(Above: Radhey Govind Chanting with Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj at Bhakti Mandir, Mangarh)
The greatest help for an aspiring devotee comes in the form of
chanting God’s names, forms, pastimes, attributes and abodes. Sing
in a loud voice the bhajans and keertans that glorify God. Numerous
saints have composed extremely sweet devotional songs that have been
set to haunting melodies. Choose the best from these songs and sing
them as you like. Some people ask whether it is not just as
effective to do a mental repetition of God’s name as it is to chant
in a loud voice. Whether you repeat God’s names in your mind or
repeat them loudly, it is one and the same thing. However, loud
chanting will enrich you in ways that silent meditation cannot.
There are four main advantages of sankeertan, i.e. loud chanting.
The first advantage of chanting is that it contains a lot of matter
within it. Devotional songs composed by saints such as Meera,
Soordas and Tulsidas describe God’s names, forms, pastimes and
glories. On the other hand, when you engage in mental repetition,
you are more or less restricted to only the name, and that too, only
one name You cannot do a mental repetition of God’s pastimes,
attributes and so on. Repeating the same name over and over again
will lead to boredom since the mind is at present not very attached
to God. You cannot experience bliss by mentally repeating only one
name of Shri Krishna, and as long as you are not feeling blissful,
your practice of devotion will not be considered effective. Loud
chanting provides the mind with much variety. If you get bored
chanting His name, you may move on to chanting His attributes. Then
you can chant His pastimes, which are unlimited. There is no
question of getting bored. If you get bored with one pastime, you
can move on to the next. When you get bored with even that, you can
think of still another. There are pastimes to suit every
relationship and depict every mood of the devotee.
The second advantage of loud chanting is that you are getting help
from music and musical instruments. You sing God’s glories, His
names and pastimes. When you do jap (mental repetition) there is no
music. You have the prayer beads, or just your mind. On the other
hand, the word sankeertan itself denotes music. Music is pleasing to
the ears. Beyond the ears is the mind that experiences happiness and
sorrow. The mind likes music. Through the medium of music, you can
engage the mind in the thoughts of Shri Krishna for a longer period
of time. If you take the help of some musical instrument to
accompany the chanting, it’s all the better for you.
The third advantage of sankeertan is that when you are mentally
repeating the name of God, there is no sound. Because of this
silence, you will be able to hear every little sound. The clock goes
tick tock-tick tock, and you will hear it. Because the mind is so
wild and impetuous, it runs to the world immediately. It leaves God
to go to the world. There are so many distractions around. A child
starts crying and you are disturbed. Someone drops something, and
the mind is again disturbed. One family member is scolding another,
and you are distracted. When you do sankeertan, you’re singing. You
are creating a sound. Moreover, you have some sort of a musical
instrument, which provides additional sound. In such a situation,
the mind concentrates on God much more easily. All the senses will
be involved in sankeertan, and therefore you will not even hear the
other sounds. As a result, the mind will stay put and will not be as
tempted to run to the world.
The fourth advantage is that many people fall asleep due to the
quiet atmosphere created by mental repetition. Sleep comes very
easily. This does not happen in sankeertan, since you are singing
with your mouth and clapping with your hands. Moreover, your ears
are listening to the music, and the mind is meditating on God. In
other words just about every sense-organ is involved in the chanting
process.
Thus, all these advantages are yours to benefit from in chanting,
which are not present in mental repetition of the name. Moreover,
thechantingprocess purifies the atmosphere, and anyone who hears the
chanting benefits from it. Loud chanting is much more beneficial for
us than silent repetition of God’s name, especially in the beginning
stages of devotional practice.
(Above: ShukdeoJI explaining the ultimate aim of human life: receiving the Divine love of Shree Krishn. Leela performance at JKP, Barsana Dham, US Ashram of Jagadguru Kripaluji Maharaj)
The word God is very common. Everyone knows this particular word. Then what is meant by the word God? Seldom people know. In our Vedas, it says, “As you know Him, you find Him.” If you don’t have Him, it means you don’t know Him. It means the knowing and finding are simultaneous. The Gita says the same thing: “As soon as a person knows God, dedicates himself to God…then what happens? Whatever he wants.” Let us look at this idea more closely.
