From the Editor
Kṛṣṅa’s Special Form for US
SOME YEARS AGO, when I was the treasurer of our temple outside Washington, D.C., I went to the bank one Friday afternoon as usual, only to find it closed. Puzzled, I asked a woman standing nearby why it wasn’t open.
“Are you living in a hole out there at that Hare Kṛṣṅa place?” she replied. “Don’t you know today’s Good Friday?”
I didn’t say anything, but I thought, “Well, I’m sure you don’t know that last Friday was Gaura Pūrṅimā, the appearance anniversary Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu!”
Gaura Pūrṅimā, along with Janmāṣṭamī, should be the most important day on anyone’s calendar. The greatest misfortune for people today is that they don’t know Lord Caitanya, who came to give them love of God.
Lord Caitanya appeared five hundred years ago to declare that in the present age chanting God’s names is the best way to attain love for God. Today, awakening our God consciousness without reference to Caitanya Mahāprabhu is difficult. Why? Because Lord Caitanya is Kṛṣṅa, or God Himself, the evidence of which can be found throughout the Vedic literature. No doubt that evidence is a little hard to find, and that’s because Kṛṣṅa wanted to protect the secret of His descent: in this age He comes disguised as His own devotee. Still, learned contemporaries of Lord Caitanya discovered many scriptural passages that prove His identity as Kṛṣṅa, and those can be found in authoritative biographies about Him.
Śrīla Prabhupāda points out that in our time, following Caitanya Mahāprabhu can be said to be more important than following Kṛṣṅa. Of course, since They’re the same person, Their instructions are the same. Kṛṣṅa says, “Surrender to Me,” and Lord Caitanya says, “Surrender to Kṛṣṅa.” But Lord Caitanya came to show us exactly how to surrender to Kṛṣṅa. In the Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṅa asked everyone to surrender to Him, but people either misunderstood the order or failed to execute it. So Kṛṣṅa came as Caitanya Mahāprabhu to show us exactly how to surrender.
The essence of Lord Caitanya’s method of surrender is the chanting of Kṛṣṅa’s names. As important for us as chanting the Hare Kṛṣṅa mahā-mantra is chanting the names of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and His chief associates with the mantra jaya śrī-kṛṣṅa-caitanya prabhu nityānanda śrī-advaita gadādhara śrīvasādi-gaura-bhakta-vṛnda. Worshiping the Lord as He appears in the current age is appropriate—or, rather, imperative—because He has come specifically for us.
People in the West hardly know anything about Kṛṣṅa, what to speak of Caitanya Mahāprabhu, but even the people of India, who all know something about Kṛṣṅa, know little or nothing about Lord Caitanya. Many believe He was a sixteenth-century Bengali saint, but He is much more than that.
Lord Caitanya mostly hid His identity as Kṛṣṅa because He had taken on the mood of a devotee of Kṛṣṅa. He showed that love of Kṛṣṅa is so wonderful that Kṛṣṅa becomes His own devotee to taste it. By worshiping Caitanya Mahāprabhu and accepting His teachings, we too can taste the only love that can fully satisfy us.—Nāgarāja Dāsa