Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's austerities as a sannyasi at Puri were severe even by the standards of the renounced order, and they grew more severe as the years of separation from Krishna deepened. Most of the devotees around Him responded by trying to console His mind. Jagadananda Pandita responded, again and again, by trying to manage His body — and did so with a persistence and a bluntness that no one else in the Lord's circle attempted. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita frames this directly as an expression of his identity as an incarnation of Satyabhama: "Jagadananda Pandita always wanted to see to the comfort of Lord Chaitanya, but since the Lord was a sannyasi He did not accept the luxuries that Jagadananda Pandita offered." What follows is what that comfort-giving actually looked like in practice, verse by verse.
At a Glance #
- Brought scented sandalwood oil from Bengal for Mahaprabhu's head; broke the pot in anger when the Lord refused it
- Fasted for three days until Mahaprabhu personally came to end his fast
- Force-fed the Lord roughly ten times His normal quantity of food out of fear that refusing would restart the fast
- Sewed a quilt and pillow for the Lord's increasingly thin body; was privately furious for weeks when it was refused
- Provoked what Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita calls "loving quarrels" with the Lord as a matter of course
The Jug of Sandalwood Oil #
While staying at Shivananda Sena's house in Bengal, Jagadananda had about sixteen seers of fragrant sandalwood oil prepared and carried the full earthen pot all the way to Puri, asking Mahaprabhu's servant Govinda to rub it on the Lord's head to relieve the headaches brought on by disturbed bile and wind. Mahaprabhu's answer was immediate: a sannyasi had no business with oil, especially scented oil, and Govinda should give it to the Jagannatha temple to burn in the lamps instead. Jagadananda said nothing when Govinda relayed the message. Ten days later, when Govinda raised the matter again, Mahaprabhu grew genuinely irritated — "Why not keep a masseur to massage Me? Have I taken sannyasa for such happiness?" — and repeated His refusal. The next morning Jagadananda denied ever bringing any oil at all, took the jug into the courtyard in front of the Lord, and smashed it. Then he bolted his door and lay down without eating.
Three days passed before Mahaprabhu Himself went to Jagadananda's door and asked him, gently, to get up and cook lunch. Jagadananda rose immediately, bathed, and prepared rice, vegetables and sweets on banana leaves. When the food was ready, Mahaprabhu insisted Jagadananda spread a second leaf and eat beside Him, refusing to touch the meal with His own hands raised until Jagadananda, "with great affection and love," agreed to eat first. As He ate, the Lord kept praising the cooking — "Even when you cook in an angry mood, the food is very delicious" — while Jagadananda, still not finished making his point, kept piling on more vegetables. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita says Mahaprabhu ate about ten times His usual quantity that day, too afraid of restarting the fast to refuse a single dish, and only stopped once He had directly asked Jagadananda, twice, to let Him rest. Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami closes the episode by comparing the whole exchange to Satyabhama's dealings with Krishna in Srimad-Bhagavatam, and adds that anyone who simply hears about it, "or who reads Jagadananda's book Prema-vivarta, can understand what love is."
A Quilt Against the Plantain Bark #
Some time later, Mahaprabhu's body had grown thin enough from the pain of separation from Krishna that lying on His usual bed of dry plantain bark began to hurt His bones, and the devotees around Him could see it. Jagadananda's answer was to dye some cloth red, stuff it with cotton from a silk-cotton tree, and turn it into a quilt and pillow, which he asked Govinda to offer the Lord while Svarupa Damodara Goswami worked to talk Mahaprabhu into using it. The Lord's reaction, on seeing the bedding, was immediate anger: "You might as well bring a bedstead here for Me to lie on. Jagadananda wants Me to enjoy material happiness. I am in the renounced order, and therefore I must lie on the floor." He had the bedding put aside and lay back down on the bark. Svarupa Damodara tried once more, warning that refusing it would cause Jagadananda real unhappiness, but Mahaprabhu held His ground, and Jagadananda was told the bedding had been turned down flat.
Svarupa Damodara then quietly solved the problem a different way, shredding dry banana leaves fine enough with his own nails to stuff two of the Lord's own outer garments into a workable mattress and pillow — bedding humble enough that Mahaprabhu, after much persuading, finally accepted it. Every other devotee was relieved. Jagadananda, Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita says plainly, stayed angry, hiding it outwardly while it burned inwardly — and it was this same unresolved frustration, more than any long-held wish to see holy places, that pushed him soon afterward to ask Mahaprabhu, repeatedly and pointedly, for permission to leave for Vrindavana. That request, and what came of it, is told in Mission to Vrindavana and Sanatana Goswami.
Why Mahaprabhu Put Up With It #
Mahaprabhu Himself gave the clearest explanation of this whole dynamic, and He gave it not to Jagadananda but to Nityananda Prabhu, when explaining why He wanted to tour South India without any companions at all: "Jagadananda wants Me to enjoy bodily sense gratification, and out of fear I do whatever he tells Me. If I sometimes do something against his desire, out of anger he will not talk to Me for three days." It is a remarkable admission — the Supreme Lord, by Gaudiya Vaishnava understanding, describing Himself as managed, even mildly intimidated, by the sheer force of one devotee's loving insistence. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita never treats this as anything but proof of how deep that love ran, and later Gaudiya Vaishnava writers have read Jagadananda's identity as an incarnation of Satyabhama — discussed fully in His Identity in Krishna-Lila — as the reason this particular devotee, alone among Mahaprabhu's associates, was permitted to mother the Lord so openly, and so insistently, without it ever once being called an offense.