The Ramananda Samvada

When Chaitanya Mahaprabhu set out from Jagannatha Puri on His long tour of South India in 1510, Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, who had recently given himself completely to Him, gave Him one specific piece of advice. Somewhere on the Godavari, in the town of Vidyanagara, there was a man He must meet. Sarvabhauma had said honestly that he himself did not know the topics of Lord Krishna. Those, he said, were known to Ramananda Raya. The Lord took the advice so seriously that He said afterwards He had come to that stretch of river for no other purpose. The conversation that followed took place over ten evenings on the bank of the Godavari. It is the single most important theological dialogue in Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Krishnadasa Kaviraja states that his account of it is taken from the notebook of Svarupa Damodara Goswami, who in later years was Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's close personal secretary. This means that the tradition preserved the conversation as a record, not as a memory.

Who Ramananda Raya Was #

Ramananda Raya was a most unlikely partner for such a conversation. He was a government officer. He was governor of the southern province of the Gajapati kingdom of Maharaja Prataparudra, based at Vidyanagara on the Godavari, in the district the Chaitanya-charitamrita calls Madras. He was the eldest son of the devotee Bhavananda Raya. He was a truly accomplished poet and dramatist, the author of the Sanskrit play Jagannatha-vallabha-nataka, deeply read in the literature of rasa, and a musician. By birth, however, he was not a brahmana. He belonged to the karana or scribe community, which orthodox people of that time counted as sudra. He travelled by palanquin with a group of Vedic brahmanas attending him. He came down to the river to bathe and make offerings to his forefathers. There he saw an extraordinary sannyasi, brilliant as a hundred suns, sitting a little way from the bathing place. Ramananda came over and fell flat on the ground.

The Meeting at the Bathing Place #

Mahaprabhu asked whether he was Ramananda Raya. Ramananda answered that he was His most fallen servant and that he belonged to the sudra community. The Lord embraced him, and both of them were completely overcome. They trembled and wept, and the word "Krishna" came out of them in broken syllables. Then Mahaprabhu noticed the shocked faces of the ritualistic brahmanas standing around, and He controlled Himself. The brahmanas were thinking exactly what one would expect them to think. They thought that a sannyasi with the lustre of Brahman was weeping in the arms of a fourth-caste man, and that the grave and learned governor was behaving like a lunatic. The whole conversation that follows takes place with this scandal in the background, and before the conversation was over, the Lord spoke to the scandal directly.

The Question Put on the First Evening #

They arranged to meet in the evening, privately. When Ramananda came, with a single servant, Mahaprabhu gave him a question and a method: recite a verse from the revealed scriptures concerning the ultimate goal of life.

Varnasrama-Dharma Rejected as External #

Ramananda began where any responsible Vedic scholar would begin. He quoted the verse from the Vishnu Purana which says that Lord Vishnu is worshipped by properly carrying out one's prescribed duties within the system of varna and asrama, and that there is no other way to satisfy Him. The Lord's answer was two words that would be repeated all evening: this is external. Say something further.

Offering the Results of Work to Krishna #

Ramananda went one step further. If mere performance of duty is external, then let all the results of one's work, whatever one does, eats, sacrifices, gives in charity, or performs as austerity, be offered to Krishna. That is the teaching of the Bhagavad-gita, and it converts ordinary duty into worship. External, said the Lord. Go on.

Renouncing Occupational Duty Altogether #

The third proposal was to renounce occupational duty altogether. A person may examine the duties given in the scriptures and understand their merits and their defects. If he then abandons them entirely in order to serve the Supreme Person, he is a first-class man. Ramananda supported it with Krishna's own final instruction in the Gita, to abandon all varieties of religion and simply surrender. This is the most extreme position on the usual ladder of paths, and the Lord rejected it too.

Devotional Service Mixed With Knowledge #

Next Ramananda offered devotional service mixed with knowledge. The Gita describes this state. A man who is transcendentally situated realises the Supreme Brahman and becomes joyful. He no longer laments or hankers, he sees all beings equally, and in that condition he attains pure devotion to Krishna. Since the Absolute is here reached first as Brahman and only afterwards as the Lord, Mahaprabhu again set it aside as external.

