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MORE REFLECTIONS ON INITIATION:
Critique of Tripurari's little tan book
Part 1
Nitai Das
September 15, 1999
This month I thought that I would take a look
at some of the issues raised in the little tan
book by Tripurari Maharaj (TM) called Sri Guru-parampara (Mill Valley, CA: Harmonist
Publishers, 1998; no ISBN). Some of you may
recall that it was one of the stimuli that
started this series of essays of mine. One
senses that TM tried in this book to take an
open-minded and accommodating approach to the
topic and for that he is to be
14
congratulated. Why I myself am even cited in
the text! That is generosity indeed. I will try
in what follows to maintain that atmosphere
of generosity. Unfortunately, the
understanding presented in the book is
profoundly flawed. To try and examine all of the
failings of the book would require another
book of equal or greater length and that is way
beyond my intentions. Therefore, I want to
focus on only three major issues: the question
of the siddha-pranali, the question of the
siksa-parampara, and the myth of the fall of the
Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition in the 19th
century.
Let's begin with the question of the
siddha-pranali. TM unfortunately misunderstands
what the siddha-pranali is and I am afraid
that I might be at least partially to blame for
that. In the first place, the siddha-pranali
is not a separate rite or diksa that is received
later than the mantra diksa. It is an
expansion of the mantra diksa. In some of my
previous writings I may have given the
impression that it is a separate rite apart from the
primary rite of initiation. For that I
apologize. The single most important rite in Gaudiya
Vaisnavism is mantra diksa. At that time one
is accepted into a line of gurus going back to
Sri Caitanya or his immediate followers. This
is called the guru-parampara and is very
important because it is the channel through
which Mahaprabhu's mercy comes to one.
The mantras one receives then are empowered
by every member of that line and knowing
who they are is very important. That is why
in the Gaudiya tradition one is given their
names in a list like the one on this
web-site. One should offer obeisance to every member
of that chain each day and before doing any
devotional practice. It is by their grace that
one succeeds. Not doing so would be like
sitting out on the end of a branch of a tree
while sawing it off at the trunk. That is the
chain that one has to catch hold of if one
wishes to be pulled out of the ocean of
repeated birth and death and each link is
important.
In the Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition outside of
ISKCON one receives sixteen mantra and
gayatri. These are the gurumantra and
gayatri, caitanya-mantra and gayatri, nityanandamantra
and gayatri, advaitacarya-mantra and gayatri,
gopala-mantra and kama-gayatri,
radha-mantra and gayatri, gadadhara-mantra
and gayatri, and srivasa-mantra and gayatri.
There may be some variations in these mantra
in the different lines of the tradition, but
these are the mantra I received from Tinkudi
Baba and the ones others said they too
received. Each mantra and gayatri of course
is preceded by the one syllable seed
appropriate to that mantra or gayatri.
Without these mantra and gayatri one is not
qualified to do any higher service like puja,
arati, or smarana. Note that there is no suryagayatri
(aka brahma-gayatri: om bhur bhuvah svar tat
savitur ..) As far as I know this
mantra has nothing to do with Gaudiya
Vaisnavism or with the worship of Radha-Krsna.
It is the mantra given to brahmin boys during
the upanayana initiation which marks their
entry into the study of the Veda. Its
introduction into the mantra diksa appears to be one
of the many fabrications of Bhaktisiddanta
and we will return to some of those later.
Chanting the Holy Name of course does not
depend on proper initiation. There is no
required initiation rite for the Holy Name in
this tradition.
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One is transformed during the mantra
initiation from a pravartaka (beginner) to a
sadhaka (practitioner). As a practitioner one
has a number of choices open to one for
devotional service most of which do not
require the siddhapranali. If one has a strong
desire to do raganuga sadhana-bhakti,
however, and that desire is the chief qualification
for such a practice, one needs the
siddha-pranali. The siddha-pranali is nothing more
than the siddha or manjari names and
descriptions of that same line of gurus that one
received at initiation. Each is believed to
be a participant in the eternal sport of Govinda.
