(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 07 July 2014, Serbia, Summer Camp, Caitanya Candramrta Seminar Part 1)
Sri Caitanya-candramrta by Srila Prabodhananda Sarasvati
Chapter 1, Verse 5:
“For those who have attained the merciful sidelong glance of Lord Gaura, impersonal liberation becomes as palatable as going to hell, the heavenly cities of the demigods become as real as flowers imagined to float in the sky, the poisonous fangs of the untameable black snakes of the senses become broken, the whole world becomes full of joy, and Brahma, Indra, and all the great demigods become like tiny insects. Let us glorify that Lord Gaura.”
This verse was quoted many times by Srila Prabhupada, who pointed out that the poisonous fangs of snakes are no longer of any danger when they are broken. The senses are compared to such teeth. The senses are constantly biting us and the poison of the senses is injected into our consciousness. When we see something… we want it. When we smell, we want. We want to touch and so on, constantly, the whole day, again and again.
But now this poison cannot really affect us very much. Even if a devotee gives up devotional service, even if a devotee is again embracing material life, how long can he continue like this? It is said that a devotee is rasagraha: he is one who has tasted nectar. So once you’ve tasted, how can you go back to ordinary life?
Can you again believe in one life, just one little life? Prabhupada used to speak about Professor Kotovsky from Moscow. “He believes that there’s one life? Just one little life is everything? That’s all?
So once the bigger concept is here, the concept of eternal, ever-growing love, the concept of loving exchange between Krsna and his devotees (even if we’re not there yet), can we again strive for something ordinary and mundane?
1 Comment
What a wonderful article written with such few words. Thank you very much, haribol!