(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 21 January 2013, Radhadesh, Belgium, Caitanya Caritamrta Seminar 1)
Krsnadasa Kaviraja has taken all the essential elements of Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s personal teachings; the theology of the Goswamis who were his disciples; and in that way, he captured the whole corpus of what Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s teachings embodies. No one who claims any connections with Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu had anything as sophisticated as Krsnadasa Kaviraja Goswami had and therefore Krsnadasa Kaviraja Goswami’s book became the universally accepted book!
In Bengal, there are Caitanya Caritamrta temples; I don’t think they read it but sure enough, they are worshiping it. There are temples where they worship the Caitanya Caritamrta. So that is how prominent the Caitanya Caritamrta has become. It has become a predominant authoritative book on Lord Caitanya. It includes not only pastimes, it includes also ontology and theology,
Ontology – the nature of the being, the nature of the being of God – the whole Caitanya Caritamrta gets into it. Like completely into how the Lord manifests in all these different incarnations and so on. If you look at like what Prabhupada did when he summarized the Caitanya Caritamrta, before he did Caitanya Caritamrta, first he wrote the teachings of Lord Caitanya. As he is wrote the teachings of Lord Caitanya, he left out 90% of the pastimes and just zoomed in on the ontology and theology. He does this whole thing about the avatāras: guna-avatāra, lila-avatāra, so many avatāras; it is interesting. So ontology means Krsna, all his expansions and energies and the nature of his being. That is very much part of the Caitanya Caritamrta, much more so than any other biographies.
In the Caitanya Bhagavata, you won’t not find that. In the Caitanya Bhagavata, there are a lot of ecstatic pastimes – a varied kind, described in a lyric way, a very ornate way, in an emotional way, very rich description, and when you read it all, Caitanya Bhagavata is like “wow” and it is ecstasy! It has lots of supernatural experiences and just overwhelming things!
