By Shyamananda Dasa
With a little more than a month to go for the great Kumbha Mela festival we can deliberate upon and try to implement in our lives some of the lessons it has to give us in order to enrich our spiritual realization.
The History in brief – The Kumbha Mela is centered around the episode from Srimad Bhagavatam where the demigods and demons joined hands and churned the milk ocean for the elixir of immortality. The king of the demigods Indra offending the great sage Durvasa muni and thus falling from grace wished to be reinstated in his position of power along with his associates. The Lord instructed the demigods to co-operate with the demons and churn the ocean of milk using the the snake Vasuki as the rope and mount Mandara as the churning rod. The demons agreed being greedy for the nectar and thus the churning went on. Many different things emerged from the churning beginning with the kalakuta poison which was drunk by Lord Siva making Him famous as Nilakantha. At the end the nectar emerged carried by Lord Dhanavantari in a golden pitcher. The ensuing scuffle between the gods and demons resulted in a few drops of the nectar to fall on earth in four places namely Haridwar, Ujjain, Nasik and Prayag. The Kumbha Mela which means “the nectar pot fair” is held at those very spots where faithful followers of Vedic culture take their holy dip to taste the nectar of immortality.
Lessons to be learnt – 1. Never offend saints and sages however powerful you may be materially. 2. One can take the help of atheists even to execute the order of the Lord. 3. Co-operation for the pleasure of Krsna is the key to success in devotional service. 4. Krsna never gives the nectar to the demons. 5. Krsna consciousness seems like poison in the beginning but is nectar in the end.
Relevance to ISKCON devotees – ISKCON devotees started the procession with a unique traditional bullock cart with hundreds of Vaisnava sadhus following the cart of Nitai Gaura Sundar and Srila Prabhupada, and blessed millions of pilgrims and devotees by their melodious kirtan. This Padyatra bullock cart has been travelling all over India for last 29 years since it started in 1984. The ISKCON Camp at Maha Kumbha Mela was located on Tulasi Marg, sector 5, Mori Gate (under Taragunj Railway bridge), and accommodated nearly 1,000 devotees from all over the world. The dioramas depicting churning Kshira Sagar by demigods and demons, the Gajendra-moksha-lila, Ram-Lila with monkeys attracted a lot of visitors.This tradition has been carried on till this day.
It adds special importance to Prayag
(Allahabad) that Srila Prabhupada was initiated by his spiritual master Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur in 1933. Later on Srila Prabhupada spent 13 years preparing for preaching mission of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who instructed Bhakti Rasa Sastra in Prayag for 10 days to Srila Rupa Goswami at Dashashwamedh Ghat. Srila Prabhupada came twice with his disciples to visit Kumbha Mela for preaching purposes. He emphasized: “The Kumbha Mela is sat-sanga. If you go to Kumbha Mela to find out a man of knowledge, then your Kumbha Mela is right. Otherwise, yad-buddhih salile sa eva go- kharah [SB 10.84.13]. If one thinks that this salila, the water, to take bath in the water, is Kumbha Mela, he is a go- kharah. But the real?, that ‘Now there are assembly of so many saintly persons. Let me take advantage of their knowledge.’ Then he is intelligent.” ISKCON is following the important aspects of Srila Prabhupada’s misson in Maha Kumbha Mela 2019 at Prayag – Besides book distribution, Bhagavata discourses and harinama, over 5,000 full plates of lunch prasadam were distributed for pilgrims and sadhus.
Comments