About Ramanujacharya

So, as I said now, say something in glorification of this great sampradāyic āchārya, Śrīla Rāmānuja Āchārya. And how can we say anything to properly glorify him? But if we reference what we've heard from Śrīla Guru Mahārāj, then we can have some hope of saying something pertinent.

And I can't think of any particular order, but just as things are occur to me, Guru Mahārāj is always saying something unique, presenting things in a unique way. You can read stories about great Vaiṣṇava Āchāryas, you can find them everywhere – they're in books, they're on the Internet and different things like that, and for the most part maybe it’s okay. But Guru Mahārāj will always give some unique expression as he said sometimes, when I was praising him, you have all these unique expressions: 'Dive deep into Reality', 'Reality the beautiful'. First Mahārāj was like, "What, I don't understand, what are you saying?" And then after I mentioned four or five of them, then he started supplying more of them. "Progress means elimination and acceptance”, “As connotation increases the denotation decreases”, “Golden volcano of divine love”, “Ecstatic eruptions”, and, like, “Streams of golden lava coming from Mahāprabhu." We may take these things for granted at times, but they're unique, and they point to the unique wealth of Śrī Chaitanya Sāraswat Maṭh.

So, with regard of Rāmānuja Āchārya once, he said it like this, he said, "Rāmānuja discovered Vaikuṇṭha." Like the way we grew up in America, like, “Columbus discovered America." And it’s like, such a profound example, he said "Rāmānuja discovered Vaikuṇṭha," and what he means to say, just like previously, when their discoverers, the Spanish explorers or Italians - for our Italian viewers this evening, we know that Christopher Columbus went to Queen Isabella, we know that. Or as my father used to say, "He was a sailor," he was very proud, "a sailor discovered America." So, they were sailing oceans to get to the new world, so it was like he's saying something simple, but it has profound implications. So as there, we know, there's that vast ocean, and these sailors, they would get on the ship with their captain, and they would go, trying to discover a new world, and they have their charts, their maps, everything, their faith, their sanction from the queen. So Guru Mahārāj is saying, the great devotees, Vaikuṇṭha world in this sense is like an ocean of consciousness. So they're sailing in the ocean of consciousness, discovering new worlds, like Śukadev Goswāmī says,

pariniṣṭhito ’pi nairguṇya
uttama-śloka-līlayā 
gṛhīta-chetā rājarṣe
ākhyānaṁ yad adhītavān 
(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 2.1.9)

