Respected Swamiji and all Vaisnavas,
Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna!
Jaya Visnupada Srila Prabhupada!
Jaya Swami Gaurangapada!
All glories to our Guru Parampara!
Please accept my respectful obeisances!
I start with describing realizations I get while practicing. I face so many difficulties from within more than without. But it’s actually a lot better than before and improving steadily, all by your grace and the Lord's grace and the grace of His Holy names of course. As we keep at the chanting, the obstacles start to fall down one by one leaving the path clear. But we are always vulnerable and that is not a reason to become over-confident. Rather it must emphasize our surrender more and more with the Lord as it is only by the mercy of his names that our path is getting cleared. I have realized something which will make our practice more efficient.
First of all I’ll see the basic question? Do we really believe that the Lord is His name? A little introspection should tell that. I realize that to actually realize it is a different affair. The name is more subtle. To understand that the name is also the Personality of Godhead who is completely spiritual, merciful and who is also helping and showing us mercy and descending to grab us and show us His beauty and mercy and etc., etc., etc,....is something a neophyte like myself am not readily accustomed to at a deeper level. Like when we see the form of the Lord we have learnt to understand that it is Him. But since the name is actually more subtle than a form, we run the danger of not having completely realized the Personality of the naama. There is a danger of treating the names with an impersonalist attitude.
All the names in this material world are abstract objects different from their objects and being devoid of personality and potency are all impersonal. Owing to this subconscious impression, whenever we chant the name, we may be unknowingly treating the nama prabhu as an impersonal object. Even the very language that we use (referring to the name as 'it' for example) is also impersonal, though that may not be our intention. So I do not want to use neutral words. I would rather use ‘he’ to refer to Nityananda’s name as we do with Lord Nityananda personally. We can easily pray or surrender or grab the feet of the deity form of the Lord. But it takes deeper realization to behave in the same way to the name. Do I pray to the name? Do I surrender to him? Do I ask him to descend on my mouth? Do I ask Him to show his mercy? Do I understand that when I chant, the Lord is RIGHT THERE as the name? Do I try to please the name? Do I try to serve the name? And so on and so forth?
For some people, the very idea of asking this to a deity is embarrassing. But at a more subtle level, a beginner like myself finds that it’s easy to act with and treat the form of the Lord personally, but if I were to ask myself to treat the name as my personal friend and master, I would find myself somewhat embarrassed and hesitant. My mind would say, “What’s this you’re doing?” This is basically the first time we have done this, so it feels very unusual because of our ignorance in the truth of the holy name. We are so conditioned to think impersonally that mostly we do not pray to the name at all, if we do so, it might actually feel weird. We are so conditioned to treat the name as an object with potency rather than as the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself. Note the word ‘object’. That’s subtle impersonalism at work.
Impersonalism is the ultimate disease of the soul. Why should Bhaktivinode Thakura have stated that impersonalism is the cause of our coming to the material world? The answer is very obvious when we see. When meat-eaters kill and eat animals mercilessly, it is because of impersonalism. They take the animals as merely as a food or business called ‘cattle’. When the terrorists and war-mongers are busy creating trouble for the world in their acts of destruction that is again impersonalism. They treat life like a use and throw commodity and for them the people, the soldiers, everyone, is just a drug to gain power. Because of their impersonalism they do not realize that others too have feelings of pain and suffering. Life is treated with the same regard given to a piece of tissue paper after using it to blow mucus out of the nose. And that’s because life itself is treated impersonally. That is why Isopanisad described the impersonalist as the killer of the soul. I am only giving a few examples. When everything is treated from a personal point of view, there are no such problems. That is the first and most important qualification for spiritual advancement.
If we are to make our advancement more rapid we must put aside these illusory feelings and accept the name just as we accept the Supreme Lord. Of course we are very familiar on how devotees treat the Lord if he were to be standing before them, and we must accept the fact that we must do the same thing for the name too. That’s real surrender. This takes us to surrender our ego and in the process beat the mind to its most deep rooted false impressions. To surrender to the deity is easy. To surrender to the Lord’s name the way we do to the deity is not difficult either, but it’s a neglected department and not something that we have done with any other name. We must first put aside those feelings and realize that this is what we are supposed to be doing.
