Суд над Бхагавад-гитой / Attempt to ban Bhagavad-gita

Second Heartfelt Effusion





My dear Shri Shri Radha-Shyamasundara! Crying at the
lotus feet of Shri Guru, one very fallen and destitute soul humbly
offers to You the following unrestrained stream of prayerful
outpourings for Your kind and considerate audience.

Some brazenly declare that the Hare Krishna movement is
dead – a lifeless corpse spasmodically flapping for a few residual
moments before total collapse. Others rashly conclude that
transcendental book distribution is for the neophytes. Still
others insist that the members of the Hare Krishna movement
could never attain vraja-prema or vraja-lila due to all the
offenses a few of its leading members have done to great souls;
they could attain Vaikuntha at best. Even worse, much high-
flung absurdity spews forth, inanely declaring the
Bhaktivedanta purports to be detrimental to one’s faith in
Krishna consciousness.

I ask, Are these blessings, promises, challenges, curses,
insults, or threats? I dare doubt not only the legitimacy but also
the very rectitude of such statements. If there were but one
sincere, unsullied soul living among the members of the Krishna
consciousness movement, could we not construe the
establishment, notwithstanding all its trials and tribulations, to
still be alive in spite of itself? Aside from that, did not great
devotees of the Rupanuga-sampradaya, like Shrinivasa acarya,
Bhaktivinode Thakura, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Prabhupada,
and more recently, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada, humbly embrace the task of transcendental book
distribution to uplift the fallen? Should we deem them
neophytes? Moreover, are we to say that the above-suggested
immature, superstitious bigotry of a few adherents becomes
automatically imputed to yet the broader-minded more
progressive students simply by dint of institutional
membership? Must an entire army stand trial for the inter-


institutional war crimes of a handful of its soldiers? Is attainment
of the vraja-lilas not contingent upon the Lord’s response to an
individual’s sincerity of purpose? Can we not see even one
worthy soul among the followers of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada intently pursuing the progressive living spirit of
self-discovery culminating in the realization of vraja-prema? Is
there no one “in” the Hare Krishna movement desperately
crying out for the mercy of Shri Lalita, Rupa, and their
attendants? Can their decision to bestow or not bestow special
causeless mercy upon anyone be countermanded merely by the
miserly dictums of minute jivas who wish to be distinguished as
the foremost rasa-Acaryas of all the little raganuga wannabes? Is
there any consideration at all beyond the transcendental
preponderance of Shri Rupa Manjari’s mercy?

O dear queen of my life, most gracious Shrimati Radharani!
O cherished treasure of my heart, honey-moon-faced Shyama!
Please let us have recourse to higher authorities to whom we
may confidently appeal our individual cases! Have we not read
many scriptures? Have we not served many gurus? Is Shri
Vrindavana Dhama not the greatest of all gurus, the crowning
splendor of all the scriptures? Is the dust of Vraja not ultimate
authority? Is hari-dasa-varya, Giri Govardhana, not highest
authority? May we not earnestly resort to the life-saving waters
of Radha-kunda and Shyama-kunda, optimistically anticipating
the fruition of our heart’s enshrined aspirations? Is His Divine
Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaja Srila Prabhupada
himself not, in truth, higher authority? One may, to muster some
sort of esteem amongst a rather credulous following, vaunt
otherwise in violation of due Vaishnava decorum, but honestly
speaking, one would do very well to remember that ultimately
the decision as to who is nearer and dearer to Lord Gauranga is
not in our hands. Are Shri Shri Jahnava-Nitai not our ultimate
well-wishers? Does not the very name “Radha,” when fervently
chanted, forgive all Vaishnava aparadhas? Does not even a
single recitation of the name “Shri Krishna Caitanya” forgive all
offenses? Do the statements of the Acaryas regarding all these
things now betray us?


Hridaya Caitanya, considering his disciple Duhkhi
Krishnadasa to be a wayward offender, wanted to punish him
for changing his tilaka and also for changing his name to
Shyamananda. My dear Shyamasundara! Did Shyamananda not
appeal to Lalita, Radha, and subsequently Subala (Gauri dasa
Pandita, the spiritual master of Hridaya Caitanya himself)? Was
Shyamananda not able to achieve the blessings of Radharani by
the grace of Jiva Gosvami in spite of the displeasure and
considerable consternation of his guru, Hridaya Caitanya?