One learns one's own siddha name, color,
service, and so forth as well as the gurus's from
the guru at that time as well. One can then
use that information to visualize one's self as a
manjari assistant to the guru-manjari and his
guru-manjaris as they serve Radha and
Krsna. This visualization is at the core of
the practice called "remembering the sports of
Radha and Krsna during the eight periods of the
day (asta-kaliya-lila-smarana)". If one
does not have the desire to do this form of
mental service, and many don't, one does not
need the siddha-pranali. Thus, it is not a
separate diksa and for many it is not strictly
speaking necessary. What one cannot do
without, though, is the mantra diksa and the
guru-parampara. Thus, when TM says: "All
opposition to Bhaktisiddhanta contends that
he did not receive the siddha-pranali
initiation to the esoteric worship of Radha and
Krsna from either Bhaktivinoda or Gaura
Kisora (p. 3)", he is simply wrong. The
contention is that Bhaktisiddhanta did not
get mantra diksa and guru-parampara.
Without mantra diksa and guru-parampara there
is no question of receiving a siddhapranali.
When I left ISKCON it was not because I wanted
some siddha-pranali-diksa, it was
because I became convinced (and I am even
more convinced today) that Bhaktisiddhanta
did not receive mantra diksa and
guru-parampara from anybody. To return to an earlier
analogy, I became convinced that the chain or
rope that I was holding onto in hope of
being pulled out of the ocean of
"becoming" was tied to absolutely nothing. TM tacitly
recognizes this when he says:
"Bhaktisiddhanta did not teach his followers to worship the
diksa guru of Gaura Kisora Das Babaji .. (p.
3)". The reason Bhaktisiddhanta didn't was
that he didn't know who the diksa guru of
Gaura Kisora Das Babaji was. Neither does
TM or anyone in the Gaudiya Math and ISKCON.
My contention is (based on an eyewitness
account of his own admission before Pandit
Ramakrsna Das Baba) that
Bhaktisiddhanta didn't know who his
parama-guru was because he never received diksa
and guru-parampara from Gaura Kisora Das
Babaji. On the other hand, Gaura Kisora
Das Babaji was notoriously difficult to get
initiation from (he once accused an initiation
hopeful quite crudely of wanting to butt-fuck
him) and even when one of his disciples
asked about guru-parampara he was, according
to Haridas Das's account, tremendously
evasive telling him instead to chant the Holy
Name. He emphasized the Holy Name over
everything and did not recommend
lila-smarana. Nevertheless, it is highly unlikely that
Gaura Kisora Das Babaji, who was not a
brahmin and who cared nothing for the caste
system, would have given Bhaktisiddhanta the
surya-gayatri in initiation. (See Gaura
Kisora Das Babaj's jivani in Sri Sri Gaudiya
Vaisnava Jivana, dvitiya khanda, by Haridas
Das. 3rd printing, Gaurabda 489 [1975], pp.
39-52. Haridas Das's account of Gaura
16
Kisora Das Baba is quite interesting. What is
most interesting about it, though, is that
there is no mention of Bhaktisiddhanta at
all. Bhaktivinoda is mentioned, but mostly in
the context of Gaura Kisora's pleasure at
having eluded him by hiding out in a whore
house. I don't think that there was any great
enmity between Haridas Das and either
Bhaktivinoda or Bhaktisiddhanta, apart from
the usual dissatisfaction Navadvipa
Vaisnavas felt toward them for claiming
Mayapura was on the other side of the river. It is
strange that an important person like Bhaktisiddhanta
would not be mentioned, though.
Perhaps the diksa-seeker whom Gaura Kisora
Das Babaji accused of wanting to butt-fuck
him and later beat up with an umbrella was
Bhaktisiddhanta. In Haridas Das's account,
that person is never named, but was from a place
called Noakhali. I have no idea where
that place is. Gaura Kisora Das Baba,
however, ends by giving that person the Holy
Name and tells him if he chants for one year
without fail he will meet the Lord and if not
he should come back to Gaura Kisora Das
Babaji. If this is Bhaktisiddanta, perhaps his
name was not mentioned out of regard for his
reputation and the feelings of his
followers.)
What I received from Tinkudi Baba (who lived
out in lonely places like Prema-sarovara,
not Radhakunda as TM claims) was mantra diksa
and guru-parampara and, because I
asked for it, thinking I would like to
practice lila-smarana at some point, he also gave me
the siddha-pranali. I have not as of yet
begun the practice of lila-smarana, but it is
comforting to know that I could if I wanted
to. And I may yet want to. Now, however, I
am certain that the rope I cling to when I
sit to do my mantra is attached firmly to the
ocean-liner of Sri Caitanya and that I am
being dragged, for the most part unwillingly I
must admit, toward the distant shore of
Goloka.
