Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Toronto, Ontario

HARVARD DR. SPEAKS ON THE KRISHNA MOVEMENT

On the calendar for the Krishna devotee community is something called "Gaura Purnima". It is our actual New Year and commemorates the birth of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. It was he who conducted a demonstration, a peaceful civil disobedience march to oppose the injunction against public chanting. His mission was successful as he was able to capture public sympathy at the turn of the 16th century in West Bengal. What Gandhi was hailed for over four hundred years later, Chaitany had established long before. Gandhi had struggled for national independence, whereas Chaitanya wrestled with political powers over the right to freedom of spiritual expression in a public setting.

Unofficially, the Hare Krishna movement started from here. In the words of Harvard professor, Dr. Diane Eck:

"The Krishna Consciousness movement is part of an important and distinctive tradition of devotional faith, the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition which began in the sixteenth century with the great saint, Sri Chaitanya, but which participates in a much older movement of devotion dating back to at least the second century B.C.

The devotional faith is called bhakti, which means devotion to God, or love of God. Bhakti expresses the relationship between human beings and the Lord. It is a relationship of shared being and of natural love.

The Bhakti tradition found a full expression in the ancient Bhagavad-Gita, 'The Song of the Lord'... and existential dialogue on some of the most deeply significant human questions... What is human life? What is transcendence? How can one be actively engaged in the world without being ensnared by it?"

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