Gosvamis of Vrindavan By HH Bhanu Swami @ ISKCON Japan on 10/5/2021
General conversation:
Devotee: How is India going on?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Fine. Normal almost.
Devotee: Almost normal? No corona, okay?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Not much. Don’t hear about it much. What about Japan? How is Japan?
Devotee: Japan still not getting, less.
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Less, okay.
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: People are allowed in the country or not?
Devotee: Not yet.
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Okay.
So, they wanted something on the six Goswamis. So, Of course, that designation of six goswamis maybe a little arbitrary. They lived in Vrindavan, but then we have devotees all over the place, but they are particularly famous because some of them contributed a lot of literary works to our Sampradaya.
[HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj audio was not audible for sometime]
So, of course, most famous is the Rupa, Sanatana and Jiva Goswami. They’re all related to each other. Sanatana was the elder brother, Rupa was the next brother. They had a younger brother called Vallabha, but he happened to die, but he had a son, he became Jiva Goswami. So they all came from Bengal and, of course, Raghunatha Goswami also came from Bengal. We have one person who came from South India, that is Gopal Bhatta Goswami.
So, of course, of those, because Rupa Goswami was the most prolific, he wrote the most works. So he’s very famous as one of the Acharyas of our Sampradaya. So he’s most famous for writing the Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu and this explains all about Krishna’s rasas. So no one has explained spiritual rasa in such detail as Rupa Gosvami.
Now there was rasa explained in detail in the material world, that is in relation to material drama. So the dramatists in India became very inquisitive about how the relationships between people manifest and then they had to represent that in a drama. So dramas or plays are compositions in which there are different characters and they interact with each other with relationships. So they began to analyze the different types of relationships and then how those relationships are expressed.
So of course, many countries of the world there are many different languages they have dramas. But in India they began to analyze very carefully how the characters interact with each other. How do they express their emotions? So they did this in a very analytical way .So a skillful dramatist will use these elements and combine them together to produce a drama which is very interesting, at the same time gives a very aesthetic experience. But this is material relationships, material emotions.
But Rupa Goswami applied the same analysis to spiritual relationships, so we have similar names and similar concepts represented in Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu. But it’s to illustrate relationship with Krishna and Prema. So this is a very unique contribution to philosophy and I doubt it’s been done anywhere in the world. He wrote another work called Ujvala Nilamani. So he uses the same method to analyze Madhurya Rasa. Of course in Nectar of Devotion he analyzes all the Rasas, Madhurya Rasa, Sakhya Rasa, Vatsalya Rasa, etc but in more detail he explains Madhurya Rasa in Ujvala Nilamani. So these are his most famous works.
But he also wrote other works, philosophical works as well. One of them is Laghu Bhagavatamrta and this explains largely the different avatars. He also wrote some plays, dramas, he wrote a lot of poetry, he wrote smaller works like Upadeshamrita and things like that.
Sanatana Goswami was his elder brother, so his major work is The Brihad Bhagavatamrta. So this is a large work in story form and ultimately illustrates the superiority of Madhurya Rasa.
So Jiva Goswami is famous for writing the six Sandarbhas. So this is the.., we say, the philosophical contribution to our Sampradaya. He established Achintya bheda abedha philosophy. And in the six Sandarbhas he explains Sambandha, Abhidheya and Prayojana, and in the last Sandarbha, Priti Sandarbha, he covers much of the same subject as Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu. So he explains the various rasas there. So besides that, of course, he’s also famous because he wrote one huge work called Gopala Champu. This is basically Krishna’s pastimes. He is also famous for writing commentaries. So he wrote a commentary on the Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu. He wrote a commentary on the Brahma Samhita. He wrote a commentary on the 10th Canto and he also, well, more or less, a brief commentary on the rest other cantos of Bhagavatam called the Krama Sandarbha. So in this way he was also quite prolific. Another interesting work is Harinamamrita Vyakaran, this is the grammar book. So in that work, it’s a grammar book, but he uses the names of the Supreme Lord to illustrate the grammar or even the terms of grammar in terms of Vishnu’s names, so he was also quite prolific, he wrote many works.
Raghunatha Goswami wrote some works, mainly they’re shorter works, poetic works.
