CHAPTER FIVE

In the latter part of the fifteenth century, India’s most extraordinary political, cultural, and religious reformer appeared in a small town in West Bengal.

Five hundred years before Gandhi, this remarkable personality inaugurated a massive nonviolent civil disobedience movement. He swept aside the stifling restrictions of the hereditary caste system and made it possible for people from any station in life to achieve the highest platform of spiritual enlightenment. In doing so He broke the stranglehold of a proud intellectual elite on India’s religious life. Ignoring all kinds of outmoded rituals and formulas, He introduced a revolutionary spiritual movement that was rapidly accepted all over India – a movement which, because of its universal appeal, has now spread all over the world. The name of this powerful reformer was Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya Mahāprabhu, the founder of the modern-day Hare Kṛṣṇa movement.

The Vedic scriptures of India had long predicted His birth, which occurred in 1486 in Māyāpur, a quarter of the city of Navadvīpa. Great saints and scholars soon detected that He was not an ordinary human being but the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself, Lord Kṛṣṇa, appearing as a great devotee of the Lord.

Śrī Caitanya had little patience with ritualistic religious functions, and as He grew to young manhood, He began to carry out His divine mission. He wanted all people everywhere to have access to the actual experience of love of God, by which one can feel the highest spiritual ecstasies. This awakening, Śrī Caitanya taught, could be attained by saṅkīrtana – the chanting of the holy names of God, the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra.

Śrī Caitanya rapidly acquired many followers, who immediately took up the chanting, sometimes performing it in their homes and sometimes in the streets of Navadvīpa. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s saṅkīrtana movement immediately threatened the established groups in the social hierarchy – the Muslim rulers of Bengal and the hereditary Hindu priestly class, the caste priests who were attempting to artificially monopolize religious leadership. Members of both groups lodged complaints with the local Muslim ruler, Chand Kazi.

Agreeing that Śrī Caitanya and His followers threatened the established order the Kazi tried to suppress the growing saṅkīrtana movement. On his order constables raided the home of one of Śrī Caitanya’s followers and smashed the drums used in the chanting. The Kazi ordered that the chanting be immediately stopped, and he threatened that if it began again in Navadvīpa, he would be ruthless with those responsible.

When informed of the raid, Śrī Caitanya immediately organized the largest peaceful civil disobedience movement in Indian history up to that time. On a prearranged evening, Śrī Caitanya and one hundred thousand of His followers suddenly appeared in the streets of Navadvīpa and divided into many well-organized chanting parties. As they danced through the city, the sound of the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra resounded in a deafening roar. Finally, the chanters converged on the residence of the Kazi, who hid inside.

At Śrī Caitanya’s invitation, however, the Kazi appeared, and the two began negotiations. Speaking politely, and with great logic and reason, Śrī Caitanya convinced the Kazi that the complaints against saṅkīrtana were groundless. In a dramatic conversion, the Kazi himself became a follower of Śrī Caitanya and actively promoted and protected the saṅkīrtana movement. To this very day Hindus visit the tomb of this Muslim magistrate to pay their respects. Since the time of the Kazi, the Muslim inhabitants of Navadvīpa have never interfered with the public chanting of the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, even during the time of the Hindu-Muslim riots.

Not long after this important victory in His native town, Śrī Caitanya began to spread His movement all over India. For six years He traveled the length and breadth of the country, chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra and spreading love of God. At many places, crowds of hundreds of thousands of people would join with Him in massive chanting parties. Nevertheless, He also encountered opponents, the strongest of whom were the Māyāvādīs, an elitist group of philosophers who had spread throughout India, twisting the meaning of the Vedic scriptures in a vain attempt to prove that God has no personality or form. The impersonalists also believed that spiritual enlightenment could be obtained only by a chosen few who knew Sanskrit and arduously studied the Vedānta-sūtra.

Throughout His travels, Śrī Caitanya struggled against the Māyāvādīs and succeeded in convincing many of them by the strength of His preaching. One of the greatest philosophers of the Māyāvāda school, Sārvabhauma Bhaṭṭācārya, tried to prevail over Śrī Caitanya in philosophical discussion but was defeated. Countering the Bhaṭṭācārya’s impersonal explanation of God, Śrī Caitanya said, “The living entities are all individual persons, and they are all parts and parcels of the Supreme Whole. If the parts and parcels are individual persons, the source of their emanation must not be impersonal. He is the Supreme Person among all relative persons.” Then out of His causeless mercy, Śrī Caitanya performed a wondrous miracle, manifesting before Sārvabhauma Bhaṭṭācārya His beautiful, original, spiritual form as Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Falling at Lord Caitanya’s feet, the former impersonalist philosopher surrendered to Him and soon became a great devotee of the Lord.