It is interesting to note that TM mentions
Ananta Vasudeva and Sundarananda
Vidyavinoda in his book without clearly
saying who they were. Ananta Vasudeva was also
known as Puri Maharaja and was not only
learned, but was the man chosen by
Bhaktisiddhanta to replace him after his
death. Sundarananda Vidyavinoda was one of
the leading writers and thinkers of the
Gaudiya Math and the editor of the Math's
monthly journal for years. A few years after
Bhaktisiddhanta's passing, for some reason
the year 1941 sticks in my memory, Puri
Maharaja and Sundarananda Vidyavinoda left
the Gaudiya Math, but not alone. A number of
followers left with them and settled in
various places around Vraja to do bhajana,
i.e. hari-nama and lila-smarana. I heard the
following from one of them, then an old baba
in Govardhan. When Puri Maharaja
discovered the lack of initiation in the
Gaudiya Math lineage, he called all of the leading
sannyasi in the Math organization together
and informed them of his discovery. He
advised them: "You all may as well go
home and get married. Continuing this charade is
useless". (It has never been clear to me
what charade Puri Maharaj had in mind, the
Vaisnava charade or the sannyasa charade.
Judging from his later actions he probably
meant both) He then took his own advice
taking off his saffron robe and heading to
Vrindaban where he at first hid from the
anger of his former god-brothers (this part
sounds quite familiar to me). When he arrived
in Vrindaban he was given shelter by
17
Vishvambhar Goswami, one of the Radharaman
Goswamis. Shortly thereafter he publicly
renounced the Gaudiya Math and apologized for
all of the offenses he committed as a
prominent member and leader of it. He later
married and settled in Vrindaban producing
over the years one of the finest collections
(more than fifty volumes) of Gaudiya scripture
ever to be produced. This hardly sounds like
someone who had lost his sakti-sancara
(empowerment by Krsna).
The departure of Puri Maharaja strikes me as
an incredibly courageous and honest thing
to do. Here Puri Maharaja was in the highest
seat of power in the Gaudiya Math,
appointed by the founding acarya himself and
himself therefore the acarya of the
institution at the time. He could very well
have covered up the flaw and carried on.
Instead, at great risk to himself and at
great loss, he informed his god-brothers and set
out to put himself back on the correct path.
Many of his god-brothers, however, split off
into their own factions, struggling for control
of the institution or to establish their own
institutions, and tried to cover up the
truth, labelling Puri Maharaja as fallen and
claiming that he ran off with a woman. They
fought each other for years for pieces of the
juicy Gaudiya Math pie. After that time the
Gaudiya Math and its offshoots were firmly
founded on greed and deceit. The books the
Math and its family produced afterwards
were with few exceptions poorly edited and
filled with errors. None of them match up to
anything like the quality of the work
produced by either Puri Dasa (no longer a sannyasi)
or Sundarananda Vidyavinoda after they left
the Math.
Well, here I am at the end of an installment
having said much and yet with so much more
to say. Experienced writers know (not that I
am one) that they can never quite tell where
they will end up when they sit down to write.
I have only scratched the surface of one of
the three issues that I wished to discuss in
this essay and I am afraid I have also let
generosity slip out the door. Haven't I just
called the leaders of Gaudiya Math after Puri
Maharaja greedy and deceitful? Let me try and
usher some generosity back in by pointing
out that though the leaders of the Math may
have been crooked and deceitful, the rank
and file members probably had no idea of what
was going on. Prabhupada, who was still
being a chemist in Allahabad, probably only
heard that Puri Maharaja had fallen down
with a woman, shrugged, and turned back to
selling shaving cream and toothpaste. The
followers no doubt remained sincere.
We need to dig more deeply into the
siddha-pranali question. Where did the practice
come from? Who originated it? Why is it
important to the Gaudiya tradition? Who
should practice it and when? These are all
important issues as are the related questions
of the siksa-parampara and the supposed fall
of the Gaudiya tradition in the 19th
century. I will turn to these things in the
next installment. Look for that in a few days
rather than a month, since I am bursting with
ideas.