He's telling Parīkṣit Mahārāj, "I was liberated in the womb of my mother. I wasn't sure I was going to come out and walk around and navigate the world, I was already a liberated soul." So he came out fully developed, but he said, "When I heard ‘uttama-śloka-līlayā, gṛhīta-chetā rājarṣe’, I heard about the Pastimes of Kṛṣṇa, there is nothing in this world that compares to that." And for those of you who might think, “Well, what about the affairs of men and women in this world?” It’s not that, it may appear superficially to resemble that, I have no interest in those things. Read the Bhāgavatam, when he walked by the naked women, they didn't bother to cover themselves because they saw in his eyes nothing, no, what's the word, lust. They didn't see any, they could tell, with him. Then Vedavyās comes running after him, "Oh, my son, my son," and it says 'viraha kalpa' - the trees responded in separation, when he said, "Oh, my son, son, son." He was gone, and the trees sympathetically responded to the separation of Vedavyās, but the ladies covered themselves, and Vyās was perplexed, “When the boy went by, you didn't bother. Now I come. You know, do you know who I am? Vedavyās, the giver of the Vedas and everything?" "Yes, but we see in your eyes something, don't mind it. But, and the boy, he doesn't distinguish male or female of this world. So, Śukadev, that's why he's the loudspeaker of the Bhāgavatam, he gives vent, he expresses Kṛṣṇa Conception and the pastimes of Rādhārāṇī, Kṛṣṇa, Vraja Gopīs. Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Like a sailor swabbing the deck, that's our theme tonight, the sailings, the oceans. Like if you ever visit Satya Sundar Prabhu, you can tell he was a sailor, he always has a bucket with a mop in it. [laughs]. To keep his place very clean, because you have to do that. [So, it’s okay, don't worry about it too much].
So, he's saying, ‘gṛhīta-chetā rājarṣe’ means, 'my consciousness was captured by hearing uttama-śloka. That is what this is about. He didn't say, “Oh, my intellects, my… I was fascinated by this intellectually”, or “It was very mentally stimulating”, none such a thing. He heard the uttama-śloka, the spiritual - the līlā, the Pastimes of Kṛṣṇa couched in spiritual sound. It’s real, it’s lifetime streaming of the ultimate reality, and he said, "That captured me, my consciousness, and carried me away to a domain that I didn’t know existed previously." So in that way, we're told, little bit now. Because my consciousness has not been totally captured by… [laughs]. So, Guru Mahārāj said Rāmānuja discovered Vaikuṇṭha like sailing the ocean of consciousness. So he said, mining gems, you can mine spiritual gems from the chinmoy world. Śaṅkarāchārya and others, they had their,  what do you call, stages, 'pratyakṣa', 'parokṣa', 'aparokṣa', that's three, and fourth dimension, 'adhokṣaja', sometimes called 'turīya', referred to as the fourth dimension, that’s what Rāmānuja revealed. Fifth dimension is the 'aprākṛta-līlā' of Kṛṣṇa, so Guru Mahārāj means the southern hemisphere. Again, with this sailing the ocean of consciousness, there's a southern hemisphere in the spiritual world, that is the Vaikuṇṭha Lokas.

So how wonderful is that. And he was so divine and gifted even when he was a boy, his guru initially was a māyāvādī, the Yādava Prakāś, you can usually tell by the names, a lot of Prakāś, Prakāśānanda Saraswatī, [‘prakāś’ is a wonderful word, no doubt] and that, when Rāmānuja was a young boy student, he's giving massage to the guru, and that māyāvādī, impersonalist, guru, who, they denied the form of Kṛṣṇa, the form of Viṣṇu - 'nirākār' - they believe everything is formless. He started quoting one passage of Śaṅkarāchārya, and it says 'kapyāsan', is a Sanskrit word, words. And he said, "Oh, here it’s telling that the lotus eyes of Viṣṇu are like a monkey's rear." Because there are monkeys in India, their backside is reddish, so, kapi, like when Hanuman's.
So he's saying, "Oh, here, hahaha, isn't this funny, comparing the lotus eyes of Viṣṇu to the rear end of a monkey, hahaha." He thinks he's brilliant and funny, and Rāmānuja who's massaging him, hot tears start streaming down his - or, whatever tears of anger are, I sometimes think whether it’s hot or cold - tears are pouring down his eyes onto the back of the guru, and he's thinking, “This is strange." Rāmānuja crying to hear this blasphemous description of the beautiful lotus eyes of the Lord. He's saying, "You differ what the Āchārya, the Śaṅkarāchārya, you differ with the sampradāya guru? You have some other conception?"

And Rāmānuja said, "You hear kapi and āsan, you're misinterpreting this, and even the great Āchārya, he's misinterpreting. You're thinking 'kapi' meaning 'monkey' and ‘āsan' meaning 'like that', like the word the āsan sounds, you're thinking like that, saying it’s not that," he said "Another meaning of 'kapi' is 'one who drinks water through the stem', and means 'the lotus flower', like, 'ambuja', it’s resting on the water and through the lotus stem its drinking the water." He's saying "and so it’s sitting, 'āsan', sitting on the water, and 'kapi', drinking the water, that means the lotus flower. So, what this means is that the eyes of Viṣṇu, they're beautiful lotus eyes and like a pink lotus flower they're so beautiful, just like that type of pink you see at the sunrise, that's what its telling you. That pink beautiful lotus that sits on the water drinking the water, the lotus eyes of Viṣṇu are like that." When Yādava Prakāś heard this, he thought, “Now I know who the enemy of our sampradāya is going to be. This boy." He knew, “He is going to be impossible to defeat, if he can find fault in the sampradāyic āchārya and correct what he said, he's our enemy."

