How to enter Vrindavana. Opening

Shri Guru Shri Yuta Padakamalam Shri Guru Vaishnava Nischa Shri Rupam Sagrajatam Sahagana Raghunatam Vitam Tamsa jīvam Sadvaitam savadhūtam Parijanā sahitam Krishna chaitanya devam Śrī radhā Krishnā padām Sahagana lalitā Śrī viṣakā vidām ścā E Krishna Karana Sindho Dina Bandho Jagatpate Gopesa Gopika Kanta Radha Kanta Namastute Taptakanchena Gaurangi Radhe Vrindavaneshwari Vrishabhānu sutta devī Prānamāmi harī priyep Anca kalpā darubhyaśca Kripā sindhubhya eva ca Patitanā pavanebhyo Vaiṣṇavhyo namo namah Śrī Kṛṣṇa Chaitanya Prahbhuni Tyananda Sri Advaita Gadadhara Sri Vasadhi Gauravakta Vrinda 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 Rama Hare Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Namo Vishnu Padaya Krishna Prashtaya Bhutale Shri Matai Bhaktivedanta Svāmī niti nāmīnī Nāmas te sarasvāti devī Gauravāṇī pračārīne Nīrviṣeṣa šunyavādī Vāścātya deśa dārīne Yantāh praviṣya mamavācīm amāprasūptam Sāngjiīvāyā takīla-shaktī dharāh svadhamnā Anyamśca hastacaranaśravanātvāgādim Pranāṇamā bhagavate purushāya dubhyam Swasyasthu viśvāśya kalāḥ prasīdatam Dhyāntu bhutāni śivam mitodiyā Manasca padram vajatattadau kṣadjā Havishyatam nomadīrād vyahaitukī Arīkāsina. I'm very happy to see all those whom I can see. And others whom I cannot see. But kind of assume that they're there. So, let me speak a few words about this place where we gather together and about the retreat which is ahead of us. First of all, I would like to thank everyone for coming for this event. And I also have to mention that this is the very first retreat which we are conducting in this place. All the team who is trying to bring this retreat center to shape was working very hard to make this retreat happen. And inevitably there will be some shortcomings and problems. Just yesterday was a big fire here and you can expect floods and other calamities. Please kindly forgive us for any shortcomings. we'll try to improve in the future and just consider that this is the very first retreat in this place. So first of all I wanted to speak a little bit about the idea of this place. What is it and what we're trying to achieve by building yet another retreat center. Just one year ago, big retreat center in Govardhan was opened by Satshinanda Marach and Buridjan Prabhu. Why do we need another one? There is a different idea behind this place. And... I'm happy to reveal this idea to all of you. This place is called Shri Rupa Seva Kunj. And the Sanskrit word Rupa, which we usually translate as form, also means beauty. And Shri Rupa indicates the divine beauty, the beauty of divine couple or specifically the beauty of Shri, who is known other than Shri Mati Radharani. So the main meaning of this name, Sri Rupa Seva Kunj, is that this is the place where we are trying to serve the divine beauty. The beauty of divine couple, the beauty of Sri Mati Radharani, the beauty of Krishna, Sri Rupa Seva. This is the kunjo, the intimate place of service to the beauty. And of course, there are other meanings of this name, of this place. Sri Rupa Seva kunj means this is the kunj where Sri Rupa Manjari is serving the divine couple. because she's the only one who can really serve who we are, who we think we are, to serve the divine beauty. So this name also reminds us about our eternal position of servants of Sri Rupa Manjari, who is the leader of all the Gaudiya Vaishnavas in their original spiritual forms. and Siddha Deas. And of course, Sri Rupa means Sri Rupa Goswami who has come to this earth and he is nobody else but Sri Rupa Manjari. So we are followers of Sri Rupa Goswami and here we are trying to help to serve the Divine Couple. And he is the leader, he is the founder, Ācārya of the whole Gorya, Sampradaya, and we are his servants by definition. And to serve Sri Rūpa Gosvāmī, this is very clearly stated in Sri Chaitanya Charitāmṛta, to serve Rupa and Raghunath. Basically means to imbibe their mood, to understand the mood which they described in their literature and try to reflect this mood within our heart and try to execute or fulfill their desires. And ultimately this is the desires of Shri Chaitanya Mahabhub. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu So Sri Rupa Goswami knew the heart of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. He revealed the heart and the innermost desires of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in his books. And this is the place where we are trying to serve Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Prabhu, by understanding the exalted literature written by the Goswami Sofri Ndavan and their followers. And Srila Prabhupada, of course, is the first and foremost in our minds. And he is the one who revealed to us this amazing concept of Krishna, who is dancing God and singing God, God of love and God of beauty. And therefore, we are trying to emphasize here the beauty. It is explained by Bhaktivinoda Thakur. He was explaining the verse from Vishnu Purana, Aishvaryasya Samagra-sya