Unalloyed Devotion Accepted at Last #

Only with the fifth proposal did the Lord's reply change. Ramananda now offered pure devotional service, free from speculation. He quoted Lord Brahma's prayer about those who give up the attempt to know God by their own mental effort. Instead they live by hearing about His name, form, qualities and pastimes from realised devotees, and they surrender with body, words and mind. The prayer says that such people conquer the unconquerable, and that they may do so while remaining in whatever social position they happen to occupy. The Lord did not call this external. He said it was correct, and asked for more. Everything before this point had been rejected. Everything after it would be a climb higher, not a correction.

Spontaneous Love and the Price of Greed #

Next Ramananda added that devotion is not only a duty but also a taste. As hunger makes food pleasurable, so love makes the acts of worship themselves a source of transcendental bliss. He also said that this love cannot be bought with piety gathered over millions of lifetimes. The only price it has is intense greed for it, and if it can be found anywhere, one should buy it at once without delay. That verse is among the most quoted in the whole tradition. Hearing it, the Lord accepted spontaneous love as a genuine advance and asked to be taken further still.

Dasya, the Mood of Eternal Service #

From here the dialogue climbs through the relationships in which love of God becomes personal. Ramananda described dasya, service, in which the devotee knows himself as the Lord's eternal servant and asks for nothing beyond permanent employment in that service.

Sakhya, Friendship With Krishna #

Above it he placed sakhya, friendship. The cowherd boys of Vrindavana play with Krishna as an equal. The Bhagavatam says that their fortune cannot be understood by those who know the Lord only as Brahman or only as master.

Vatsalya, the Love of Nanda and Yasoda #

Above that he placed vatsalya, parental love: what pious acts had Nanda Maharaja performed to receive Krishna as his son, and what had Yasoda done that the Absolute Truth should call her mother and take milk from her breast. The Bhagavatam observes that such a favour was never obtained by Brahma, by Siva, or by the goddess of fortune herself. Each time the Lord said that this was very good and that something still surpassed it.

Madhurya, the Summit of Conjugal Love #

The summit of that ascent is madhurya, conjugal love. Ramananda argued for it by showing how the relationships are built, not by appealing to feeling. The five relationships are not five separate choices. They build on one another. Among the material elements, from ether to earth, each one gains the qualities of the one before it and adds its own, until earth possesses all five. In the same way, each higher relationship with Krishna keeps the qualities of those below it and adds its own. First there is neutrality, then service, then the trust of friendship, then the protective closeness of a parent, and finally, in conjugal love, the offering of oneself entirely. Because it contains all the others, its taste is the fullest. Krishna returns each devotee's love according to the way that devotee approaches Him. So He admits that He is unable to repay the gopis of Vrindavana, and He remains eternally in their debt. Krishna's own beauty, Ramananda added, is the height of sweetness. Yet it increases when He stands among the gopis, as an emerald increases in beauty when set in gold.

The Supreme Love of Srimati Radharani #

This, said Mahaprabhu, is certainly the limit of perfection. Then He asked him to speak further if there was anything more. Ramananda's answer at that point is one of the moments the tradition treasures. Until that day, he said, he had not known anyone in this world who could inquire beyond that stage. And then he went beyond it. Among the gopis, the love of Srimati Radharani for Krishna is supreme. He argued it from the rasa dance itself. When Krishna treated all the gopis alike, Radharani left the circle in Her pride and displeasure. Krishna could not relish the dance without Her. So He abandoned hundreds of thousands of gopis and went alone into the forest to search for Her, lamenting. The Lord is satisfied in Himself, yet He is not satisfied in that vast assembly and goes out after one person. The tradition reads this as the strongest possible statement of who She is.

Knowledge of Krishna, Not Birth, Qualifies a Guru #

At this point Mahaprabhu pressed him to explain the underlying truth of Radha and Krishna and the nature of rasa itself, and Ramananda protested. He did not know these things, he said. He was a parrot repeating what the Lord Himself was making him speak, a stringed instrument with the Lord's hand on it, a puppet dancing on the Lord's strings. Mahaprabhu answered that he should stop flattering Him as a learned sannyasi. Then He made the statement that settled the question the brahmanas by the river had been thinking about that morning: whether a man is a brahmana, a sannyasi or a sudra makes no difference: whoever knows the science of Krishna is, by that fact, qualified to be a spiritual master. No other line in the tradition has done more to separate spiritual authority from birth.