Krishn, God Himself, tells us in the Gita, “Suppose a devotee has surrendered himself to Me, but his mode of surrendering, his motivation behind that dedication is unique. His conception about God is unique. His relationship with God is unique. According to all of these uniquenesses, he attains Me, but in that unique and variable form because I have uncountable forms, because I am almighty and loving.” Thus God is here, He is everywhere, He is in His Divine abode, He is Divine, but His form is uncountable. You cannot count. So a devotee or a true aspirant is really wanting God, but in what form is he wanting God? That makes all the difference! So we must look at who or what we believe God is.
What is the definition of God in our minds? If you look through the books available nowadays on spirituality, God or meditation, you’ll find that the definition of God is very much changed as it was hundreds and thousands of years ago. In those days God was only absolute love, absolute Divine love, but now the definition has been changed and people are thinking all in psychic terms. Everything that is a little different from what we normally experience, everything that seems superior, everything that appears abnormal, we just put a label, ‘G-o-d’, God.
The question is: Is that the God of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu? Is that the God of the Gita? Is that the God of the eternal Vedas? This is the real question.
Take a factual example: You wish to know about God, and I am here to teach of God. But what I think about God is in my mind, what you think about God is in your mind. What I mean to say is that actually, what is God? Unless you understand that aspect, there cannot be a path to or a devotion of or a meditation for God realization.
Say, for instance, you are going to meet someone. All you know is that the person lives in Los Angeles. You flew from New York, came to the Los Angeles airport, and now you are trying to find that person. It’s such a big town—miles and miles and miles. Can you find that person among the millions of houses? I think it is impossible. But you know he is there, he is there somewhere, but it is impossible. You can devote your whole life and still you may not find him. You must know the exact address of that person, the person’s name, who that person is. Only then you can reach him.
Similarly, unless you know the exact definition of God, the exact form of God, the exact path of God realization, then and only then can you directly proceed on the path. Otherwise, there is no possibility. You may spend your whole life—even lives and lives—you may spend all your time before you realize you are lost, and then it is too late. You started on some path and you sincerely believed it was the path to God. You followed it, perhaps wholeheartedly, but after 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years you began to experience that you are getting nowhere. You noticed you are feeling more attraction towards the world than towards God. Your heart is burning with increased desires and discontentment, and you feel far from God’s consolation and Grace. Now it is too late to change your path to God.
So it is very important to know what is the actual definition of God. And who can tell? Who can tell? That’s the greatest question: who? There are millions of missions, religions, philosophies and belief systems all over the world. In every country there are hundreds and hundreds of missions and belief systems related to God, and they confuse you more and more. How are you going to find out if that problem is solved? Solve that problem and then at least a major problem has been solved.
To this end I can only suggest that you know there are Saints, prophets, descensions of God on this earth, descensions of the loving and Gracious personality of God, Divine personalities, Saints sent by God to propagate His mission. They will not be in thousands or hundreds—not at any one time on this earth, but in our history, in our scriptures, they are in the thousands. So those Divine personalities they introduced God. They were one with God. They propagated only God’s love, so their writings can guide you a little to find what is the path to God.
We can have a quick survey of all of those. We can’t have all, just a few important scriptures, starting from the very beginning of the human civilization. Vedas were the only scriptures which were revealed in the very beginning or you can say even before human civilization. According to our Indian Divine history, the very first people on this earth were all the descended Saints. They appeared with the will of God and then it started through one generation.
So from those days, Vedas existed. All the Vedas, there are many, many branches, but in gist, there are two main points: “We cannot find God with intellectual speculation or intellectual analysis or intellectual research.” But Ved doesn’t say that you can never find God, it says you cannot find God with your intellect. Then what is the path? Ved says, “Bhakti…” Dedication… It’s not an act of your intellect; dedication is an act of your heart or you can say your emotional mind. So through dedication, through complete dedication, you can find God.