And Rāmānuja's a boy at that time. But as great as he was, and he wrote, when he met Jamunāchārya, Jamuna Muni, and Gurudev has told so many wonderful stories about him, he came when he had already left his body, and Rāmānuja came right at the last moment and he was there but they saw his hands were clutched, and he was trying to guess, 'what sevā does he want from me?' And then he's thinking, “He wants some service from me. My guru wants some service from me but he left without telling me." Some devotees think like that like, maybe, you know, someone said, "Oh Gurudev didn't tell something special to me before going." But here, so he's wondering 'What does he want from me?' like a sincere disciple would ask, 'But he couldn't say, so what is it? I have to think. Inside me, he put something, some conception inside of me, that's within me, will it come out?' and he thought “Well one, Upaniṣads, explanation”, and he goes like, the finger moved, “And an Archanā-padati. And”, he said, "Vedānta-bhāṣya." So, all the fingers unfold, and he said 'one two three, are the things that, oh, I understand - he wants from me. Sevā." So he presented the Śrī Bhāṣya to annihilate the Śārīraka-bhāṣya of Śaṅkarāchārya.

And Guru Mahārāj told us that Rāmānuja, just think how he knows as much Sanskrit as can be known, let’s put it that way. He's the ultimate quoter of Upaniṣads, Vedas, everything, and once he argued with a māyāvādī for fourteen days and couldn't defeat him. He knows every example. What's a great Rāmānuja Āchārya example? Two parrots, in India, those green parrots?

[..tia  baki..] Green parrots

Okay, these green parrots, you see them in Vṛndāvan especially. And like there's the two, two green, and I've seen this example real time on the roof of our Maṭh in Vṛndāvan, you'll see two green birds fly into a green tree, and it appears as though they disappeared.
He's saying, but actually they're there, they haven't, they didn't, what's the word – oblivion, self obliv… they didn't annihilate themselves by entering the tree. So that's one of his examples, how people think, ”viśate tad-anantaram” (Bhagavad-gītā 18.55).
In Bhagavad-gītā, when Kṛṣṇa says, "Then at a certain stage of spiritual realization, the devotee enters into me." And Rāmānuja said, “That doesn't mean dissolve, annihilate your individuality, or lose yourself." It means, as Guru Mahārāj said, you enter the family of Kṛṣṇa. Who is Kṛṣṇa? Rādhā, Kṛṣṇa, Lalitā, Viśākhā, Nanda, Yaśodā, Śrīdāmā, Sudāmā, Subal, etc. So, that Rāmānuja Āchārya, he can give so many examples, quote so many Scriptures - he can't defeat this man. And every day they debate, for fourteen days.

I remember when going, first going to India, or some years ago, you would see in a newspaper, there would be an article covering a debate between two swāmīs. This was like news in India, they go "Swāmī so and so maintained the sūtadvaita position," and then they'd like explain that, "But then Swāmī such and such in response to that, he came with…," you know, that, like, was a newspaper article. You know, India is a country where Gurudev sometimes watched the news in Sanskrit. They have a channel where they give the news for one hour everyday in Sanskrit. This is the culture of India.

So, he could not defeat. And then Rāmānuja, he's thinking, "I'm supposed to be the sampradāyic āchārya, I'm not doing my job properly, I can't defeat this man. I've given every example, I've given every perfect argument, and he won't acknowledge defeat." And so, Rāmānuja woke up in the morning and he thought, "I'm going to leave my seat as the Āchārya because I can't keep up the dignity of the line, I can't defeat him, so I'm going to…” This morning, when I go to the assembly to again one more time debate, I'm going to resign." And when he gets there, that man on the other side, before Rāmānuja speaks, he said, "I had some realization last night, I've been thinking about all the things you said, and I realized, you're right."

