The Leap of Faith

[…] What the sadhus and gurus, based on the shastras, are aiming for when they tell such accounts [Krishna’s lilas], is for us to make the leap of faith from the springboard of dharma through the airways—or, I should say, sound-ways—of bhakti to this realm where only wonderful things happen, things that invariably expand God’s glory.

—from Attending Krishna’s Image: Chaitanya Vaishnava Murti-seva as Devotional Truth by H.H. Krishna Kshetra Swami, 2006

No Fixed Conclusion

Question: Sometimes we see that senior devotees or other Vaisnavas in the community are speaking of what goes maybe against the general philosophy. Or, for example, nowadays talks coming up again about raganuga-bhakti and how to practice it. Sometimes it goes quite far, with some devotees claiming that Srila Prabhupada did not give us everything required, and that Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati was excluding things that should have been there, and so on. That can sometimes unexpectedly come from senior respected Vaisnavas. We, as a local community, that take responsibility for the education of young people, wonder how to respectfully deal with such situations or deviations.

Answer: Well, deal carefully. You may ask a senior devotee to talk to you in a private way and explain your concern, and why you have this concern in particular – in the context of the whole society and as well as the little community: “What you are saying might be a problem and a cause of confusion…” And you can also ask him or her: “How do you want us to deal with that?” That would be, I think, a good starting point.

It could also be – and I am now speaking very generally, not necessarily of what you have given an example – that this devotee is correcting a misunderstanding that devotees may have, or a quasi-correct understanding that ends up being misunderstanding in their application of it.

You mentioned raganuga-bhakti. There are devotees who have a misunderstanding that raganuga-bhakti equals sahajiya-orientation or mentality or way of life. Well, that is a misunderstanding. Raganuga-bhakti is described by Srila Rupa Goswami in his Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu as an authorized form of sadhana – as raganuga-bhakti-sadhana (or raganuga-sadhana-bhakti).

There is a paragraph, we have read during the festival, from the Nectar of Devotion, where it may seem like Srila Prabhupada is saying that raganuga-bhakti equals sahajiya-ism. I was reading this paragraph and thinking, “O… How is this going to be understood….” Srila Prabhupada is talking there about siddha-pranali and then he seems to be equating it with sahajiya-ism.

Here is the Nectar of Devotion excerpt: “In this connection, we should be careful about the so-called siddha-pranali. It is a process followed by a class of men who are not very authorized and who have manufactured their own way of devotional service. They imagine that they have become associates of the Lord, simply by thinking of themselves like that. This external behavior is not at all according to the regulative principles. The so-called siddha-pranali process is followed by the prakrita-sahajiya, a pseudosect of so-called Vaisnavas. In the opinion of Srila Rupa Goswami, such activities are simply disturbances to the standard way of devotional service.” (See The Nectar of Devotion, Chapter 16: Spontaneous Devotion Further Described, Eligibility for Spontaneous Devotional Service).

It is not the philosophy of the Vaisnavas that raganuga-sadhana-bhakti is sahajiya-ism But in this excerpt from the Nectar of Devotion, Srila Prabhupada is warning us against superficial or false practice, in the name of raganuga-bhakti jumping to an assumed level of perfection (siddha) that we are not qualified for.

But the general point in this context of your question is that it could be that a devotee is seeking to – and perhaps, he or she does it in a not very expert way – that is possible – to correct the misunderstanding that raganuga-sadhana-bhakti is sahajiya-ism.

In some sense, our mission works like a funnel: we have a very wide end that is welcoming everyone, and then we are narrowing it down. The small end of the funnel of our tradition is actually very small. It is not easy to get everything right to suddha-bhakti or pure devotional service, back home, back to Godhead. It is a very small passageway. And in our Society, we have everybody: from the widest down to the narrowest, and we are trying to negotiate all this variety. It is not easy.

Once a disciple of H.H. Gaura Govinda Swami Maharaja was expressing some dissatisfaction to him, about how things were going on in his temple – I don’t know what specifically, but he was not happy about something, describing to his spiritual master quite some immaturity of some devotees in that particular temple. Gaura Govinda Maharaja replied (I’m paraphrasing): “You know, sometimes our temples are like kindergarten.” They are places for learning the basics. I hope this will not be taken in a negative way…

If I just stop here, you will feel greatly upset – especially those of you who live here – “Oh no, what is this!” Remember, Srila Prabhupada said that our temples are places for education, and education doesn’t mean just kindergarten. We have our courses for studying sastras and of course, the whole idea of studying sastra is applying sastra and developing sastra-caksu – the vision of sastra. What I am saying is that this is an ongoing process of learning.

Therefore, it is not that you have a fixed conclusion applicable to everyone at all times. You don’t always have a fixed conclusion: some things are a matter of discussion, and even friendly argumentation. And that is why we have also our class with sastra, where we can discuss and consider things from – like Srila Prabhupada said – “all angles of vision.”

—From the lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam (4.3.27) by H.H. Krishna Kshetra Swami on May 14, 2023 at Simhacalam, Germany (with some of his own editing for clarity)