Sanatana reached Varanasi and quietly took his place at the door of Chandrasekhara's house. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu recognized him at once. He told His host, "There is a devotee at your door. Please call him in," even though at first Chandrasekhara saw nothing but a Muslim beggar waiting outside. Once Sanatana was inside, the Lord went to him immediately and embraced him, and both men wept, "shoulder to shoulder," in a display of feeling that astonished Chandrasekhara. Then the Lord began cleansing Sanatana's travel-worn body with His own hands. Sanatana protested that the Lord should not touch him. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's answer became one of the most quoted lines in the entire Chaitanya-charitamrita: "I am touching you just to purify Myself, because by the force of your devotional service you can purify the whole universe." When the Lord asked how he had escaped, Sanatana told the whole story of the jailer, the crossing and the road to Varanasi from beginning to end. In turn he learned that Rupa and Anupama had already gone on ahead to Vrindavana.
The Blanket and the Torn Quilt #
Before any formal teaching began, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu quietly tested Sanatana and worked on his remaining attachment. Sanatana had arrived wearing a single valuable woolen blanket, the one gift from his brother-in-law Srikanta. In every other way he lived a life of strict begging. He went door to door for alms instead of accepting full meals, even when a wealthy brahmana offered them. But the Lord kept glancing again and again at this one costly possession. Sanatana understood the unspoken point. He went to bathe in the Ganges, found a poor Bengali beggar drying a ragged quilt, and asked to trade his fine blanket for it outright. The beggar was astonished and asked why a gentleman would want to make such a clearly unequal trade. Sanatana insisted that he meant it seriously, and the exchange was made. When Sanatana returned wearing the torn quilt, the Lord asked what had become of the blanket and heard the story. He was clearly satisfied. He remarked that Krishna had already delivered Sanatana from the deepest hell of material existence, and would allow no trace of attachment to remain: "After vanquishing a disease, a good physician does not allow any of the disease to remain." Later generations of Gaudiya Vaishnavas have most often pointed to this small, homely scene, not to any grand miracle, when they explain why Sanatana Gosvami is remembered as the model of a Vaishnava's relationship to possessions.
Sambandha, Abhidheya, Prayojana #
With Sanatana's last attachment gone, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu began the teaching for which this meeting is chiefly remembered. He told Sanatana plainly that the Vedic literature deals with three subjects, "sambandha, abhidheya, prayojana". These are the living entity's eternal relationship with God, the regulated practice by which that relationship is revived, and the ultimate goal that this practice leads to, love of God. At the foundation of it all was one often-repeated statement of the soul's true identity: "jivera 'svarupa' haya - krsnera 'nitya-dasa' / krsnera 'tatastha-sakti', 'bhedabheda-prakasa'": "It is the living entity's constitutional position to be an eternal servant of Krishna, because he is the marginal energy of Krishna and a manifestation simultaneously one with and different from the Lord." Starting from this one point, the Lord gave a long explanation, which Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita records in Madhya-lila chapters 20 through 24. He described Krishna's personal opulence, His various energies, and the nature of the soul's forgetfulness and bondage in material life. He also told a memorable parable of a poor man who does not know that his own father left him a buried treasure. Through it He showed exactly why the soul needs revealed scripture and a bona fide guide to recover what is already, in truth, his own.
A Minister's Mind, Freely Given #
Krishnadasa Kaviraja Gosvami pauses partway through this teaching to note something about the manner of Sanatana's questioning, not just its content: "rāja-mantrī sanātana — buddhye bṛhaspati / prabhura kṛpāte puche asaṅkoca-mati": "Sanatana Gosvami had been a minister under Nawab Hussain Shah, and he was undoubtedly as intelligent as Brihaspati, the chief priest of the heavenly kingdom. Due to the Lord's unlimited mercy, Sanatana Gosvami questioned Him without hesitation." In a 1966 lecture on this same exchange, Srila Prabhupada made the same point in plainer language. Sanatana's years as "a politician... a minister" had made him sharp and unafraid to ask exactly the question that needed asking. Now that same trained intelligence was turned toward Krishna instead of the work of government. It let him take in, in two months, a range of teaching that his own later students would need a lifetime to understand fully. Before sending him on, the Lord also gave Sanatana an outline for the book he had been asked to write on the rules of Vaishnava conduct. This was the beginning of what would become the Hari-bhakti-vilasa. Then Sanatana finally set out for Mathura and Vrindavana, the place that would be his home for the rest of his life. This part of his story is told in Arrival in Vrindavana and Madana-mohana.
