Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur Prabhupada
It is painful to see people wasting their valuable time in no better work than mischievous, ill-conceived criticisms of others’ conduct. They excel only in giving advice to others. Their damned mind is, no doubt, responsible for this. So, every morning, on rising from bed, they should make their wicked mind hear the following immortal song of Thakur Bhaktivinode:
bhaja re bhaja re āmāra mana ati manda (bhaja) vraja-vane rādhā-krsna-caranāravinda (bhaja) gaura-gadādhara advaita guru-nityānanda (smara) śrīnivāsa haridāsa murāri mukunda (smara) rūpa-sanātana-jīva-raghunātha-dvandva (smara) rāghava-gopāla-bha a-svarūpa-rāmānanda (smara) gosthi-saha karnapūra sena śivānanda (smara) rūpānuga sādhu-jana bhajana-ānanda.
In this song, the mind is asked, first of all, to hold bhajan of Radha-Krishna (in their joyful activity) in the sacred woodland of Vraja. In comparative view, the degrees of excellence of the five rasas, from mādhurya (consorthood) to śānta (the state in which active service is wanting), are gradually lowering. A servitor in the last mentioned position (i.e., śānta-rasa) is neither actively engaged in bhajan nor against it. He will neither oppose bhajan nor actively hold it. Now, bhajan or bhakti may be of different kinds. There is such a thing as michā-bhakti, false bhakti, as opposed to śuddha-bhakti, unalloyed bhakti. The adherents of karma, who are followers of smriti, take recourse to the former. In Prema-bhakti-candrikā 6.18, Thakur Narottama Das warns us against such false bhakti by saying: karmi, jnani, micha-bhakta, na habe tate anurakta, Áuddha-bhajanete kara mana .Don’t absorb your thoughts in the fruitive worker, the philosopher, or the hypocritical devotee. Fix your mind in pure bhajana. The cult of the so-called social reformers (or society makers) of the past or present age is quite different from the ideas and principles of bhaktas. The followers of the former are engaged, at present, in various movements relating to personal advantages and self-enjoyment. Those agitators who, leaving aside all considerations of bhakti, are busily engaged in movements for temporal advantages only are doing harm to themselves. And their failure to serve Krishna, who is the emporium, or rather effigy, of all endless, immeasurable nectar of love, joys and pleasures, bespeaks simply of their ignorance of the real state ofaffairs. Such desistance of service to Krishna gradually turns a man into an upholder of nirviśesa-vāda, the doctrine of the unspecifiedness of the absolute truth. What can be more deplorable than such misfortune of mankind? To counteract the afore said tendencies in us, we should sing, every morning, advising our wicked mind to hold bhajan, which is impossible if we are unmindful of the dictum: trinād api su-nīcena taror iva sahisnunā amāninā māna-dena kīrtanīya sadā hari. Which means that hari-kīrtana should be continued ceaselessly and with the humility of low grass. What is the object of our bhajan? It is only the holy feet of Radha-Krishna, roaming about freely in the woodland of Vraja. And what should be our line of conduct in holding bhajan? Mahaprabhu’s advice to Srila Das Goswami [Cc. antya 6.236-237], in this connection, is as follows:
grāmya-kathā nā śunibe, grāmya-vārtā nā kahibe bhāla nā khāibe āra bhāla nā paribe amānī mānada hañā krsna-nāma sadā la’be vraje rādhā-krsna-sevā mānase karibe.
Have no worldly talk, nor pay heed to it, Wear no good clothes, nor rich food eat, Have krsna-nāma always, humbly, on your tongue, Serve Radha-Krishna in the closet of the mind. In the aforesaid verse, the first two advices are in the negative and the remaining two are in the affirmative. By “vraja-seva”, Mahaprabhu meant service to Krishna by one who has a transcendental body and whose self-realization is complete. People ignorant of this generally turn into mental speculators, and cannot rightly understand the teachings of the Gaudiya Math.
From an evening lecture at the Calcutta Gaudiya Math. 12 July 1936