Gopal Bhatta Goswami, who came from South India, he wrote a commentary on HariBhakti Vilas. So the actual HariBhakti Vilas, some say Sanatana Goswami wrote it, sometimes they say they both wrote it together or whatever but anyway the commentary seems to be by Gopal Bhatta Goswami. So HariBhakti Vilas is an explanation of deity worship. However, it does more than that because it also, in order to explain that, he also explains diksha or initiation. He also explains Bhakti, the different types of Bhakti, and as well as explaining deity worship. Then he also explains how to celebrate different festivals and he also explains how to install deities. And he also explains briefly a little bit about how to build temples and then there’s a whole section on the general conduct of devotees, what the devotees should do, what the devotees should not do. So, this is quite a huge work, there’s 20 chapters and each chapter may have 400 to 800 verses in it, and a lot of that is quotations from different Puranas and Smriti Sastras.
So, of course, apart from that, his writings, we also have the Goswamis, they established temples in Vrindavan. So the devotees nowadays they visit all of these temples. Most of the Goswamis also had deities, and around those deities, temples were established. Some of these deities were discovered by the Gosvamis. So Sanatana Goswami got his deities and he began worshipping, and then some rich merchant built the temple for him, and the same with Rupa Goswami and his Radha Govinda temple.
So Gopal Bhatta Gosvami is very famous because he had a Saligram Sila, and it turned into the Radharaman deity. So the deity is quite small, and the temple itself is not so big also, but the descendants of his pujaris are still there worshipping the deity very nicely.
So in any case, Caitanya Mahaprabhu had ordered the Goswamis to stay in Vrindavan and write the literature, which they did, and through those works, they established our philosophy and our code of conducts. He also ordered them to discover the places of Krishna’s pastimes. So a lot of these places that are famous now when we go on pilgrimage, we go to these places, these were discovered by the Gosvamis.
So the Gosvamis, Rupa and Sanatana, their meeting with Caitanya Mahaprabhu is explained in the Caitanya Caritamrita. So originally they came from Brahmin families from South India but somehow or other, they got employed by the Muslim government. But they were actually very learned in Sanskrit, they had studied Sanskrit and Bhagavatam, as children.
So they were employed by the Muslim government, consequently they were ostracized by the Hindu community. But when they met Caitanya Mahaprabhu, they surrendered to him. So after that point, they lost interest in their jobs and eventually they escaped from the government, retired so to speak, and they ran after Vrindavan, and then later on Jiva Goswami joined them. Though they were very learned in Sanskrit etc, still because of their contact with the Muslims, socially they were also considered to be outcastes and that is why when Rupa went to Puri, he never went into the temple, because he was considered to be outcaste. But in Vrindavan he made a major contribution to our Sampradaya.
So it’s very interesting how in spite of the fact that they didn’t have libraries there, they were just living in little grass huts[Laughs] they were able to write these books on palm leaf manuscripts and somehow they memorized all these Puranas and things, because they were quoting from Padma Purana, Kurma Purana, Varaha Purana, Narada Purana, Garuda Purana, Vedas, Upanishads etc. Somehow they had this all in their minds, they memorized everything!! So it’s quite surprising how they were able to produce all the works!!
So they not only were very very prolific in literature, but their devotion was remarkable, so we have these prayers of the six Goswamis, which Srila Prabhupada sings and in there it’s described how they were always in ecstasy and they were completely detached from the material world. It is said that they ate very simply, maybe they took a little chapati in a day and a little buttermilk and they slept very little, they wore very simple clothing and they were always chanting or writing and discussing about Krishna.
So in spite of the fact that the whole area was largely controlled by the muslims, they managed to establish a devotional centre there, which has continued up until the present day. Of course, one of the reasons they stayed there is because it is the place of Krishna’s pastimes and in the scriptures, it says to live in such a place is a very very good devotional act, it inspires one’s devotion. So they were very attached to living there because, through living there they were able to associate with Krishna. So this acted as an inspiration for them to write the various literatures that they wrote.
So of course we also associate them with the Manjaris. Kavi Karnapura, a Bengali associate of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, he wrote a work in which he identifies the associates of Lord Chaitanya as personalities in Krishna’s pastimes. So some of the famous devotees in Puri were considered to be like, the ashta-sakis, the eight famous Sakis, like Lalita and Vishaka etc. And the Goswamis are considered to be manjaris. Of course the manjaris are famous because they are a little bit indirect, they serve Radha and Krishna but they indirectly get their enjoyment. So in this way the Goswamis lived separate from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who lived in Puri, but they were very very expert at serving him.
