Easy Journey to the hellish Planets

[suchandra 1]

June/July and Jagannath

 

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Propelled violently, the delicate form of HH Bhakti Charu Swami managed to keep its feet. Behind him glared the Orissan policeman who had so savagely hurled him away from the Rathayatra carts. A few minutes earlier, that same human bulldozer had punched HH Indradyumna Swami in the nose, knocking off his glasses. No need for further demoniac endeavours—this security man had certainly guaranteed himself an easy journey to the hellish planets.

 

Materially we’re in Puri, a small city of 125,000, near Bhubaneshwar, the capital of Orissa, on the central east coast of India. Spiritually, however, we’re in Sri Purushottama-kshetra, also known as Niladri or Nilacala—the famous home of Lord Jagannatha and His mandira. It’s Rathayatra day. Our small party had special passes allowing our presence in the special cordoned area where the Rath carts waited for the Deities to arrive from the Jagannath Temple nearby.

 

Their Holinesses Radhanatha Swami, Indradyumna Swami, Sacinandana Swami, Bhakti Charu Swami, as well as Pankajangahi Prabhu, Jananivas Prabhu, and I were eager for a close-up. When Sri Jagannath, Sri Baladeva, and Srimati Subhadra would emerge and mount their chariots, we wanted to be right at their lotus feet. But, as thousands of people watched from the rooftops and streets, the Orissan police were determined to deny us this spiritual delight. We could withstand broiling in the 38-degree tropical sun, but the police’s verbal and physical assaults drove us away. We finally retreated to seats in buildings overlooking the carts.

 

“Foreigners and Indians aligned with them still aren’t appreciated in Puri by the powers-that-be,” my young assistant Krishnagraja das, a Mayapur gurukula graduate, explained to me. He reasoned that the antipathy stemmed back to the British colonizers’ looting the Jagannath temple of the Deities’ jewels and dispatching the booty to London.

 

True, a few hundred years ago, British propaganda had wickedly smeared the Jagannath Temple and its worshipable Lord. Attacking Sri Jagannath as "a frightful visage painted black, with a distended mouth of bloody horror," the British Crown distributed their bigotry in publications throughout the world. You can just imagine how Rathayatra sent them even more into a tizzy. Shocked by the annual grand procession of “the horrible, bloodthirsty idol,” the British, from the sacred name Jagannath, then coined the term "juggernaut." Now a normal word in the English language, the Random House Unabridged Dictionary reveals the deep misunderstanding and prejudice sustained from India’s colonial past into the 21st century.

 

Juggernaut:

 

1. any large, overpowering, destructive force or object, as war, a giant battleship, or a powerful football team.

 

2. anything requiring blind devotion or cruel sacrifice.

 

3. Also called Jagannath. an idol of Krishna, at Puri in Orissa, India, annually drawn on an enormous cart under whose wheels devotees are said to have thrown themselves to be crushed.

 

Don’t, however, blame all the ignorance and malpractice on the British. Who now controls many of India’s most venerable and majestic temples? The Indian government. Millions of pious pilgrims still flock to the oldest and largest temples, depositing en total huge sums of money for the worship of the Deity. The state governments then misspend the Deity’s divine funds as they like, for mundane projects and political pockets.

 

Safe from the Orissan police surrounding the carts, Bhakti Charu Swami and I watched the transcendental pageantry of Rathayatra from a roof directly overlooking Sri Baladeva’s cart. We humbly gazed to our heart’s content as the pandas (caste brahmins who serve the Deities) bore Sri Baladeva, then Srimati Subhadra, and finally Sri Jagannath from the temple to their thrones on their chariots. We saw the King of Orissa enact the ritual of sweeping the floor of the carts, and we also watched the elderly acarya, the sannyasi head, of the local Shankaracarya lineage, surrounded by an official police honour guard, board each cart to perform ceremonies to the Deities.

 

Yes, the irony has to be tolerated. The modern followers of Lord Caitanya, the greatest devotee of Lord Jagannath, are denied close access to the Deities. HH Indradyuma Swami, who has enacted ecstatic Rathayatras in many cities of the world, is punched in the face, trying to see Sri Jagannathadeva. Meanwhile a staunch lifelong Mayavadi impersonalist is given carte blanche—the royal carpet straight up the carts to the Deities’ thrones.

 

Lord Caitanya has declared that because the Mayavadi impersonalists misrepresent Vedic knowledge, they are the greatest offenders to the Supreme Lord. Quoting the Gita (16.9), Srila Prabhupada points out to us: “Life in demoniac species awaits the Mayavadi philosophers after death because they are envious of Krishna.” (Cc. Adi 7.130)

 

We want to subordinate ourselves to the Lord; the Mayavadi leader, however, actually thinks he is Sri Jagannath! His concocted notion is that by his worshipping the Lord, he worships himself, because all is one, and any apparent individuality—whether of the Lord or us—is maya, an illusion to be overcome by austere spiritual practices and Vedantic study. Beaming with imaginary self-satisfaction that by his seeing the Deity, he has just seen himself, the elderly swami, amidst his reverent police escort, finally leaves the scene. Then amidst roars from hundreds of thousands of onlookers, finally, one after the other, the chariots of Sri Jagannath, Sri Baladeva, and Srimati Subhadra begin to roll.