Viryasiya Yashasah Shriya, Jnana Vairagya Yosha Chayvada, verse, the famous verse which gives, and not definition, but the description of the qualities of Bhagavan, the personality of Godhead. And he explains that there are five, six main opulences of Bhagavan. And Bhaktivinoda Kuru says that out of the six, Sri or beauty is the main one. It's the Angi and the other five aspects of the personality of Godhead, like Aishwarya, Virya, Gyanavairagya and Yasha, his glory, his opulence, his physical strength and his knowledge and his renunciation, they are just aspects of beauty. In fact, you can consider this verse as a definition of beauty. What is beauty? Beauty has so many different dimensions. And these dimensions are mentioned in this verse. Knowledge is the aspect of beauty. Knowledge is beautiful. Somebody who is knowledgeable, he becomes beautiful and beautified by the knowledge and the education which he has. Renunciation makes somebody very beautiful. Renunciation is the aspect of beauty. In a similar way, the opulence or diversity, because in this world when we talk about opulence, we're talking about diversity, is also an aspect of beauty. Beauty can never be monotonous. It's always very diverse. Of course, it has so many different varieties within it. And even Viriya, the heroism, is an aspect of beauty. And of course, yasha, the glory, the fame, is also an aspect of beauty. Somebody who is beautiful is famous. And Bhaktivinoda Thakur explains that the beauty, the yasha, which is included in this definition of Godhead, the Bhagavan, definition of Bhagavan, beauty, sorry, yasha, glory or fame, here means something which brings good fortune within our life, something which purifies the heart. Usually when people speak about glory, they speak about some famous persons. When we are talking about famous persons, basically it means that we are talking about their sex life, which is very contaminating. The glorious, whatever description of quote-unquote glorious people in this world you have, inevitably involves their romantic, whatever, adventures. But the glory of the Lord, the fame of the Lord is all purifying. And by purifying the heart, by purifying the consciousness, it brings about the good fortune in our life. It brings about our ability to go deeper inside. So, first of all, to understand what it means to serve the beauty of the Supreme Lord, we have to understand how His beauty manifests in this world. And it manifests in this aspect which I mentioned, and of course the beauty itself is all inclusive. It includes so many other dimensions, like kindness and mercy is also beauty. The relationships which are there, which are based on love, love is also beauty. Love and beauty are basically synonymous. So, while doing this place or meditating on what this place is all about, we were thinking about how we should try to manifest, not manifest really, how we should, I don't know what is the proper word in English for this, but try to reveal the beauty of the Lord. The beauty is already there, it manifests in this world in so many different aspects. The world is essentially beautiful. We can see, those who have eyes, they can see the beauty of the Lord everywhere. But unfortunately, there are so many other things in this world which sometimes overshadow the beauty, the original beauty which has created this world. So, the humble attempt to construct this retreat center is not just about the retreat center, It's not about running a guest house and getting some money. That's not the idea. The idea is to reveal the beauty of the Lord in its multifarious aspects. All different aspects of the divine beauty. And this is the place where we are supposed to serve this divine beauty. Therefore it's called Shri Rupa, Seva Kunj. So, basically why I'm talking about this and why we thought that there is a dire need for such a place is that originally Vraja is the place of all-encompassing beauty. The Lord Himself is beauty personified and all the relationship in original Vracha are beautiful, all the trees and all the flowers, they all serve and this service makes them even more beautiful than they are. And of course, cows are the most beautiful creatures. Perhaps you have seen this, especially this Gir-Cows. If I was a bull, I would fall in love with them. They're so beautiful. They're really beautiful. With the hump and beautiful horns. And beautiful big eyes. So, cows are very beautiful if you look at them, how they walk and how they react in this world. So, originally Vraja is the place of beauty. But, due to the... And of course when Chaitanya Mahprabhu came here 500 years back, in the year 1515, that's the year when he visited Vraja, he also saw the original beauty of this place. But since that time, 500 years passed and you only see plastic everywhere and all kinds of garbage. Unfortunately, not only, of course there are breathtaking beauty still here and special sweetness is here. Those people who are used to this place, or kind of in