So Guru Mahārāj is saying, this is an example, it’s not the just a question of giving the right arguments “athāpi te deva padāmbuja-dvaya-prasāda-leśānugṛhīta eva hi” (Śrīmad- bhāgavatam 10.14.29). There has to be 'prasāda-leś', means, a little bit of mercy. Like Guru Mahārāj, when he was twenty-three years old, had a teacher, who was like, 'sat-darśan', means like an ontological black belt, you know in six different philosophical systems of India, he knew everything. It was one of his teachers in school. And Guru Mahārāj being so pure and simple hearted in this sense, he's thinking, "Oh, such an exalted learned man as you, why don't you dedicate all that vast learning in service to the lotus feet of Guru and Gaurāṅga, Gaurāṅga Mahāprabhu?" And he said – that man was around seventy, so, Guru Mahārāj is twenty three and that man is seventy, and he told him, he said, "It’s not a question of learning, my boy, or intellectual capacity. You have to get some mercy."

And later when Guru Mahārāj became famous for his own ontological development and spiritual realization, he met him many years ago, that man found it difficult to convert. He would say, "First, we should follow the path of Buddha, then we go to Śaṅkara, then we go to Mādhava Rāmānuja, or Rāmānuja Mādhava, and then to Mahāprabhu." You can understand he was a Bengali [laughs]. And Guru Mahārāj said, "Interesting, you're saying that," he said, "but Mahāprabhu doesn't say that. Mahāprabhu doesn't say, 'First we should go to Buddha, then we go, next, then we go, next, next, next', no, he's not saying that.

jñāne prayāsam udapāsya namanta eva
jīvanti san-mukharitāṁ bhavadīya-vārtām 
sthāne sthitāḥ śruti-gataṁ tanu-vāṅ-manobhiḥ
ye prāyaśo jita jito ’py asi tais tri-lokyām
(Śrīmad-bhāgavatam 10.14.3)

“Begin hearing from the self-realized soul, whatever your position is in the world. Whether you're in family life, student life, whatever it would be."

Rāmānuja, he wanted to teach something to his disciples once about what is real attachment and what is real detachment. So Rāmānuja's famous for being surrounded by sannyāsīs. The tridaṇḍa-sannyās of Saraswatī Ṭhākur, he borrowed a page from Rāmānuja -sampradāya when he reintroduced this, because Rāmānuja had taken sannyāsa before a picture of his guru and, it's another story, but. So one day, they go all the sannyāsīs go to bathe in the river, and they leave their garments on the shore and while they're bathing, Rāmānuja takes all the clothes and he mixes them, puts them in different places. So when they come back out and they're looking for their clothes they're going "Hey, you've got uttāriya," "You have my kaupīna," "That was my bahirvās." They all start arguing about their... they're supposed to be totally detached, given up everything, they're arguing about their clothes.

Then, that night, there's a gṛhastha, householder devotee, his name was Danur das. So Rāmānuja sends one brahmachārī to his house in the dead of night, and his wife, they're sleeping and she still has some bangles, and the brahmachārī comes, he starts sliding the bangles of her wrist, taking the golden bangles and removing her jewellery. Then she turns and he runs away. So then the next day she goes to the temple and says, "Is there some problem with finances at the temple?," and they say, "Why?" and she said, "Well, because one brahmachārī came last night and started removing my bangles, and when I turned so that he could remove the other side he ran away." So Rāmānuja, he wanted them to understand, she… She's supposed to be the wife, she's the one who has the devotion. These big sannyāsīs are arguing about their cloth, their kaupīns, and this lady, she's giving everything she has for the service.