Now come to the Gita. It says, “Through bhakti, through dedication, through exclusive dedication…you can find God.” Exclusive means… Say for instance you are in the world. You have a family, husband or wife, children, you have to support. You have a job. Don’t leave anything. Devote some time for God also. It means you are doing 50-50, you’re putting half of your mind in the world and half in God. Even then it is quite enough. Suppose you have got that great longing for God realization and you want, “Oh, I must find God right now. Not tomorrow, not tonight, why not now?” And you supported your thought with your understanding. Here comes the right use of your intellect.
What is your understanding? That He is kind. You know that through the scriptures, through writings of Saints. He is kind and He can shower His kindness any time. So when He’s kind, why cannot he shower His kindness on you now? There’s no reason. Because He is almighty, He has no dates or no appointments for various people. There is no appointment book because there is no limitation. We keep our appointment books because there’s a limited twenty-four hours in a day, limited about thirty days in a month. We have got all limitations. So we get the appointment book and make appointments. But in God’s kingdom there’s no limitation of anything, there is no diary. It is open every time, it is open, come and receive. Delay is from the soul’s side, not from God’s side! The Giver is giving; it is for the receiver to receive when he is ready to receive. So that is what you have to understand mentally.
Let’s say both things are being properly used, your mind and your heart, your emotions and your intellect. So when you have intellectually learned, when you learned that yes, He is kind and He can show Himself any time, then why not now? With this understanding, when your longing goes deeper, and deeper, and deeper, He comes closer, and closer, and closer to you. But you see even if you try to force your mind that way, a part of your head will say “No.” Why not? “No.” This is because you hesitate in trusting that He will appear, or even that he may appear, maybe in one hour or tonight. You don’t trust. From the heart you feel, “No, No, it cannot be that easy.” It is your heart that hesitates. God is ready.
Why won’t you accept it? Why is there something that is pulling you back, something that you don’t know, that brings you back? That something has to be avoided. I’ll explain what is that something. Anyway, if that comes in your mind that “truly I want Him now” and you have the intense longing for Him, there is no reason why He should not come. That is complete dedication as taught in the Gita. It means exclusive devotion or exclusive bhakti or exclusive surrender. Surrender, dedication, devotion, bhakti, all of these four words signify the same thing.
So when that thing happens, then He reveals Himself. You can see Him. You can visualize Him face to face. You can merge yourself in Him. You can experience His absolute radiance which is omnipresent in the world. You can play with Him. Whatever you wish, everything is perfect. But whatever you wish, that depends upon you, and upon your conception about the personality of God.
In this conception you cannot think of God using your psychic powers or abstract intellectual ideology. I mean it should be the real God, but in the form that you love Him. Say, for instance, in the world you love someone as your daughter, someone as your friend, someone as your sister, someone as your mother, they’re all women but the relationship is different. That’s what I mean, that you must remember the real God. In that way you feel yourself related to God, that relationship and those feelings may appear. In that form, He will come to you.
So in this way, this is bhakti, this is dedication or devotion, or this is surrender. The Bhagwatam explains that there are many, many confused aspirants who try to find God in their own way and devote years and years and years in isolation, transcending inside into samadhi and trying to find God in their hearts. They are called yogis and gyanis. They fail. But Krishn, the supremely charming and loving personality of God, says, “A devotee who is not trying to find Me with his intellect, but rather he is trying to dedicate himself, the one that knows that his soul and I are not just closely related, but that we are eternally closely related, that our relationship is not a formed relation, but it is an internal and eternal relation that can never die, he experiences Me as his Divine Beloved and tries to find Me, not with any demand or request. He only wants Me to love, that is all. Such a devotee or such a disciple or such a bhakt, I take care of Him even during his devotional period, and I don’t let him fall in the worldly mire. I protect him. Slowly as his divine love consciousness increases, he feels Me closer and closer, and in the end he finds Me.”