sync with the vibrations of this place, they can feel the special sweetness, no matter what is going on on the surface. The beauty is definitely here in Vraj, but unfortunately it's covered up by so many unpleasant things, And for newcomers, it's sometimes a little difficult to relate to the original beauty of this place. So, the idea behind this place was to try to recreate the original Vrach as much as we could do it. And therefore, in this Kunj where we're sitting now, There are over 100, 120 or something different species of trees and plants and flowers. And out of them, 75 are mentioned in scriptures in connection with Krishna-lila. And we tried to bring all these plants here and eventually we will explain the role of every tree and plant and flower in Krishna's lila. There will be QR codes and we will use the Kali Yuga means of explaining or giving this information. But in any case, this is just subsidiary thing, but the original idea is to create a place where the beauty is very visible, where you don't have to dig it out from the garbage pile. And in this way, to help people to meditate on the beauty of the Lord. Because again, what is service? What is serva? Serva means meditation. Serva means meditation. That's the original meaning of the word meditation, dhyana. When something is very beautiful, you naturally meditate on this beauty. You're fixed on this beauty, you want to see this beauty. And we of course know the descriptions from the scriptures, how people who would see Krishna, they would go deep into the meditation on his beauty and couldn't take away their eyes, their looks from the beauty of Krishna. So, again the idea here is to facilitate meditation. different modes of material nature, they can either distract us from meditation, and what we see in Kali Yuga, it's mostly different manifestations of the modes of ignorance and passion. Especially in the big cities, if you go to the big city, you only see passion, and of course nowadays a lot of ignorance in these big cities. But when you go to the nature, then your mind is naturally calm. Sattva guna enters into your mind, and Sattva guna is the only mode of material nature, is the only guna which helps meditation, which helps us to go deeper. And you cannot enter Vrindavan without meditation. You cannot really understand what is Vrindavan or feel what is Vrindavan without going deeper and without calming out your mind. So the idea of this place is to facilitate this calming down of the mind. to make the mind completely peaceful and by making mind completely peaceful to help all the people who are coming here to meditate deeply on the divine beauty and hopefully come in direct contact with divine beauty because this material world is nothing but reflection, perverted reflection of the divine beauty of the Lord. So that's the idea of this place and therefore the very first retreat, which you have, whatever you look at it, honor to be a part of or misfortune to be a part of, depending on the amount of inconveniences which you will encounter. But it's not without the reason that this first retreat in this place will be about meditation and how to enter Vrindavan. We will speak about the process of meditation And our guide in this meditation on Krishna will be Akrura. Of course, the name of Akrura is quite terrifying for the inhabitants of Vrindavan. They don't like to hear this name. But at the same time, Akrura is a very special personality and all the Acharyas who write commentaries on the 10th kanta of Srimad Bhagavatam, they stress that he is a great devotee and we have to learn a lot from him. But the most important lesson which we should learn from him is how to meditate upon Krishna to meet him at the end of journey. So this beautiful journey of Akrura to Vrindavan from Madhura is also a description of our own journey. We are coming from the foreign land and the idea of this journey is ultimately to enter Vrindavan. And enter Vrindavan doesn't mean that you got your room in the guesthouse. entering Vrindavan means meeting Krishna. Only then, if you meet Krishna face to face, you will be able to proudly say that I entered Vrindavan. Before you met Krishna, you didn't enter Vrindavan. You're just crawling on the surface of Vrindavan. There are so many bugs here. so no problem. They are also part of this Vrindavan, but ultimately that's the idea. And you can only meet with Krishna if you are focused, if you are concentrated, if your mind is very cool and peaceful. Like in the very beginning of Srimad Bhagavatam, The fourth verse of Srimad Bhagavatam, after three introductory verses, is speaking about Naimisharanya Kshetra, and commentators explain why Srimad Bhagavatam was told, not for the first time, but why it was retold by Sutta Goswami in Naimisharanya. And they explain that the very word Naimisharanya means this is the place where the chakra of our mind stops. To understand Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, to understand anything which is