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MORE REFLECTIONS ON INITIATION:
Critique of Tripurari's little tan book
Part 2
Nitai Das
October 21, 1999
Throughout my life it seems I have repeatedly
found myself in the position of the critic. It
is not a role that I particularly love, since
it is invariably unpleasant to criticize another's
work, but a role that seems to be constantly
thrust upon me. Indeed, over the years I have
lost a number of friends because of it. It
seems to be my sad fate to be the gadfly. There
seems to be nothing I can do about, however,
because it still irritates me when I see
stupidity passed off as wisdom. Tripurari's
book is bursting at the seams with stupidity and
I just cannot resist lancing it like the
infected boil it is. My friend (I haven't criticized him
yet, you see) Minaketana Rama Das forwarded a
piece of a conversation between
Prabhupada and some of his devotees about me
after I left ISKCON. Since it gets straight
to the point of this essay I want to cite a
bit of it here:
Hari-sauri: That was one thing that Nitai put
in his letter, that the teachings of ISKCON
are completely opposite or contradictory to
what is actually in the Sastra.
Prabhupada: Now he has become tiger. He wants
to kill that philosophy. When he did not
know anything he came to us. Now he has
become learned, he wants to criticize. The
same philosophy. "You have made me
tiger, now I can see you are my eatable." (laughs)
He could not find out any other eatable.
"I shall eat you." The rascal. What can be done?
(end)
(Roarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Time for a little
lunch!) What I said years ago in my parting letter
to Prabhupada is unfortunately still true
today. ISKCON has got it exactly backwards,
could not possibly get it more backwards than
it has and Tripurari's little book is a superb
example of that.
An example of what I shall call "the
ass-backwards principle" is found on page 8 of TM's
book where, quoting Bhaktisiddhanta, he says
"First maranam (ego death) then
smaranam." Not only is this completely
contrary to scripture, this is straight from the
mouth of the big bird himself. No wonder the
Gaudiya Math and ISKCON went astray.
Smarana of which siddha-pranali is an
important part is a variety of sadhana bhakti, that
is to say practical bhakti that is a means to attaining the goal of
preman. It is not sadhya
bhakti, that is bhakti as the final result or
goal. It is not the end result of practice, but the
means towards achieving that end result. Rupa
Goswami describes smarana as part of
raganuga bhakti in the second wave of the eastern division
of his Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu
in which he is concerned exclusively with
sadhana. Bhava-bhakti and prema-bhakti make
19
up the third and fourth waves of the eastern
division respectively. Those are the results of
sadhana. In the section on bhava-bhakti Rupa
describes the arising of krsna-rati, love of
Krsna, and in the chapter on prema-bhakti he
describes that love when it becomes more
condensed and is experienced or relished by
the devotee. To put it more clearly in the
words used here: "smaranam leads to
maranam, not maranam to smaranam." Maranam is
the goal and smaranam is the means to that
goal. Bhaktisiddhanta (shall I call him BS for
short ?) has it ass-backwards.
Let us place this discussion in the context
of Rupa's nine stages in the development of
bhakti. Those nine stages are, as everyone
knows: faith (sraddha), association with the
good (sadhu-sanga), activity of worship
(bhajana-kriya), stopping of harmful things
(anartha-nivrti), steadiness (nistha), taste
(ruci), attachment (asakti), feeling (bhava),
and love (preman) (Brs. 1.4.15-16). Where
does smarana fit in this scheme? Smarana is
an activity of worship as are all types of
sadhana. It therefore is taken up in the third
stage, activity of worship, before the stage
of stopping of harmful or unhealthy things.
There is an implied causality operating in
this process. Through one's faith one
associates with the good. From the good one
learns how to execute the practice. As a
result of practice one's unwanted habits are
gradually stopped. When one's unwanted
habits cease one becomes unshakable in one's
practice. Being unshakable or unfailing in
practice leads to a taste for things related
to Krsna. Taste leads to developing a stronger
attachment. That strong attachment leads to
the feeling of love for Krsna and the
presence of that love for Krsna leads to the
experience of bhakti-rasa or what I call
"sacred rapture" which is also
called preman. This is kindergartner stuff.
On the stage of bhajana-kriya there is a fork
in the path. Some choose vaidhi-bhakti as
their bhajana-kriya, others choose raganuga
as their bhajana-kriya (see Brs. 1.3.269 and
1.3.292-3). Rupa makes it clear that these
are two separate, but parallel paths when he
distinguishes between the results of each in
his chapter on bhava-bhakti. Those who
follow the path of vaidhi develop one kind of
bhava (see Brs. 1.3.7, 1.3.9 for an example
of vaidhi-ja bhava) and those who follow
raganuga-bhakti develop another (see Brs.
1.3.14 for an example of raganuga-ja bhava).
Different examples of preman are given in
the chapter on prema-bhakti, too (see Brs.
