Near the close of Chaitanya-charitamrita, in its very last chapter, Krishnadasa gives an account of his own physical condition. It reads less like fine writing and more like a plain medical report. "I am old and troubled by invalidity," he writes. "I am almost blind and deaf, my hands tremble, and my mind and intelligence are unsteady." A few verses later he goes further still. He describes himself as suffering from five kinds of disease at once, and unable to walk or sit properly. He says he could die "at any time of the day or night."
Continuing Regardless #
These lines are remarkable because of where Krishnadasa places them. He does not give them as an excuse to stop. He gives them as the start of his explanation of why he kept going. He tells his readers directly that he has "previously given an account of my inabilities" and asks them to hear, now, the reason he still continued to write. That reason was the order he understood he had received from Sri Madana-mohana. He says he could not, in good conscience, leave this order unmentioned, however much it cost his humility to reveal it.
A Drop From the Ocean #
Krishnadasa's sense of his own smallness was not limited to his body. Earlier in the same closing chapter he compares himself to a small red-beaked bird. The bird drinks from the ocean to quench its thirst, but it takes in only the tiniest part of the water: "so I have touched," he writes, "only a drop of the ocean of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's pastimes." A few lines later he goes further still. He questions whether he can even claim to be the book's author at all: "I infer that 'I have written' is a false understanding, for my body is like a wooden doll." Read together, these lines show an old man who was completing the single most detailed biography of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in existence. Even so, he refused to take credit for having written it in any ordinary sense.
A Complaint Repeated From the Start #
This was not the only place in the book where Krishnadasa described his condition in such harsh terms. Earlier, in Madhya-lila, he had already written, "I am now an old man and an invalid. My hand trembles as I write and my memory fails me. I am going blind and deaf, but still I manage to write, and this is a great wonder" (Madhya-lila 2.90). He would return to the same complaint, in fuller and more painful detail, in the book's closing chapter.
Near the Radha-Damodara Temple #
Vaishnava tradition places Krishnadasa's final years at or near the Radha-Damodara temple in Vrindavana, established in honor of Rupa Gosvami's own worshipable Deities. A small kutir associated with Krishnadasa on the temple grounds is still shown to visitors today as the place where Chaitanya-charitamrita was composed. Whatever the exact details of his daily life there, his own verses give a clear picture. They show a man living out his final years in real physical hardship. He had very little to live on. By his own account, the Deities and devotees around him sustained him spiritually.
Written Beside Which Kunda? #
Even within the tradition, there is disagreement about exactly where Krishnadasa spent these final years and wrote his book. This page follows several later accounts, which place his kutir on the grounds of the Radha-Damodara temple in Vrindavana itself. Other traditional accounts instead place him at Radha-kunda, on the banks of its twin pool, Shyama-kunda. There he is said to have built his bhajana-kutira beside that of his own guru, Raghunatha Dasa Goswami. He did this so that he could hear, directly and every afternoon, Raghunatha Dasa's memories of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's final years at Puri. The two traditions differ on the exact spot. But both agree on the main fact: Krishnadasa wrote near his guru, with devotion to him, and not in isolation.
Gratitude, Not Complaint #
Even in describing his own sufferings, Krishnadasa does not ask for sympathy. In the same closing chapter, he says that whatever he managed to write did not come from any ability of his own. It came from "the mercy of the lotus feet of Sri Govindadeva, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Lord Nityananda, Advaita Acharya, other devotees and the readers of this book". He also gives credit, by name, to Svarupa Damodara Gosvami, Rupa Gosvami, Sanatana Gosvami, his own guru Raghunatha Dasa Goswami, and Jiva Gosvami. This is a very long list of thanks from a man who, elsewhere in the same book, calls himself lower than a worm in stool. It fits, from beginning to end, with how little Krishnadasa ever claimed for himself.