Anyway, so be it! Even if it were true that the Hare
Krishna movement is dead and so forth, still, I would never give
up my deepest gratitude toward His Divine Grace A. C.
Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and his many sincere
servitors who, though bearing diverse levels of spiritual
qualification and empowerment, benevolently went out of their
way to help extend all those life-line literatures to the lives of
fallen conditioned souls like me. If the words of our acarya
diminish one’s faith in Krishna consciousness, then pray tell
how, by reading his Bhaktivedanta purports, thousands of
people like myself continue to come forward to join the Krishna
consciousness movement and become attached to the pursuit
of Krishna-prema?

My dear Shri Shri Radhe-Shyama! I know I’m not qualified.
I know I’m an offender. On that account, I may rightly be ever
deprived of the wish-fulfilling service of Your lotus feet in Your
most charming land of Vraja. Still, I declare and declare
emphatically that I shall never relinquish my enthusiasm for
hearing the incomparably brilliant exaltations of Your glorious
names, forms, qualities, and pastimes from the pages of all those
beautiful books of the followers of Lord Gauranga!

Ha Radhe-Shyama! Are You kindhearted or what? If You
want to stick me this way and that with all the apparently
dogmatic, arbitrary, unintelligible, virtually impracticable rules
and regulations of the smriti-shastras, then surely there is no
hope for my redemption.

Yet even if in Your view I should have to be born and
reborn in hell for the rest of eternity, I shall never ever give up
hoping against hope that one day some unlimitedly


compassionate person will take pity on me and, though I be not
at all deserving or fit, benignantly fulfill my impossible dream to
attain but a dust particle of direct engagement in the service of
Your eternal associates.

My dear Radhe-Shyama! Even though I am certainly a
reprehensible reprobate, devoid of any trace of good qualities
and deserving to be punished in every way, please hear the
earnest plea of my heart’s deepest desperation. Please don’t
laugh at me, scorn me, or doubt me in any way. Even if I will
never be allowed to relish a single drop of the ocean of
nectarean mellows of pure unalloyed prema for Your lotus feet,
please let me perpetually or even just in some lifetime or
another live and die in the dust of Vraja-bhumi, hoping against
hope to some day in the course of eternity attain You.

My dear most fortunate and beneficent Shrimati
Radharani! Please allow me to take my birth millions and billions
of times in Vraja-bhumi in any species of life, even as a worm in
the stool of a pig, rather than banishing me to become a queen
of Dvaraka or an associate of Laksmi in Vaikuntha.

Even if I will not be permitted to eternally reside at Shri
Vrindavana-dhama, please let my heart live here always.

He Radhe-Shyama! Please do not forsake me! Please
forgive me for my many obvious faults and shortcomings and
somehow or other compassionately find the ways and means to
take my withering soul to Your lotus feet. Otherwise, what hope
is there for such a helplessly fallen and blameworthy creature as
myself?

To hell with trying to secure a comfortable situation within
this temporary world of shadowy afflictions!

To hell with hoping for heavenly delights on earth,
elevation to svarga-loka, or residence on any of the highest
planets within this cosmos!

To hell with the achievement of mystic perfections!

To hell with all our exuberant eating, sleeping, mating, and
defending on the plea of keeping body and soul together for the
performance of sacrifice!


To hell with the attempt to curtail our generally excessive
eating, sleeping, mating, and defending, with the aim of
practicing the principles of practical renunciation!

To hell with undergoing severe penances and austerities
for the sake of self-realization and God consciousness!

To hell with the achievement of the five kinds of liberation!

To hell with the attainment of Vaikuntha-loka in the
eternal kingdom of God!

To hell with having been born on Earth as some kind of
dull-headed humanoid in this most glorious Age of Kali in which
Lord Caitanya has appeared to make self-realization easy by
inaugurating the sankirtana movement of the Holy Name!

To hell with conceitedly boasting of our descent from a
most venerable disciplic succession of eternally perfect Gaudiya
Vaishnava Acaryas!