BVT 12 :: Bhaktivinoda Thakur: Sampradāya and Innovation

As I come to the end of my three months exile from the Dham, I have decided to publish this following article, which has been sitting as a draft for most of that time. It has taken me all this time as I have struggled with my current situation in spiritual life to assess where I stand on the fundamental question of relations with other followers of Bhaktivinoda Thakur.

Clearly, I have to objectively assess my own decision to apparently renounce my initiation from A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, who gave me my inspiration to engage on the path of devotional service and which has sustained me throughout my life.

Living in Vrindavan and also having the perspective of being an outsider to Vrindavan (a "wannabe Brijbasi" if you wish) I have arrived at what I believe is the proper position to take, as I have attempted to describe it in my most recent post of Vṛndāvana-mahimāmṛta (VMA 2.50)

This article was meant to be the last remaining part of my introduction to the personal memoir of Bhaktivinoda Thakur, which I hope to see published soon. The main thrust of the argument is that the guru-paramparā based on initiation is established in scripture and tradition, and most specifically in the writings of Bhaktivinoda Thakur himself. On the whole I have little to say that differs from my conclusions in the final part of my original article on the subject dating from 1993 or thereabouts.

"....in the view of the traditionalists, Saraswati Thakur's unorthodox approach to initiation was a disruption in the path of devotion (utpātāyaiva kalpate. What was unusual in Bhaktisiddhanta's approach was his claim to more accurately represent the spirit of Chaitanya and his followers than those who traditionally did so in that he put the accent on proselytization. The promulgation of the śikṣā-sampradāya idea, in which the spirit of the law takes precedence over the letter may partially have been promulgated with the goal of overcoming sectarianism within the Gaudiya school, but other innovations in the Gaudiya Math movement made such spiritual unity difficult if not impossible. It appears rather more likely that the rift between the Gaudiya Math and the rest of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition was intentional and is probably irreparable. Those in the Gaudiya Math tradition must therefore come to terms with this and recognize the exceptional status of their founder and the fact that their disciplic succession has taken a new beginning from him. It would thus be historically more accurate to call this particular branch of Vaishnavism; the Brahma-Madhva-Gauḍīya-Sārasvata-sampradāya, "Sārasvata" being a reference to Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati." And that sampradāya has now subdivided into numerous dīkṣā paramparā, as is the case with all sampradāyas.

Recently I saw a call from Bhakti Bibudh Bodhayan Maharaj calling for this rift in the tradition to be corrected, making specific reference to Lalita Prasad Thakur. It is hard for me not to have an entrenched position. My leaving the Gaudiya Math tradition in 1979 was done to reconnect with the original sampradaya. Nevertheless, I must admit that being in the line of Bhaktivinoda Thakur means to be somewhere in the middle between the Gaudiya Math and the Orthodoxy.

My revered godbrother Gadadhar Pran Dasji begins his book "Another Side of Thakur Bhaktivinoda" with the following words:

It is surprising that although Thakur Bhaktivinoda had a large family of 13 children, only two of them became exemplary Vaishnavas. The first was Bimala Prasad, who later became famous as Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati. Born in 1874, he was Thakur Bhaktivinoda's sixth child. Then in 1880, the Thakur had another devoted son whom he named Lalita Prasad. As the bhakti in these two sons began to mature, their father encouraged them in two different ways:

1) to Bimala Prasad, Thakur Bhaktivinoda requested that he widely preach, make disciples, construct maths and mandirs and work to establish varnashram dharma;

2) but to Lalita Prasad, the Thakur said, "I want you to remain at my Janma Sthan (at Ula Birnagar) and daily chant three lakhs of Harinam japa in gopī-bhāva."

As time went on, both of these sons took to heart the mission their father blessed them with and succeeded. Now that Bhaktisiddhanta's influence, precepts and teachings have spread far and wide throughout the world, this essay will introduce the bhakti path that Thakur Bhaktivinoda desired to preserve through Lalita Prasad.