So, that is Rāmānuja, Guru Mahārāj told he also, was, when he got the mantram from his guru, he was sworn to secrecy. Then the guru told, "Here is the mantra." Then he went out and immediately told everyone. And they're saying, "You're violating the order of the guru, this is confidential, you must keep this secret," and he thought, "No, I'm thinking, maybe I'll go to hell for doing this, but everyone else will get that mantra and become liberated."

So, Guru Mahārāj compared that to Kṛṣṇa's headache. Where in Dvaraka, one day Kṛṣṇa tells Nārada Muni that, "Oh, I’m suffering from a headache, very intense, and what I need is foot dust from a devotee, if I take that foot dust and I’ll put that on my head then I'll be cured, I'll get some relief." So Nārada approaches the queens of Dvārakā, these great queens, Rukmiṇī, Satyabhāmā, and the others, and is asking, "Oh, Kṛṣṇa's suffering so much with the headaches, says he needs the feet dust from a devotee, and he'll put this on his head – headache cured." And the queens, they're thinking, "I'm not going to give the dust from my feet. And you're going to put that on Kṛṣṇa's head? Never."

And then they say, and these queens are very intelligent also, and they say, "Besides Nārada, you're a great devotee, you're Nārada Muni, give your feet dust, what are you coming to us for?" He runs back to Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa's suffering, "Give, you have the feet dust? Hurry, hurry!" and Nārada's saying, "No one will give, they’re afraid of the consequences of taking the dust from their feet and putting on your head," and Kṛṣṇa said, "Then you go to Vṛndāvan, ask the Vraja-gopīs, they'll give."

Nārada Muni goes to Vṛndāvan, they said, "Oh, Nārada, you have some news about Kṛṣṇa?," "Everything's going pretty well, but today as of what happened he has a headache, suffering from a headache, and told he needs feet dust from a devotee to cure that headache." And immediately the Vraja-gopīs they say, "Take our feet dust. I don't know if I'm a devotee, but take this feet dust... Try, maybe Kṛṣṇa will get some result." Nārada said, "Aren't you afraid? What if you're not a devotee and that means you'll go to hell forever." "Maybe, that's all right for me, but Kṛṣṇa will get some relief." Kṛṣṇa wanted Nārada to see this type of devotion, just as when he sent Uddhava to observe the Vraja-gopīs, how much love they have for Kṛṣṇa, how much affection they have for Kṛṣṇa.

So when Guru Mahārāj was in South India, and they were making one Maṭh, they ran out of funds. And normally in India, they get all the funds together and build a temple. And then from the inauguration day and onward, you just have to collect for maintenance but the temple is paid for. But in this instance, they, the construction stopped and they took a loan, and they were afraid that Saraswatī Ṭhākur would be displeased hearing this because it’s not the Indian system to do that, but when he found out that they'd done that he said, "Oh, you have engaged your future energy in the service of Kṛṣṇa, excellent. So not only everything you have at current you gave all of that in service to Kṛṣṇa, but in anticipation of future energy, you've also employed that in his service," so, he liked that idea.

And, so, anyway, and different ways that Rāmānuja's sampradāya, we see from there the ślokas regarding śaraṇāgati, the glories of surrender.

How there's a famous śloka in Bhagavad-gītā says,        
yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ
tyajaty ante kalevaram
taṁ tam evaiti kaunteya
sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitaḥ
(Bhagavad-gītā 8.6)

Talks about at the time of death, we're told, at the time of death, what you're thinking, that will determine your next life. So, then the question arises, literally what you're thinking at the time of death? What if just some inexplicable, you know, you're senses are dis…who knows what you might be thinking at that moment. So, different schools of thought on this, but Rāmānujāchārya, he comes to our relief and says in the life of a devotee, they've been thinking and serving in a particular way their whole life, so even at that moment if they're not thinking of Kṛṣṇa, we can say, still they will get the benefit of life-long of devotional culture, thinking, sevā, etc.

