Why I write

ON

Writing

by Michael Dolan/B.V. Mahayogi

Some people question why I write. It's a waste of my time, I should do something more productive and useful like carpentry or plumbing or selling cellphones. Who am I to say anything? Why should anyone listen or read? It's all been said before and better by better men and women than me. After all, writing like all art is mere vanity.

I face quite a bit of opposition, not least from my own laziness. After all, I’m not famous and I don’t make any money doing this. But not everything is done for money and fame. We live in a society where money is appreciated and fame is important. But when money and fame are the only important things, real value is lost. In today’s world every human transaction is tracked and monetized. But I do not write for money. I write because I have to.

I have no choice in the matter. Humans have a natural instinct towards language, says Darwin. I believe this is true, insofar as “instinct” is true. I write from instinct. It is my dharma.

“Dharma” is a funny word. It sounds like “karma.” Dharma and karma are related ideas. But dharma is more about who you are, where karma is what you do. Dharma is about how “the self in the world” relates to consciousness and divinity: society consciousness and God consciousness. In other words, “religion, duty, essential being.” The dharma of sodium is to be salty. The dharma of glucose is to be sweet. Separate sweet from sugar and it is no longer sugar. The dharma of the human soul is an interesting question, one that may be explored in terms of proper activity or mysticism. Proper activity in dharma is ethics, morality, and religion. Mysticism in dharma is the attempt to unravel the spirit on the path of self-realization. Dharma is about “who you are,” especially in relation to your eternal function as spirit.

Karma has more to do with the world of action and reaction. We think of karma as what you do and how that action creates a reaction. Where dharma is both essence and ethics, Karma is work, energy, action and reaction.

Karma and dharma are related in the sense that “What you do” and “who you are are” related. For example if we ask someone, “What are you?” they say, “I’m a doctor,” or “I’m a carpenter.” So there is a natural way of identifying our dharmic sense of “who we are” with “what we do,” or our karmic activity.

The Vedic system attempted to divide society according to dharmic characteristics in the system known as varnashram-dharma. Krishna says in Bhagavad-Gita that this system is God-given: cātur-varṇyaṁ mayā sṛṣṭaṁ guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśaḥ “According to the three modes of material nature and the work associated with them, the four divisions of human society are created by Me.”  According to one’s quality and work, he finds himself positioned in a particular sector of society where his dharma manifests itself through karmic activity. Thus karma reflects dharma. What one does is related to what one “is” socially.

So, karma and dharma are connected in the sense that “who I am” is connected to “what I do.” If you are highly educated, love to help people, and concerned about health, you are a doctor. That’s who you are. You heal people: that’s what you do. I am athletic, a natural leader, and love arms and contests, I am a soldier. It’s who I am. Going to war is what I do. Karma and dharma are related.

So I don’t write because I want name and fame or money. I write because it’s who I am. It’s what I do.

Chaitanya Mahāprabhu warns against the pride of a poet. In His Śikśāstakam we find:

na-dhanaṁ na-janaṁ na-sundarīm

kavitāṁ vā jagadīśa kāmaye |

mama janmani janmani īśvare

bhavatād bhaktiḥ ahaitukī tvayi || 4||

“O almighty Lord, I have no desire to accumulate wealth, nor do I desirebeautiful women, nor do I want any number of followers. I only want ẏour causeless devotional service birth after birth.”

A devotee of Krishna is not interested in mundane wealth and fame. His service is unconditional. Still, we cannot avoid having our service be tempered by our individual karma and dharma. Unconditional service may be required by my spiritual preceptor. And yet each of us is qualified in particular ways according to our karma and dharma. Sometimes the mission needs money. Some people are especially qualified to do business. Others are not. The guru often gets involved personally in charging particular students with particular tasks, given their dharma and karma or their qualifications.

Personally, I am quite introverted. When I first joined the mission I was asked to go out and collect. I did so on a daily basis, selling Prabhupada’s books in the street; in airports, at K-mart shopping malls. I dressed as Santa Claus and collected donations by handing out candy canes and exhorting people to help the mission. I even went out in a clown suit and sold Barry White records. On the basis of a vow of obedience and the determination to help the mission, I accepted any number of tasks and did my best to perform them.