This does indeed seem to be a pathway to conciliation, which nevertheless indicates that there is a progression from external to internal. This appears somewhat contradictory: The external path of Harinam sankirtan is open, to be given to all. The Thakur's own songs, oft-uoted in the GM, appear to state that the whole process of initiation, even to the point of attaining one's siddha form, are not dependent on initiation but are revealed by the Holy Name itself. See Kṛṣṇa-nāma dhare kata bala?.

premera kalikā nāma adbhuta rasera dhāma
hena bala karaẏe prakāśa |
īṣat bikaśita haṣā dekhāẏa nija rūpa guṇa
citta hari laẏa kṛṣṇa pāśa ||6||

The Name is a flower-bud, the amazing abode of rasa.
It manifests so much transcendental strength.
When even slightly revealed, it shows me its form and attributes.
It steals my mind and takes it to Krishna’s side.

pūrṇa bikaśita hajñā braje more yāẏa lajñā
dekhāẏa mora svarūpa bilāsa |
more siddha deha diẏā kṛṣṇa pāśe rākhe giẏā
e dehera kare sarba-nāśa ||7||

When the Name is fully revealed, it takes me directly to Vraja,
where it shows me my role in the eternal pastimes.
It gives me my spiritual body and places me by Krishna’s side,
destroying this material body completely.

This is of course refuted by the Thakur himself in Harināma-cintāmaṇi. And Kaviraj Goswami also deals with this question in the last chapter of the Caritāmṛta:

saṅkīrtana haite pāpa saṁsāra nāśana

citta śuddhi sarva-bhakti-sādhana udgama

kṛṣṇa-premodgama premāmṛta āsvādana

kṛṣṇa-prāpti sevāmṛta samudre majjana

From sankirtan comes the destruction of sin and material entanglement, the purification of the mind and heart, the arising of all the other practices of devotional life. It then leads to the awakening of love for Krishna, the relishing of the flavors of that love, and then to the attainment of Krishna, where one plunges into the nectarean ocean of service to the Lord. (CC 3.20.13-14)

The words sarva-bhakti-sādhana udgama indicate that the different limbs of bhakti, including taking a guru, are all achieved through the grace of the Name. Though it is true that the Name may exceptionally reveal all things to an individual, the huge majority of devotees cannot skip the first ten of 64 practices delineated by Rupa Goswami, starting with taking shelter of a guru. In particular, the tradition has prescribed certain practices that are to be given by the diksha guru, but these are internal and not for the beginners.

Currently I stay in Vrindavan at the Jiva Institute and have made it my intention to minimize as far as possible any recruitment of beginners, but to concentrate on those who are highly committed and desirous of something more which is available through Bhaktivinoda Thakur's dīkṣā-paramparā.

We have seen in the earlier articles of this series that initiation and guru-parampāra are internal to and serve the larger concept of sampradāya. Also we have seen that both guru-paramparā, by transmitting the mantra and the spiritual identity needed for rāgānuga bhajan, and the sampradāya, which transmits the teaching tradition initiated by the charismatic founding acharya, are essentially conservative institutions. That is to say, that they both are primarily trying to preserve some primordial and essential message that was revealed from an original divine source as was stated at the beginning of the fourth chapter of Bhagavad-gita. But that same text from the Gita also makes the point that the teaching might be lost over the course of time.

As we observe Bhaktivinoda Thakur's trajectory through life, he grew progressively more orthodox in his teaching and practice, more conservative with age. As he came to the end of his literary career, he summarized his deep desire to enter into bhajan in his last work, Sva-niyama-dvādaśakam. His work at polemics, apologetics and attempts at organizing a coherent theology came to an end and he was able to commit himself to the "final instruction" of devoting himself exclusively to Nāma-bhajana and meditation on Radha and Krishna's pastimes, such as outlined in Bhajana-rahasya and Vishwanath Chakravarti's Saṅkalpa-kalpa-druma, two of his other last published works.

On the other hand, in his earlier works the Thakur often spoke of the Vaishnava religion in evolutionary terms, as a progressive revelation. In one such progression given in the Introduction to Kṛṣṇa-saṁhitā, the Thakur gives the example of gradual development of the Bhāgavata Dharma, using the example of the growth of a child, born on the grassy banks of the Saraswati, had its infancy in Badrikashram, boyhood in Naimisharanya, its youth in Tamil Nadu by the Kaveri River, and attained full adulthood in Nabadwip by the banks of the Ganges. He says, "Knowledge of the supreme truth has, over time to this day, become progressively clearer, simplified and taken on a concise form. As much as it becomes free of the contaminants arising out of the time and place, it reveals to us its true shining beauty."