This idea of taking some risk in service comes here, and so I like to think back a little bit to the times when we began preaching in favor of Śrīla Guru Mahārāj, and Yudhāmanyu Prabhu came to inaugurate the promotion of the teachings of Śrīla Guru Mahārāj in the Western World. So, he's leaving tomorrow, I just want to say a few words, I won't say many, but like we know, he has the title, Yudhāmanyu Prabhu Sevā Vikram. If you look in Bhagavad-gītā you'll see there's a line, “yudhāmanyu cha sevā vikram cha”, right?

I mean Guru Mahārāj, everything it has some special meaning there, it’s a line from the beginning part of the Bhagavad-gītā, and they're saying, "On our side if we've got fighters like yudhāmanyu sevā, this vikram, vikramantu, something like this, it doesn't say sevā but vikramantaś cha, valiant bold fighters like that, then how can we lose? We're going to be successful.”

So, when did Guru Mahārāj give that? Was, from the beginning when we were printing books at the Guardian of Devotion press, they were mainly going to him, we would calculate – we're going to print this many, and we kept a small amount, actually, for where we were, relatively, and the bulk of it went to Yudhāmanyu Prabhu who was distributing Guru Mahārāja's books in South Africa at the time, and as fate would have it this was not pleasing to certain people. Is that a safe, fair way to put it? [laughs]. And so, they wanted to, like, throw him in jail. To put it, like, in a more blunt way. And did. And attack him in different ways. So, Guru Mahārāj... He's there giving, you know, trying to valiantly distribute Guru Mahārāj's teachings to the world, some insane opposition movement is there, they're trying to stop him from doing that. So, when the news of being attacked and thrown into jail comes to Guru Mahārāj, he says, "This is how he's now got the mercy of Nityānanda Prabhu, for this act. This is where Nityānanda Prabhu showers you with a mercy cloud. And because it’s a valiant type of sevā, he's given this title of Sevā Vikram.

And actually so many of our devotees in the beginning who helped at the Guardian of Devotion press, he brought them with him from there. It’s not they were all South Africans, but they happened to be in South Africa at the time, so he had some special connection with there from the very beginning. And he came to San Jose with Jīvana and Prabala, and Guru Mahārāj didn't like us to leave ISKCON with anything - I mean take anything. Not leave. So, instead of like, walking, hitchhiking from Seattle which is in the northern, north, the pacific northwest down to San Jose, California, it’s like, what is it, 1000 miles, they're not going to let him take anything. But finally at the last minute they let him take this vehicle, if you want to call it that, that was known as the garbage truck. It’s what the Maṭh used to take the refuse. That's what was given to him. Right, after so many, I mean, I don't want to run this thing into the ground, but I think you get the idea. So, they come down to San Jose where we are, with, in the so called garbage truck, there's Yudhāmanyu Prabhu, his wife Jīvana, and Prabala, and we think this is like a Vaikuṇṭha chariot [laughs]. I don’t even know if we have a vehicle at the time [laughs] but they show up.

And that, and I remember once we're going, we're sort of driving around like madmen in the area, we're going across the Golden Gate bridge, and maybe not thinking so much about eating at the time, we're having these very loud like screaming kind of conversations over the sound of the engine and everything, and I remember thinking at that time, I said, "People, they give this argument that Guru Mahārāj, he never preached in the West," this is one of the arguments that we would have to deal with at the time, "He didn't come out of India and go to the West and preach." And it was going across that bridge I thought, I said, “I think I have a solution to this, and that is we will publish books of Śrīla Guru Mahārāj, of his talks, his tapes, his lectures. And these books will go all over the world, and they'll be conceptually, like ‘kṛpayā hari-kīrttana mūrtti’, this will be his mūrtti conceptual, ontological mūrtti personified, through these books he will go all of the world preaching, and they will never use this argument again."

