Swami Shivapadananda on Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s role
SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA
DAILY READINGS
Selected from Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji.
Day 459
Swamiji on Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu [the great Hindu Bhakta]
The first act of detachment by this great being was when he left his wife and his little baby. He looked at them and then walked out of the house – never to return as a householder. Is it an easy task to give up your wife and child at one stroke and walk away? Yes, it is easy if you love God with all your heart and soul. If you love something to that extent then, for that something, even hell is treated indifferently. Society has no importance for one that loves his Chosen Ideal [Ishta Deva].
Chaitanya taught us one of the greatest lessons in the Kali Yuga: Wife, children, husband and relatives are not eternal; but God, and God alone, is eternal.
At that time there was a pride of learning. Sankaracharya had explained Advaita Vedanta, the principle of non-duality [i.e. you and God are one, indivisible consciousness]. Pundits on the other hand were preaching their own views – the scriptures of confusion. And this confusion led millions of sincere devotees into misery. The caste system also was strangling the growth of Hinduism. Then came Chaitanya.
In his pre-monastic life he was a great lecturer in mathematics, Sanskrit and other subjects; yet he abandoned his learning to yearn for the love of Sri Krishna.
A man's caste did not matter to him provided he took the name of God. When he went into the streets of India all the castes including the pariahs, the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas warriors], the Vaisyas [merchants] and the Sudras [working class] became one in the name of God. He sang the Maha Mantra – the mantra that was given by Lord Brahma to Narada to uplift the world. * See footnote.
When a mantra loses its potency (by men not using it properly) God Himself comes and uplifts the power of that mantra. This happened through Chaitanya. When he sang the Maha Mantra [literal meaning 'great mantra'] even the most learned, dry intellectuals would cry and weep and roll on the ground. When he said, "Bol Hari, Hari Bol, Bol Hari," people used to shout, "Hari Bol." He united the whole of India in this way – not by learning, not by caste, not by money and wealth, but by God's name alone.
Footnote: The Maha Mantra invocation is the 'Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna' repetition. That is its original sequence. It is used in reverse order by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. But within mainstream Hinduism, the sequence remains as given by the Rishis.