There were many Saints in India, they all said very similar things. Harivansh, Haridas, Roop Goswami, Sanatan Goswami, Vallabhacharya, Nimbarkacharya, many, many acharyas, very similar things they said. Dedicate yourself to loving, Gracious God, He will take care of you, and in the end He will come to you in His Divine personified form. Just start something: cry for Him, cry for His Grace, for His Love alone. That will purify your heart and put positive imprints on your mind and move you towards the path of dedication. In this way a devotee or any person who determines to find God understands that this life is a golden chance to find the love of God. It can start any time he desires to. Your time is passing. Every moment…what is gone is gone. It will never come back. Start now.
Every soul in the world desires happiness. Happiness is synonymous with God. Whether one says ‘happiness’ or ‘Bhagwan’ or ‘God’, all these have one meaning. The Ved says that God is happiness, anand. As souls, we are a fraction of God who is the form of happiness, and that is why we naturally desire happiness. Every fraction naturally desires its source, and by attaining that, becomes complete. This is the law of nature. In fact, we could never desire unhappiness. Even if we were to try, it is impossible because everyone naturally desires happiness.
Can we determine if there happiness in this world? The Ved defines happiness as, Yo vai bhuma tatsukham. True happiness is of an unlimited limit and it remains forever. What are the qualities of worldly happiness? First, it is limited, because a greater happiness always exists. In our world, those who are millionaires are superceded by multi-millionaires, and ahead of them are billionaires, and ahead of them are multi-billionaires, and the richest is Kuber, the god of wealth. This means that worldly happiness is not of an unlimited limit, and what does exist, keeps on changing and ultimately comes to an end.
Just like you hugged your mother. From the first hug you got a lot of happiness, from the second hug, it was less, from the third, it decreased further, and by the fourth, it was finished. We experience this daily in this world. So there are two problems in the happiness of this world. First, it is not of an unlimited limit, and second, it is not for an unlimited time. The happiness we truly desire is with the unlimited ocean of Divine happiness, Krishn, or you can say we desire Krishn, Who is the form of happiness. But He is not visible to us, so how will we receive His happiness?
If we want something from someone, how do we get that? One way is to grab the person, tie him up and snatch it. Another way is to steal it from him. Another way is to beg. These are the three ways. God is all-powerful and the soul has very limited powers, so it is impossible for a soul to forcibly take anything from God. God is also omniscient, omnipresent and knows what is in everyone’s heart, so stealing from Him is also impossible. So there is only one way left: request God for alms of His happiness. Beg Him. It is God’s rule, “If you ask, I will give.” But you have to request properly. There shouldn’t be any craftiness or deceit in your heart.
How long does a newborn baby have all his desires fulfilled by his mother just by crying? If he feels cold or hungry or if he has pain anywhere, he cries. There is one remedy for all his demands: crying. That is called complete surrender. In the same way, shedding tears before Krishn with a pure and sincere heart, we can ask for Divine happiness. When will this happen? When we have complete confidence. Our present confidence is that perfect happiness is in the world, and one day we will attain it. We have to change this decision. This is done by detaching the mind from this world (vairagya) and attaching the mind to Krishn, (abhyas) and tearfully requesting His Divine Vision, Divine Love, and Divine happiness. Devotional love is the practice and Divine love is the attainment.
The scriptures say that with the Grace of Guru and God everything is possible, but where do the Guru and God bestow their Grace? Grace is received in the heart and the heart is mayic, material. On one side, the heart is occupied by the commanders of maya like lust, anger, greed, attachment, passion, and jealousy. On the other side, all our worldly attachments are seated there. God asks, “Is there any space for Me?” So He says, “Purify your heart first through your tears of love, than I will give My Divine happiness.”
TV Asia airs the discourses of Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj (Shree Maharajji) daily
Weekdays at 8:00 am & Weekends at 10:00 am EST.
Shree Maharajji was offered to become Jagadguru by the Kashi Vidvat Parishad of Varanasi, India in 1957. Thus, he became the fifth original Jagadguru in the last 5,000 years. Shree Maharajji founded a worldwide non-profit, educational and charitable organization, Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat which has five main ashrams. Four in India and the fifth, Barsana Dham located in Austin, TX. For further information visit www.BarsanaDham.org or call (512) 288-7180.
