20250717 Addressing to South India Devotees

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam
paramānanda-mādhavam śrī caitanya īśvaram
Harihi oṁ tat sat

Jayapatākā Swami: My class will be in English. You will translate in Tamil? I would like to welcome everybody, su-svāgatam! Gaurāṅga! Nityānanda! Advaita Ācārya! Gadādhara, Śrīvāsa-ādi Gaura-bhakti-vṛnda!

So Rādhārāṇī has created this holy dhāma. And She was playing on Her flute. So, Kṛṣṇa wondered, “Who is playing on the flute so sweetly?” So He came here and saw Rādhārāṇī and thanked Rādhārāṇī for making this beautiful dhāma! And each of the islands of the dhāma is like a part of a lotus. Center of the lotus is the anther, and eight petals around. The nine petals are connected to the nine practices of bhakti-yoga. So there are many different holy places around. Kṛṣṇa said that, “This dhāma will be non-different from Vṛndāvana. Every activity of devotional service done here is multiplied by one thousand. In Vṛndāvana, any sinful act, the result is also multiplied by one thousand.” But here, it is known as the mercy dhāma. So the sinful acts or sinful thoughts are not multiplied by a thousand here. 

So in our disciplic succession, Śrī Jagannātha dāsa Bābājī, he was in Vṛndāvana. He found that sometimes the results of sinful or bad thoughts to be too heavy! So, he came here, and he got his siddha-svarūpa. In Navadvīpa his āśrama is there and where he got his darśana of Kṛṣṇa is there too. Now, this place in Lord Caitanya’s time was the center of the city. Then in the British rule, the train station was over there and so people began to live there over that side. So, Śrīla Prabhupāda was saying that in the Bhagavad-gītā [4.9] it says that janma karma ca me divyam. So, one kilometer away, that side is the birthplace of Lord Caitanya. So that is the birthplace and this, Śrīla Prabhupāda said was the karma-sthāna. So we are trying to carry out the karma of Lord Caitanya!

We are very happy that you came here! So, Bhagavad-gītā tells that we are a spirit soul in the body. It is not that we are the body, and we have a soul. We are the soul, and we have the body. We have two bodies – we have the gross body and the subtle body. But most people may think that the purpose of life is to enjoy the body. So, while we are in the body there is a certain amount of sukha and duḥkha. But Lord Caitanya taught that the real purpose of human life is to love Kṛṣṇa. We have the book Nectar of Devotion, where many of the details are revealed. And Kṛṣṇa is enjoying in the spiritual world. The material world is only one-fourth of the energy of the Lord. And the spiritual world is three-fourths. You see when Kṛṣṇa came down, with Him came a storehouse of love! But it was locked!! Lord Caitanya, He is Kṛṣṇa in the mood of Rādhārāṇī, He broke the lock! And He gave out the love of Kṛṣṇa, freely! He did not analyze who deserved it and who did not! He gave out, He said, “I am like a gardener of a tree. The tree has so many fruits, how will I give it out, some may get, some may not get them.” So, Lord Caitanya wants all of you to help Him, give out the fruits of love for God! Ladies are clapping, men are not clapping – why is that? Now, everybody is clapping! Gaurāṅga!