So long as we consider the name as an object, we are not inclined to give the name the proper respect. If we don’t see Lord Nityananda’s name as his own self for example, we may fall into the danger of using the name as a drug (worst case). The naam will become a tool for us. Of course the Lord forgives me still, but I am sure it would make devotion a lot faster and a lot more blissful if I realize this. When I actually think this matter carefully and realize my mistake, I start treating His name with the proper respect he deserves. Now I feel that I must serve Him. I feel very ashamed for having thought of him as an object or a tool like a ladder. Now I feel that my chanting Him is actually my service to Him and preaching His glories is the best thing what anyone can do for Him. He is soooo merciful that he descends to all the living entities and hearing Him even once, even creatures in the most ignorant species of life are immediately delivered. He can do anything. When I chant he actually descends and he is dancing. He is making me realize true bliss and love in service to him.
The only thing that we all do in the ultimate sense is service, service and service. Even honoring prasada is service we do with our tongue to the prasada. The prasada is not serving us. We are serving the prasada by honoring it. Its really beyond logic to explain how the activities meant for serving ourselves are actually service to the Lord in various ways. In the same way, chanting the name of Nityananda is the service which we are doing to Him. Preaching his name is the other service to Him.
In this way we see that everything is only service. When the concept of impersonalism is abandoned and replaced by the personal truth, we realize that even inanimate objects used in the Lord’s service become real and exalted personalities and we are only serving them in whatever manner they are meant to be served. When we fully embrace the personality of the name such as the name of Nityananada, we give up the idea of using Him as an object and instead treat him with reverence and humility and mercifully falling at His feet for forgiveness, we continue to pray that He will always descend on our tongue and give us the eligibility to serve his devotees. At that time we will truly realize how great the Lord’s naam is and we will develop the true attitude of devotional service.
This way our chanting will very quickly become completely offence less and then very quickly it will become pure. And it is then that our spiritual progress enters into a whole new dimension of unlimited bliss and love in service. Our real nature is the service attitude. The drug attitude is completely opposed to our nature and it is the ultimate spiritual disease with impersonalism at the heart of it. The only way to get rid of the drug mentality, the ultimate spiritual disease that is the cause of our material existence is to fully surrender to everything spiritual as the personality. When this impersonalism is kicked out, and the personal truth is fully established, that is when we will fully embrace the service mentality and enter into the spiritual world.
I know deep inside that it takes only a short time before we get accustomed to treat the name as Lord Krishna or Lord Nityananda or Lord Gauranga. It only takes a bit of practice. A week or two of repeatedly acting with the name the way we do with the Lord is all that it takes. Anyone who hasn’t realized or done this till now can learn from my mistakes as I am. Our spiritual advancement will then enter into the most sublime levels very easily that are impossible to put down in words.
So from right now, I am going to try my best never to address the name as a ‘thing’ or an ‘it’, but as a personality, a ‘he’ or ‘she’ depending on the personality of the name, a transcendental person. It would be good if everyone who are like myself take up this process of addressing the names as a personality. Then we will know what it means when the name is non-different from the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Not only that, we neophytes can also put ourselves on the path to offenceless chanting of the names of the Lord. This language is the most subtle influencing factor of our mentality. If we just change the language a little bit, then very soon we will understand a lot as to what it means when the forms, qualities, abodes, personalities, associates, pastimes, etc. etc. are all there in them, the Holy names of the Lord.
If someday I ever fully follow the purport of what realisation I just had today, I can consider that my devotional service was not a vain attempt. And I can be happy at the realisation that I managed to follow atleast one footstep in the footsteps of all you devotees, Swamiji and all our acaryas of the guru parampara!
Jaya Nityananda! Gauranga! Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare! All glories, prayers and obeisances to the mantrarajas and the maha-mantra! All glories, prayers and obeisances to the Holy names of the Lord!
Aspiring to be a humble servant of the Vaisnavas, the Lord and His Divine names, the mantrarajas and the maha-mantra,
A most unworthy fellow,
Srinath
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