Activities and Schedule
Satsang services (literally “divine-assocation”) are held every Sunday morning from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. followed by a prasad lunch. There is also a Sunday evening service from 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Darshan sessions are held four times daily. Visitors are free to roam the grounds from 8:30 a.m.-10:00 a.m. and from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Visits should be made only during these times.
Barsana Dham
History
Barsana Dham was established in 1990 by H.D. Swami Prakashanand Saraswati. The vision behind Barsana Dham was to recreate the pilgrimage sites of Braj, India here in North America. Braj is a holy district because it is the site where the deities Shree Radha Rani and Shree Krishn appeared 5,000 years ago. Such a project required land with very specific geographical features and an extensive search was done to find a suitable location. The search ended when two devotees living in Austin suggested purchasing a 200 acre Summer camp. At the time, it was the first Hindu temple in Austin. Today, Barsana Dham is one of the largest Hindu temples in North America. A ground breaking ceremony was held in October 1992. Construction began in January 1993 and continued to 1995. Those active in the center began an extensive campaign to educate the local community about Barsana Dham. An open house was held which quickly evolved into an annual tradition known as the Mela fair. The outreach campaign was very effective. To date, successive mayors of Austin, as well as local heads of law enforcement have visited Barsana Dham. In 2002, 8000 people attended the fair at Barsana Dham: half of those in attendance were Indian, the other half were Westerners. That same year, Barsana Dham also hosted the interfaith Thanksgiving celebrations of the Austin Area Interreligious Ministries.
Demographics
Approximately 1000 families attend Barsana Dham. 96% of these are Indian, the remaining 4% being Westerners and people of Caribbean descent. People of all ages can be seen at Barsana Dham. In addition to its regular community, thousands visit Barsana Dham every year to attend festivals or on pilgrimage. Barsana Dham welcomes visitors of all faiths who wish to draw closer to their higher power. Barsana Dham has cultivated a relationship with the local Presbyterian seminary, whose students enjoy the peaceful setting. During Satsang services, sermons (pravachan) are conducted in English while prayer and chanting is done in Hindi. Translated and transliterated worship aids are made available. Barsana Dham also offers classes in Hindu, which focuses on religious application.
Description
The vision of recreating the holy land of Braj India has been realized in Barsana Dham. The land where Barsana Dham now stands features a hill that looks very similar to the Barsana hill in India where the palace of the goddess Radha stood. A pond at Barsana Dham corresponds to the sacred Prem Sarovar pond in Braj. All eight of the holy sites of Braj have been replicated at Barsana Dham. Thousands of pilgrims visit Barsana Dham every year who lack the time or money to visit India. All of Barsana Dham’s 200 acres are well maintained and beautiful. Free roaming peacocks and a large peach-orchard add to the utopic environment. The Shree Rasheswari Radha Rani Temple at Barsana Dham is a beautiful building, combining North and South Indian architectural styles. South Indian Shilpas spent two years detailing the temple. The main prayer hall has both traditional and modern features. The surrounding complex has facilities to host almost any function including traditional Hindu weddings and thread ceremonies. One of Barsana Dham’s most unique facilities is that it has overnight housing. In addition to the roughly sixty people who live on the property, the center can accommodate 200 overnight guests.
Multimedia Offerings
If you cannot physically visit Barsana Dham, you can take a virtual tour on their website. Barsana Dham’s website is just as impressive and beautiful as the physical center. At the website you will find audio clips of chanting and speech and you may sign up for their newsletters. Their annual festivals are documented on the website as well.
Center Activities
Barsana Dham is a center for Indian culture as well as worship. Courses are offered in a variety of subjects including Hindi, yoga, a youth program, and a summer camp teaching classical Indian dance. Barsana Dham hosts a variety of retreats and special events including Holi, Divali, and an annual Mela fair. Consult their website for more information
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