So the Gosvamis in Vrindavan played a huge role in establishing this movement, so Prabhupada always emphasizes the fact that we have to establish our movement upon our authority on philosophy, so it was the Goswamis in Vrindavan that did this work to establish that authority. Of course, we can say that their works were not scripture as such but they depended on Bhagavatam which is the scripture and through that they illustrated the philosophy and expanded the philosophy. So, therefore, apart from their poetic works they did spend a lot of time writing commentaries on Bhagavatam and the Sandarbhas are more or less commentary on different verses of Bhagavatam.
But we know that philosophy itself is useless unless it is supported by actual realization. So obviously they were also realized and therefore their works are very very important and it’s also interesting that Srila Prabhupada also when he was in India and he took sannyas that he stayed in Rupa Goswami’s temple, so he got a lot of inspiration from Rupa Goswami especially. He wasn’t in his temple he was actually in Radha Damodara temple but the samadhi of Rupa Goswami he could see it from his window. So Srila Prabhupada also got the association of the Goswamis and by their mercy then he was inspired to start preaching.
Now apart from the Goswamis in Vrindavan there are others also who made a big contribution. So we have Krishna Das Kaviraj who wrote the Caitanya Charitamrita. He also came to Vrindavan but he largely concentrated on writing this work glorifying Caitanya Mahaprabhu. So this is not in sanskrit , the Goswamis wrote in sanskrit so this is in a language which is something like Bengali. But he also knew sanskrit and he also wrote some Sanskrit works like Govinda Lilamrita. So in Govinda Lilamrita he explains the pastimes of Radha and Krishna throughout the day.
And apart from that then we get in Bengal we get some authors also. So we have Vrindavan Das Thakur, who wrote Caitanya Bhagavat. So he’s considered to be the reincarnation of Veda Vyasa, this of course is in Bengali also, and this is a biography of Caitanya Mahaprabhu.
And then as a few other writers also, we have Kavikarnapura, he was the son of Sivananda Sena. So he wrote several works in Sanskrit, and then we have a few other persons like Prabodhananda Saraswati. He also wrote a few works in Sanskrit, and of course among the six Goswamis with them we have a few persons like Lokanath and Bhugarbha Goswami, they are not famous for writing anything, but they also stayed in Vrindavan at the same time as Rupa and Sanatana.
Lokanath is very famous because his disciple was Narottama Das, and Narottama Das came back to Bengal and he preached very widely there and he is also famous for writing many songs, so these were the personalities who established the movement through literature.
It was a few hundred years later that we have Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakur and Baladeva Vidyabhushan. So they also made major contributions to our Sampradaya literature. Vishvanatha Chakravarti of course wrote commentary on the whole of the Bhagavatam. He wrote a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. He wrote a commentary on the Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu. So these are some of his famous works. Of course he also wrote many poetic works. He also went to live in Vrindavan.
So Baladeva Vidyabhushan wasn’t his direct disciple, but he was like a siksa disciple. He was born in Orissa but he studied a lot in South India under the Madhvas. So he’s famous for writing a commentary on the Vedanta Sutra. So this was the only Gaudiya commentary on the Brahma Sutras / Vedanta Sutras. Of course he also wrote a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita also, very famous. He also wrote a commentary on the first canto and tenth canto of Srimad Bhagavatam. He wrote a commentary on the Laghu Bhagavatamrta of Rupa Goswami. So they were the major authors in our Sampradaya.
So in the modern world, more modern world, we have Bhaktivinoda Thakur who made significant literary contribution. So he published a lot of the Goswami works and then he wrote his own original works also to explain the philosophy, in particular he tried to explain it to the people of the modern world. And then of course his son Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur, he also wrote many works and then we have Srila Prabhupada who translated everything into English. So Prabhupada also emphasized that the books were very important, so it all starts with the work of the Goswamis in Vrindavan.
Okay, Hare Krishna.
Q & A
1) Maharaj, So it was very interesting how you made a timeline of all the literary works of all the Acharyas from the Gaudiya Vaishnava line. So he has so many questions but first question is, is there a significant reason as to why the six Goswamis didn’t write a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita?
Oh !! [Laughs] It is nowhere mentioned. They quote the Bhagavad Gita sometimes, but usually they quote Bhagavatam.
So as far as rasa is concerned and Radha and Krishna, they concentrated on the Bhagavatam. So for instance the Sandarbhas are all an expansion of the Bhagavatam. So one should have a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras. This was the challenge put out a few hundred years later, you can’t consider yourself to be a sampradaya unless you have a commentary on the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita.
