In the Hari-bhakti-sudhodaya there is a conversation between Prahlāda Mahārāja and his father, Hiraṇyakaśipu, in which Hiraṇyakaśipu addresses Prahlāda in this way: "My dear son, association is very important. It acts just like a crystal stone, which will reflect anything which is put before it." Similarly, if we associate with the flowerlike devotees of the Lord, and if our hearts are crystal clear, then certainly the same action will be there. Another example given in this connection is that if a man is potent and if a woman is not diseased, then by their conjugation there will be conception. In the same way, if the recipient of spiritual knowledge and the deliverer of spiritual knowledge are sincere and bona fide, there will be good results.
Recipient
Bhagavad-gita As It Is
BG Chapters 1 - 6
There are two classes of men, namely the devotee and the demon. The Lord selected Arjuna as the recipient of this great science owing to his being a devotee of the Lord, but for the demon it is not possible to understand this great mysterious science. There are a number of editions of this great book of knowledge. Some of them have commentaries by the devotees, and some of them have commentaries by the demons. Commentation by the devotees is real, whereas that of the demons is useless. Arjuna accepts Śrī Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and any commentary on the Gītā following in the footsteps of Arjuna is real devotional service to the cause of this great science. The demonic, however, do not accept Lord Kṛṣṇa as He is. Instead they concoct something about Kṛṣṇa and mislead general readers from the path of Kṛṣṇa's instructions. Here is a warning about such misleading paths. One should try to follow the disciplic succession from Arjuna, and thus be benefitted by this great science of Śrīmad Bhagavad-gītā.
Srimad-Bhagavatam
SB Canto 1
A brāhmaṇa should become a teacher, regardless of what his department of knowledge is. A learned brāhmaṇa should become a teacher, a priest and a recipient of charity. A bona fide brāhmaṇa is authorized to accept such professions.
A suffering man, if he is pious at all, prays to the Lord for his recovery. But as soon as the recovery is over, in most cases the suffering man no longer cares to keep any connection with the Lord. The mercy of the Lord is open for him, but he is reluctant to receive it. That is the difference between a pure devotee and a mixed devotee. Those who are completely against the service of the Lord are considered to be in abject darkness, those who ask for the Lord's favor only at the time of necessity are partial recipients of the mercy of the Lord, and those who are cent percent engaged in the service of the Lord are full recipients of the mercy of the Lord. Such partiality in receiving the Lord's mercy is relative to the recipient, and it is not due to the partiality of the all-merciful Lord.
SB Canto 3
Brahmā is the direct recipient of Vedic knowledge from the Personality of Godhead, and anyone discharging his entrusted duties in disciplic succession from Brahmā is sure to gain fame in this life and salvation in the next. The disciplic succession from Brahmā is called the Brahma-sampradāya, and it descends as follows: Brahmā, Nārada, Vyāsa, Madhva Muni (Pūrṇaprajña), Padmanābha, Nṛhari, Mādhava, Akṣobhya, Jayatīrtha, Jñānasindhu, Dayānidhi, Vidyānidhi, Rājendra, Jayadharma, Puruṣottama, Brahmaṇyatīrtha, Vyāsatīrtha, Lakṣmīpati, Mādhavendra Purī, Īśvara Purī, Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, Svarūpa Dāmodara and Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī and others, Śrī Raghunātha dāsa Gosvāmī, Kṛṣṇadāsa Gosvāmī, Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura, Viśvanātha Cakravartī, Jagannātha dāsa Bābājī, Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, Gaurakiśora dāsa Bābājī, Śrīmad Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami.
In the Upaniṣads a devotee prays to the Lord to kindly put aside the effulgence, brahmajyoti, so that the devotee may see within the brahmajyoti the actual, eternal form of the Lord. Unless one attains realization of the transcendental form of the Lord, there is no question of bhakti. Bhakti necessitates the existence of the recipient of devotional service and the devotee who renders devotional service.
SB Canto 4
Everything depends on the strength of the recipient. For example, due to the scorching sunshine many vegetables and flowers dry up, and many grow luxuriantly. Thus it is the recipient that causes growth and dwindling. Similarly, mahīyasāṁ pāda-rajo-'bhiṣekam: the dust of the lotus feet of great personalities offers all good to the recipient, but the same dust can also do harm.
SB Cantos 10.14 to 12 (Translations Only)
I first honored the brāhmaṇas who were recipients of my charity by decorating them with fine ornaments. Those most exalted brāhmaṇas, whose families were in need, were young and possessed of excellent character and qualities. They were dedicated to truth, famous for their austerity, vastly learned in the Vedic scriptures and saintly in their behavior. I gave them cows, land, gold and houses, along with horses, elephants and marriageable girls with maidservants, as well as sesame, silver, fine beds, clothing, jewels, furniture and chariots. In addition, I performed Vedic sacrifices and executed various pious welfare activities.