And I can say now, it’s 2012, that was 1981, no, that was, ’82. Anyway, thirty years, we haven't been hearing that argument. And, Yudhāmanyu Prabhu he, you can say, his collecting party became Gurudev's collecting party. Just as Saraswatī Ṭhākur, he used to say that Guru Mahārāj, Goswāmī Mahārāj and Madhava Mahārāj, he used to call them “my party”, because Guru Mahārāj once called them in and said, "I want you to pay for the preaching in London." And Guru Mahārāj thought, "We're collecting rupees and that's pounds." You may not believe that there was a time when there was like three dollars to a pound, there was a time when there was five dollars to a pound, pounds were like sterling. So, Guru Mahārāj said to him, "I don't think we can get that much money every month." I mean Guru Mahārāj is so honest. And Saraswatī Ṭhākur said, “We are not karmīs." And what he meant was, “This is some order that's come down, and you try and do that somehow. Don't think literally what can be done or literally what cannot be done. There's some sevā, that's come to you, you try and do that."

So, Śrīla Gurudev and Śrīla Guru Mahārāj, they would give this sevā to Sevā Vikram Prabhu - Yudhāmanyu Prabhu - of maintaining the Maṭh, but also expanding the Maṭh. Other buildings when we first went there, there weren't enough residential quarters for visiting devotees. And one by one you started seeing, Yudhāmanyu Prabhu would collect, give to Gurudev, and then a building would appear, the Sevak Bhavan or Pāśchātya Bhavan. All those buildings that are there now, one by one, they came. And it’s really Yudhāmanyu Prabhu working under the direction of Śrīla Gurudev. Because once, when one of the buildings was going up, Guru Mahārāj said,  "You may not believe this, but that [...construction sound..] makes me besides myself." He said, Govinda Mahārāj knows how you can build one, and then another one, and another one, and the movement's growing and developing."

And also Yudhāmanyu Prabhu has a history of pioneering things. Like South Africa was pioneering, what was done in American was pioneering, getting the Soquel ashram was pioneering. But after so many years, he's always thinking he's not content to be disguised as a mild mannered  English teacher. But he's thinking a few years back, now a few years means nine, eight or nine. Seems like a few years ago, it was eight years ago – we were having a discussion on Gurudev's veranda, his mystical veranda, and Yudhāmanyu Prabhu is saying, "I'm wondering what should I do now? Where can I devote my energies? What could I do next?" he's not thinking, "Oh I’ve done so many things," you know, retirement. 'Retirement' - that's not a word in Gurudev's vocabulary, or 'relax'. Sometimes some of us say "Oh, Mahārāj, you can go to such and such place and relax" and, he did not like that word. You could use another word, but not relax.

So anyway Yudhāmanyu Prabhu's thinking like that, and asked me something, and I said at the time, like, naively, I said, "Oh I’ve been reading about China on the internet and the New York Times," and I said "it seems, you know, China and 21st century, how things are going, you know it’s going to be Chinese century, and things like that," and I said "if I wasn't doing what I'm doing with Avadhūt Mahārāj, I would give some attention to that." And he's saying, "yes, let's ask Gurudev if he will give some Divine blessings." And we asked Śrīla Gurudev, "Shall Yudhāmanyu Prabhu go and take Guru Mahārāj's conception to China?" and Gurudev gave those blessings, like the “āmāra ājñāya guru hañā tāra’ ei deśa’ (Chaitanya-charitāmṛta, Madhya 7.128), the ‘prabhu-datta deśa’, where he gave him this land to bring Guru Mahārāj's conception to.

And although it seems to me sometimes like a few years ago, it’s now become eight, and so many devotees have been made there, and now we find ourselves here after so many years and he's come here recently, and he's appreciating so much the devotees here, and we're appreciating him. And the Chinese devotees have come to visit us and bless us, and we're thinking, seeing, that we're sister temples. Now we have some sisterly relations. Sometimes Yudhāmanyu Prabhu, he'll come here and stay here for some time with us, or go there with the devotees. Guru Mahārāj liked that, he said one temple, when he talked about Maha Mandal initially, he said what it will be is one center assisting or serving another one, like that. So we're praying for that kind of reciprocal relationship. And if we can assist what he's doing then we'll get some benefit.