1.4.6-7).
This view is consistent with the position of
the Bhagavata
Purana on the
intimate sports
of Krsna. At the end of the five chapters on
Krsna's Rasa lila with the gopi, the Purana
tells us:
anugrahaya bhutanam manusam dehamasritah
bhajate tadrsih krida yah srutva tat-paro
bhavet (Bhag.
10.33.36)
He (Krsna) has taken this human form to show
compassion to all beings and he engages
in such sports, the hearing of which makes
one intent on him.
20
And how does one benefit from hearing these
intimate sports? The Bhagavata
says two
verses later:
vikriditam vrajavadhubhir idanca visnoh
sraddhanvito 'nusrnuyad atha varnayed yah |
bhaktim param bhagavati pratilabhya kamam
hrdrogam asvapahinotyacirena dhirah || (Bhag. 10.33.39)
One who with faith hears about this sport of
Visnu's with the gopi and who describes it
quickly attains the highest devotion to the
Lord and easily destroys that disease of the
heart, lust.
These intimate sports of the lord with the
gopi are a kind of medicine to cure the disease
of lust. Whoever heard of waiting to take a
medicine for a disease until the disease is
cured? If one has a serious disease and has a
medicine, but refuses to take it, the disease
is never cured and one dies. This is the
brilliant course Bhaktisiddhanta has launched
Gaudiya Math and ISKCON on. This is
ass-backwards. There may be more to this than
mere buffoonery, however. There may be a more
malicious dimension to it all. If Krsna
has come into this world in order to attract
the lost and suffering living beings back to
him by pulling up the curtain and revealing
the sweetness of his eternal activities and if
someone else is trying to cover them back up
and hide them away, discount them, then
that person is actually interfering with and
hindering the lord's redemptive visit to the
world. That person is undermining the work
not only of Krsna and Caitanya
Mahaprabhu, but also of those who originated
and promoted one of the most powerful
and important practices in the Caitanya
tradition, the practice of smarana/siddha-pranali,
which is nothing more than remembering the
sports of Krsna and Mahaprabhu
throughout the day and night. Who are those
originators?
Before we explore that question, though, let
me comment on a few of the pieces of
support that TM rustles up for his position.
He, for instance, notes that Radhakrsna
Goswami (17th cent.) recommends renunciation
of household life as a prerequisite for
smarana (p. 8). What Radhakrsna Goswami
actually recommends is celibacy
(brahmacarya) as a qualification for the practice of
raganuga-bhakti, which means
essentially lila-smarana (Sd. 9.27). As
evidence Goswami cites a verse from Rupa
Goswami's Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu (Brs 1.4.7):
na patim kamayet kamcit brahmacaryasthita
sada |
tam eva murtim dhyayanti candrakantir
varanana || (Padma Purana ?)
Beautiful faced Candrakanti, meditating on
that form alone, ever situated in celibacy,
would not desire any husband.
21
So far this looks good; this young lady is definitely
practicing celibacy. But wait! Where
did you say that verse came from? That's from
the fourth wave
of the eastern
division
where Rupa is describing preman, the ultimate
result of practicing raganuga bhakti. That
is the end result of the practice, not the
qualification for starting the practice. It is
absurd to demand that one already have
achieved the result of a practice before one even
begins it. This is assbackwards. In this case
it is the fault of Radhakrsna Goswami. Why
would he have made such a mistake? His
knowledge of scripture is far more vast than
mine. Still, it is a mistake and, whatever
caused the good Goswami to make it, it must not
be taken as binding. Instead, the verse and
Rupa's use of the verse in his work support the
point that I have been trying to make here.
Smarana/siddha-pranali is a practice that
leads one toward perfection and cannot
therefore require perfection as a prerequisite.
Moreover, since it has as one of its results
the overcoming of sexual desire, it can be, and
in fact should be undertaken by those who
have not yet conquered sexual desire.
Radhakrsna Goswami (9.29) points out one
caveat in the practice of smarana of the
confidential sports of Radha and Krsna,
citing a passage from Jiva Goswami's Bhaktisandarbha
(para. 338). This passage was surprisingly
missed by TM in his vain attempt to
shore up his ass-backward position. He might
have been able to twist this into some
semblance of support for his point of view.
