Purushottam Month Blog, Day 1

Yesterday I was reading a little book that was lying around, Amar Gurudeb, about Siddha Manohar Das Babaji of Govinda Kund. Manohar Das lived from 1847 to 1947, but spent the last fifty years of his life at Govinda Kund by Govardhan. There is of course a lot to say, but most of it I will just pass over for the time being. Nitai Das has apparently translated this into English, so I would recommend it to everyone. 

Manohar Das was a renounced sadhu of extreme accomplishment. He gave up eating and sleeping to an extreme degree reducing both almost to nothing. He chanted seven lakhs of Harinam every day, an almost impossible achievement. Needless to say, he chanted almost all day and night. Tinkori Baba, his vesh disciple, also followed his example in renunciation and commitment to the Name and chanted far beyond what most mortals are capable of.

My own Gurudeva is said to have chanted a similar number of Holy Names. I have seen that when I chant a lot and to do it mentally rather than vocally, time goes by much faster and one does more in less time without losing quality. This phenomenon has been observed in different people’s practice also, and I remember Swami Veda Bharati even demonstrating (as much as it can be demonstrated), saying that he had learned the method from Swami Rama.

For the past many years I have been chanting the bare minimum of sixteen rounds, which Is 25,000 names or a quarter of a lakh, but this is actually a pitiful number for one who has received as much grace in my life. This only takes me about 75-90 minutes. But I have admittedly been painfully weak in my practice over the years. Spending time on the computer means getting distracted all too easily, especially by YouTube and all the hypnotizing glitter of the infinite aspects of the worldly life that are so easily available on it, and which can be experienced passively.

Reading about Manohar Das refreshed dormant memories in me from the days when I was younger and more spiritually ambitious. My friend Gadadhar Pran Das also spends a lot of time chanting. He tells me that he chants three lakhs every day, but he does so in about six hours. Gadadhar is very focused on vratas. He divides his months into two halves, the white half and the dark half, and follows a different schedule in each. The Shukla-paksha is generally the period in which he chants more, the Krishna paksha when he writes more. He even wrote me recently and said, "You should go and stay in Birnagar and follow Prabhu's example and chant at least three lakhs every day." 

Since I gave up my renounced life, I have not been particularly assiduous about bhajan, not even after coming to Vrindavan. I have been keeping busy in other ways, mostly with the Grantha Mandir and editing Babaji’s Sandarbhas. The commitment to the Holy Name, which is the principal feature of the Gaudiya Vaishnava sampradaya, has been somewhat lax. I think I took Hariram Vyas’s statement that if one simply takes shelter of Kumari Radha, one can relax, lie down and stretch one’s legs. In other words, living in Vrindavan is enough, even without any effort one reaps great benefit just from the dust itself.

Though it is true, it is recognizably a copout to me. At this stage in my life, getting serious primarily means serious about chanting. After all, Radharani’s mercy means bhajan. In one nice passage in the life of Manohar Das Baba, the author Nabadwip Das writes:

All the disciples gathered in front of the deities. We put an asan for Gurudeva and sat down after him. The others looked at me to be their mouthpiece and so I said what was in their minds. “Gurudeva, the bhaktas are saying that they are doing bhajan, but without the mercy of the Guru, nothing can come of it. So they beg you to please be merciful to them.” When he heard this Maharajji said, “Mercy is already there. Be persistent in your bhajan. There is no point to asking for mercy while not doing any bhajan. The effort made to get mercy is what bhajan is. When God’s energy in the form of kripa descends on the jiva, his life of bhajan begins. And through bhajan one gets direct experience of that mercy. Absorption of the mind in Bhagavan is called bhajan, and through such absorption one experiences His mercy.

After that, on the insistence of the disciples who refused to be brushed off with this answer, he gave an elaborate discourse on kripa, of which unfortunately Nabadwip Das only gives the barest outline. But Manohar Das’s answer did strike a chord with me. Here I am in Vrindavan, so much kripa, and where is my bhajan? It really is time to get serious.

At the same time, I became aware that Purushottam month was about to begin. [It begins today on the 18^th]. Purushottam month is inserted as an extra month every three years to make up the shortfall that comes when one follows the lunar calendar rather than the solar. That comes to about ten days every year, so every three years, a full month of days accumulates that has to be caught up with. If not, one arrives at the situation that comes with the Muslim calendar where the months have no relation to the seasons of the year and can come at any time, winter or summer. Purushottam month has no feasts or festivals. If a sadhu leaves his body in Purushottam month, which may be inserted at different places in the year, his tithi is celebrated in the month prior.

Brahmins call this month “impure” (mala-māsa), but for the Vaishnavas it is considered to be a particularly holy month and often special month-long events like unbroken kīrtana or pāṭha, etc., are organized during this time. It falls in the chaturmasya period and immediately precedes Karttik, so it is certainly a good time to engage in a special vrata of some kind.

As I intimated above, I have never really been particularly good with vratas. I start with fury, but usually wimp out fairly rapidly and so have pretty much stopped trying. I have numerous Vaishnava friends and acquaintances who are quite diligent in this respect, Gadadhar Pran Dasji being just one of them. But I think that the time has come for me to take a bit of a vow, so I impetuously wrote on Facebook yesterday that I would observe the three following vows:

1. (1)   I would chant one lakh each day. That does not seem like much, but I intend to sit in one asan for the five or six hours it takes and get back into the habit. Sixteen rounds really is the bare minimum. You barely get started controlling the mind with that measly number, to be honest. So it is time to get serious about this principal anga of Gaudiya Vaishnava bhajan.
2. I am getting back into doing the regular readings from Prīti Sandarbha. I got lax again the last few weeks and have been spending more time on my Sanskrit primer and editing Grantha Mandir texts, mainly Laghu-bhāgavatāmr̥ta and Br̥had-bhāgavatāmr̥ta. I made good progress, but since I stopped the videos, things quickly slowed down to a halt. So my scholarly and intellectual efforts are going back to this important work.
3. The only negative vow I am making is to get off the internet as much as possible. I will do any writing off line and then simply copy and paste it to my blogs and then take a quick look at personal correspondence, but no more of the news and entertainment that has been such a major distraction for me of late.

Last night I had a pretty bad night. I could not sleep. It is hot and muggy. I kept taking showers and sitting under the fan to cool off. I had a headache and ended up sitting in my asan with a wet gamcha wrapped around me from one o’clock to 2:30, then finally fell asleep. But I got up again at 4.30, strangely and unexpectedly refreshed. I did another three hours of japa. 

One thing about Nabadwip Das Baba’s memoir. It is clear just how austere life was in Govardhan at that time. There were frequent epidemics and famines. He describes how disturbing the mosquitoes were. I don’t know what happened to the mosquitoes. There used to be more in Vrindavan than there are now. This Covid business is small potatoes compared to the stuff that used to happen, like in Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s description of the decimation of Ula Birnagar in 1858, or the plague in Kolkata in 1891. These were regular occurrences, which the people of today seem to have forgotten. In this scientific age, we think that human beings can control everything and if something bad happens, human agency must be the cause. Manohar Das followed the golden rule of surrender, śaraṇāpatti. God is the doer and our business is to do bhajan and let him take care of the rest.

I spent a little bit of time on the above-mentioned projects and am now starting back to work on Prīti Sandarbha, though I don’t think I will manage a video today. Nevertheless, I feel encouraged about the next month. This is the way to make the most of Vraja vāsa/


Jai Radhe.