Today is the divine disappearance day of Namacharya Haridasa Thakura. So we shall read from Sri Caitanya-caritamrta, Antya-lila, Chapter Eleven: “The Passing of Haridasa Thakura.”
INTRODUCTION
The summary of this chapter is given by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura in his Amrta-pravaha-bhasya as follows. In this chapter it is described how Brahma Haridasa Thakura gave up his body with the consent of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, and how the Lord Himself personally performed the funeral ceremony and carried the body to the sea. He personally entombed the body, covered it with sand, and erected a platform on the site. After taking a bath in the sea, He personally begged prasada of Jagannatha from shopkeepers and distributed prasada to the assembled devotees.
TEXT 1
namami haridasam tam
caitanyam tam ca tat-prabhum
samsthitam api yan-murtim
svanke krtva nanarta yah
TRANSLATION
Let me offer my respectful obeisances unto Haridasa Thakura and his master, Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, who danced with the body of Haridasa Thakura on His lap.
TEXT 2
jaya jaya sri-caitanya jaya dayamaya
jayadvaita-priya nityananda-priya jaya
TRANSLATION
All glories to Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, who is very merciful and who is very dear to Advaita Acarya and Lord Nityananda!
TEXT 3
jaya srinivasesvara haridasa-natha
jaya gadadhara-priya svarupa-prana-natha
TRANSLATION
All glories to the master of Srinivasa Thakura! All glories to the master of Haridasa Thakura! All glories to the dear master of Gadadhara Pandita! All glories to the master of the life of Svarupa Damodara!
TEXT 4
jaya kasi-priya jagadananda-pranesvara
jaya rupa-sanatana-raghunathesvara
TRANSLATION
All glories to Lord Sri Caitanya, who is very dear to Kasi Misra! He is the Lord of the life of Jagadananda and the Lord of Rupa Gosvami, Sanatana Gosvami, and Raghunatha dasa Gosvami.
TEXT 16
eka-dina govinda maha-prasada lana
haridase dite gela anandita hana
TRANSLATION
One day Govinda, the personal servant of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, went in great jubilation to deliver the remnants of Lord Jagannatha’s food to Haridasa Thakura.
TEXTS 17–20
When Govinda came to Haridasa, he saw that Haridasa Thakura was lying on his back and chanting his rounds very slowly.
“Please rise and take your maha-prasada” Govinda said. Haridasa Thakura replied, “Today I shall observe fasting.
“I have not finished chanting my regular number of rounds. How, then, can I eat? But you have brought maha-prasada, and how can I neglect it?”
Saying this, Haridasa offered prayers to the maha-prasada, took a little portion, and ate it.
PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada
Maha-prasada is nondifferent from Krsna. Therefore, instead of eating maha-prasada, one should honor it. It is said here, karila vandana, “he offered prayers.” When taking maha-prasada, one should not consider the food ordinary preparations. Prasada means favor. One should consider maha-prasada a favor of Krsna. As stated by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura, krsna bada dayamaya karibare jihva jaya svaprasada-anna dila bhai. Krsna is very kind. In this material world we are all very much attached to tasting various types of food.
Therefore, Krsna eats many nice varieties of food and offers the food back to the devotees, so that not only are one’s demands for various tastes satisfied, but by eating prasada one makes advancement in spiritual life. Therefore, we should never consider ordinary food on an equal level with maha-prasada.
COMMENT by Giriraj Swami
The honoring of maha-prasada is one of the important items of devotional service. Maha-prasada is food that has been offered with love and devotion to the Lord and accepted by the Lord. In the Antya-lila of Sri Caitanya-caritamrta Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu feels great ecstasy honoring maha-prasada and He raises the question amongst His confidential devotees about its nature, that although it appears to be made of the same ingredients as ordinary food such as rice, dal, vegetables, spices, it creates a completely different experience. He explains that the food that has been offered to Lord Jagannatha has been mixed with the nectar of the Lord’s lips. The same nectar that fills the transcendental flute of Krishna and for which the gopis are always hankering—that same nectar from the lips of Krishna permeates maha-prasada. And when we honor maha-prasada with purified senses, we can relish the nectar from Krishna’s lotus mouth.