At a later date I was asked to transcribe the lectures of my guru Shridhar Maharaja and compile and edit them into books. I found that in order to fulfill this duty I needed to become more erudite. Shridhar Maharaja for example explains that “Subjective Evolution of Consciousness” may be explained and understood with reference to the idealism of Bishop Berkeley. In order to better defend the ideas of my Guru Maharaja, I took to studying Berkeley and Hegel. Now, studying Berkeley and Hegel isn’t for everyone. It may not be the appropriate dharma or karma for the general public. But since it was my dharma to defend the ideas of my Guru Mahārāja, I took it upon myself to become more erudite with a view to properly editing his books.

Shridhar Maharaja had a particular gift. He was able to speak truth and at the same time speak without offending others. This is a great ability. Many devotees, determined to advance their cause, speak boldly. They have no concern for the feelings of others; they must only speak the truth. But while Shridhar Maharaja’s arguments were both brilliant and subtle, he also took care not to alienate non-believers.

This often gives an oracular quality to his speech. Now that he is no longer with us, we have only his books and the memories of his followers to guide us. But often the oracular quality of his speech makes it difficult to understand his purpose. His speech seems to appeal to both sides of some questions. An oracle sometimes needs interpretation.

The point of my blog, then, is to try to support Shridhar Maharaja’s point of view. Where at times his message was subtle, I try to spell it out. Where at times his message was general, I try to explain things more specifically. And where he would veer off and drop a reference showing how Hegel or Berkeley support the conclusions of Chaitanya Mahāprabhu, I have tried sometimes to shade in or color their ideas, to better highlight his meaning.

I believe that Krishna Consciousness has a universal message. I believe it goes beyond what someone wears or eats or how they talk. And this is what inspires me as I write. Unfortunately I often face a tremendous amount of criticism by those who want me to cleave to their beliefs. And yet by trying to follow some line in the sand, I find that the line shifts and the sand withers with the tide.

Shakespeare felt that his writing was immortal. In his Sonnet XVIII, he proudly claimed, “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” I make no such claim for this blog.

I know these words are ephemeral and whatever I write here will be forgotten by the time the sun moves to the horizon. Still writing has somehow become karma and dharma to me. I cannot avoid it. I hope then that you, dear reader, will find something of value here.

Writing for me is my way of holding mysterious communion with my readers. I hope that our life is somehow enhanced by that communion. I write, then, because I have to, because I have been ordered to do so, because it is karma and dharma to me. I write to discover my own ignorance and to see what I know. I write to try to dispel ignorance in myself by not writing what I don’t know.

So thank you for joining me in my journey to discovery, the journey to surrender.

Magical Realism and the Suspension of Disbelief

Wish-fulfilling Talismans 

and Supernatural Power

Stories about the supernatural withstand the test of time. They invoke the imagination of story-tellers of milennium to tell and retell them. Stories of magic amulets and talisman capable of invoking the supernatural have drawn the attention of readers and writers for centuries, not merely for the morals they draw but also for what they tell us about the life of the soul and mind. The Monkey’s Paw is a popular story about the dangers of wish-fulfillment, but while it hints at the supernatural it leaves the deeper themes undeveloped.

Supernatural stories involving wish-fulfilling talisman are as old as the Arabian Nights and Aladdin’s lamp. Like a winning lottery ticket, the idea of a magic talisman capable of granting wishes tempts us even while straining our credulity.

The story of the Monkey’s Paw terrifies us, not for its appeal to magic, but for the realistic elements in the story. It is at once a transcendent promise and a cautionary tale: don’t try to change your karma, lest you create an unexpected reaction. Told to children on a rainy night it still serves to terrify and instruct. It has components of magic, but the story seems “real.”

A more terrifying and effective tale of magic and wish-fulfillment is found in The Wild Ass’s Skin or Le Peau de Chagrin, by Honore de Balzac.

My connection with the story is personal. My curiosity about Balzac was not aroused by late night sessions with a seductive French lit teacher, but had to do with my wanderings through the city of Raymond Chandler.