So we see that Ramanujacharya, wrote a commentary on Bhagavad Gita and wrote one on Brahma Sutras. Madhvacharya, wrote a commentary on Bhagavad Gita and Brahma Sutras. So Nimbarka also wrote on Brahma Sutras and Bhagavad Gita, so all the major sampradayas have written commentaries. So therefore, there should be commentaries, Vishwanath wrote and Baladeva wrote on the Bhagavad Gita and Baladeva wrote on the Vedanta Sutra.
It looks like the Goswamis were not so interested in Vedanta, it’s a little bit indirect to express Rasa and Radha and Krishna so they concentrated on the more direct literature. But historically speaking, the sampradaya should have a commentary on that. So Baladeva Vidhyabhusana was especially qualified to do that. He had studied under the Madhvas in South India and they concentrate a lot upon Upanishads and Vedanta Sutra.
2) Is that why Prabhupada mainly used, not Vishvanatha Chakravarti’s Bhagavad Gita, but Baladeva Vidhyabhusan’s ?
Yeah, Possibly why, yeah [Laughs].
Bhaktivinod Thakur actually he translated both commentaries in a sense according to Vishwanath and according to Baladeva. This is of course Bengali he translated. Baladeva Vidhyabushan’s commentary is more Varnashramik oriented, we can say [Laughs], a little more conservative. Vishwanath Chakravarti’s commentary is more about rasa[Laughs].
3) Your Holiness translated both Baladev and Vishwanath’s commentaries. Was it like a direct translation or.. ?
Yeah.
Plus I also translated Bhaktivinoda’s version. He doesn’t actually translate the commentaries, he just translates the verses according to the commentaries, it’s much more brief.
4) So over the years different acaryas have made commentaries according to the time and circumstance and also 50 years ago Srila Prabhupada wrote commentary on Bhagavad Gita and the Srimad Bhagavatam, so is it possible ever in the future of ISKCON that somebody follows in Prabhupada footsteps and next there will an Acharya who writes new commentary?
[Laughs] Anything is possible, I would think that You see, language changes and now everything changes very quickly. The English language of 500 years ago was very different from today’s language. So the language, let’s say 100 years from now, will be very different from now. Just 100 years, it may radically change, we don’t know.
And of course, society itself, the way they think, everything will change radically also. So we have to some degree adjust to that change in society and the way they think and with that in mind, Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur, he saw that the society of his time was very different from the society of 200 years before.
The British had made a huge influence upon India, so therefore he had to speak in terms of that British education that everybody got. Similarly, Srila Prabhupada was speaking to people of his time and in the future also people have to speak according to their own environment and mentality etc.
5) Maharaj, does Your Holiness think that Prabhupada’s Bhagavad Gita commentary can still be applied in our current society now?
Well in our society, yes. But we see even now it’s very difficult because most people don’t even read anymore [Laughs]. So maybe the next generation there will be no more books, nobody will be reading anymore [Laughs], so you know, so we do have to face that reality[Laughs].
Devotee: Especially when he’s distributing this every day and giving classes a lot of what he hears is that, this is very difficult to read and understand.
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Yeah, Yeah [Laughs].
Devotee: But the advantage of that is that, because it’s so hard people can’t study on their own so then they will have to reach out to the devotees, so they can learn from them.
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: That’s true, yeah [Laughs]
6) I’m sorry Maharaj can you please write the spelling of that grammar book that you’re mentioning?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Harinamamrita Vyakarana.
Devotee: okay, yeah
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Vyakarana is grammar.
Devotee: ah okay thank you.
7) Two question Maharaj – Is Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu is a collaboration of Sanatana Goswami and Rupa Goswami or is it elaborately only Rupa Goswami’s work?
That was Rupa Goswami, yeah. There’s two commentaries Jiva Goswami’s written a commentary and Vishvanatha written a commentary those are the famous commentaries.
Jiva Goswami says is in sandarbhas that the original sandarbhas were notes written by Gopal Bhatta Goswami but they were out of order, so he put them in order then he added extra to it and it became the sandarbhas. So it looks like Gopal Bhatta was also contributing to the sad sandarbhas.
Devotee: Sandharbha mean.. ?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: These are the works, there’s six sandarbhas written by Jiva Goswami, philosophical works.
Devotee: So it’s something philosophical?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Yeah.
8) Maharaj, another thing – In Bhagavatam we don’t see much mention about Radharani so what are the basis, what literatures are the basis for our Goswami’s work on all these rasas?
Well, the basis is Bhagavatam, where the Gopis are not mentioned by name but our Goswami’s identify the different personalities there, as different Gopis like Radha, Lalita, Visakha, etc.