related to the Divine Realm, you need to stop the rotation of your mind. When the mind is rotating passionately, non-stop, we don't have access to the Divine Realm. The only way to access the Divine Realm is to stop the mind. And of course, Govardhan is the best place. I remember I sometimes tell this story, one very passionate, rich person came here and we took him for Govardhan Parikrama and in the middle of Govardhan Parikrama, he just stopped. And he said, I can't believe it. And we're looking at him, what he cannot believe. He said, I can't believe it. And he repeated it a third time. I can't believe it. my mind stopped. I couldn't believe it. My mind is always rotating. But here he, in a very natural way, and it was so surprising to him, it was practically miraculous to him that he came for the second time here. As busy as he is with all his, you know, millions of things to do, he came again here and he said again, it happened again here. So this place in itself is very conducive for this. This place in itself where Govardhan is in his deep meditation on Krishna and Krishna Lila. If you come close to Govardhan, a little closer, and there is a facility to come close, you practically could feel that he's there, he's alive, and he's meditating very deeply. He's in samadhi. So this place itself is very conducive for meditation. But, of course, there are so many distractions also. And what I want to say is that everything which we are trying to do, and we are actually begging you to help us, to help in a sense, to contribute a little bit into this beauty by your smiles, by the relationship which you enter, by everything which is beautiful. As I said, beauty is a very big world. And there are so many dimensions and aspects of beauty. So, by being here, please try to contribute into the beauty of this place. And the most beautiful thing which you could do is just to smile. It's very simple, just smile. And immediately you become very beautiful. Your face shines by the smile. So, but everything in the human culture actually is there to elevate the consciousness. The real human culture is to help us to uplift the consciousness. The purpose of architecture, the real architecture, is to uplift consciousness. Of course, when you come to some apartment in some building in San Francisco, it's not necessarily uplift your consciousness. But originally the purpose of everything, of the human culture, is to uplift the consciousness of human beings. So that's what we are trying to do. We are trying to have a beautiful architecture here. We are trying to ultimately build a beautiful temple. Now we are in the process of inviting Radha and Krishna in this beautiful temple. manifesting themselves in Jaipur. And the real beauty again calms your mind, brings down the anxieties of the mind and all different disturbances which are there in the mind and desires. So I will consider our retreat a big success if by the end of this retreat you will become much more peaceful and calm and happy as a result of it. So I will inspect every one of you. I will look at your faces and try to see what was the effect of this event. Let's hope that it will work. So that's basically a little introduction to this place and to the topic which I will speak on and I'm sure Madhavananda Prabhu will help me in this regard by taking you to different beautiful spots in Vrāja and nearby places. And tomorrow the first lecture, the introductory lecture to this retreat will be given by his holiness Shachinanda Marachi is writing his book many years about meditation two books about meditation and he said to me a couple of days back when we spoke that I consider this book my final contribution. So he attributes a lot of importance to this book. And we were talking about this, how in our desire to please and to serve, we passionate people of Kali Yuga sometimes misunderstand that ultimately we have to calm down and go deeper and deeper and deeper to get the real spiritual experience. Without calming the mind, without bringing the mind into a sacred space, we will not be able to achieve the spiritual experience. Sometimes people are trying to do it by some imagination. And of course the mind is very fertile, And they think if I read the book and then I start imagining something and then I become some Kachori Manjari or something like this. With my Ikadashi Baba. That's not the way. The way is to calm down the mind, to chant the holy name in a very humble and peaceful state of mind. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama, Hare Hare. And remember the past times of Krishna. And yeah, Akrura will explain what we should do. this 38th chapter of the 10th kent of Srimad Bhagavatam is very glorious and very deep and has many many lessons for all of us. So, Satchinan Maraj will give the introductory lecture tomorrow and from the day after tomorrow I will give a few lectures on this topic. And let's hope that the magic will happen. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.