In Jaiva Dharma, chapter 10 Thakur compares Vaishnava dharma to a lotus flower that gradually blooms, its fullest blossoming coming in Mahaprabhu's dharma. Shankaracharya represents the flower bud, and through the other Vaishnava acharyas' further revelations the flower slowly opens, but the full revelation, the anarpita-carī unnatojjvala-rasa comes only with the descent of Lord Chaitanya.

And again, in another of these progressions, he follows another trajectory, that of the Bhagavata. Krishna spoke to Brahma, giving the Truth in seed form in the four verses known as the catuḥślokī. In turn Brahma spoke a more expanded version to Narada and so on. (Jaiva Dharma, Ch. 10)

This evolutionary idea of revelation is something that was part of the Thakur's thinking, no doubt in part a result of his early reading of Enlightenment philosophers and Unitarian Christians, but his awareness of the texts and his belief in the fundamental unity of all of God's revelations (love of God and the brotherhood of man). These formed a part of his entry into the life of Vaishnava faith. This is therefore most apparent in his early writings, in particular his first real work of Vaishnava apologetics in his "Bhagbat Speech."

"Our śastras, or in other words, books of thought do not contain all that we could get from the infinite Father. No book is without its errors. God’s revelation is absolute truth, but it is scarcely received and preserved in its natural purity. We have been advised in the 14th Chapter of the 11th skandha of the Bhāgavata to believe that truth when revealed is absolute, but it gets the tincture of the nature of the receiver in course of time and is converted into error by continual exchange of hands from age to age. New revelations, therefore, are continually necessary in order to keep truth in its original purity."

A couple of years thereafter, in his article "To Love God", he compared this historical evolution to the individual's spiritual development. "The stages of progress are very much the same as the circles of spiritualism which, though not true themselves, explain a great deal about the gradual development of the soul."

But the evolutionary process requires change, which in turn demands rejecting an entrenched tradition. In an entrenched conservative tradition that passes truth from guru to disciple, such renewal can be problematic. From the perspective of the Vaishnava tradition of Vrindavan, love of God is developed through the worship of the Divine Couple, Radha and Krishna. Whoever serves this ultimate goal is my brother or sister and I am their servant, according to my abilities and my experience.

It would be sheer miserliness for me to not recognize the indebtedness I have to A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur or to say that they are not extraordinary great souls who are inheritors of the mercy and inspiration of Bhaktivinoda Thakur. But one has to recognize also that one guru can inspire different disciples in a different way. I still haven't changed my opinion, which is that there is an offense at the root of the IGM, which is guror avajñā towards Bipin Bihari Goswami and to the very concept of the dīkṣā paramparā. These may result in subtle problems that may have an effect at some level of spiritual progress, but they are certainly not so on the most fundamental levels of introduction to Vaishnava Dharma and the teachings of Lord Chaitanya.

So I will conclude here with the following statement, which I also wrote at the end of the above-mentioned article of the Vṛndāvana-mahimāmṛta (VMA 2.50), which I hope will also be read by anyone reading this.

The biggest obstacle to harmony seems to arise from sectarianism. It is natural to have faith in one's own guru and the teachings that he gives, but if this gives rise to disdain or enmity for those who have other traditions, then one should understand that one's faith has not fully fructified. All the rasika acharyas from Vrindavan, whatever differences may have existed historically between their traditions, avoid such enmity by encouraging each other to honor their respective gurus and be devoted to them. They see the differences as cosmetic for the goal of all is Radha-Krishna prema.

There is a tradition in Vrindavan of knowing the best of each other's texts and being able to speak the siddhāntas of a particular sampradāya to its own members and being well received and at the same time exposing its glories and the glories of its honored saints to those in other lineages. This tradition perhaps had its beginnings with Nabha Das's Bhakta-māla.

Vṛndāvana-mahimāmṛta, even though written by Prabodhananda Saraswati, who offers his obeisances to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (VMA 1.1) does not belong to any sampradāya. Like Vrindavan itself, it transcends sectarian thinking and points to that state. Those who follow the Mahimāmṛta will automatically be obliged to offer their respects to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Others have imitated the Mahimāmṛta, such as Dhruva Das in his Vrindavana-sata-lila, but without mentioning Prabodhananda or Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. How can we understand the course of history in which influences other than the immediate are not recognized?