When I was a boy growing up in Los Angeles, one of my favorite things to do on Saturday’s was to go for long hikes on my bicycle and see the city for myself. I would get on my bike at six o’clock in the morning and set out to discover the city. I lived in the Pacific Palisades, near the beach. I would ride up Sunset Blvd. over to Santa Monica Blvd., or Wilshire or Western Avenue Some Saturdays I would go downtown, others I would head for East or Central L.A. I would simply pack a sandwich and a couple of oranges and head for parts unknown.

My old neighborhood: Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles

Back in the sixties I saw a strange variety of urban life on my bike hikes. I would wander along in the streets of L.A. and observe as I rode. I saw the surfers and wannabe actors and writers in Santa Monica preening and drinking green juice at sidewalk organic cafes; I rode past guitar stores and bookshops and gas stations. Sometimes I would ride over to the black section of town in Central L.A. with used car lots and pawnshops and soul food restaurants. Sometimes I’d go out to China town and try the Chinese food: Won Ton Soup, Spring Rolls. Or I’d ride up Western Avenue to Fairfax near Wilshire where Jewish delicatessens sold Knishes and Bagels and Lox on Fairfax Avenue or out to Echo Park or East L.A. with its tacos and burritos and Latino music blaring out of low-rider cars. In my adventures around Los Angeles one of my favorite spots was the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wilshire Blvd near Fairfax.

La Brea Tar Pits

It was near the La Brea tar pits where dinosaurs and wooly mammoths fell into massive pools of black goo and surfaced millions of years later for school-kids to see and wonder at.

In those days it didn’t cost much to get in. I can’t remember if they charged admission or if it was free for kids. But I whiled away a few Saturdays looking at the golden sarcophagus of Tutankhamen or the impressionist paintings of Vincent Van Gogh.

Inside the museum was fascinating. But outside the museum was pretty cool too. There were always musicians out front busking. One Saturday I saw a brilliant flautist serenade the crowd outside with an amazing performance of a Bach Suite. Later there was an brilliant banjo player who did a lightning speed version of Lester Scrugg’s Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

And presiding over this strange melange of creativity was a huge statue installed on the steps of the museum. It was a weird figure of a half-melted giant sculpted in bronze by Rodin. At that time I really didn’t understand the sculpture. It didn’t seem “beautiful” in any traditional sense. In fact it was hideous. I looked at the identifying plaque: “Balzac” by Rodin.

"Balzac" by Rodin

Rodin was one of the best sculptors the world has seen, after Michelangelo. I later learned that the statue in front of the museum was one of several that he had done as studies for a final work. I was left wondering, “Who was this Balzac character?” And why was he so important that someone like Rodin would create a giant sculpture like this? The statue was incredibly hideous. I didn’t get it. I respected Rodin, but how could this be art. And why did he make so many studies of this particular author in bronze? Balzac has been called, “The Limburger Cheese of literature,” for his uneven quality and appeal to sensationalism. And yet, the great sculptor Rodin, when commissioned to create a statue of Balzac, spent years of his life trying to get it right. What special insight did Balzac have that made him such an important figure in French letters?

Balzac at work with coffee-maker

The Wild Ass’s Skin by Honore de Balzac is perhaps Balzac’s most famous work, and certainly the most influential. Oscar Wilde is said to have drawn on it for his Picture of Dorian Gray, and Sigmund Freud identified with the hero and the themes of this novel, especially at the end of his own life. Unlike many works of fantasy, this is not overwhelmed by its fantasy, but retains a truthful and grounded reality and in that sense may be said to be the forerunner of Magic Realism. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the greatest proponent of Latin-American “magical realism” once explained that his technique involved creating such a palpable reality that his “magical” elements seemed entirely natural. Garcia Marquez certainly knew of Balzac and had read his works before writing his own masterpiece, 100 Años de Soledad. 

“Magic Realism” (el realismo magical) was an expression first forwarded by Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier in 1949. He coined the phrase to describe the offhand mix of both fantastic and quotidian elements in his fiction. While Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and even Jorge Luis Borges contributed elements to “magical realism,” I think it may be argued that the real pioneer of this technique was Honoré de Balzac’s La Peau de Chagrin, translated as “The Wild Ass’s Skin.”

