how the behavior, even the smallest kind of gestures of Srila Prabhupada were teaching them a lot. They were learning the spiritual science just by observing Srila Prabhupada, how he walks, how he talks. That's exactly what actually Arjuna asked Krishna. How this Sthita Prabhya Muni, how he walks, how he talks, how he sits. Even though it has some other meaning while Arjuna asking these questions, but it has also literal meaning. You know, how externally the internal consciousness, which you cannot really see externally, which is very subtle, how it externally manifests in the behavior. And by observing this, you subconsciously start to imitate the person. And I mean imitating not in a bad sense. Usually we say imitation is bad, but imitating basically means you try to do the same, you try to act the same, you try to absorb the mood. You know, again, mood is something which is very difficult to explain, especially if it's very difficult to write it on a piece of paper, but it's very easily transferable. when you deal with the person you immediately feel his mood his emotions and his general mood what he experiences there is another example I heard one scientist he is explaining his experience he was living for one year with sadhus in India and he says just by being close to them, next to them, I could feel the ambience, I could feel the peacefulness which they're emanating. You know, you will never be able to feel the same just by reading the book or even observing somebody on the internet. But being in the presence of somebody when you are in touch with his aura and the subtle body which is spreading around his gross body, you can easily understand this and also learn. Which is very important because we should not only learn theory, we should also learn the mood. The siddhanta we should learn, but again, siddhanta we can learn from the book to a certain extent. We can become quite good by learning from the book, but we will never become really good in understanding the real mood of a sadhu. And then there is a third, even deeper way of learning from the sadhu. And again, Prabhupada's disciple, they explained this. And this is actually the purport of this story with Pandit Jasraj and my friend. You know, the sadhu is somebody who is good in something. Because, you know, to become really good in any discipline, you have to perform a lot of tapasya. To become a really good doctor, really good surgeon, really good musician, really good astrologer, really good anyone, you need a lot of tapasya. Tapasya means you limit yourself. You don't do what you like, but you do what you're supposed to do. You learn the scriptures, you do this. And tapasya means concentration of the mind. You don't distract your mind. Tapasya means you don't go to Facebook every 12 minutes of your life. You don't check other stuff. That means tapasya. and if somebody has tapasya and whoever is good in anything in any field of activity if he has tapasya he has the ability to create to share some of his or her tapasya with you by creating some deep samskaras you know and that's what it means blessings Blessings of Asado means he wishes you well and his wish is very powerful because it's backed by the tapasya he performed. Because there is so much tapasye behind it when he says, Tata astu, let it be as you want, as you wish. I grant you your desire, let your desire be fulfilled. When this takes place, when he just says, Tata astu, let it be so. His words are so powerful that it creates samskara in the external reality and this samskara manifests as something real in your life. You know, so that's why, you know, we say that we depend on the mercy of the Guru. When the Guru wishes you well, when the Guru, you know, shares with you little of his austerity, his or her austerity, and blesses you, then you know, some scars which he has in his heart are being transferred into you. And you feel what he feels. Or we may feel some reflection of what he feels. You know, Srila Rupa Goswami explains this in Bhakti Rasa Amrita Sindhu when he says that there is this, you know, Abhas of the emotions, Bhava Abhas. We come close to somebody who has Bhava and we feel the reflection of his Bhava in our heart. Srila Bhaktivaya Bhavmaraj, disciple of Srila Prabhupada, He explained a very beautiful episode from Prabhupada's life and he says that once Prabhupada just came to the lecture and he started singing, chanting Jaya Radha Madhava and he became so emotional and ecstatic and he just stopped it, his voice choked and you know the tears started screaming and somehow or other he composed himself and left the room, he couldn't continue with the lecture. Bhaktivaya Bhambhavaraj says a very interesting thing. He said that everyone felt this intense emotion, which Śrīla Prabhupāda experienced himself. And because of this intense emotion, he said, I came to the paintings on the walls of the temple. And, you know, these intense emotions of Srila Prabhupada reflected in my heart. And I looked at this painting and I saw the spiritual world. The painting didn't remain the two-dimensional, you know, paint on the canvas. It became three or four or multi-dimensional reality, which became alive all of a sudden, which became full of life and pran and everything. And he said that, I shared this experience with other people who were present at that time, other disciples of Prabhupada, and almost all of them confirmed that something strange happened in our perception of reality. The deeper dimensions of reality become available to us just because we are present next to somebody who was experiencing deep emotions. And in this way, the transference of his or her spiritual samskaras are taking place in our life. So, that's three progressively deeper and deeper ways of learning from somebody who is good at any subject matter. And of course, spiritual subject matter is included. One is that, you know, you learn by correction and by asking questions. Another one you learn by observing him. and another one you learn by the blessings. You learn by trying to please him by your sincere endeavors, no matter how feeble they are, and by being next to him and by this reflection