There are many reasons for sectarian differences that causes conflict when there is so much that we may have in common. It is a psychological effect that Freud called "the narcissism of small differences" whereby the ego seeks differences in order to maintain distinctive individuality and superiority. According to the Gita, the ability to find commonality is the sign of the sattva-guna, an intellectual attachment to analysis of differences is rājasika, while blind attachment to one's own absolute superiority is tāmasika.

One must learn to encourage other sādhakas in their niṣṭhā. Those who are rājasika emphasize differences, but such an approach is not usually helpful to an audience of beginners that is looking to be inspired in their sādhana and their commitment to the path given by their guru. Sad-guru-niṣṭhā is what is to be supported, regardless of sect.

It is true that individual sects might not find close (svajātīya) mood with other sects' siddhāntas or whatever. But sattva-guṇa means to seek out and find common ground, appreciation for the positive points in other sects' doctrines.

So an important part of the Vrindavan tradition is to glorify the activities of the Vaishnavas, regardless of their sect, in particular those who aim at loving service to the Divine Couple. Does it not give pleasure to hear of the virtues of the great renounced devotees and the stories of how they received the Lord's mercy? Does that not inspire everyone?

All of this is an extension, a positive development, on Krishna's verse in the Gita.

na buddhi-bhedaṁ janayed ajñānāṁ karma-saṅginām

joṣayet sarva-karmāṇi vidvān yuktaḥ samācaran

The wise should not disturb the intelligence of the ignorant who are attached to fruitive work. Rather, he should encourage them to perform their prescribed duties, while himself setting the example. [Gītā 3.26]

sve sve'dhikāre yā niṣṭhā sa guṇaḥ parikīrtitaḥ
viparyayas tu doṣaḥ syād ubhayor eṣa niścayaḥ

Firm commitment (niṣṭhā) to acting according to one's own level of attainment (adhikāra) is called virtue. The opposite is called vice. This is the long and short of virtue and vice. (11.21.2)

So let us all take shelter of the Dham and encourage everyone to seek the prema-sevā of the Divine Couple without falling into the trap of the narcissism of small differences.

For those who take offense at my apparent claim to speak from some superior or more advanced platform, I beg forgiveness. For those who believe that I am an offender to my gurus, I beg forgiveness, for nothing makes me more afraid than to be excluded from residence in the Holy Dham, which has been given to me by their grace. No doubt I am an offender, a thousand times over, but I only pray that in this life or in the next, I may get their mercy and merge with the dust of Braja Dham. Jai Sri Radhe!

aparādha-sahasra-bhājanaṁ
patitaṁ bhīīma-bhavārṇavodare |
agatiṁ śaraṇāgataṁ hare
kṛpayā kevalam ātmasāt kuru ||

---

Other articles in the introduction

BVT 1-2 : Invocation and Introduction to the Autobiography
BVT 3 :: Modern Scholarship on Bhaktivinoda Thakur
BVT 4 :: Bhaktivinoda Thaku and his thirst for knowledge.
BVT 5 :: Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Christianity
BVT 6 :: Bhaktivinoda Thakur in Jagannath Puri
BVT 7 :: Bhaktivinoda and the Meat-eating issue
BVT 8 :: Initiation from Bipin Bihari Goswami
BVT 9 :: Bipin Bihari Goswami in the Thakur's Writings
BVT 10 :: Lalita Prasad Thakur
BVT 11 :: Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Sampradaya
BVT 12 :: The Authenticity of the Autobiography

Other articles related to sampradaya history:

The parampara institution in Gaudiya Vaishhnavism (1)
The parampara institution in Gaudiya Vaishhnavism (2)
Keeping Faith with Kheturi (1)
Keeping Faith with Kheturi (2)
Charismatic Renewal in Gaudiya Vaishnavism (Part 1)
Charismatic Renewal in Gaudiya Vaishnavism (Part 2)
Charisma and legitimacy in Vaishnava sampradayas
Is the Gaudiya Vaishnava sampradaya connected to the Madhva line?

Other articles inspired by the Autobiography:

A Bengali Zamindar's education in the 1840's
Bipin Bihari's testimonial to his best disciple Kedarnath Datta
Longfellow and Bhaktivinoda Thakur's poems

See also,

Hari-nama-cintamani related posts
Siddhi-lalasa