The Wild Ass's Skin

When I was older I found a dog-eared copy of The Ass’s Skin and couldn’t resist the temptation to try to discover Balzac’s value for myself.

Looking back, I’ve been through many of Balzac’s works and have a better idea of how he earned his reputation and why he is considered great. The Wild Ass’s Skin is considered a masterpiece of French literature and focuses on the nature of a talisman or wish-fulfilling device. Stories about three wishes are inevitably fraught. Somehow those who try to extract from nature more than the share karma alotted to them by their karma will pay with interest to the farthing, as we have seen in the story of the Monkey’s Paw, which is representative of the genre.

Balzac is known for his realism. His account of post-Napoleonic Parisian life is intimate. He describes such mundane details as taxi fares, the price of a pair of yellow gloves, or cup of coffee or the rent of a hotel room on the Left Bank of the Seine between the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue Pierre. Balzac has a gift for revealing his character’s psychology through detailed descriptions of their very real environment. His prose reveals an obsession for the material details of how money is made and spent.

But where many of Balzac’s story’s deal with the worldly foibles of his characters and their dilemmas as they descend into moral turpitude, “The Wild Ass’s Skin” is a complete departure. It is a window into the mystic world and the source of Balzac’s genius.

The apparently materialistic elements of his technique, his capacity for dwelling on the details of bourgeois Paris, instead of vitiating the mystical elements of his story, anchor the magic of “The Wild Ass’s Skin” in a frank realism.

But in this mystical tale the focus shifts. Instead of merely detailing his patient’s symptoms and probing the vicissitudes of lust, anger, greed, pride, illusion and envy--the hidden sins of high society-- that color works such as Father Goriot or Cousin Pons, Balzac creates in The Wild Ass’s Skin an alternative world of magic realism. He is concerned with the mind as touchstone and the consequences of using the creative fire. The author himself will burn from inside out. His own creative fire will result in his brain exploding from too much creativity. In this novel he searches for the link between mind’s gift of creativity and the demon power of a magic talisman that will consume its owner..

While originally created as a standalone novel, The Wild Ass’s Skin was enfolded into Balzac’s Comedie Humaine as on of the Études Philosophiques, or Philosophical Studies.

In the Wild Ass’s Skin, Balzac weaves a mystic story: A magic donkey skin fulfills its owner’s every wish, but shrinks as each desire is fulfilled. In the end, the owner’s own life shrinks as well until he is confronted with the prospect of inevitable death.

The plot is simple, yet brilliant. Inspired by Balzac’s contrasting ideas about the nature of the will and the expenditure of necessarily finite vital force, The Wild Ass’s Skin is the first and probably the greatest of Balzac’s “Philosophical Studies,” a subdivision of The Human Comedy. One cold Parisian evening Raphaël de Valentin, inspired by poverty enters a casino where he bets and loses his last coin at roulette. Desolate, he walks through the bitter streets of Paris, to the River Seine, in which he intends to drown himself in the freezing waters. 

He feels that it is still early. There may be a witness. He decides to kill a few hours. Near the banks of the river is an old antique shop. There the strange proprietor, a curious old man offers him a magic skin. It is the skin of a wild ass, charmed to provide its owner with all his desires.

All wishes will be fulfilled but the skin will shrink according to the quality and quantity of the desire. And finally, when it has shrunk into nothing, its owner will die. Echoes of this theme are found in many stories about wish-fulfilling devices, including “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” by Oscar Wilde.

The old man is anxious to rid himself of the charm. He has achieved longevity by freeing himself from desire. Disregarding the old man’s warnings, the young Raphaël declares that he wants to achieve all his desires.

Ecstatic at first with his new wish-fulfilling charm, he wants money, sex, and power. He holds drunken orgies with oriental dancing girls, artists, and poets. He does his best to erase his misery with drunkeness. The morning after the orgy subsides, Raphaël learns that he has inherited the vast wealth he had wished for but sees that the skin has shrunk. It is only half the size as before. He can understand that he can attain all that he desires, but at the cost of his life. He will get whatever he wants, but every want will reduce his life’s power. He wants now to do nothing, but cannot cease desiring. He finds himself in the classic dilemma faced by a student of Buddhism who wishes to dissolve the ego by ending desire.

