Srila Gurudeva: Don’t waste your time in learning Sanskrit grammar or Hindi grammar. Don’t waste your time in any of these things. Any language cannot give you anything. Simply, in all languages, prema is there. I am telling one pastime of Caitanya Mahaprabhu to explain this point.
Caitanya Mahaprabhu was in His tour through South India. He reached Ranganatha temple, a very famous temple in South India. That temple is so big and the upper part is built out of gold. It is one of the biggest temples in the whole world. So many villages are in the surrounding area of that temple. Caitanya Mahaprabhu was there in the house of Venkata Bhatta, who is the father of Gopala Bhatta Gosvami. He used to daily go to take darsana of Ranganatha. While He was there, He saw that there was a brahmana who was reading Gita.
But he was not a scholar. He was not knowing grammar or anything, no letters, nothing. He only used to know, a, e, i, o, u, ka, kha, like this. He used to utter Sanskrit slokas in a very wrong way. But still he would begin to weep and weep and weep. Caitanya Mahaprabhu was seeing this and one day He went to him and began to hear what he was saying. He saw that he was weeping and uttering:
dhrtarastra uvaca
dharma-ksetre kuruksetre
samaveta yuyutsavah
mamakah pandavas caiva
kim akurvata sanjaya
Bhagavad-Gita 1.1
[Dhrtarastra said: O Sanjaya, what did my sons and the sons of Pandu do, having assembled at the sacred land of Kuruksetra, desiring to fight?]
Without grammar, reading it wrong, wrong pronunciation, everything. But yet he was weeping so much. When he finished and he was closing the book, Caitanya Mahaprabhu, very honorably He asked, “Oh bhakta, when you read Gita, why do you weep? I see that there are so many learned people reading Gita here, but they never weep. But how are you weeping?”
He told Him, “I am not a learned person. I don’t know Sanskrit or any language. But when I open the book, I see that at once Arjuna is sitting on the chariot, giving up his bow and arrows and he is so sad. I see that Krsna is smiling, giving him so many instructions, ‘sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja (BG 18.66).’ I see this and also how beautiful Krsna is. Seeing this, my heart becomes melted and I weep.”
Caitanya Mahaprabhu at once embraced that man and said, “Oh, you are really a devotee.” So all truth will come in your heart. This is the process. We cannot have all these things by grammar. We cannot understand acintya-bhedabheda tattva by our intelligence. We cannot understand acintya-bhedabheda. The theory of all the Sandarbhas and Govinda-bhasya is acintya-bhedabheda. What is the meaning of acintya? It cannot be known by our intelligence, by grammar, or by any endeavor of these senses, never. How will it come? Only by grace and causeless mercy of Krsna and His bhaktas. Guru can give this understanding, so be very fixed and strong in this.
So don’t waste time in these things. In any language you can chant ‘Hare Krsna.’ It is there in all languages. And by this chanting, prema will come. Our constitutional form is there. What is there? All potency is there in the seed. So by the mercy of Gurudeva and by chanting and remembering, all doubts will go away very easily and all your offenses and anarthas will go and thus we will see that everything was in that seed. Only water was needed.
What is that water? The association of Vaisnavas or something coming from the hladini and samvit-sakti coming from the hearts of the ragatmika bhaktas, from their association. This is the method. Don’t go towards intelligence and all these things. Be like this. All the established truths will come in your heart in this process. Try to give up all doubts and be like this. I wanted to tell you something from Bhaktivinoda Thakura about what are the functions of a madhyama-adhikari and who is a madhyama-adhikari.
He at least has sambandha-jnana of Krsna. He has knowledge of all tattva and almost all anarthas have been removed and he has at least come to the stage of nistha, ruci, and asakti. Then he will be a madhyama-adhikari. He will be a madhyama-kanistha. He can help us by his hari-katha, but not that in a moment, “Oh, you should be a premi-bhakta.” He cannot help us like this. Who will do this? Only three kinds of uttama-adhikaris can help us like this: murcchita-kasaya, nirdhuta-kasaya, and bhagavata-parsada-deha-prapta, what I explained yesterday.
Like Narada Muni in the first stage, Sukadeva Gosvami in the second stage, and in the third stage Narada Rsi after he attained his transcendental body. Only they can help us. They can say, “Oh, at once you should be a tree,” and they will be a tree. They will say, “At once you should be full of prema. You should dance and remember,” like Nityananda Prabhu touched Jagai and Madhai and they began to dance and say, “O Krsna, where are You?” Then they began rolling down on the earth.
We should try to follow this very easy process. Caitanya Mahaprabhu has given a very easy process. Don’t try to use your intelligence and exercise your mind. Don’t try to do mental exercise.