But the biggest confrontation with the Māyāvādīs was yet to come, and it occurred in the city that had for centuries been the capital of the Māyāvāda school, Benares. There Lord Caitanya stayed with His friends and devotees and continued His saṅkīrtana movement, attracting crowds of thousands wherever He went. Hearing reports of this, Prakāśānanda Sarasvatī, the leader of the prevailing Māyāvāda sect, began to criticize the Lord. A real spiritual leader, he said, would never involve himself in singing and dancing with all kinds of ordinary people. Ignorant of the spiritual significance of chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, he considered it mere sentiment. Prakāśānanda Sarasvatī believed a spiritualist should continually study abstract philosophy and engage in lengthy discussions about the Absolute Truth. A great clash between a popular nonsectarian universal religious movement and a stifling separatist philosophy was about to occur. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu would soon destroy forever the impersonalists’ attempted domination over Indian spiritual thought and practice.

The Lord’s followers were extremely unhappy about the Māyāvādīs’ constant criticism of Him, so in order to pacify them He accepted an invitation to a meeting of all the leading Māyāvādīs. After seating Himself on the ground at the assembly, the Lord, exhibiting His supreme mystic potency, manifested from His body a spiritual effulgence more brilliant than the sun. The Māyāvādīs were amazed and immediately stood in respect. Then Prakāśānanda Sarasvatī inquired about why Śrī Caitanya chanted and danced instead of studying Vedānta philosophy. Lord Caitanya, who in truth was extremely well versed in the Vedic teachings, replied, “I have taken to the saṅkīrtana movement instead of the study of Vedānta because I am a great fool.”

Indirectly, the Lord was criticizing the Māyāvādīs for being overly proud of their dry, intellectual study of the Vedas, which had led them to false conclusions. “And because I am a great fool,” Caitanya continued, “my spiritual master forbade Me to play with Vedānta philosophy. He said that it is better that I chant the holy name of the Lord, for this would deliver Me from bondage.” Śrī Caitanya then spoke a Sanskrit verse His spiritual master had told Him to always remember:

“In this age of Kali, there is no alternative, there is no alternative, there is no alternative for spiritual progress other than the chanting of the holy name, the chanting of the holy name, the chanting of the holy name of the Lord.” (Bṛhan-nāradīya Purāṇa)

The discussion went on for hours. Finally, in one of the most astounding religious conversions of all time, Prakāśānanda Sarasvatī, the Māyāvādīs’ greatest scholar, along with all his followers, surrendered to Lord Caitanya and began to chant the holy names of Kṛṣṇa with great enthusiasm. As a result of this conversion, the entire city of Benares adopted Śrī Caitanya’s saṅkīrtana movement.

Although Śrī Caitanya had been born a brāhmaṇa, a member of the highest caste, He always said that such designations were external and behaved accordingly. Disregarding the social conventions of the age, He would stay in the homes of devotees from even the lowest caste and take His meals with them. Indeed, He delivered His most esoteric teachings on the subject of love of God to Rāmānanda Rāya, a member of a lower caste. Another of the Lord’s disciples, Haridāsa Ṭhākura, was born a Muslim and was thus considered an outcast in Hindu society. Yet Śrī Caitanya elevated him to the exalted position of nāmācārya, the exemplar of the chanting of the holy name of Kṛṣṇa. Śrī Caitanya judged people not by their social status but by their spiritual advancement.

In this way, Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu laid the foundation for a universal religion for all humankind – a scientific process of spiritual awakening that is now rapidly spreading around the globe. In this present age, when attendance at churches, temples, and mosques is diminishing daily and the world is torn by violence between numerous religious and political sects, it is easy to see that people are growing more and more dissatisfied with external, divisive religious formulas.

People are hungering for an experience of spirituality that transcends all boundaries. Millions are now finding that experience in the worldwide saṅkīrtana movement of Lord Caitanya, who said, “This saṅkīrtana movement is the prime benediction for humanity at large because it spreads the rays of the benediction moon. It is the life of all transcendental knowledge. It increases the ocean of transcendental bliss, and it enables us to fully taste the nectar for which we are always anxious.”