Radharani as the Hladini Potency #

So Ramananda spoke on the underlying tattva. Krishna is the original Personality of Godhead, the source of all incarnations, eternally youthful in Vrindavana, attractive even to Cupid and even to Himself. His energies are three: spiritual, material and marginal. Of these, the spiritual or internal energy is supreme. The internal potency itself appears as eternal existence, knowledge and bliss. The bliss-portion, the hladini, is the potency through which the Lord tastes His own pleasure and gives it to His devotees. The essence of that pleasure potency is prema. The essence of prema, its most concentrated form, is mahabhava, and mahabhava is personified as Srimati Radharani. She is therefore not one gopi among many. She is the source of love of Krishna, and Lalita, Visakha and the rest are expansions of Her. Ramananda described Her ornaments as so many different ecstasies and Her dress as shyness and affection. He concluded that even Krishna cannot reach the end of Her qualities.

Prema-Vilasa-Vivarta and the Covered Mouth #

Then Ramananda mentioned that there was one further topic, called prema-vilasa-vivarta. He warned that he did not know whether the Lord would be pleased to hear it. Ramananda began to sing a song of his own composition on the transformation of love in separation. It tells of an attachment that began in an exchange of glances and grew past all limit. In it neither is enjoyer nor enjoyed, and in separation it becomes something that cannot be explained at all. Mahaprabhu covered Ramananda's mouth with His own hand.

Following in the Footsteps of the Gopis #

The last question was the practical one, and it produced the most important answer in the dialogue. The goal is one thing; by what process is it reached? Ramananda replied that the pastimes of Radha and Krishna cannot be entered through servitude, friendship or parental affection. Only the gopis have the right to them, and therefore only one who worships in the mood of the gopis, following in their footsteps, can enter. This is not sentiment. It is a rule, and its consequence is stated. The goddess of fortune herself wanted to join the pastimes of Vrindavana, but she could not, because she was held back by her knowledge of Krishna's majesty. Awareness of opulence stands in the way of intimacy. The Upanishads personified, the sruti, are described as having attained the lotus feet of the son of Nanda Maharaja by following the gopis. And the mood of the gopis is known by what it leaves out. It contains no trace of desire for one's own enjoyment. Radharani's own happiness increases tenfold when the gopis, rather than She Herself, are engaged with Krishna.

The Combined Form of Radha and Krishna Revealed #

By now Ramananda had understood who he was speaking to. Ramananda saw the Lord sometimes as a sannyasi and sometimes as Syamasundara with a flute, and he begged Him to stop concealing Himself. Ramananda said he could see that this was Krishna, who had accepted the mood and the golden complexion of Srimati Radharani in order to taste His own sweetness from Her side. Mahaprabhu revealed that combined form to him, and Ramananda lost consciousness and fell. When he came to his senses, the Lord embraced him. The Lord told him that no one else had ever seen it, and asked him to keep the whole matter secret, since people would only laugh at behaviour that looks like madness. Then He added, putting him at ease: I am a madman, and you are also a madman, so we are on the same platform.

Ten Nights and the Order to Come to Puri #

Ten nights passed in this way. On other evenings the talks took a lighter, question-and-answer form: what is the highest education, the greatest wealth, the sharpest suffering. Ramananda answered that of all distresses he knew none more unbearable than separation from a devotee of Krishna. He concluded that those who taste only dry philosophy are like crows chewing the bitter fruit of a nimba tree, while devotees are cuckoos eating the buds of the mango. Krishnadasa Kaviraja compares the whole conversation to a mine from which copper, bell metal, silver, gold and touchstone are dug out one after another, each better than the last. At parting the Lord gave Ramananda an instruction that shows what He thought of him: give up your government post and come to Jagannatha Puri. Ramananda did so. For the rest of the Lord's life, along with Svarupa Damodara, he was one of the very small circle admitted to His most confidential moods.

Why the Ramananda Samvada Matters #

The Ramananda Samvada matters to Gaudiya Vaishnavism in three distinct ways. It is the tradition's own map of the spiritual path. It is arranged as a ladder, with every rung named and every rung below the top clearly refused. For this reason later acharyas treat it as the measure by which any claimed goal of life is judged. It is the main scriptural basis for the theology of Srimati Radharani as the hladini-sakti and for the practice of following the gopis. And it establishes that the qualification to speak about Krishna is knowledge of Krishna, not birth. It shows this through a non-brahmana governor of a province teaching the Supreme Lord, who had appeared in the dress of a sannyasi. The movement has acted on this principle ever since.

Further Reading #

Read Ramananda Raya's own full biography at Srila Ramananda Raya: his life as governor of Vidyanagara, his resignation to serve at Puri, and his place in Krishna-lila theology.