If we assume that fruitive work is the cause of happiness and distress, we still are not dealing with the soul. The idea of material work arises when there is a spiritual actor who is conscious and a material body that undergoes the transformation of happiness and distress as a reaction to such work. Since the body has no life, it cannot be the actual recipient of happiness and distress, nor can the soul, who is ultimately completely spiritual and aloof from the material body. Since karma thus has no ultimate basis in either the body or the soul, at whom can one become angry?
Sri Caitanya-caritamrta
CC Adi-lila
The potencies of the syllables bha, ga and va apply in terms of many different meanings. Through His different potent agents, the Lord protects and sustains everything, but He Himself personally protects and sustains only His devotees, just as a king personally sustains and protects his own children, while entrusting the protection and sustenance of the state to various administrative agents. The Lord is the leader of His devotees, as we learn from the Bhagavad-gītā, which mentions that the Personality of Godhead personally instructs His loving devotees how to make certain progress on the path of devotion and thus surely approach the kingdom of God. The Lord is also the recipient of all the adoration offered by His devotees, for whom He is the objective and the goal. For His devotees the Lord creates a favorable condition for developing a sense of transcendental love of Godhead. Sometimes He does this by taking away a devotee’s material attachments by force and baffling all his material protective agents, for thus the devotee must completely depend on the Lord’s protection. In this way the Lord proves Himself the leader of His devotees.
The Supreme Personality of Godhead has innumerable expansions of His transcendental form who eternally exist in the spiritual world. This material world is only a perverted reflection of the spiritual world, where everything is manifested without inebriety. There everything is in its original existence, free from the domination of time. Time cannot deteriorate or interfere with the conditions in the spiritual world, where different manifestations of the Supreme Personality of Godhead are the recipients of the worship of different living entities in their constitutional spiritual positions. In the spiritual world all existence is unadulterated goodness. The goodness found in the material world is contaminated by the modes of passion and ignorance.
Material nature cannot independently become an agent for supplying the material ingredients. This is more clearly explained by Śrī Kapiladeva, an incarnation of Godhead, in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (3.28.40):
- yatholmukād visphuliṅgād dhūmād vāpi sva-sambhavāt
- apy ātmatvenābhimatād yathāgniḥ pṛthag ulmukāt
"Although smoke, flaming wood, and sparks are all considered together as ingredients of a fire, the flaming wood is nevertheless different from the fire, and the smoke is different from the flaming wood." The material elements (earth, water, fire, etc.) are like smoke, the living entities are like sparks, and material nature as pradhāna is like the flaming wood. But all of them together are recipients of power from the Supreme Personality of Godhead and are thus able to manifest their individual capacities. In other words, the Supreme Personality of Godhead is the origin of all manifestations. Material nature can supply only when it is activated by the glance of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
There are some rascals who dare to speak against the mission of Lord Caitanya by criticizing the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement for accepting Europeans and Americans as brāhmaṇas and offering them sannyāsa. But here is an authoritative statement that in distributing love of Godhead one should not consider whether the recipients are Europeans, Americans, Hindus, Muslims, etc. The Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement should be spread wherever possible, and one should accept those who thus become Vaiṣṇavas as being greater than brāhmaṇas, Hindus or Indians. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu desired that His name be spread in each and every town and village on the surface of the globe. Therefore, when the cult of Caitanya Mahāprabhu is spread all over the world, should those who embrace it not be accepted as Vaiṣṇavas, brāhmaṇas and sannyāsīs? These foolish arguments are sometimes raised by envious rascals, but Kṛṣṇa conscious devotees do not care about them. We strictly follow the principles set down by the Pañca-tattva.
One subbranch of Haridāsa Ṭhākura consisted of the residents of Kulīna-grāma. The most important among them was Satyarāja Khān, or Satyarāja Vasu, who was a recipient of all the mercy of Haridāsa Ṭhākura.
Śrīnātha Paṇḍita, the forty-ninth branch, was the beloved recipient of all the mercy of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Everyone in the three worlds was astonished to see how he worshiped Lord Kṛṣṇa.
Jagāi and Mādhāi, the eighty-ninth and ninetieth branches of the tree, were the greatest recipients of Lord Caitanya’s mercy. These two brothers were the witnesses who proved that Lord Caitanya was rightly named Patita-pāvana, "the deliverer of the fallen souls."
