Giriraj Swami

The following are talks from a program to welcome deities of Gaura-Nitai and Jagannath, Baladeva, and Subhadra into the home of Probeer and Nivedita Banerjee.

“Tonight we had the opportunity to see the Lord being bathed. Who can bathe the Lord? Only a devotee can do that. And who can cook for Krishna? One time I was listening to a lecture by Srila Prabhupada and he said, ‘Krishna doesn’t need your halava. He has much, much better halava in the spiritual world. But you need to offer your halava to Krishna because you need His mercy. You need the blessings of Krishna.’

“So, we get the opportunity to understand the Personality of Godhead by rendering Him service.” — Rtadhvaja Swami

Rtadhvaja Swami
Giriraj Swami

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This talk was given by Giriraj Swami, on  Gadadhara Pandita’s appearance day, at the “Simple Living, High Thinking” gathering at Alberto Duran’s home.

“One thing led me to the next, and I finally came to Srila Prabhupada and the Bhagavad-gita. I gradually came to understand that most of what I had been reading was speculation. The basic speculation, or artificial conception, was that we could be happy in the material world. Many of the authors that I was reading were proposing techniques to make you happy in the material world and to make you believe that everything was all right. One common theme with some of the authors was living in the moment — not living in the past or the future. I came to see this as a kind of speculation, because it’s not practical. It came to me that if I have to cross the street I can’t just be living in the moment without thinking about the future. I have to calculate. ‘There’s a car coming. Am I going to make it safely across the street before the car reaches?’ I realized that it’s not an absolute principle, because it doesn’t work in every situation. It’s good when are you chanting, for example, to be in the moment and not thinking about the past or future. But as a philosophy it was not practical.”

05.09.13_Houston

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Giriraj Swami read and spoke from Srimad-Bhagavatam 2.4.18 at a Bhakti Vriksha program in the Dallas area.

“You can go to the temple. You can hear the holy names of Krishna, which are Krishna. You can hear the talks about Krishna, which are Krishna You can see the deity of Krishna, which is Krishna. So, you are associating with Krishna. But the association of those associated with Krishna is even more beneficial, because by associating with them you can learn about the process of bhakti-yoga and take up the practice. And we see that happening in this group. People walk in the door and are chanting zero rounds, and now they are chanting sixteen rounds — by the association of devotees. Bhagavat-sangi-sangasya. The same applies to stri-sangi, or yosit-sangi — but in a contrary, deleterious way.”

SB 2.4.18 Home Program, Dallas

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Giriraj Swami read and spoke from Srimad-Bhagavatam 10.36.16.

“Certainly Radha-kunda is a most sacred place. During the eightfold daily pastimes (asta-kaliya-lila) of Sri Radha and Krishna, They meet at Radha-kunda in the afternoon and enjoy various pastimes. Krishna will take the cows to pasture on Govardhan Hill and then on some pretext he will arrange to leave the cowherd boys and cows and steal away to Radha-kunda with some confidential friends and meet Radharani and Her girlfriends and enjoy various pastimes there. Almost all our great acharyas established bhajana-kutiras at Sri Radha-kunda.”

Srimad-Bhagavatam 10.36.16

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tyaktva su-dustyaja-surepsita-rajya-laksmim
dharmistha arya-vacasa yad agad aranyam
maya-mrgam dayitayepsitam anvadhavad
vande maha-purusa te caranaravindam

“O Maha-purusa, I worship Your lotus feet. You have given up the goddess of fortune and all her opulence, which is most difficult to renounce and is hankered after by even the great demigods. Being the most faithful follower of the path of religion, You thus left for the forest in obedience to a brahmana’s curse. Out of sheer mercifulness You chased after the fallen conditioned souls, who are always in pursuit of the false enjoyment of illusion, and at the same time engaged in searching out Your own desired object, Lord Syamasundara.” (Srimad-Bhagavatam 11.5.34)

“This verse applies to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Lord Krishna, and Lord Ramachandra and thus relates to the sad-bhuja murti. And as Srila Prabhupada explained in the previous purport we read, about Lord Rama, ‘Lord Sri Ramacandra is so kind and merciful to His devotees that He is very easily satisfied by a little service rendered by anyone, human or not. This is the special advantage of worshiping Lord Ramacandra, and there is the same advantage in worshiping Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. . . . All the incarnations of the Supreme Personality of Godhead—but especially Lord Ramacandra, Lord Krsna, and, later, Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu—delivered many of the living entities present before Them, indeed almost all of them. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu is therefore represented in the six-armed form of sad-bhuja-murti, which is a combination of Lord Ramacandra, Lord Krsna, and Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. The best purpose of human life can be fulfilled by worshiping the sad-bhuja-murti, the form of the Lord with six arms—two arms of Ramacandra, two arms of Krsna, and two arms of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu (SB 5.19.9 purport).’ ”

Sad-bhuja: Gaura, Krishna, and Rama in One

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