20151112 Govardhan Pūjā @ Lotus Rooftop

20151112 Govardhan Pūjā @ Lotus Rooftop

Type Of Talk:

Evening Class

Date:

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Collection:

Needs enhancement

20151112_Govardhan_Puja_@_Lotus_Rooftop_Sri_Mayapur_Dham Ke bangle bhala bujhen hath tolen. Saide bosun bangle anuvad keo karar janya Any Russian translation? Any other language? So today is the auspicious anniversary of the appearance of Giriraj of Govardhan, in a sense that today is the day that Krishna offered worship to Giriraj. His father and the cowherd men were preparing to do the Indra puja, so he wanted to ah... teach Indra. Indra was forgetful of the position of Visnu. So Krishna asked his father what he was doing if he could tell him. He said that a liberal person, he doesn’t keep any secrets and he tells everyone. Even if a person is less liberal at least he will tell his family members and relatives. So like this Krishna was laying the basis for Nanda Maharaj explaining to him. Nanda Maharaj was saying that this whole issue will be so complex for my child to understand. But Lord Krishna continued to enquires, “Is this given in the Vedas or this is just some tradition that you do.?” So then Nanda Maharaj in simple words he said that, “We are very much dependent on having good rains because as Vaisyas they were engaged in the production of grains and cow protection.” So he said that, “We are very grateful to Indra for sending us this rains.” But then Lord Krishna he wanted to get Indra angry. So he started to speak the karma mimamsa philosophy and by saying that the devas give blessings because you did good work. So what is really important is that you do your work according to your varnashram, and the devas they have to give. It’s not that they have a independent authority. So this angered Indra a lot but Krishna was so convincing that He presented that we should worship all this grains, ghee, worship the Gobardhan by cooking and offering preparations. So they took all this grains, ghee and they cooked Halwa, sabzi, rice and made a big feast for Lord Gobardhan. Krishna said that Gobardhan is non-different than Him and He took a large form while He kept His childhood form. So He said, “See Giriraj has taken this form to accept your offerings.” So different devotees were offering Him different prasadam and literally He was eating. Infact in Govardhan they have a village called Anayor, that means bring more, bring more and Govardhan He would begin to eat and He would say bring more. So like this they are offering a mountain of rice with dal, halwa, chapattis, pakodas, and also milk sweets, sweet rice, sandesh, and many other preparations. So on this day they have extreme Puja to Govardhan. Now the brahmans and ladies and bullocks and men they would circumambulate the govardhan hill. For the ladies were riding on the bullock cart, the men were walking and the brahmanas were chanting mantras. So that was the puja done 5000 years ago. In the harmonist, it tells how Bhaktisiddhantha Saraswati Thakur, he did annakut in the new temple in Baghbazar, Calcutta. The new temple at that -1921 or something, and then he said that people would come, rich and poor, aristocratic and beggars, high class Indian ladies, also mohammedans, christians, buddists, jains and which shows that it was very cosmopolitan, and it is said by the most humble estimate, 100,000 people came to take the annakut prasadam. It said that there were 60 mounds of rice. Mound is 40 kilos from ah... one of the Garia math sansyasis how a dog had come up and eaten from the annakut, everyone stood back, “OH! Contaminated.”, and they told this to Bhaktisiddhanth Saraswati Thakur that a dog had eaten the mound of rice. “oh!” he said, “Really!” “Yes!” “Show me where” They showed him. “that place.” “you are sure this is the place.” “Yes. This place where there is a small indentation, that’s the place.” Then he took and ate it. And then they started to distribute the annakut rice. The ah... after the bagh bazaar success all the gauria math were doing annakut and then Om Visnupad Srila Bhaktisiddhant Saraswati Thakur was in ah... Jagannath Puri and ah... he suddenly said that he wanted a annakut observed in a particular way. He said that we should have different styles of cooking and decorating the gobardhan hill- Bengali style- preparations that Lord Caitanya liked, North Indian style-preparations that Krishna liked, South Indian style- like this you have... this should not be a cullianary festival, it should primarily be preaching and different sanyasis and senior devotees were giving classes throughout the Gauria math all day long. If not giving a formal class they would meet people and tell them some Krishn katha. I was thinking that if we had known this we could have observed the Gobardhan Puja not only East India, North India, South India, also Italian and various, various cuisines from different part of the world. So it is interesting how he used annakut as a form for spreading Krishna consciousness. So Prabhupada, he introduces this annakut in ISKCON and in Mayapur we had tons of rice and other festival items and afterwards, after.... we got a cow to circumumbulate but the cow would slip on the marble sometimes, so it wasn’t so god. Today when I see mounds of rice before Radha-Madhav and some pots, what Srila Bhakti Siddhantha Saraswati Thakur, not only would he have different kinds of cosines, each type you had to prepare 500 varieties. 500 bengali, 500 north Indian, 500 south Indian, and in Maypur we have now our Chinese, Russian, Italian, who else? Do you have in Spanish 500 varieties? (laughter) But specially ah... I wanted to... this is day that after annakut that Prabhupada from his room, he was hearing dog’s bark and ah... he walked over and looked down from the lotus building and he saw some village children with a stick in one hand beating back the dogs, with the other hand eating the remnants that people left in their plates, and Prabhupada was literally crying. He said, “how hungry they must be that they are fighting dogs to get the ucchistha, to get the remnants.” This is the house of Krishna, he is the supreme father. We should see that within 10 miles radius no one goes hungry. That was the beginning of our ISKCON food relief on a very massive scale. So that is the part of our unique culture in Mayapur that we want to feed the people. I saw that it was a quite well organized prasadam feeding today that they had it here in the Prabhupada park and ah... that’s a very important part of our culture that we want to feed hungry people. Hunger is not only poverty but people may have a spiritual hunger also. I remember one quite wealthy lady, she said that, “I can khicdi. I can put very expensive ingredients, spices, pistasios, opulent khicdi but it won’t taste like yours. Somehow your khicdi is out of the world.” “We said, Yes it is tasted by Krishna. It has touched Krishna’s lotus mouth. Therefore it’s spiritually opoulent.” I was reminded by one story that happened to me with regarding Giriraj, our Jagannath, Baladev and Subhadra deities in Rajapur. They come to the pujari in his dream and said, “ever since you put a Govardhan shila on the altar, he is a mountain, he eats everything, he doesn’t wait, he just dives and zoom he takes off everything. We are not getting any bhoga. So you have to do something.” So he came to me, the pujari and he said that this problem is there. This is part of our management in Mayapur. It’s not there in any of the training, how to settle disagreements among the deities. So I was thinking what to do. This was a very unusual case. So after some investigation, I found that one Maharaj had left his Govardhan Shila on his altar but there was nothing we could do about that. But they were offering one plate to all the deities. So Govardhan being a mountain He could eat so much. So then I suggested that they offer Govardhan special plate and offer the other deities different plates and see if that stops the complaints. So after that no complaint came. In the Krishna book purport Prabhupada says how devotees get... since Krishna declares that Govardhan is not different from Him, the devotees get small stones and offer puja. Prabhupada would say that this puja is more spontenous and there are a number of devotees who... some have saligram sila and some have govardhan shila. Some have both. So that’s some discussion about Gobardhan. If some time left, if any of you have any questions, tell me. Q: Prabhupada has said in the purport of Krishna book that devotees can take the Gobardhan shila and worship it, is it necessary that we should take the permission of Vrajavasi before bringing them? Gurumaharaj: I noticed that also and suspected that someone may ask. But I don’t know exactly where it started. I think that Prabhupada asked ah...whether the devotee got it from a Vrajavasi. Seems to be the attic ate that a Vrajavasi can give you a Gobardhan shila, but I haven’t researched it more than that. This seems to be the etiquette and ah... usually the devotees who want to worship the Govardhan shila can find a Vrajavasi to give them one.