of his or her feelings within your heart. So this is the three ways which actually stress the need of a living Guru. You know, you can always write a letter, you can always get a blessing if you do something good and you report to the Guru. the Guru and you can always observe how he behaves, how he deals with other people, how he deals with the problems which may be there in his life or in the life of other people. So, they are very important. All three ways are very, very important for the progress of our spiritual life. You may say, I don't see my Guru, he is only coming, if we are lucky he is coming once a year, or if we are really lucky twice a year. Still, nevertheless, first of all, we can always come, we can still watch, we can still get the blessings. And it's important, because when we are lacking this, Even if we know He is there and He is praying for me, and He knows that I exist. That's a very important part. You know, it's very important for our spiritual progress to know that somebody causelessly interested in our spiritual progress. without any selfish motive. He just wants us to progress. Like, recently some disciple of mine wrote me a letter, and she writes that she was in a big crisis, And some spiritual crisis, some difficulties, no taste, this and that, it happens with everyone basically. And then one senior lady devotee whom I trust very much and whom I consider, you know, I asked my disciples to take Shiksha from her, she's from Russia, from Moscow. she just all of a sudden out of blue called her. And she asked her, how are you doing and how is your japa? How are you chanting your rounds? And she said, at this moment I just bursted into tears because I realized that somebody else is interested in my japa. You know, just this feeling that my spiritual progress is needed for somebody. That somebody really is interested in me developing spiritually. This is a very powerful feeling. You know, Ritwik philosophy, you know, it has some merits. It definitely has some rationale behind it. You cannot deny certain successes of these people. They do have a lot of success due to some... Perhaps their devotion to Srila Prabhupada is powerful. And their concentration on Srila Prabhupada is fine. But still, I met a couple of followers of this camp, and at least two of them told me that I became very dry, because I kind of felt that for whom I am doing this. One of their leaders, it's very interesting, I found him in Vinod Bihari Baba Ashram. And he recognized me, of course I didn't know him, but he recognized me immediately and he said, Oh, when I was with Bangalore Temple, I was listening to your lectures often. And then he told me the story. He was one of the leaders. He was in charge of one rather big community of their followers in Gujarat. And he was basically, yeah, he was the leader of this camp. But then he said, I became so desperate because I just kind of felt that, you know, to whom I am serving. Who is this person who actually receives my service and gives me the blessings in exchange? And then he said, I listened to some satsangs of Vinod Bihari Baba. He is a very great saint in Varsana, living now. And he said, I became so touched. I left everything and I came here and I am so happy here. He is not a leader, he is nobody there in this little group surrounding Bihari Baba. Because he has this personal touch of somebody, he says, it makes all difference in my life. It makes complete difference in my life. Because I feel that there is somebody who is interested in my devotional service. I am not doing it just a dry, meditative exercise by chanting this Hare Krishna mantra, but I am doing it as some very meaningful practice and I see how he is doing. So, the whole point which I am trying to make here is that we are persons. and ultimately the spiritual life is extremely personal. And ultimately we need to enter into personal relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead. And for that we have to develop as persons. And development in Bhakti is the development of our personality. the highest development, rectification, purification of our personality, of our personal traits, personal feelings, refinement of our personality. And because it is a practical discipline, not just theoretical, not just knowing Siddhanta, not just knowing the shlokas, that's good, but that's by far not enough. Because we have this personal philosophy. Personal philosophy implies personal relationship among the devotees. First and foremost, when they try to remain the persons and deal in a very personal way with each other, in a very friendly and very warm and emotionally fulfilling way, dealing with each other, helping each other. And we also have to have the personal relationship with juniors and with seniors. And especially the relationship with those people who are higher than us in their spiritual understanding and spiritual experience are extremely important because we can learn from them something which we will never learn just by reading the book. And therefore, Krishna emphasized this in Bhagavad-gita, tadvidi pranipatena pariprašne ena sevaya upadeksyanti tegyanam gyanina stattva darsinaha It's very interesting that he speaks about guru in the plural. upadeksyanti They will, they will give you the instructions tegyanam gyaninaha Again, it's plural in Sanskrit. So even though we usually say guru is one, but we also say that there are many gurus in our past. Each of them is teaching us different aspects of spiritual life. And therefore Krishna says, Upadakshanti te jnanam jnaninastatvadarsinaha This jnaninaha, those people who know the siddhanta or scriptures, the theory of spiritual life. And Tattva Darshanah, those people who have direct spiritual experience, Aparoksha Gyana, they can teach us this knowledge by which we will be able to understand the unity of reality and to understand the spiritual nature of reality ultimately. which is a very high ideal of bhakti and of our spiritual practices. So that's my little lecture on the topic which you are trying to discuss today. yeah so thank you very much I dutifully spoke 45 minutes the allocated time Śrīla Prabhupādaki Jaya