TM, of course, can't read any of these texts
unless someone translates it for him. He is
as illiterate and as helpless as a baby. Any way,
Jiva Goswami quotes the passage of the Bhagavata I cited above (vikriditam ..) and gives
the following commentary on it:
"one quickly gives up the disease of the
heart, lust and so forth that are not prone to sin
(?). While the superiority [of those sports
with the gopi] is established in general, among
them the worship (bhajana) of him sporting
with his most dear lover Radha is the highest
of all. That is self-evident. But that
confidential sport is not to be worshiped by those
whose senses possess human (or manly)
transformations (i.e. penile erection or other
forms of arousal) and by those whose feelings
are those of the parents, sons, or servants
because that is contrary to their own moods.
Sometimes the confidentiality is partial [as
with their kissing and embracing, etc.] and
sometimes complete [as with their sexual
union]." In other words one should not
practice smarana of Radha and Krsna's
confidential sports if one gets sexually
aroused by them. If one approaches those sports
sincerely from the siddha identity of a
manjari servant of Radha whose responsibility it is
to facilitate their pleasure, not one's own,
one can generally avoid this problem. This is in
fact at the very core of the practice; one
learns gradually to morph one's sadhaka identity
into that siddha identity. To approach it in
any other way is to collapse into voyeurism. If
one is not able to remember the confidential
sports of Radha and Krsna without getting
aroused then perhaps one should not do the
practice until one can.
Let us now return to the question of who were
the originators of the practice of
smarana/siddha-pranali. TM quotes
Bhaktivinoda Thakura who in his Jaiva-dharma
traces it back to Mahaprabhu himself (p. 7).
Mahaprabhu gave it to Vakresvara Pandita,
22
his kirtana partner, who passed it on to
Gopalaguru Goswami and Gopalaguru to his
disciple Dhyanacandra Goswami. The later two
wrote "methods" (paddhati)
on it. This
may well be true, but it ignores another
important side of the practice. Vakresvara
Pandita, Gopalaguru, and Dhyanacandra are
relatively less well known members of the
Caitanya tradition. This gives the mistaken
impression that the practice of
smarana/siddhapranali developed among a
peripheral group of followers and is not
central to the Caitanya Vaisnava enterprise.
The first time we hear of the idea of a
siddha-deha which is at the core of the
siddha-pranali in any Caitanya Vaisnava text is in
Rupa Goswami's Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, in the famous seva sadhaka-rupena verse (Brs.
1.2.295). The first time we hear of the
manjari is perhaps in Raghunatha Dasa's Vilapakusumanjali
(tvam rupamanjari sakhi ..., verse 1) or perhaps in
Kavikarnapura's
Gauraganoddesadipika. It is difficult to
determine the relative age of these works.
Nevertheless, it seems clear that the
practice developed in the Vrndavana circle of
Mahaprabhu's followers and was particularly
well suited to the simple and sparse life of
Vraja. Gopalaguru settled in Vrndavana after
the disappearance of Vakresvara Pandita
and Kavi Karnapura also retired to Vrndavana.
In fact, Raghunatha Dasa's address to
Rupamanjari at the beginning of his Vilapa-kusumanjali may well indicate that Rupa
Goswami was already involved in the practice
at the time.
Rupa was profoundly indebted to his elder
brother whom he regarded as his teacher.
Perhaps Sanatana had a hand in the
development of the practice as well. Vrndavana
insider Krsnadasa Kaviraja presents the
teachings, including those on the siddha deha, as
having all been given to Sanatana by
Mahaprabhu (Cc. Madhya, chaps. 20-24). Sanatana
in turn passes them on to his brother Rupa
who records them in his books. Sanatana's
own first book, Krsnalilastava, is an interesting precursor
to the practice. It combines the
holy names of Krsna suitable for the
recounting of the first forty-five chapters of the
Tenth Canto of the Bhagavata. Thus it is has both
nama-kirtana and lila-smarana
combined with 108 acts of obeisance spread
throughout it. In addition, in the chapter in
Sanatana's Brhad-bhagavatamrta called
"Abhista-labha" (2.6) in which Gopakumara visits
Goloka, he presents Krsna's lila in a form
that resembles to a high degree the form that
the daily sports will take in the hands of
Krsnadasa Kaviraja and Visvanatha Cakravartin.
Another Vrndavana insider, though one
somewhat more removed than Krsnadasa
Kaviraja, our Radhakrsna Goswami in his Dasa-sloki-bhasya records the tradition that
it
was Rupa himself who revealed the practice
primarily in the seva sadhaka-rupena verse
and in various of his stotras, but because of
its confidential nature he confined it
to his own followers and never wrote about it
in an ordered, detailed way. When his
followers encouraged him to do so, he was already
very old and close to death. One the
verge of death he taught it to Krsnadasa
Kaviraja in detail and asked him to publish it.
