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Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #46 – The Mind of Śrīla Prabhupāda — Part One

November 11th, 2024

I hope the title doesn’t seem too presumptuous, but it was the best I could come up with in terms of this week’s topic. Let me explain. First, some background.

 

A few years ago, I began to lecture on Brahmā-vimohana-līlā from the thirteenth chapter of the Tenth Canto of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. As I was finishing the chapter and marveling at the depth of some of its long purports, a question arose in my mind. Was there anything special about this chapter that impelled Śrīla Prabhupāda to dictate such a comprehensive commentary on it? It seemed an almost impossible task for one bed-ridden, at the very end of life and in significant pain.

 

As I considered whether there is some special significance to the story that may have inspired Śrīla Prabhupāda to make an almost superhuman effort to complete it, the first thing that caught my eye was the special position of the Brahmā-vimohana-līlā. It is the last pastime in Krishna’s kaumāra-līlā (age 1-5), the first of Krishna’s three age divisions, preceding paugaṇḍa (age 6-10), and kaiśora (age 11-15). Did Śrīla Prabhupāda push himself so that at least one age division was nearly complete before he left? I think there was something even more urgent on his mind that inspired him.

 

The Brahmā-vimohana-līlā, perhaps more than any other story in the Bhāgavatam, vividly establishes an extremely essential siddhānta (philosophical conclusion)—the topmost position of the divinity of God as a simple cowherd boy, Śrī Krishna.

 

Lord Brahmā had witnessed the power of Krishna in killing the Aghāsura demon. Shortly after, in contrast, he witnessed Krishna having a picnic with His friends. A doubt then arose in his mind about the position of Krishna, and that doubt is expressed in the simple phrase yajña-bhug bāla–keliḥ—is the young cowherd boy Krishna yajña-bhuk, the omnipotent lord who accepts all the innumerable offerings of sacrifice, or is he just bāla-keli, a simple boy playing with friends? To find out he decides to test Krishna by stealing all the cowherd boys and calves and hiding them in his lair. When he quickly returns to Vrindavan, however, he is shocked. Not only are all the cowherd boys and calves somehow exactly in the place where he had just stolen them, but each of them demonstrates that they are expansions of Krishna by manifesting an overwhelming display of aiśvarya (opulence or power). Temporarily blinded by the effulgence of those Viṣṇu forms he becomes stunned. When he finally regains his consciousness and with great difficulty opens his eyes, he again sees sweet Krishna standing alone in Vrindavan just as before, as a simple village cowherd boy with a morsel of food in his hand searching everywhere for the calves and his cowherd friends. Now fully realizing that the yajña-bhuk (the omnipotent Lord) is bāla-keli, this simple cowherd boy, he becomes overwhelmed with ecstasy, bathes Krishna’s lotus feet with his tears of joy, and offers prayers.

 

So that is the background information for our conjecture about what was in Śrīla Prabhupāda’s mind that led him to use the last drop of his strength and acumen to complete his commentary on this pastime. I will offer what I think Śrīla Prabhupāda was thinking:

 

“Historically, and even today, Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism has been plagued by sahajiyism where devotees impose their material conceptions on the pastimes of Radha-Krishna līlā. In the very next pastime after Brahmā-vimohana-līlā in Chapter Fifteen, Krishna enters the age of paugaṇḍa and his relationship with the gopīs is first introduced. I am concerned that my young disciples may misunderstand those pastimes. Let me therefore at least finish this important pastime that so forcefully demonstrates that the yajña-bhuk is the bāla-keli. So with all my strength let me push on to complete the kaumāra-līlā to give my disciples just one more important tool to help inoculate them from common misunderstanding of thinking of Krishna as mundane when His love of the gopīs is introduced in the next pastime.”

 

And that’s what I think was in the mind of Śrīla Prabhupāda when he pushed himself to complete against all odds the Brahmā-vimohana-līlā.

 

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