In 1515, after the journey to Vrindavana and the ten days with Rupa Goswami at Prayag, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu came to Varanasi and stayed there for about two months. It was not a comfortable place for Him. Varanasi (Kashi, Benares) was the intellectual capital of Sankara's Vedanta, and it maintained a large and prestigious community of ekadandi sannyasis whose life consisted of meditation and the study of the Vedanta-sutra according to the Sariraka-bhasya. Their leader was Prakashananda Sarasvati. He and his followers had views about the golden sannyasi from Bengal, and they expressed them freely.
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Year | 1515 |
| Place | Varanasi, also called Kashi or Benares |
| Length of stay | About two months |
| Opponent | Prakashananda Sarasvati, leader of the ekadandi sannyasis |
| The charge | An illiterate sannyasi who chants and dances instead of studying Vedanta |
| His hosts | Chandrasekhara and Tapana Mishra |
| Outcome | The sannyasis of Kashi accepted the holy name and the Srimad-Bhagavatam |
The Charges Against the Sannyasi From Bengal #
The charges were specific. This Chaitanya, they said, is an illiterate sannyasi who does not know the duties of His own order. Instead of studying Vedanta He chants and dances in the streets in the company of sentimental people, guided by emotion and not by knowledge. Before He accepted the renounced order, He had been Nimai Pandita, the finest young logician in Nabadwip. Either they did not know this, or they did not think it mattered. When He first passed through the city, Mahaprabhu's response was to smile and say nothing. He did not attend the sannyasis' gatherings or accept their invitations. He ate only at the house of Tapana Mishra, and He stayed with Chandrasekhara, who was a kayastha by caste. This choice itself said something.
The Maharashtrian Brahmana's Invitation #
His two hosts found the situation unbearable. While He was teaching Sanatana Goswami, they came to Him and said that they would rather give up their lives than go on hearing Him insulted. He smiled again and remained silent. Then a brahmana from the Maharashtra country arrived with a plan. He was a devotee who lived in Varanasi, and he had been quietly thinking about the same problem. He had invited every sannyasi in Benares to his house. He knew the Lord never went to anyone else's home, but he asked Him to come. His reasoning was simple. Anyone who saw Chaitanya Mahaprabhu at close range would understand who He was. And if he did not try, he would spend the rest of his life in Varanasi regretting it. The Lord accepted the invitation.
Sitting at the Washing Place #
What happened at that lunch is told at length in the seventh chapter of the Adi-lila of the Chaitanya-charitamrita. It is mentioned again in the twenty-fifth chapter of the Madhya-lila. There Krishnadasa Kaviraja says that he will not repeat himself, but will add what he left out. Mahaprabhu found the assembly of sannyasis already seated. He offered them obeisances, went to wash His feet, and then sat down on the ground at the washing place instead of taking a seat among them. Krishnadasa Kaviraja records that an effulgence came from His body like the light of millions of suns, and that the sannyasis rose. Prakashananda Sarasvati himself came over and called Him forward: why are You sitting in an unclean place? Mahaprabhu answered that He belonged to a lower order of sannyasis and did not deserve to sit with them. Then Prakashananda took Him by the hand and seated Him in the middle of the assembly.
Prakashananda Sarasvati's Challenge #
Then Prakashananda put the challenge politely and directly. He knew who this was. It was Sri Krishna Chaitanya, a disciple of Keshava Bharati, and therefore a member of their own Sankara sampradaya, living in their own city. Why then did He avoid them and refuse even to be seen? Meditation and the study of Vedanta are the whole business of a sannyasi. Why had He abandoned both to chant and dance with fanatics? You look, Prakashananda said, as though you were Narayana Himself; explain why You have adopted the behaviour of low-class people.
What His Spiritual Master Had Told Him #
Mahaprabhu's reply is the most famous single sentence of the encounter, and it is not a counter-argument. My spiritual master, He said, considered Me a fool, and chastised Me. He told Me: You are a fool, You are not qualified to study Vedanta philosophy, and therefore You must always chant the holy name of Krishna, which is the essence of all mantras. He said that simply by chanting one is freed from material existence and comes to see the Lord's lotus feet, and that in this age of Kali there is no religious principle other than the holy name. So, said Mahaprabhu, I have done what I was told.