Q: What is the best thing we can do the last thing before leaving Mayapur. We have come with great difficulty with orphanage children. What is the most that we can do today because we are leaving tomorrow to get spiritual benefit? Gurumaharaj: You are asking me this question at 9’O clock in the night? Q: We used the whole day well. What we should do for the last part? Gurumaharaj: What time do you take rest? A: As soon as we finish the class. If there is anything we can do it and take rest. Gurumaharaj: There are two things. One is we are going to give our some prasadam. The kids can come up first and get prasadam. And second thing, before they can go to sleep they can bow down and pay their obeisances to the nine islands, unto the different deities and Govardhan, and the presiding deities here and chant panchatatva and Hare Krishna. Devotee: Thank you. Gurumaharaj : Welcome. Devotee Mataji : It’s said that we should cook only those food that Krishna likes, so Gurumaharaj mentioned about Italian cuisine, Chinese cuisine, this are only for Govardhan puja? Gurumaharaj: Srila Bhaktisiddhantha Saraswati thakur had prescribed 500 preparations of each style and during our Prabhupada Vyasa puja 2016 preparations and those are various kinds. So for this very important days you can make vast quantity of preparations. For ordinary days you can have seven or ten preparations, and there is no hard and fast rule that you can cook only things that Krishna likes. We don’t know that He doesn’t like Russian preparations. From Malaysia one devotee asked me, “Does Krishna knows Tamil.” I said, “Yes, Krishna knows all languages. Even the languages of the birds and beast and the trees. He knows Tamil.” 44.00-44.08That way I said, “Krishna knows Tamil!” That means also knows Russian, Chinese and Telugu. On special days we prepare that preparations that they like but we can make many preparations also. So Prabhupada liked Kachoris. We can also make him a variety of other preparations. There is no restriction. We should advantage to glorify Prabhupada, to glorify Krishna. Q: Maharaj spoke very nicely on the annakuta from the harmonist. So I would like to know if Maharaj would like us to read some section from the Harmonist like the Janmastami? Gurumaharaj: Those devotees who are in charge of the festival organization, maybe it is useful to study what our previous acharyas did on those occasions and just like the Hari Bhakti Vilas Sanatan Goswamvi, he also tells us what to do on different occasions and ah... so this things are on the advanced levels of deity worship. Maynot be for everybody, but those who are organizing festivals they can research what was done by the previous acharyas. We follow the sadhu, sastra and guru. So if you have previous acharyas as guru and if there are other sadhus, other vaisnavas, it’s sadhu. Prabhupada says particularly we should do this or that, that should take presidense for us. If he just says that have a big festival what is the harm in researching what our previous acahryas did? Prabhupada said that he would construct the structure of ISKCON and that we have to fill in the walls and windows. So thank you all very much. This side men, this side ladies, but kids first.

Transcribed by: Sadananda Krishnaprem Das.