Dear Friends

Dear friends:

I hope you are enjoying these posts. This week I have been concentrating on the Gauḍiya Kaṇṭhahāra. It is a project dear to my heart.

 I first began working on this translation about 34 years ago, in 1982.  At that time I was recently returned from the ashram of the founder acharya of Śrī Chaitanya Saraswat Matha, His Divine Grace Bhakti Rakṣaka Śrīdhara Dev Goswāmī Mahārāja. He spoke highly of the Gauḍiya Kaṇṭhahāra and recommended its study to me personally.

I had been in India about six months at that time and was studying Bengali. I could read the lips, but wasnt very expert in the grammar. But I could see where the book quoted from Bhagavad-Gīta for example, and would look up the translation in Prabhupāda's version.

In subsequent trips to India, as my Bengali language skills improved, my translation proceeded. It took me about 8 years to go through the entire work verse by verse and I had completed the work in around 1990. Much of the work had already been translated, of course. The majority of the quotations from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Bhagavad-Gīta and Chaitanya-Caritamṛta are merely compiled from the works of His Divine Grace, A.C. Bhaktivedānta Swāmī Prabhupāda.

Having taken sannyāsa  from Śrīdhara Mahārāja in 1984, I preached his message as best I could in the West for 8 years, bring out a number of publications at Guardian of Devotion Press, supporting the work of Bhakti Sudhir Goswami at our temple at 62 South 13th Street. In 1989 I made a world tour in support of Bhakti Sundar Govinda Mahārāja that took me from India to Australia to the streets of Berlin.  Exhausted, I returned to San Jose, California to find that the mission was being dissolved on account of financial problems. I traveled to South America, touring Colombia and Ecuador, visiting a number of cities including Quito, Ecuador, and Bogotá, Colombia. Another tour of the United States took me from California to Miami.

Unfortunately, few people at that time were interested in our books and our message. While there was an explosion of interest in yoga and gurus in the 1970s and early 80s, that interest seemed to have dried up. Low on resources and money, with no backing from any quarter I was at a crossroads.

In the different established missions I was told that while I was a great speaker, preacher, and bhajan singer, and really knew the philosophy there was really no room for me. X Swami told me the problem was that that people in his ¨zone¨would listen to me and want to accept me as their guru.

As there was no room for another guru in the mission, I was on my own. Fair enough.

At this time many of the managing gurus in ISKCON, the old International Society for Krishna Consciousness were on a rant against Sridhar Maharaja. Their sectarianism played out by barring us from their temples. Anyone who supported Sridhar Maharaja was a ¨heretic¨and was ostracized from the Hare Krishna movement for being somehow "against Prabhupada."

So I was "too weird" for the Hare Krishnas.

Times have changed, of course. ISKCON has since relented. Govinda Maharaja himself was such an exalted figure that by his own transcendental charm, he managed to change the hearts and minds of many of those who held such sectarian views.

But at the time, I was out in the cold.

On the advice of P. Maharaja, I went to Costa Rica with a list of names of devotees and began knocking on doors.

I arrived in Costa Rica armed with the Gauḍiya Kanṭḥahāra, which was my solace. 8 years on, I was still working on the translation. I had pretty much polished it, and it was ready for publication.

I took a cheap hotel across the street from the market while I ran down the "leads" I had been given. This hotel was frequented by Peace Corps volunteers, idealistic young people with the idea of helping poor communities in Latin America. They were there to supervise the construction of water pipes to remote areas so that they would have running water. I preached a bit to them about the value of saving eternal souls, but they seemed to feel that running water was more important.

I went to the "art gallery" that sold paintings of Krishna imported from India. I was told that Krishna Das and Ram Das were really enthusiastic about starting a temple. They would certainly help me out. But when I got there, I found that the gallery had been closed a few weeks before, leaving no forwarding address.

I went to the "Govinda's" restaurant in downtown San José, and connected with Hari Das. He was friendly at first. We chatted and I helped him with his English homework as we sat in a booth at the restaurant. But when he discovered that I was connected with  Śrīdhara Mahārāja, his attitude changed. He became afraid and could no longer talk with me. I was asked to leave and not come back. His guru Z Maharaja who was a disciple of B Maharaja who was a Prabhupada disciple wouldn't like it. I should probably leave Costa Rica.

It seemed that the only way for me to continue would be to found my own mission with no money and no followers, and then initiate disciples, setting myself up as the head of the mission and guru.

In conversations I had had with different swamis over the years, one of the problems that was complained about was the number of crazy people who somehow frequented the ashrams. When Ronald Reagan was governor of California he defunded a number of mental institutions. As we offered free food to indigent people once a week, we found many people with mental problems showed up at our program. There was a girl who painted her eyes with so much mascara she looked like a circus clown. There was "Star" a burned out hippie who loved to chant hare krishna because he said it made the little green people inside his head disappear for a while. There were junkies and ex-junkies, meth-heads, and old people who had been cast into the rubbish bin by a society who didn't care for them. We even saw hard-working salvadoran and guatemalan immigrants who grinned at the devotees as they hungrily scarfed down the prasadam.  But somehow a number of people who had a hard time adapting to society would gravitate to the hare krishna movement back then. They had conspiracy theories about Marilyn Monroe, Jack Kennedy, and UFOs. They knew how to irrigate colons and stop viruses with organic cauliflower. Some of them were yoga experts who smoked marijuana, or sadhu brahmacharis with three ex-wives.   I'm not talking about the sincere souls who works so hard sacrificing their lives and their youth to keep our mission alive, but the summer soldiers who showed up for a sunday feast, stayed for a week and moved on. All of these people are dear to me, I don't mean to make light of anyone's hardship. But somehow we attracted some pretty strange folks. Maybe it was our shaved heads and peace and love outlook.