Buddha

The ass’s skin is a ‘talisman’ that comes from the world of the supernatural, bursting the bounds of earthly existence. It has the power to fulfill any wish, but shrinks whenever its power is used, shrinking also the life and power of its owner. And while it can grant any desire, the insidious effect of the skin is to shorten the life of its owner.

Raphael, an angry young genius, soon finds himself in a struggle to conserve his life force against the power of desire and the wish-fulfilling impulse of the talisman.

The hero reaches the Buddhistic conclusion that desire must be shunned. To live free of desire is the only way to preserve his life against the mechanism of the talisman that fulfills wishes even as it shrinks his life force. The key to his survival is the adoption of a wholly habitual, routine way of life, free from desire and ego. Raphael’s only escape from the power of the wish-fulfilling talisman, is to follow a life from which all desire, almost all action, has been banished.

Even mental desire is a form of wishing. Even mental desires are also confirmed and fulfilled by the talisman which is bound to shrink with every fulfilled wish. The reaction is fatal.

The cruel twist of fate is that the wish-fulfilling device brings death; the only way to escape the fatal pact is to give up desire--to stop wishing. Balzac was fascinated with oriental philosophy and here, he explores a theme that Buddha explored long ago: how to give up desire.

Unlike the Buddha, Raphael fails miserably. Unable to conquer his desires he succumbs to the power of the talisman.

As Marceau, Felicien puts it: “The novel extrapolates Balzac’s analysis of desire from the individual to society in general; he feared that the world, like Valentin, was losing its way due to material excess and misguided priorities. In the gambling house, the orgiastic feast, the antique shop, and the discussions with men of science, Balzac examines this dilemma in various contexts. The lust for social status to which Valentin is led by Rastignac is emblematic of this excess; the gorgeous but unattainable Foedora symbolizes the pleasures offered by high society.

“To be reading Balzac is to be allowed to wallow, to be consumed by his world view, to give yourself fully . Here is a writer paid by the word and who made sure his books were filled to the brim with them. He allowed digressions, meandering thought and plot, and sometimes seemed to have little regard for plot. “

(Marceau, Felicien. Balzac and His World. Trans. Derek Coltman. New York: The Orion Press, 1966.)

La Piedra de Toque

La historia de Fray Gómez y su milagroso escorpión nos cuenta cómo un hombre santo beneficia a un suplicante con un talismán mágico. Sridhar Mahārāja cuenta una historia similar aquí, pero con un final muy diferente.

La Piedra de Toque

Bhakti Rakṣak Śrīdhar dev Goswāmī

"Tú has venido a rendirte ante la belleza del ideal…

Es una aventura… para explorar el mundo espiritual, el mundo de la humildad. Hay muchas joyas ahí. Y qué joya puede encontrarse en la superficie? Queremos ser salvados te todo el encanto de la grandeza externa.

Hay una historia de la vida de Sanātana Goswāmī, la cual se halla en el Bhakta-mala, y también Rabindranath Ṭhākura escribió un poema conectado a ella. Había una villa, Mankore, y ahí vivía una rica familia brāhmaṇa, que hacía mucha adoración y festivales religiosos de varios tipos. Pero de pronto se empobrecieron, y el brāhmaṇa dijo, “Soy lo mejor de este linaje, soy pobre y no puedo realizar tantos festivales que solían realizarse aquí cada año.”

Entonces, él era un devoto de Mahādeva, Śiva, empezó a orar muy fervientemente al señor de su corazón, Śiva, “Por favor ayúdame para que pueda conservar la gloria, el nombre y la fama de mis ancestros.”

Entonces en un sueño le llegó una sugerencia, “Ve a Vṛndāvana, ahí está Sanātana Goswāmī, encuéntralo y tu deseo será satisfecho.”

En aquellos días, no había tren, ni autobús, sólo caminando miles de millas llegó el brāhmaṇa a encontrarse con Sanātana en Vṛndāvana.