The Maha-Mantra and the Fifth Goal of Life #
He then described what had followed, and in this way He turned the charge of madness into His argument. Chanting as instructed, He had found Himself laughing, weeping, dancing and singing like a madman. In real alarm He had gone back to His spiritual master to ask what sort of mantra His guru had given Him. His guru had smiled and said that this is the nature of the maha-mantra: whoever chants it develops ecstatic love for Krishna. Religiosity, economic development, sense gratification and liberation are the four goals of human life accepted everywhere. But love of God is a fifth, and beside it the other four are as insignificant as straw in the street. The symptoms that had alarmed Him were perspiration, trembling, tears, a faltering voice and apparent madness. These were the natural signs of that love. So His guru had not corrected Him. Instead, he had ordered Him to continue, and to go out and preach the value of chanting Krishna's name in order to deliver the fallen. Mahaprabhu added that, compared with the ocean of bliss available in the holy name, the happiness of impersonal Brahman realisation is like the water in a canal.
Why Do You Avoid the Vedanta-Sutra #
The assembly was moved by this, and Krishnadasa Kaviraja says their minds changed. But they came back to the main point. There is no objection to Your being a great devotee of Krishna, they said. Everyone is satisfied with that. But why do You avoid the Vedanta-sutra? What is the fault in it?
No Fault in the Sutra, Only in the Commentary #
Mahaprabhu asked permission to answer, and then answered at length. There is no fault in the Vedanta-sutra. The Vedanta-sutra is the word of the Supreme Person Himself, spoken in the form of Vyasadeva, and therefore free of the four defects of ordinary human speech: mistake, illusion, cheating and defective senses. The fault lies in the commentary. Sankaracharya explained the Vedic literature in terms of indirect meanings, and whoever hears such explanations is ruined by them. Mahaprabhu was careful about whom He blamed. He said that Sankaracharya himself is not at fault. Sankaracharya covered the real purport of the Vedas on the order of the Supreme Lord, for a purpose of the Lord's own. It is those who take the Mayavada philosophy as final who lose everything they have gained.
The Errors of Mayavada Philosophy #
He then went through the specific points. They are the same points He had made to Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya at Puri. Taken directly, the Absolute Truth is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He is full of all spiritual opulence, and no one is equal to Him. His body, His name, His fame and His entourage are all spiritual. To hold that the form of Vishnu is a product of the material mode of goodness is the gravest of offences. The living beings are energies, not the energetic (the source of the energies). They are sparks of a blazing fire, not the fire. The scriptures divide the Lord's potencies into the spiritual, the living beings, and nescience (ignorance). Mayavada philosophy takes the tiny living being to be the Absolute Truth itself. This does not raise the soul up. It only hides the glory of God. On creation, Vyasadeva teaches that the cosmos arises by the transformation of the Lord's energy. Sankaracharya supposed that such a transformation would change the Absolute itself, so he would not accept it. He concluded that Vyasadeva had made a mistake, and he put the doctrine of illusion in its place. But a touchstone turns iron into gold without itself being changed. If such an inconceivable potency exists in a stone, why should the Supreme Person not possess one? Illusion belongs to the soul's identification with the body. The world is temporary, not false. And omkara is the basic sound vibration of the Veda, the Supreme in the form of sound. The phrase "you are that" is only secondary. Yet Sankara's followers have made this secondary statement carry the whole weight of the tradition, while covering the main one. In every case, He argued, the Vedic text taken directly is self-evident, and it is the highest evidence. Interpretation destroys that self-evident character.
The Sannyasis Concede the Argument #
The Mayavadi sannyasis' response is one of the more remarkable passages in the Chaitanya-charitamrita, because they admitted a great deal. They told Him that they had no quarrel with His refutation. They said they knew very well that Sankaracharya's juggling of words is imaginary. They accepted it only because they belonged to his school, they said, and it did not satisfy them. Then they said: let us see how well You can explain the sutras in their direct meaning.
The Sutras Explained in Their Direct Meaning #
So He did. Brahman means the greatest, and the greatest is the Supreme Person. He is full in six opulences, the reservoir of all truth and all knowledge, and free of material contamination. To describe Him as impersonal is to deny His spiritual potencies. One who accepts half the truth cannot understand the whole. He is approached only by devotional service, beginning with hearing. Regulated devotional service performed under the direction of a spiritual master awakens the love of God that is already sleeping in the heart. That is the process. And love of God is the fifth and highest goal of life. It is so exalted that, because of it, the infinite Lord makes Himself submissive to a tiny devotee. Every aphorism of the Vedanta-sutra, He concluded, deals with these three subjects and nothing else: one's relationship with the Supreme, the activity by which that relationship is lived, and the goal of life.
The Sannyasis Ask to Be Excused #
When they had heard this, the sannyasis addressed Him as Vedic knowledge personified and asked Him to excuse the offences they had committed in criticising Him. He excused them and gave them the holy name. Then He took His meal sitting among them, and the biographers record this with clear satisfaction.