Alone in 1992 I decided that being a guru was not for me.  I felt that anyone who could accept me as they guru must be crazy by definition. Why would I lead people who were crazy enough to believe I was a guru? It was an exercise in absurdity.  Disgusted and demoralised, I moved on.

6 months later I found myself in Guatemala.

We have a saying in Mexico: enter Guatemala y Guatepeor. It means "between the devil and the deep blue sea."

One day I was walking down the street in Antigua, Guatemala, feeling quite lost when who should appear before me but P. Maharaja himself.

It was a miracle.

We had a long talk. He couldn't really do anything to help me, he said. I was welcome to come to the Sunday feast at his temple, but he didn't want to disturb the minds of his disciples. I should understand.

He asked me if I needed any money.

I was honest with him. He said, look, why don't you let me buy your computer. It's just sitting there in Miami.

Fine, I said. He gave me a good price, 800 dollars for my old Macintosh. We had a nice talk and he disappeared again. It's hard for me to believe I really saw him.

With the money I got on a bus to Chichicastenango, Guatemala, and then to La Mesilla, a small border town between Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico. My mother lived in San Miguel de Allende. I hadn't seen her in a number of years. As a renounced devotee, brahmachari and sannyasi I had taken the idea of giving up my family very seriously and had no contact with anyone for almost 15 years.
Now, I really had no place to go. I owed my mother a visit. I called her on the phone and she said she could help me with a teaching job in the small town of San Miguel.

The bus from La Mesilla to San Cristobal crosses some of the most inhospitable badlands you will see. Of course, that's another story.

Flash forward.

The teaching job turned into a position at the University of Guanajuato, a prestigious university here in Mexico. I settled down and married a Mexican woman, Aurora, who is a teacher herself.  We've been faithfully married for 23 years.

I do my best to follow the principles I learned from my guru.

No smoking, no drinking, no drugs.

No meat, no fish, no eggs. No gambling.

I still chant hare krishna and take the name on my japa rosary beads, given me by my guru.

I'm pretty much of a square.

But I am not a saint.  I don't pretend to be a saint. Still, I love this book, the Gauḍiya Kaṇṭhahāra. Although I am unable to live up to its high standards and practices.

A few years back I did a google search on my name, Bhakti Vidhan Mahāyogi, and found the unfinished edition of Gauḍiya Kaṇṭhahāra languishing on a Spanish language website run by P. Maharaja. I found that publication and the Lives of the Saints, another pet project of mine. Since that time I have been working on the manuscript. Now that it's in pretty decent shape, I'm posting it online here at the blog.

The new version includes the Sanskrit devanagari lipi when a verse is in Sanskrit and the Bengali lipi when a verse is in Bengali.

Each jewel of the Gauḍiya Kaṇṭhahāra represents a different conclusion dear to the Vaishnavas in the Gaudiya line. The book was originally designed and authorised by Bhaktisiddhānta Sāraswati Ṭhākura for his preachers. Any doubt about Krishna, the tatastha-shakti, varna-ashrama-dharma, and so on can be solved by consulting this book. Where there is a contradiction between two differing ideas in this book, Vaishnavas may hold a hari-katha session to explore the inner meaning of a shloka.  Of course spiritual life means proper adjustment and if there is anything here which causes a grave doubt, higher authority may  be consulted.

This blog is written for my own self-purification. Perhaps one day I will gather these notes together and turn them into some kind of useful publication. If anything here is useful, please take it. If anything here offends you, it was not my intention. A blog is by nature ephemeral; here today, gone tomorrow. No one will remember this post in a few days. So, given the ephemeral nature of the blog, I'm only describing my own path and some of the pitfalls I faced along the path.

Don't take it too seriously.  Different personalities have come into my life at different times. If I describe them I try to do so without envy.  Nothing I say here is meant to hurt other people. Please excuse me if I mention X Swami or Y Maharaja. No offence is meant to X Swami or Y Maharaja. Please don't waste your time sending me hate mail, death threats, or offer to help me in assisted suicide. I'm not interested. I'm trying to keep it positive. Peace and love everybody. Gaura Hari bol.

Just as gold is acceptable even if found in a dirty place, just as the truth is acceptable even if spoken by a drunkard, I hope you can accept whatever is worthy in these ramblings and discard the rest.

I recently had a brush with death and don't know how much longer I have. I think my time may be short. And so, while I occasionally lapse into madness and reveal  the depths to which I have sunk, I am trying in my own way to offer something valuable.

Please therefore accept my offering of Gauḍiya Kaṭḥahāṛa. I hope you find it useful.

Humbly,
B.V. Mahāyogi.