The Authenticity Of Spiritual Places
Pilgrimages can enhance our devotion to the Lord, provided we go to authorized holy places, and in the proper mood.
by Satsvarūpa Dāsa Goswami
WHEN ŚRĪ CAITANYA Mahāprabhu—Kṛṣṅa Himself in the role of His own devotee—was present on earth five hundred years ago, He sometimes traveled to holy places, or tīrthas. Not only did He tour South India, but He traveled to Vṛndāvana, Lord Kṛṣṅa's eternal abode on earth. When Lord Caitanya was about to leave for Vṛndāvana, King Pratāparudra ordered his servants and soldiers to accompany the Lord, to make His path easier and especially to erect monuments at each place the Lord stopped. It is said that anyone who visits places where Lord Caitanya stopped even briefly will receive great benefit from such tīrthas.
Wherever the Lord went, tremendous crowds of pious people followed Him to get a glimpse of Him and receive His blessings. He was always merciful to the people, but sometimes He would escape without their knowledge and go on to the next place.
Rāghava Paṅḍita, seeing the great crowds following the Lord, took the Lord away to his house. The Lord stayed at Rāghava Paṅḍita’s place for one day. The next morning He went to Kumārahaṭṭa.
Śrīla Prabhupāda writes:
From Kumārahaṭṭa, Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu went to Kāñcanapallī (also known as Kāṅcaḍāpāḍā), where Śivānanda Sena lived. After staying two days at Śivānanda’s house, the Lord went to the house of Vāsudeva Datta. From there He went to the western side of Navadvīpa, to the village called Vidyānagara. From Vidyānagara He went to Kuliyā-grāma and stayed at Mādhava Dāsa’s house. He stayed there one week and excused the offenses of Devānanda and others. Due to Kavirāja Gosvāmī’s mentioning the name of Śāntipurācārya, some people think that Kuliyā is a village near Kāṅcaḍāpāḍā. Due to this mistaken idea, they invented another place known as New Kuliyāra Pāṭa. Actually such a place does not exist. Leaving the house of Vāsudeva Datta, Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu went to the house of Advaita Ācārya. From there He went to the western side of Navadvīpa, to Vidyānagara, and stayed at the house of Vidyāvācaspati. These accounts are given in the Caitanya-bhāgavata, Caitanya-maṅgala, Caitanya-candrodaya-nāṭaka, and Caitanya-carita-kāvya. Śrīla Kavirāja Gosvāmī has not vividly described this entire tour; therefore, on the basis of Caitanya-caritāmṛta, some unscrupulous people have invented a place called Kuliyāra Pāṭa near Kāṅcaḍāpāḍā. (Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya 16.205, Purport)
From this information we can understand that some so-called holy places are not authentic. What, then, constitutes an actual holy place?
Before Śrīla Prabhupāda's arrival in the West, we knew very little of holy places. We knew that a church or synagogue was meant to be a holy place, and we may have had a conception that the heart was meant to be a holy place, the seat of God. We may have even known of what is called the Holy Land in the Middle East. But we certainly knew nothing of the holy places in India, or of the details that made a place holy in the first place.
Often it is difficult to ascertain the exact location of a tīrtha. It is too easy, especially with the influx of comparatively naive Western pilgrims to India, for people to create a holy place to bring in money. Vaiṣṅavas and others, however, usually contest the authenticity of such places.
Qualifications Of A Holy Place
The main qualification for a place to become holy is that the Lord or His pure devotee appeared or had pastimes there. For Gauḍīya Vaiṣṅavas, followers of Lord Caitanya, Vṛndāvana and Māyāpur are the main tīrthas. In the present age, Kali-yuga, holy places tend to become covered by the material energy, so it is sometimes difficult to understand the mood of such places.
Even when a holy place is established as authentic, the question still must be raised as to our own eligibility to understand its mood. A holy place must be approached with the proper spiritual attitude and humility if we are to gain anything by visiting it.
Nowadays, devotees in the Hare Kṛṣṅa movement are more concerned with the question of how to define holy places because they are living in places established by Śrīla Prabhupāda, not only in India but in the West. Are ISKCON temples holy places? Most of the land now owned by ISKCON was once owned by persons with no intention of its becoming a tīrtha. We usually cannot claim that the site of a temple has historical integrity as a tīrtha. Its claim to holy place status must be based on something else.
Several things constitute a tīrtha:
1. Devotees must have performed (or be performing) spiritual activities in the place, and the tīrtha must be visited by sadhus, saintly persons. In fact, the Vedic scriptures state that a person who visits even the historically bona fide places of pilgrimage only to take bath is no better than a cow or an ass. Visiting a tīrtha means associating with the saintly persons in attendance. Cāṅakya Paṅḍita warns that we should avoid a place devoid of saintly persons. And a place bereft of talk of Kṛṣṅa, or God, and service to Him cannot claim holy place status.