Although maha-prasada is transcendental, one should honor it as spiritual. As far as possible, one should not lust after maha-prasada. And although it is transcendental, Srila Prabhupada has warned us to maintain a respectful attitude toward it and not accept it on the basis of taste. Sometimes even with Prabhupada’s remnants, maha maha-prasada, the servant would bring the plate out and the senior devotees who were waiting for it would examine it and say, “I want this. I want that. I don’t want that.” It wasn’t a good mentality, and when Prabhupada’s servant mentioned it to him, Prabhupada said, “After I finish honoring prasada, you should take the remnants and mush it all together and then distribute the maha-prasada so the devotees will not be selecting on the basis of their personal taste, but they will just be receiving maha-prasada.”
Once, in Bombay, there a clash between two of Srila Prabhupada’s disciples. One was a cook—actually a very good cook—and would cook for the Deities, and the other was a good manager and good businessman. So, they had some clash, and immediately afterwards each one ran to Srila Prabhupada to give him a version of what happened and to complain about the other. In the end, Prabhupada commented that the problem was that they both were eating too much maha-prasada and that by eating too much rich food, they had become passionate and were fighting.
Sometimes honoring prasada is part of preaching. That’s also a subtle point, because sometimes when we go to people’s homes to accept prasada, we are not completely sure about the consciousness that went into the cooking, or the principles of cleanliness and hygiene and the spiritual rules and regulations that are required to cook for Krishna and offer the food to Krishna. We are not sure. But in India in the early days, Srila Prabhupada said that if the family were Vaishnavas and they offered the food to their family Deity, we should take it as prasada.
When we first came to Bombay, we received so many invitations that Srila Prabhupada made a rule that we would not eat at anyone’s house unless they became a life member. So, during the first Bombay pandal, a big pandal program at Cross Maiden, a very distinguished, aristocratic, pious, cultured Hindu gentleman and philanthropist, K.J. Somaiya, came. Prabhupada would speak at about seven in the morning in Hindi and then in the evening in English. Sri K. J. Somaya would come to the morning lectures, and he invited Srila Prabhupada and the devotees to his home to take prasada. So, the devotees informed him of the rule, “You have to become a life member.” And he became a little annoyed. He didn’t think it was proper that we should place such a condition. But Srila Prabhupada was strict in his principle. In certain cases he was responsive to an extent, but he didn’t really care about a big person in the material world—he had his rules and principles, and he stuck to them.
Eventually Sri Somayaji relented and became a life member, and the devotees said that Srila Prabhupada would come to his home for prasada. Srila Prabhupada remarked, “We are making life members simply by eating.”
Another friend from Bombay, Sri Hari Krishna Das Agarwal, invited Srila Prabhupada and the devotees to the Vedanta Sammelan in Amritsar. The sammelan was held at a Mayavadi ashram, and there were Mayavadi slogans everywhere: aham brahmasmi, tattvamasi. After the morning program one day, with his disciples in his room, Srila Prabhupada said that the event organizers knew that he didn’t agree with them, but invited him because they knew that if he came with his disciples, more people would attend their program. And that is what happened. The general public who came to the programs weren’t really that interested in hearing dry Mayavadis’ speak nonsense. They really came to see Srila Prabhupada and the devotees and to join in the kirtan. “These Mayavadis will go on speculating for many lifetimes and never come to any conclusion,” Prabhupada said. Just then, Malati dasi brought a plate of maha-prasada from Prabhupada’s small Radha-Krishna Deities. “They will go on speculating for many lifetimes,”—he popped a maha sweet in his mouth—“but we will realize God simply by eating.”
So, the devotees would do kirtan first, and thousands of people would stream into the grounds. And then, when the devotees’ kirtan and their talk was over, the people would leave and there would hardly be anyone left to hear the Mayavadis. The organizers thought to juggle the program and have the devotees perform kirtan later, but when the public figured out what was happening, they started to come late, after the Mayavadis had finished their dry, speculative, and imagined interpretations.
Source: https://girirajswami.com/blog/?p=19316#more-19316
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