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Musala lila - The meaning of the Yadus disappearance



Jagat - Thu, 21 Jul 2005 00:45:00 +0530
I came across the following passage in Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati's Vivriti to the Eleventh Canto (11.6.22)

This story of the brahmin’s curse which led to the destruction of the Yadu dynasty marks the end of Krishna lila, which is dominated by the principle of union. No such destructive curse appears in Gaura lila, which is centered around the principle of separation. Even so, there is still no indication that any kind of blood line of descendance came through Chaitanya Mahaprabhu or any of his associates.

Nityananda Prabhu, the incarnation of Balaram, had only one son, Virabhadra Prabhu, who had no children, but spread his teachings through initiated disciples, in accordance with the Varnashram system. Similarly, with the one exception of Achyutananda, Advaita Acharya Prabhu did not make any of his own children particularly qualified in the matter of devotional service. And, though there was no external apocalypse in the Avatar's and his companions' blood lines, as there was in the case of Krishna lila, many of the descendants of these associates of the Lord were cursed to become so involved with mundane society that they themselves were deprived of this supreme goal.

When Gaurasundar went to see Advaita Prabhu in Shantipur, he passed through the village of Lalitpur where a bearded sannyasi lived. There he engaged in the lila of asking this sannyasi for a blessing. His purpose was to show the people of this world that there is no need to ask anyone for blessings in order to have any kind of material benefit, all of which simply reveals one's worldly intent. But many of those who claim to have taken shelter of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in fact interact with a society that has no interest in the Lord’s devotional service. By so doing, they become subject to a "brahmin’s curse" and fall into inauspiciousness.

Furthermore, they demand to be treated as though they were on the same level as the Supreme Lord himself, by which they show themselves to be different from the true devotees, who think of themselves as tadIya, as his servants. Thus, in other sampradayas, particularly that of Vishnuswami, we observe the concept that all disciples in the succession are family descendants or the eternal children of the founder acharya. It is this same idea that led Vrindavan Das Thakur to use the words sa-putrAya (“with his sons”) when paying his obeisances to Mahaprabhu, who did not have any children.


That verse is from Chaitanya Bhagavata (1.1.2)--

namas trikAla-satyAya jagannAtha-sutAya ca
sa-bhRtyAya sa-putrAya sa-kalatrAya te namaH


There are a lot of empty spaces in the above paragraphs, but the reasoning may be given as follows--

The purpose of the destruction of the Yadu dynasty was so that there would be no descendants of Krishna. Bhaktisiddhanta makes this point elsewhere: Krishna was afraid that his descendants would abuse their relationship with him. By claiming to be his descendants and claiming political power, they would bring his name into disrepute.

So, by this token, he argues that there could be no claims of "physical" descendence from Krishna Chaitanya or the other Prabhus.

I don't really know what his purpose is in distinguishing between Krishna lila and Gaura lila as yoga/vipralambha respectively, and what this has to do with the question of descendance. There seems to be a lot of viraha in Krishna lila, and Mahaprabhu is Radha and Krishna united, whatever happens when he is in Radha bhava. But even if the premise (Rasa is the essence of Krishna lila, ergo union; Mahaprabhu in Puri is the image of Radha after Krishna has left Vrindavan), how does that related to the institutionalization of the sampradaya after their departure.

Whatever the case, is there any other lesson to be drawn from this lila? B.R. Sridhar in particular liked to compare the situation post-BSS to the Musala-parva. I was just thinking of some things I wrote a few years ago (Speculations on Srila Prabhupada's succession plans (scroll down)). Today the idea came to me that it was like that Musala--one piece of lead that fragmented into a thousand pieces--like a pressure cooker that explodes and splatters all over the wall. It's a way of spreading the food around.