The Beautiful Story of the Supreme Personality of Godhead

I would like to share with you a kind of schema that I find helpful for appreciating the Bhāgavatam in general because for us, those who follow the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition, we take the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam or the Bhāgavata Purāṇa as our central and final authority based on what Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī wrote in the first part of his Ṣaṭ Sandarbhas―Tattva Sandarbha. He discusses all the different Vedic literature and points out what we might call the shortcomings, and then he does a process of narrowing down to pinpoint the Śrīmad Bhāgavata Purāṇa, which is also called the Amala Purāṇa, the Purāṇa with no fault, as the perfect scripture. Sometimes, I like to make mind maps―making drawings with squares and circles and lines and so on. 

I found myself making a kind of mind map for the Bhāgavatam as a whole, which ended up being just a simple kind of standard form yantra, where you have a circle in the center, and maybe you have some lotus leaves around it. I was thinking, there will be some bindu in the center, and then there will be these square sides, these gates, of north, south, east and west. Prabhupāda said, we should discuss Bhāgavatam from all angles. One angle for appreciating the Bhāgavatam is that we put the Bhāgavatam in the center of this yantra. What do we have on the four sides? 

Well, in my mind, I put on the bottom, at the basis of the root, the Vedic literature starting with Ṛg, Sāma, Yajur, Atharva Veda, and all the scriptures―Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa, and also including different Purāṇas. Of course, the Bhāgavatam itself says nigama-kalpa-taror galitaṁ pha-lam. It identifies itself as the fruit of the nigama, that which goes down of the root. The word nigama seems to refer to Vedic literature in general, and the idea of roots is that the whole image we have is of a tree. A tree has a root, and then there is the fruit. The point I want to make is that the Bhāgavatam is very inclusive. 

On the northern side, the upper side, we have our own tradition, Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, beginning with Caitanya Mahāprabhu and then the texts which he inspired―specifically all of the writings of the Gosvāmīs―Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, Vṛndāvana dāsa Ṭhākura and then going all the way up to the present, with Śrīla Prabhupāda and his translation and commentary to the Bhāgavatam. 

A major focal point in that upper area, we can say, is Caitanya-caritā-mṛta, because Caitanya Mahāprabhu is what I like to call the ideal reader of the Bhāgavatam. You get this in literary theory―the idea that an author is writing a book with some idea in mind of his or her ideal reader. Someone who can really appreciate what they are writing. So, the ideal reader in this case, we can say, is Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, who is not, of course, just sitting and reading. He’s living the Bhāgavatam. There is the book Bhāgavatam, and the person Bhāgavatam and He is the Primordial Person Bhāgavatam, being none other than Kṛṣṇa Himself. He is hearing about Himself, and then the whole Caitanya-caritāmṛta can be read as an extended commentary on the Bhāgavatam. You can also say that the Caitanya-caritāmṛta is the boiled down essence. The Bhāgavatam is the fruit, galitaṁ phalam, and then when you take that ripe fruit, you can make a nice chutney. Prabhupāda also talked about hierarchy. Bhagavad-gītā is like high school or secondary school level, the Bhāgavatam is collegiate or undergraduate level, and Caitanya-caritāmṛta is doctorate level, postgraduate level. Another way I have heard about this similar hierarchy is that the Bhagavad-gītā talks about the identity of God. Who God is is identified in the Gītā, then the activity of God is talked about in the Bhāgavatam, and finally, the mentality or the heart of God, how God is, is depicted in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta. How God thinks and how God feels, because mind includes both.  

Back to my point: we are trying to picture a sort of a yantra, and we have two sides. We have all this Vedic literature on one side, and we have all the commentaries from our tradition on the other side. Then you may ask: “What about the left side and the right side, the west and the east side?” My proposal goes―and it is just one way of thinking of the Bhāgavatam―on one side, the east side, we have ourselves with our own reading experience and everything else: hearing from our gurus and sādhus (we hear a lot of Bhāgavatam classes). Then we are also bringing everything with us that we have from our backgrounds. And one can say: “Well, we are not interested in that. That is what we want to get purified from and so on.” Yes, but we are also individuals, and there is some relevance to our experience in that as we are reading the Bhāgavatam. What is it that we take from the Bhāgavatam for our lives? That is important for us. And we are also communicating with others.