Prakashananda's Public Retraction #
The Madhya-lila records what happened after this reconciliation. One of Prakashananda's own disciples, a scholar as learned as his guru, stood up in the sannyasis' assembly. He argued at length for Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's position. He said that scholars accept Sankaracharya's interpretations in words, but these do not satisfy the heart, and that in the age of Kali formal renunciation delivers no one. Then the disciple began chanting the name of Krishna. After this Prakashananda Sarasvati himself spoke, and in effect he publicly took back his earlier position. He said that Sankaracharya had explained Vedanta as he did because he was determined to establish monism, and that anyone who wishes to establish his own opinion cannot interpret a scripture directly. He also said that the six schools of Indian philosophy are each busy arguing against the others, and none of them arrives at the Supreme Person. Dry argument cannot reach a final answer, he said, and so the proper course is to follow the mahajanas, the great authorities. The words of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, he said, are a shower of nectar.
Dancing at the Bindu Madhava Temple #
Not long afterwards Mahaprabhu bathed at Panchanada and went to the temple of Bindu Madhava. There the sight of the Deity overwhelmed Him, and He began to dance in the courtyard, with Chandrasekhara, Paramananda Puri, Tapana Mishra and Sanatana Goswami chanting beside Him. Hundreds of thousands of people took up the chanting. Prakashananda heard the sound from nearby, came with his disciples and joined it. When the kirtana stopped, he caught hold of the Lord's feet. Then each of them insisted that he was lower than the other. Mahaprabhu protested that Prakashananda was the spiritual master of the world, and that He was not fit to be the disciple of Prakashananda's disciple. Prakashananda answered that his offences had been removed by touching those feet, and that from then on he would practise devotional service. When Prakashananda described Him as the Supreme Lord, Mahaprabhu objected sharply. He did so on the principle that to identify a fallen conditioned soul with God is a serious offence.
The Bhagavatam as Vyasadeva's Own Commentary #
This time Prakashananda's questions were asked in a completely different spirit. He asked to hear the Brahma-sutra from Him. Mahaprabhu answered that Vyasadeva had explained his own aphorisms, and that his commentary is the Srimad-Bhagavatam. It gives the same purport in eighteen thousand verses. Mahaprabhu traced the chain by which its essence was passed down. Krishna spoke four verses to Brahma, Brahma gave them to Narada, Narada gave them to Vyasadeva, and Vyasadeva expanded them into the Bhagavatam. Mahaprabhu explained those four verses and showed that they contain sambandha, abhidheya and prayojana. He advised Prakashananda to study the Bhagavatam closely, because then the actual meaning of the Brahma-sutra would become clear.
The Atmarama Verse in Sixty-One Ways #
At that point the Maharashtrian brahmana mentioned that Mahaprabhu had recently explained the atmarama verse of the Bhagavatam in sixty-one different ways. This is the verse stating that even those who are entirely self-satisfied are drawn to the loving service of Krishna. The assembly was astonished and asked to hear these explanations, and He gave them again. Everyone present concluded that this was Krishna Himself.
Varanasi Turned Into a Second Nabadwip #
From that day, Krishnadasa Kaviraja writes, the Mayavadi sannyasis and the scholars of Varanasi began discussing Srimad-Bhagavatam. The city that had mocked Him spent five days chanting Hare Krishna with Him in the streets. In the end the crowds around His lodgings grew so great that He left for Puri through the Jharikhanda forest. Laughing, He told His companions that He had come to Varanasi to sell His goods and had found no customers. It had begun to look as though He would have to carry them home. But since His devotees were so unhappy about it, He had given them away for nothing. Krishnadasa Kaviraja's summary is that He turned the whole city into a second Nabadwip.
Why the Debate Is Remembered #
Gaudiya Vaishnavas remember this episode for reasons beyond its outcome. It is the one place in the biographies where Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's argument against impersonalism is set out at length before an expert and hostile audience, and not before a devotee. And there His opponents openly admit His points, as the record shows. It is also the standard example of His method. He did not begin by stating His own position. He began by accepting the charge against Him and repeating His guru's low opinion of Him, and He argued only when He was asked to. And it answers the charge that the sankirtana movement was only emotion with no philosophy behind it. It answers this by showing, not by claiming.
Prakashananda and Prabodhananda Sarasvati #
One more note comes down from later centuries. Some Gaudiya writers have said that Prakashananda Sarasvati was the same person as Prabodhananda Sarasvati, the poet of the Radha-rasa-sudha-nidhi. But this identification is disputed. Most authorities, including Srila Prabhupada in his purports, treat them as two different persons. Prabodhananda came from the Ramanuja line in the South, not from the Sankara sampradaya of Kashi.