It is very risky to accept money or food from materialistic persons, for such acceptance pollutes the mind of the charity’s recipient. According to the Vedic system, one should give charity to sannyāsīs and brāhmaṇas because one who thus gives charity becomes free from sinful activities. Formerly, therefore, brāhmaṇas would not accept charity from a person unless he were very pious. Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu gave this instruction for all spiritual masters. Materialistic persons who are not inclined to give up their sinful activities like illicit sex, intoxication, gambling and meat-eating sometimes want to become our disciples, but, unlike professional spiritual masters who accept disciples regardless of their condition, Vaiṣṇavas do not accept such cheap disciples. One must at least agree to abide by the rules and regulations for a disciple before a Vaiṣṇava ācārya can accept him. In fact, a Vaiṣṇava should not even accept charity or food from persons who do not follow the rules and regulations of the Vaiṣṇava principles.
CC Madhya-lila
Śrīla Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura says, chāḍiyā vaiṣṇava sevā nistāra peyeche kebā: unless one serves a Vaiṣṇava, he cannot be delivered. The spiritual master initiates the disciple to deliver him, and if the disciple executes the order of the spiritual master and does not offend other Vaiṣṇavas, his path is clear. Consequently Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu requested all the Vaiṣṇavas present to show mercy toward the two brothers, Rūpa and Sanātana, who had just been initiated by the Lord. When a Vaiṣṇava sees that another Vaiṣṇava is a recipient of the Lord’s mercy, he becomes very happy. Vaiṣṇavas are not envious. If a Vaiṣṇava, by the mercy of the Lord, is empowered by Him to distribute the Lord’s holy name all over the world, other Vaiṣṇavas become very joyful—that is, if they are truly Vaiṣṇavas. One who is envious of the success of a Vaiṣṇava is certainly not a Vaiṣṇava himself but is an ordinary, mundane man. Envy and jealousy are manifested by mundane people, not by Vaiṣṇavas.
By personally tasting the mellows of love of Godhead, Caitanya Mahāprabhu taught His direct disciples the process. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu is a wealthy capitalist possessing the touchstone of love of God. Not considering whether one is a proper or improper recipient, He gives His treasure to anyone and everyone. Thus He is the most munificent.
"These two brothers are great devotees and suitable recipients of Kṛṣṇa’s mercy, but in their ordinary dealings they are government officials, ministers to the King.
To be empowered by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, one has to qualify himself. This means that one must engage twenty-four hours daily in the loving devotional service of the Lord. The material position of a devotee doesn’t matter because devotional service is not dependent on material considerations. In his earlier life, Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī was a government officer and a gṛhastha. He was not even a brahmacārī or sannyāsī. He associated with mlecchas and yavanas, but because he was always eager to serve, he was a qualified recipient for the Lord’s mercy. A sincere devotee can therefore be empowered by the Lord regardless of his situation.
Other Books by Srila Prabhupada
Nectar of Devotion
Mahārāja Bali was so fortunate that the Lord extended before him His hand, which was reddish from touching the breast of the goddess of fortune, who is always smeared with red kuṁkum powder. In other words, although the Personality of Godhead is so great that the goddess of fortune is always under His command for enjoyment, He still extended His hands to take charity from Mahārāja Bali.
A person who wants to give everything in charity to Kṛṣṇa but does not want anything in return is considered the real renouncer. Thus, a devotee will refuse to accept any kind of liberation, even if it is offered by the Lord. Real love of Kṛṣṇa becomes manifested when Kṛṣṇa becomes the recipient of charity and the devotee becomes the giver.
Lectures
Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures
Madhudviṣa: "That very ancient science of the relationship with the Supreme is today told by Me to you. Because you are My devotee as well as My friend, therefore you can understand the transcendental mystery of this science."
Purport: "There are two classes of men, namely the devotee and the demon. The Lord accepted Arjuna as the recipient of this great science owing to his being a devotee of the Lord. But for the demons it is not possible to understand this great, mysterious science. There are a number of editions of this great book of knowledge and some of them are commented upon by the devotees, and some of them are commented upon by the demons. Commentary by the devotees is real, whereas that of the demons is useless."
Prabhupāda: Because it is said here that "that very ancient science of the relationship with the Supreme is today told by Me to you because you are My devotee," so this transcendental science cannot be understood simply by academic education. It is not possible. There is a secret. Just like in the ordinary educational field, nobody is allowed to study law unless he is a graduate of the degree college. At least in India that is the law. Nobody can be admitted in the law college unless he is a graduate because he will not be able to understand.
Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures
Living entities, they are in this material world in different forms. That is accepted by Kṛṣṇa, sarva-yoniṣu kaunteya sambhavanti mūrtayo yāḥ (BG 14.4). There are as many forms of life amongst the living entities. Tāsāṁ mahad yonir brahma ahaṁ bīja-pradaḥ pitā. The mahad yoniḥ, mahat, this material world, material elements, or the sum total of material elements... Mother Durgā, she is the mother. And God is the father. Just like father and mother gives birth to a child, similarly, we spirit soul, the part and parcel of the supreme father, and the material elements, bhūmir āpo 'nalo vāyuḥ (BG 7.4), they're the recipient. Tasmin garbhaṁ dadāmy aham. Just like father gives the seed in the womb of the mother, then the child gets a body and it grows and come out, similarly this body is given by mother, material, material energy, but the father is the Supreme Lord Kṛṣṇa. Ahaṁ bīja-pradaḥ pitā (BG 14.4). This is the factual position. We are not this material body.
Conversations and Morning Walks
1968 Conversations and Morning Walks
Interviewer: I notice that most of your followers, at least in this temple, are young, like in the college age or in the teenage. Is it because Kṛṣṇa doesn't attract the older generation, I mean, yourself excluded?
Prabhupāda: No. Kṛṣṇa attracts everyone. Just like magnetic stone attracts iron. But the iron is covered with too much muddy things—the magnetic force does not work. This younger generation, they are not too much dirty; therefore they are very easily attracted. You see? It is like a magnetic force. The same example, that magnetic force attracts iron. That is natural. But if the iron is too much rusty and covered with muddy things, then it does not act. So older generation means they are convinced in some way. They cannot accept any new thing. You see? They are in the last stage of life. Whatever they have understood, they cannot forget. But younger generation, they have got capacity to take new things. Just like nobody goes... No old man goes to school because they are unable to receive education. But younger generation, they go. So there is a age to receive. So this age is recipient. Therefore naturally—it is nice thing—they are receiving.
Correspondence
1947 to 1965 Correspondence
To summarise the conclusions of Bhagavad-gita it may be said that,
1) God is one and everything is in Him and He is in everything.
2) To render transcendental service unto God is to serve everything that be, just like to water the root of the tree is to water the different branches and numerous leaves of the tree or to supply food to the stomach is to vitalize all the senses and the sense organs of the body.
3) The parts are automatically served when the Whole is served but when the parts are served the whole may not be served or not served at all.
4) The parts and the Whole being eternally related, it is the eternal duty of the parts to render service unto the Whole.
5) A recipient of the services of the parts, God's sat-cit-ananda vigraha i.e. the all-attractive Cognizant and all-blissful Personality eternal. He can reveal Himself by His own potency without any help of the external potency called maya in order to be cognizable by the limited potency of the parts and as such He is not only the greatest of all but he is the smallest of all. That is His prerogative.
6) He is better realized when He by His causeless mercy agrees to descend in this mortal world but he He is never realized by the partial speculations of the empiric philosophers however systematic and long-termed it may be.
7) Sri Krishna is the Personality of Godhead and is the Summum Bonum Cause of all Causes proved by fact and figures in the statement of Bhagavad-gita, but He reserves the right of not being exposed to the sensual speculations of the empiric philosophers.
8) One should therefore surrender unto Him if one wants to know Him as He is and that is the real process to approach the Infinite by the infinitesimals.
9) Sri Krishna is easily available by the religion of love i.e. by love and service as conceived by the damsels of Vraja who had practically no education whatsoever and much less any claim for high class birth right.
10) The highest service that can be rendered to the mankind is, therefore, to preach the philosophy and religion of Bhagavad-gita for all the times, all the places and all the people.
Madam Sumati Morarji Baisaheba,
Please accept my greetings and blessing of Lord Bala Krishna. I hope you have already received my letter of the 27th ultimo and I hope to receive your reply very soon. And in continuation of my letter as abovementioned I beg to inform you that the number of Hiranyakasipus and Ravanas in this age of Kali increased more than that in other Yugas. Hiranyakasipus are always inimical with the devotees of the Lord even if such devotee happens to be a son. Hiranyakasipu persecuted Prahlada although he was a boy of 5 years old and a beloved son of Hiranyakasipu. As I have already informed you that the American people in general are very much inclined to receive something from Indian culture of spiritual knowledge, they would be a first class recipient for the Bhagavatam culture provided an organized attempt is made for this purpose.
| Page Title: | Recipient |
| Compiler: | Visnu Murti, Massimo, Matea |
| Created: | 11 of Aug, 2009 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=1, SB=7, CC=12, OB=2, Lec=2, Con=1, Let=2 |
| No. of Quotes: | 27 |