Entonces de algún modo, en las orillas del Yamunā, halló a Sanātana en una choza pronunciando el Nombre de Kṛṣṇa. Se reunió con él y le contó su asunto.

Luego de escucharlo, Sanātana dijo “Brāhmaṇa, es cierto que anteriormente cuando fui Primer Ministro de Bengala, di muchas cosas a los brāhmaṇas, satisfaciéndolos. Pero ahora me hallas como un mendigo.”

“Sí, ya veo tu condición. Pero cómo puedo pensar que mi señor, Siva, me haya frustrado, engañado. No puedo pensar así.”

“¿Pero qué puedo hacer? Mírame”.

“Si, veo tu posición.” Entonces, desilusionado, el brāhmaṇa se aleja. Entonces, a Sanātana Goswāmī, recuerda algo de pronto, . “Oh brāhmaṇa, ven. Śiva no te ha desilusionado. Verás, ahí entre la pila de basura. Creo haber puesto ahí una piedra muy brillante que hallé un día. Tal vez sea esa la piedra de toque y si es, entonces Siva te ha dicho bien en el sueño”.

El brāhmaṇa removió la basura y halló la piedra brillante.

“Puede ser la piedra de toque. Tómala y todas tus dificultades desaparecerán”.

El brāhmaṇa la tomó. “Qué afortunado soy. Śiva, mi señor me ha guiado al sitio apropiado y ahora la tengo”.

Y al irse pensaba. “Tal vez sea un vidrio ordinario también, pero he de hallar algo de hierro para probarlo”. Y encontró una pequeña astilla de hierro y la tocó y quedó convertida en oro. “Oh, qué afortunado soy. Tengo una piedra de toque, Soy tan afortunado en el mundo, tengo la piedra de toque”.

Se iba, pero afortunadamente la reacción vino a su mente. “Esta es un verdadera piedra de toque, pero porqué ese hombre Sanātana Goswāmī, ha sido tan negligente de ponerla entre la basura? ¿Cómo es posible? No puedo creer que este objeto pueda ser tratada con tal negligencia, ¿por qué?”

Entonces, un segundo pensamiento llegó hasta él, en el corazón de ese afortunado brāhmaṇa, “Ha de tner algo mucho más grande, elevado, para poder desechar este objeto”. El segundo pensamiento en su mente “Ha de poseer alguna substancia más elevada”

Y entonces una tercera etapa, llegó a pensar, “He encontrado un santo tal y si sólo por esto retrocedo, me estoy engañando a mí mismo. Es una prueba de que él es un santo de la orden más elevada el hecho de que haya sido negligente de tal modo con esta piedra de toque, odiándola. He hallado esta clase de sādhu, un santo así y si le dejo cometo un grave error en mi vida. Será difícil hallar un santo así en el mundo”.

Entonces regresó, volvió sobre sí mismo y cuando llegó frente a la cabaña de Sanātana, llegó a su zenit. Tiró la piedra de toque al río y cayó a los pies de Sanātana. Y se menciona:

“Tú tienes, estás en posesión de una riqueza tal que no te preocupaste por la piedra de toque como por algo valioso. Quiero esa cosa valiosa de ti. No quiero ser engañado por el valor de esta piedra de toque”. La había tirado al río cayendo a sus pies.

Así las cosas externas, el encanto de las cosas preciosas externas puede conquistarse así. ¡Gaura Hari bol! Esa grandeza externa puede atraer a los auto-engañados.

Kṛṣṇa es tal, no tolera otra competencia, así que no hay alternativa. Kṛṣṇa es la única fortuna, todas las otras cosas de nuestra parafernalia han de ser muy, muy insignificantes. Debemos satisfacernos con eso. Sólo la adoración completa ha de gobernar nuestro corazón. Y no debe haber nada a nuestro alrededor que pueda atraernos, perturbar nuestra concentración hacia Él. Con la excepción de Sus devotos, aquellos que nos ayudaran a ir en la dirección correcta, en dirección a Kṛṣṇa."

Śrīla B.R. Sridhar Dev Goswāmī  Mahārāj

Traducido de la transcripción datada en Mayo del 83.