2. By visiting a tīrtha we should feel enlivened in our Kṛṣṅa consciousness; the tīrtha should carry that potency.
3. The chanting of the holy names must be present as a prominent feature of the tīrtha. Concurrent with that should be deity worship. Śrīla Prabhupāda told us that as he established the various deities around the world, he worried that his disciples would begin to feel the worship as a “burden in the neck.” But if the deity worship is going on uninterrupted and the devotees in the area are taking shelter of the deity, then that place is holy.
4. Prabhupāda defined a holy place as wherever the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam was being honored. That might be in a large temple or under a tree, and it may be in India or elsewhere, but wherever there is respectful and repeated reading of the Bhāgavatam, that place becomes holy.
Obstacles To Pilgrimage
Devotees sometimes wonder if there are ever any reasons not to visit a particular holy place. Of course, travel is always inconvenient. One inconvenience may be political. Holy places may suddenly be subject to political division, which can make them difficult or even impossible to visit. What was once part of India later became part of East Pakistan, then Bangla-desh. If there is political dispute between the two countries, we may not be able to cross borders in the name of spiritual pilgrimage. Political divisions can also cause a holy place to become lost. Just as the Ganges sometimes shifts her course, so tracts of land upon which the Lord performed pastimes can become lost to our sight. Perhaps generations from now, the Lord or His pure devotees will again uncover them and pilgrims will be able to visit them for purification.
Another inconvenience may be our own inability to travel. Another may be our sense of personal disqualification to enter the mood of a tīrtha. Lord Caitanya’s devotees never visited the temples on Govardhana Hill, and it’s questionable whether Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī ever bathed in Radha-kunda. Many of Lord Caitanya’s Navadvīpa followers never went to Vṛndāvana.
Visiting a tīrtha requires qualification. Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura indicates this in his Navadvīpa-bhāva-taraṅga. After mentioning Īśodyāna, which he calls “the Lord’s garden,” he writes that if anyone visits this place in Navadvīpa, he will find only thorns. Still, those with qualified vision will be able to see the Lord’s garden through his descriptions of it. No holy place can actually be “seen” without qualified vision.
While holy places maintain an actual physical integrity, they also maintain an integrity in the descriptions found in devotional literature. During Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta’s time, a conflict ended in Indians killing a British officer and the British lining up their cannons and destroying a temple. Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī noted that although the British thought they had smashed Kṛṣṅa, they had done nothing more than destroy a temple.
If a tīrtha disappears from our vision because of politics or time, we can remember it and see it by submissively reading the scriptures. A tīrtha is revealed by the mercy of a pure devotee and is seen through the ears.
The scriptures also tell us that we are not required to travel the world visiting holy places. There is always the tendency for pilgrimage to turn into wanderlust, which results only in a superficial sightseeing. Although some devotees can sustain a feeling of Kṛṣṅa conscious intensity when on pilgrimage, others are better able to meditate on Kṛṣṅa and His tīrthas while serving in the place assigned to them by their spiritual master. We have limited energy in this lifetime; visiting tīrthas can become an entire service in itself if it is done frequently. Often, our spiritual master has assigned us a service other than pilgrimage, and we make more advancement by following his order than by going to tīrthas.
Narottama Dāsa Ṭhākura has assured us that we can visit all the holy places simply by visiting Vṛndāvana or Māyāpur. He also says that in Kali-yuga, pilgrimage is as much a source of bewilderment as of enlightenment. The real service to a holy place is to meditate upon the event that took place there, and it is just as potent to compose ourselves in our own place, meditate on the significance of the particular place, and to then allow the mood of that place to imbue our service with new life.
Every holy place has an internal reality. We are not always qualified to see it, especially if we remain outsiders to the mood. That is not only true of places like Vṛndāvana and Māyāpur, but in ISKCON temples too. If we wish to really take advantage of the spiritual and historical authenticity of a particular place, we must learn to see with eyes of devotion. When Arjuna and his brothers were being taught archery, only Arjuna was able to see nothing but the eye of the target bird. Only he was successful at hitting the target.
Similarly, we must learn to see to the heart of a place and not focus only on the externals, the apparent faults or shortcomings according to our estimations. We must see the saintly people living there and see a little of their purpose in serving their holy place. If we wish to find the spiritual essence of any holy place, we must learn to appreciate both the service and the mood with which it is offered there. Without that vision, we will always remain outsiders, even in the most spiritually authentic place.
Satsvarūpa Dāsa Goswami, one of Śrīla Prabhupāda's first disciples, is a former editor of BTG and the author of many books on Kṛṣṅa consciousness, including a six-volume biography of Śrīla Prabhupāda.