After the events at Benapola, Haridasa Thakura moved on to a village called Chandapura, staying at the home of a priest named Balarama Acharya, who served two wealthy brothers, Hiranya and Govardhana Majumadara. A young Raghunatha, the son of Govardhana Majumadara and later famous as Raghunatha Dasa Goswami, came daily as a boy to see Haridasa there, and Sri Chaitanya-caritamrta credits that early association with drawing him, years later, to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's feet (Antya 3.169-170).
A Debate at Chandapura #
It was at a gathering of scholars in the Majumadaras' house that Haridasa laid out, in public argument, a teaching that would become central to Gaudiya Vaishnavism's understanding of chanting. The assembly had been praising the holy name for freeing the chanter from sinful reactions; Haridasa corrected them. Liberation, he said, is only the smallest by-product of chanting, "an insignificant result" (Antya 3.186) compared to what offenseless chanting actually gives, which is awakened love for Krishna's feet. He compared it to sunrise: even the faintest first light, before the sun itself is visible, is enough to dispel fear of thieves and ghosts in the dark; in the same way, even a bare glimpse of offenseless chanting dispels a lifetime's sin, well before the chanter has any experience of the ecstatic love that is chanting's real fruit.
A tax collector in the assembly named Gopala Chakravarti found this claim absurd and said so loudly, wagering his own nose that no one attains liberation from a mere glimpse of chanting. Haridasa accepted the wager on the same terms, offering his own nose in exchange. The two Majumadara brothers threw Gopala Chakravarti out of their service on the spot for the insult; within three days, leprosy had taken his nose and his fingers regardless (Antya 3.209-210). Haridasa himself, true to the gentleness he showed everywhere else in his life, took no satisfaction in this and asked the gathered brahmanas not to hold it against the man.
The Deliverance of the Yavanas #
Some years later, once Haridasa had joined Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's sankirtana movement and was living at Puri, the Lord raised a related question with him directly: how would the yavanas, those bereft of Vedic culture regardless of what family they were born into, ever be delivered in the Age of Kali? Haridasa's answer became one of the most quoted teachings on the holy name in the Gaudiya tradition. Even a mleccha crying out "Ha Rama, Ha Rama!" in mortal terror, with no understanding of what he is saying, is delivered by that faint echo of the name, Haridasa said, citing the story of Ajamila from Srimad-Bhagavatam, a lifelong sinner freed at the moment of death simply by calling out his son's name, Narayana (Antya 3.56-64). This is namabhasa, the dim reflection of the name, not full offenseless chanting, but not without power either.
Haridasa was careful, though, never to let namabhasa be mistaken for the goal. Chanting performed with offenses, for material profit, followers, or out of pride, will not bear its full fruit quickly, he warned, quoting a Sanskrit verse on the subject: the name has power "whether vibrated properly or improperly," but the person who chants for the wrong reasons delays the result that power brings (Antya 3.60). Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, hearing Haridasa lay all this out, embraced him in open delight, and then went to His other devotees and spoke of Haridasa's understanding as if, Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami writes, He had five mouths to praise him with (Antya 3.93).
Even the Trees Are Chanting #
Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu did not stop at the yavanas. He pressed Haridasa further: what of the trees, plants, and insects, the countless nonmoving and unreasoning forms of life on earth — how could they possibly be delivered? Haridasa's answer was that the Lord's own loud chanting, heard by every moving creature and echoed back by the forests themselves, was not really an echo at all: it was "the kirtana of the nonmoving living entities" (Antya 3.71), Krishna's mercy reaching even those with no ears to consciously hear it. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, listening to this, was privately astonished that Haridasa had understood pastimes the Lord considered His own confidential business, and outwardly tried, without success, to steer the conversation elsewhere (Antya 3.89-91).
These two conversations, the public debate at Chandapura and the private one at Puri, are why the title discussed on the next page belongs to Haridasa above anyone else in the movement: see Namacharya, the Teacher of the Holy Name.