The Touchstone

The story of Fray Gomez and his miraculous scorpion tells of how a holy man benefits a supplicant with a magic talisman. Shridhar Mahārāja tells a similar story here, but one with a very different ending.

The Touchstone Jewel

You have come to surrender to the beauty of the ideal…

It is an adventure...to explore the spiritual world, the world of humility and humbleness. There is much jewel there. And what jewel we can find in the external surface? We want to be saved from that sort of charm of the external grandeur.

There is a story in Sanatana Goswami's life, which is found in Bhakta-mala, and also Rabindranatha Thakura has written a poem in that connection. There was a village, Mankore, and there was a rich brahmana family, who had many lineage of worship and festival of many religious types. But suddenly they became poor, and the brahmana says: "I am the best of this lineage, I'm so poor that I cannot perform so many festivals that used to be performed here every year."

So, he was a devotee of Mahadeva, Siva, he began to pray very fervently to his lord of heart, Siva, "Please help me that I can keep the glory, the name and fame of my ancestors."

Then in dream he got some suggestion, "Go to Vrndavana, there is Sanatana Goswami, meet him and your aim will be satisfied."

In those days, no train, no bus, only by walking the thousand miles the brahmana went to meet Sanatana in Vrndavana.

Then anyhow, on the banks of Yamuna, he found Sanatana in a hut and taking the Name of Krsna. He met him and told his own things.

Then after giving hearing to him, Sanatana told: "Brahmana, it was true that previously when I was Prime Minister to Bengal, I gave many things to many brahmanas, satisfied them. But now you find me I am a beggar."

"Yes, I see your condition. But how can I think that my lord, Siva, he has frustrated me, cheated me, I can't think like that."

"But what can I do? You see me."

"Yes, I see your position." Then, disappointed, the brahmana is coming away.

Then Sanatana Goswami suddenly, something came in his mind. "O brahmana, come, come. Siva has not disappointed you. You see there is some rubbish gathered together. I think that one very bright stone was found one day and I put it there. That may be the touchstone and if it is so then Siva has given you dream rightly."

The brahmana removing the rubbishes found a bright stone.

"It may be the touchstone. You take it and all your difficulty will be removed."

The brahmana took it. "How fortunate I am. Siva, my lord has guided me to a proper place and I have got it."

And now going he was always thinking, "It maybe ordinary glass also, but I must find some iron." And when searching he found a small iron nail and took it and touched and it converted into gold. "Oh, how fortunate I am, I have got a touchstone, I'm so fortunate in the world, I've got the touchstone."

He's going, but fortunately the reaction came in his mind. "This is really touchstone but why that man Sanatana Goswami, he so neglectfully put it in the rubbish? How is it possible? It can't be thought out that this thing should be so much neglectfully dealt, why?"

Then the next, second thought came to him, in the heart of that fortunate brahmana, "He must have something more greater, higher, then he could neglect this thing." The second thought came in his mind, "He's in possession of something higher, substance."

And then the third stage he came to think that, "I have found such a saint and if I go back only with this then I am deceiving myself. It is a proof that he's a saint of the highest order that he could neglect this touchstone in such a way, hatefully. I have found such a sadhu, such a saint, and if I leave him then I commit a great mistake in my life. It will be difficult to find such a saint in the world."

So he came back, retraced, and when came in the front of the cottage of Sanatana, then it came to its zenith. He threw away that touchstone into the river and fell on the feet of Sanatana. And it is mentioned:

"You have got, you are in possession of such a wealth that you did not care a touchstone to be a valuable thing. I want that valuable thing from you. I don't like to be deceived by this touchstone, valuable thing." He threw it to the water and fell at his feet.

So external things, the charm of the external precious things can be conquered in this way. Gaura Hari bol! The grandeur can attract the self-deceivers.

Krsna is such, He does not tolerate any second competition, so no alternative. Krsna is the only wealth, all other things in our paraphernalia should be very, very insignificant. We should be satisfied with that. Only the whole adoration He should command from our heart. And there should not be anything around us which may attract us, disturb our concentration towards Him. Only with the exception of His devotees, those that will help me towards right direction, towards the direction of Krsna.

Srila B.R. Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj
Transcript dated as May 83