Krsnadasa Kaviraja honoring Rupa's request
wrote about it in great detail in the
enormous Govinda-lilamrta (Dasa-sloki-bhasya pp. 8-9, Haridasa Sastri's edition). The
seed of the daily sports of Radha and Krsna
is contained in the Astakaliya-lila-smaranamangala-
stotra which is often attributed to Rupa Goswami. This
practice of
23
smarana/siddha-pranali is therefore one of the
core practices of the Vrndavana Goswami,
quite probably conceived by them and
certainly expanded and expounded by them. As
such it has found a place of centrality in
all sectors of the Caitanya Vaisnava tradition,
except in ISKCON, which as decided to place
the cart before the horse instead of the
other way around. Perhaps nobody says it
better the Sri Rupa himself in his
Upadesamrta, verse 8:
A follower of someone
who is passionate for Him,
should pass one's time
living in Vraja,
gradually applying the mind and the tongue
to the remembering and chanting
of His names, forms, acts,
This is the essence of instruction.
This is the essence of instruction and it
involves both remembering and chanting, both
smarana and kirtana, not one or the other.
Those who pretend to be followers of Rupa
(rupanuga) should pay more attention to this teachin
MORE REFLECTIONS ON INITIATION:
Critique of Tripurari's little tan book
Part 3
Did You Say Siksa-parampara?
Nitai Das
March 14, 2000
Way back in October I promised that the next
essay in this series would examine the
question of siksa-parampara, the phony substitute for a real
guru-parampara invented by
Bhaktisiddhanta to camouflage the fact that
he had no real guru-parampara. Oops! That
just slipped out! Oh well. This I hope will
be my last essay on TM's little book or
on anything else relating to the Gaudiya Math
or ISKCON. Quite frankly, the line of
thought and literature created by those
organizations is so offensive to real Vaisnavas that
even reading their works to critique them is
disruptive of and harmful to the cultivation
of bhakti. At the end of this essay I will
suggest a couple of possible remedies to this
problem, but I consider it highly unlikely
that those remedies will ever be applied. Instead
of dwelling on the flaws of those
pseudo-Vaisnava institutions, I want to focus future
essays on my own experiences at the feet of
Sri Tinkudi Baba, the Vaisnava siddha with
whom I found shelter after leaving ISKCON who
was both a baba and a hereditary
24
gosvamin.
I wish to begin my discussion of
siksa-parampara by pointing out that if those opposed to
the idea of a siddhapranali wish to cast doubt on it as a genuine
institution of the
Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition because it appears
only with the second or third generation of
followers of Caitanya and even then among
relatively minor members of the Vrndavana
circle like Goplaguru Gosvamin, Vakresvara
Pandita, and Dhyanacandra Gosvamin, how
much more should one doubt the authenticity
of the institution of siksa-parampara which
only appeared the other day and again among
an even more minor Vaisnava community.
Moreover, if one wishes to argue that there
is no scriptural support for the institution of
siddha-pranali the argument applies with even
greater force to siksa-parampara for which
there is absolutely no scriptural support
anywhere in the vast ocean of Gaudiya texts, not
even in the works of Bhaktivinoda Thakura,
the father of Bhaktisiddhanta. It is pure
invention, the invention of Bhaktisiddhanta
comparable to his invention of a Gaudiya
form of sannyasa (see the accompanying
article, "Gaudiya Vaisnava Dharma and
Sannyasa" by Dr. Radhagovinda Nath). The
siddha-pranali at least has some support in
Rupa Gosvamin's discussion of raganuga bhakti
in the Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu
(1.2.294-
96) and in Jiva Gosvamin's discussion of
initiation in the Bhakti-sandarbha
(283) where it
is said, quoting Agama, that initiation (diksa) bestows divine knowledge.