Let us continue with our yantra―what is it on the west side, the left side? This is the entire body of religious literature from other traditions that have any notion of God. The reason I mention this, or why I include this, is because of one conversation Śrīla Prabhupāda had. It was in 1969, in Los Angeles. At the end of the lecture, Prabhupāda invited questions, and one unidentified lady asked Śrīla Prabhupāda, “What about Joan of Arc?” (Joan of Arc was a 15th-century French woman who became a saint. She was a hero of the French, for she was fighting against the English, and she became, I guess, canonized as a saint.) This lady asked Pra-bhupāda: “What about Joan of Arc? Do you know who Joan of Arc is?” Prabhupāda said: “Yes, I know.” He was educated at Scottish Church College, so he would have known. And he said basically: “Yes, she is… This is also Bhāgavatam. If it is connected with God consciousness, that is also Bhāgavatam.” Prabhupāda said that, and he did not elaborate at that time, but to me, this is a very important clue to understand and to appreciate the Bhāgavatam, this specific Sanskrit text more deeply. Explaining the meaning of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam Śrīla Prabhupāda ―at least one time―called it “The beautiful story of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” Prabhupāda also said something similar about Saint Francis of Assisi. He heard that Saint Francis of Assisi talked about sister wind and brother mountain―basically like a sibling or a family relationship with nature. Prabhupāda was very appreciative of that process. That is also God consciousness. I don’t know whether he used the name Bhāgavatam in that context, but Prabhupāda was quite appreciative of that story too. The questions that come up now are: Are we considering just different ways of approaching the Bhāgavatam, like the Vedic way, Gauḍīya-way, or theistic way, or individual way? Are these different ways of looking at the Bhāgavatam, or are these just different means? What is the yantra meant to convey?

For me, it is just opening up. Yes, to look at the Bhāgavatam from different angles, and each of these is relevant for us to have a fuller experience of what the Bhāgavatam is. And it helps us to understand or appreciate the Bhāgavatam in a non-sectarian way. If we want to consider the Bhāgavatam´s description of Kṛṣṇa as the ultimate reality, then we could consider what is said about Kṛṣṇa in the Bhāgavatam. Then we see how that relates to the conception of divinity in the Vedic literature, how that is elaborated on the Gauḍīya tradition, or how that relates with other theistic traditions overall. We could also approach it from the viewpoint of what we think about it and what it speaks to us. 

With regard to other religious or spiritual literature, it may be of value for communicating about the Bhā-gavatam. One cannot be knowledgeable about all the literature (that is, a vast amount of literature), but one can be knowledgeable of certain things and point out possible connections and possible comparisons. One devotee pointed out to me the other day that we have the story of the Avantī Brāhmaṇa in Canto Eleven and how he loses everything. He becomes completely destitute materially and how he goes from there. 

There is a story in the Hebrew Bible. One of the books is called the Book of Job, and Job similarly loses everything. He becomes diseased, everything goes wrong, and then, the question is: Is he going to blame God for this or what? Eventually, he hears directly from God, who tells him basically: “Who do you think you are? You are just a little guy. You have no idea who I am.” But there is some comparison there, and there has been a huge amount of commentarial literature on the Book of Job, and some of that just might be interesting to consider with respect to the Bhāgavatam or with respect to this story…

This is all. I have roughly sketched this. I have not developed it, but it can be useful. It is at least visually clear and opens new views to analyse and discuss. Not only analyse, but also to devotionally enter into, because that is what we really want, isn’t it? We want to devotionally enter into the Bhāgavatam. There is a collection of excerpts of lectures by Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura that has been translated from Bengali to English. The book is called Śrīmad Bhāgavat Tatparya. At one point, Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura says that we cannot understand the Bhāgavatam even after millions of lives, unless we surrender to the Lord.

I am especially thinking about how to break through our tendency toward sectarian mentality. To help us connect for ourselves, to enter, but also to connect others with the Bhāgavatam.

―From the book Voyaging Through the Bhāgavatam—Volume Two, based on the dialogues between HH Krishna Kshetra Swami and HG Chaitanya Charan Prabhu about various Krishna’s avatāras with the purpose to “churn the nectar” of the Lord’s pastimes—līlā—as the recommended way to appreciate and relish the Bhāgavatam.




Is God Fair? 

Almost the whole 7th Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam is about that question, whether God is fair. And although the answer to the question is yes, He's equal to everyone, it seems at the end of that account, that He doesn't seem at all equal to everyone. Isn't it? He's quite angry at Hiranyakashipu. One could say, He kills demons and they get liberation, so He's fair in that way.

Yes. He's also fair, it seems to me, in that particular episode of killing Hiranyakashipu, in the sense that He is protecting the devotee who has equal vision. Prahlada has equal vision. And that is strongly emphasized throughout the descriptions of Prahlada. This is how he is so different from Hiranyakashipu who sees friends and enemies. Prahlada does not see friends and enemies. He sees with equal vision. 

I think one could even argue that a significant reason why Lord Nrisimha kills Hiranyakashipu to defend Prahlada is that Prahlada has equal vision. In this way Prahlada is the model devotee who is teaching us how to similarly have equal vision. And this quality of the Vaiṣṇavas is very dear to Lord Vishnu, to Lord Krishna, and therefore Krishna is partial to those who have equal vision. In effect, He's raising the devotees above Himself in some sense.

―From the lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam 8.9.15-18 in Goloka Dhama, Germany, on July 11, 2025.