9) So other sampradayas like Ramanuja they read the Bhagavatam but they are reading from the perspective that the Supreme Lord is not Krishna but Vishnu, yes ?
Well he is one and the same but they think that Vishnu is the original and Krishna is an avatar.
10) Hare Krishna Maharaj, Maharaj like our sampradaya why we always call Rupaanugas not other Goswami’s no reference.
Oh Rupanugas ? Well, because Rupa Goswami was the main rasa acharya talking about rasa.
11) Can you please talk a little bit about the relationship between rasa and philosophy?
Well, you can say that philosophy is more or less part of our sadhana and the result of the sadhana is rasa or prema. So but in order to get the prema we do need the philosophy, the sadhana. So unless we have a clear idea about who is God? who is Krishna? etc. then we cannot get to that goal.
12) So in our instance, it sounds like, it is opposite because a lot of us we suffer from material rasa, material relationships we suffer and then we start to awaken we start to think philosophically we ask oh what is the purpose of life, what is my real identity and then we go in, you know we start our sadhana and then we go back to our real rasa.
Well that’s true [Laughs], we start from material rasa [Laughs]
13) I heard that, the word “rasa” is like “conflict” and “dilemma”, those kind of concepts, (is it true) ?
Rasa ? oh no rasa actually means taste in one sense. So with the taste or an experience then we experience bliss. So that rasa is a mixture of ingredients that create an interesting taste. Just like if you make some sweet for instance, if you just use sugar no one is going to appreciate that you can’t just eat sugar. But you mix the sugar maybe you put some chocolate in it, maybe you put some cream cheese in it, maybe you put some walnuts in it, you combine various things together and you get an interesting taste which is sweet, but it’s a mixture of things, that makes it tasty.
In the modern world they have all these cooks famous chefs so they’re particularly interested in the very subtle taste of something. And the famous cooks are the ones who can have the subtlest flavors, so it’s not something gross it’s something very very subtle. So rasa is like that, it’s emotion, spiritual emotion but it’s very very delicate and it’s always changing.
14) Hare Krishna Maharaj, I have a question. In this Kaliyuga, after the appearance of Lord Chaithanya getting prema become more easy, but from this age to future, how it becomes like getting more complicated, difficult to get prema or becoming more easy to get prema because Kali yuga is going heavy and heavy but Chaithanya become easy to get prema , in future what do you think?
So logically speaking as Kali Yuga progresses everything gets worse so therefore it should become more difficult. Isn’t that ? that’s the logical explanation. And in fact Kali Yuga in general should be very difficult, because it’s the worst age.
However we should not underestimate the mercy of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and the power of Nama Sankirtan. It can very easily overcome even the worst conditions of Kali Yuga so therefore it is the Yuga Dharma for Kali Yuga not just part of Kali Yuga but the whole of Kali Yuga.
15) So are all the Acharyas and the Gaudiya Vaishnavas from this disciplic succession are they all Raganuga Bhaktas?
Yeah, Yeah [Laughs]. We see that, it is very prominent even in Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s works. So if you read Harinama Cintamani or you read Jaiva Dharma, it is quite Raganuga Bhakti oriented, it’s only with Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Sarasvati Thakur and Prabhupada that’s not so emphasized so much, but if you read Chaitanya Charitamrita then you will see that it is also quite prominent there.
16) Siddha Pranali system?
Well, that is not emphasized so much by Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakur – Siddha Pranali. This is the method that Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Sarasvati Thakur was criticizing as being very mechanical.
Translator Devotee: Siddha Pranali is mechanical?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Well it was criticized it was used in that way, it was just more became a social symbol and a designation without practice. So he criticized it for that reason.
Yeah, but Vishvanatha Chakravarti says that you could get through a guru your svarup and all this, which would mean like Siddha Pranali or something like that or you could get internal realization also.
Devotee: Means.. Siddha Pranali system.. Why it is particularly considered as mechanical ?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Yeah it’s a little bit mechanical in the sense that your guru had a certain group of Gopis and then a certain service. Then you’re under that group and that group and then you take a certain form and a certain color and a certain service and a certain name and a certain age within that group and then your disciple is also in that group and then you meditate like this. You know.. so it’s you know nothing wrong with it but at the same time people get the that you know Siddha Pranali but they don’t really practice it. So then it’s not useful in that sense, that’s in a sense mechanical. So they shouldn’t think simply because I got that now, I’m you know, I’m a Manjari or something like that. It has to be practiced and meditated on quite thoroughly.