Jiva points out
that divine knowledge is knowledge of the
true nature of the Lord in the mantra and of
one's specific (visesa) relationship to Him. This
specific relationship is, of course, one's
true identity in relationship to the Lord, or
in other words, one's siddha-deha
(there being
no difference in the spiritual realm between
one's self and one's body). Here is where the
nonsense of a siksa-parampara begins to
unravel. What is
communicated at the core of initiation is
knowledge. It is not just the giving of mantra. In
addition, this knowledge is not any
knowledge: the number of planet systems there are in
the universe or the number of ocean rings
there are or how many sections of the spiritual
realm there are or whether living beings were
once in Goloka or not. It is the most
essential knowledge, knowledge of who one
really is in relationship to the Lord. Thus,
initiation or diksa IS siksa, the most
essential and indispensable siksa one can receive.
One can certainly get by without the rest of
what counts as siksa, but one cannot get by
without this siksa if one ever wishes to play
under the skies of Goloka. To replace the
guru-parampara with a siksa-parampara
obscures and derails this fundamental function
of initiation. But this is only the first of
several idiocies that mix together to form the idea
of siksa-parampara.
The second idiocy comes with the word parampara. A parampara is a lineage
or
succession and is meant to specify a list or
a succession of singular things or people. Thus,
it applies quite well to the situation of the
initiating guru because a member of the
tradition is only supposed to have one
initiating or mantra guru. That Jiva Gosvamin says
quite clearly in his Bhakti-sandarbha (207). After all, one only
has one identity in
relationship to the Lord and that s learned
from the mantra guru. Jiva says in the
previous section of the same work (206),
however, that there can be many siksa gurus.
25
They teach the methods of worship or the
fundamentals of the philosophy or the
meanings of the various sacred texts.
Different teachers may be expert in different
aspects of the tradition. What sense does
keeping track of a parampara make in that
circumstance. A person may have three or four
siksa gurus and each of those may have
had three or four siksa gurus. One quickly
loses the thread of the succession. In fact, it is
impossible to construct a succession in such
a circumstance. An older siksa guru may take
siksa from the disciple of a disciple if that
disciple has mastered some subject from yet
another siksa guru. Then one's succession
becomes an endless loop. The idea, therefore,
of a siksa-parampara is sheer nonsense.
A third idiocy arises from what is implied by
the imposition of a siksa-parampara. Take
for instance what is implied by an early
version of the siksa-parampara taken from Jan
Brzezinski's excellent, but somewhat narrowly
conceived (since when does Gaudiya
Vaisnavism refer only or even primarily to
the Gaudiya Math and ISKCON) essay on this
subject called "The Parampara
Institution in Gaudiya Vaisnavism" (Journal of Vaisnava
Studies, vol. 5, no. 1).
Thelist is as follows (p. 152):
Caitanya (d. 1534)
Svarupa Damodara (d. 1540)
Sanatana Gosvamin (d. 1556)
Rupa Gosvamin (d. 1556)
Raghunatha Dasa Gosvamin (1586)
Krsnadasa Kaviraja (1612)
Narottama Dasa Thakura (ca. 1650)
Visvanatha Cakravartin (ca. 1710)
Baladeva Vidyabhusana (ca. 1725)
Jagannatha Dasa Baba (ca. 1911)
Bhaktivinoda Thakura (ca. 1917)
Gaurakisora Dasa Baba (1915)
Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati (1937)
Bhaktivedanta Svami (1977)
This is the list found in Prabhupada's Bhagavad-gita As It Is (1972) and in the
introduction to Bhaktisiddhanta's Anubhasya on the Caitanya-caritamrta (1956). Where
is Jiva Gosvamin? Where is Gopala Bhatta
Gosvamin? Where is Kavi Karnapura? Jan's
fifth note on this list mentions that even
Baladeva was not included in Bhaktisiddhanta's
list (fn. p. 152). What about Ramananda Raya,
Srinivasacarya, Prabodhananda,
Radhakrsna Gosvamin? How about Vrndavana
Dasa, Locana Dasa, and Murari Gupta?
Are none of these great Vaisnavas worthy of
giving siksa? Are the tradition's greatest
theologian, greatest ritualist, and greatest
Vedantin not worthy of being siksa gurus? Did
those not on the list contribute nothing
worthwhile to the enrichment of the Gaudiya
26
Vaisnava tradition? This is patently
ridiculous. On the other hand, if the succession list is
not meant to be exclusive, then what on earth
is it for? Here are those we should learn
from, who have taught us something; the rest
have not. The idea of a siksa parampara is a
worthless concoction and one that implies
something offensive. The fact is, anyone can be
a source of siksa. The examples of this
abound. A famous one is, of course, the case of
Bilvamangala's being instructed by a
prostitute named Cintamani, but Krsna can and
does teach through anyone.
