(Kadamba Kanna Swami, Finland, 2011)
Whenever we serve Lord Jagannath, it brings us beyond our limits. You can think:
“Well, this time I will not go completely crazy, in the Ratha Yatra”.
Forget it! You will go completely crazy, and that’s the nature of the Ratha Yatra. Lord Jagannath, somehow or other takes us to our limits….through our limits, and there are also no limits to how much service that Jagannath is able to receive.
Ratha Yatra, Lord Caitanya and His movement – they are very intimately connected. Of course, Lord Caitanya (in Jagannath Puri)for many years was performing Ratha Yatra. Actually it was six years in a row that Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu was performing Ratha Yatra, and later on He took twelve years in Jagannath Puri, and He was too ecstatic to deal with such things, which was another matter.
For six years Lord Caitanya was just dancing in the Ratha Yatra, which was inconceivable. He would throw himself high in the air, without considering how He would come down! Sometimes in his ecstasy He would crash to the ground – full on! He’d jump really high and would just crash on the ground! And everyone was thinking:
“His ribs would crash and completely break!”
But that didn’t happen, and then he would jump straight back up and continued dancing…..and do it again! So Nityananda started to catch Him. As He was going down Nityananda was there catching Him! Lord Caitanya would jump so high…way above the crowd, who were just looking in amazement.
He would start spinning around in circles. He would go so extremely fast that it was compared to a firebrand (lets say a red hot piece of wood, and if you moved it very fast then it just looks like a closed circle of fire). Sir Caitanya Mahaprabhu was moving so fast that it just looked like a closed circle.
So who could imagine the dancing of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu?