17) Who started this system?
That was with Gopala Guru Goswami in Puri. He wrote a Paddhati on that and Dhyan Chandra in Puri. So they established that system and then it spread to the Vrindavan and the Babajis and other people like that. But Vishvanatha Chakravarti does himself doesn’t mention that he mentions meditating on your svarup, but he doesn’t particularly mention that system that they set up.
18) Question asked in Japanese only – No English Translation
One could have Raghunuga for Sakya Rasa or Vatsalya Rasa or Dasya Rasa also, the Vallabhas they are Raghunuga in Vatsalya Rasa for instance.
Translator Devotee: Vallabhas?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Vallabha Acharya’s group.
Yeah, And one person in our Sampradaya, Nayanananda he wrote a Paddhati in Sakhya Rasa following after the cowherd boys.
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Sanjaya’s wife’s family is in that?[Laughs] somebody is in that ?
Devotee: Yes Krishna Chandra Prabhu’s mother she brought Laddugopal from Vallabha Acharya’s son. She is still worshipping that deity.
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: So that is a Raghunuga Sampradaya actually, the whole Sampradaya is Raghunuga[Laughs].
Devotee: Yes, they practice
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Rupa Goswami mentions that in Nectar of Devotion he calls him the Pushtimarga yes, Pushtimarga.
19) Maharaj, is Raganuga and Rupanuga one and the same? sometimes we say Raghunuga and sometimes we say Rupanuga.
Rupanuga means we follow Rupa Goswami. Rupa Goswami of course is Rupa Manjari so it’s kind of the same thing, but Raghunuga means a particular process of Bhakti, whereas Rupanuga means we’re devoted to following after Rupa Goswami.
Devotee: Thank you very much, Maharaj.
20) It’s like a contradiction we follow Rupanuga they practice their Raghunuga we don’t practice Raganuga [Laughs]
Yeah, well as I said with Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati he put less emphasis upon it because of the misuse of the system, that’s all. And though we put an emphasis upon Vaidhi Bhakti still we have major influences of Raghunuga, because we have Bhagavatam, Krishna’s pastimes, Vrindavan, going to Vrindavan, pilgrimage to Vrindavan and things like this Lord Chaitanya, Radha Krishna and the mood of Radha, etc. chanting the holy name, etc. all of this is part of Raghunuga.
21) Hare Krishna Maharaj, I have a question that how was the authority of Kavi Karnapura was established for Gaura Ganoddesa Dipika, regarding the past life of different Goswamis?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: How was it established?
Devotee: The authority like..
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Well, I suppose because he was quite well known as a great devotee, he was a son of Sivananda Sena, who was intimate associate of Lord Caitanya, he got the mercy of Caitanya Mahaprabhu, he sucked his big toe, so he was quite intimate so he was well respected as a great devotee. So based on that then he had the authority to write works like Gaura Ganoddesa Dipika.
So some of it, is not so.. it’s quite obvious like the parents of Lord Caitanya, for instance they’re like Nanda, and Yasoda whatever like this so some of the relationships are quite obvious and others because of their particular mood then they can be identified as a certain Sakhi or a certain Manjari.
18) Hare Krishna, if Kali Yuga goes more deep and heavy then more Vaidhi Bhakti is emphasized?
Well, Harinama is emphasized [Laughs]
Devotee: Chanting like more 16 rounds become more reduced.
I would think Harinama would increase [Laughs].
Devotee: Harinama increase but chanting?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Well, both. Both would increase to counteract the effects of Kali Yuga. So in Raganuga Bhakti japa is very prominent. They chant 64 rounds.
19) Hare Krishna Maharaj, Dandavat pranams. The six Goswamis you mentioned was the Manjaris, so they eternally serve in spiritual world so when they wanted to preach they expanded their soul to come in the material world or what is it?
Yeah, Krishna does that, he expands all of his associates.
Devotee: Ok, so they eternally serve in the spiritual world and simultaneously Krishna expands their soul ?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Yeah, and they are in other universes also simultaneously.
Devotee: Ok Thank you Maharaj, Hare Krishna.
Ok fine.
20) The six Goswamis, they don’t preach in Vrindavan so much?
Well, there were not that many people, there the villagers were there, that was it.
Devotee: Already they were all devotees, right?
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: They were the only devotees there yeah.
Devotee: Hmm not necessary to preach.
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj: Ok. Hare Krishna.
Devotees: Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.
HH Bhanu Swami Maharaj Ki.. Jai !!