Gurudev told me, he said after, in a little bit of a humorous way, "After mixing with you and the western section," he said, "nothing surprises me." He said, "There's nothing you can tell me, there's nothing you could do that would shock me. Or surprise me." He said, "There is only one thing that surprises me." "What is it Mahārāj?" "That they're chanting ‘Hare Kṛṣṇa’ in China," he said, "That surprises me."

So, every year, Yudhāmanyu Prabhu is very humble, he never takes for granted what he's doing, I can vouch that every single year since he's gone there, he would come after one year, like, the one year evaluation, or the one year review, and he would ask Gurudev, "Is what I'm doing pleasing to you? Do you want me to be there? Do you want me to continue doing this?" And every year, Gurudev would say, "Yes." But I think the last time we asked, he's saying, that was one year, then two, three, five, six, it’s going to seven, asked one last time, I said to Gurudev, he's lying on his bed, loudly, "Mahārāj, is Yudhāmanyu Prabhu's preaching in China pleasing to you?," and he's like, "Yes!"

So, Guru Mahārāj would say it’s designed and destined. So really we want to see ourselves as servants or assistants to the Chinese mission. If we can assist Yudhāmanyu Prabhu in some way, really we'll be benefited by that, Gurudev will be very pleased with us, everybody will. We know, the devotees all over the world, the preaching in China is part of the pride of this Mission. Everywhere, devotees are very happy about that, and they're always happy to meet the Chinese devotees and interact with them. You know, you're like, welcome at every center we have all over the world. There's an open invitation. From the heart of all the devotees. Now Yudhāmanyu Prabhu, Sevā Vikram Prabhu ki jaya! Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Did I say anything inaccurate? I know, I left out a lot of history, but [laughs]. Hare Kṛṣṇa. The last thing I have to say is Gurudev, when he'd say so many things, he'd say, what he likes about Yudhāmanyu Prabhu, "He only asked me one question, ‘Do you want this or not?"
Gopal: Yes
Goswāmī Mahārāj: That's it, you've, Gopal you've heard, we've heard. This is a mantra of Govinda Mahārāj. It’s a mantra. Yudhāmanyu only says, "Do you want this or not?"

And I remember Prabhupāda, he once said, "The supreme mantra is in the Bhagavad-gītā, “kariṣye vachanaṁ tava” (Bhagavad-gītā 18.73), where Arjuna says, "I've heard what you've said, and I'm going do what you said." Prabhupāda said, "That's a supreme mantra," where Arjuna said, Kṛṣṇa said, "Did you hear what is said?," Arjuna said, "Yes, I'm now prepared to do what you want." He said that is the supreme mantra.

And he would say that himself, "I only ask my Guru Mahārāj one question, ‘how can I serve you?." So, Gurudev was saying, "Yudhāmanyu Prabhu says one thing, you want this or not?" So, we can learn from that, that type of 'guru-bhakti'. That's what we're trying to achieve. As Nārada said, “gurau bhaktyā, puruṣo hy aṣjasā jayet… etat sarvaṁ…” (Śrīmad-bhāgavatam 7.15.25)

They're saying all these things in the seventh canto, like there's an endless list of things you know you will never achieve. So, when you hear, you have to hold your head up to read the book, 'I'm hopeless'. "And one who is Kṛṣṇa conscious will do this, and you're like 'Oh, it’s not going to happen", but then at the end it says, ‘etat sarvaṁ gurau bhaktyā puruṣo hy aṣjasā jayet’, “…But, if you get devotion to the lotus feet of guru, you get everything. Forget the list". If you have devotion to the lotus feet of guru you get it all.

Hare Kṛṣṇa. And it’s personified in that. Just saying, "What do you want?" “kariṣye vachanaṁ tava." Hare Kṛṣṇa.