Sri Krishna Kathamrita - Govardhan Hill The Best of Devotees

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Everyone in this world consumes foodstuffs to survive. Vaisnavas only take prasadam, the remnants of edibles that have been offered and first tasted by the Lord and his devotees. In a similar way, this issue of Sri Krishna Kathamrita on Govardhan Hill is the chewed remnants of many exalted devotees, in particular Srila Raghunath Das Goswami, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur Prabhupada, Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, our own revered spiritual master Sri Srimad Gour Govinda Swami Maharaja, as well as many thoughtful contemporary vaisnavas who possess deep realizations about and great devotion for Sri Govardhan.

Food is required to maintain the body, but the devotees maintain themselves spiritually on the remnants of Sri Guru and the devotees in the form of the bhajana and katha they have heard from their lips. Srila Raghunath Das Goswami had the inconceivable good fortune to hear the viprolambha-prema-kirtana, the intense chanting in separation, of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in the Gambhira in Jagannath Puri, It was also during that time that Mahaprabhu gave a Govardhan sila to Raghunath.

In a lecture in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, in November of 1991, Sri Srimad Gour Govinda Swami described the nature of Mahaprabhu's gambhira-kirtana:

These names are not just coming out of his mouth. The word udgirna is very significant; it is like a volcano/vomiting lava. So it is not just coming out from his lips, but what is inside, in the core of his heart, is coming out through his mouth. It is like vomiting these very sweet nectarean names "Hare", "Krishna", and "Rama". Rasaraj Krishna, in the form of Mahaprabhu, is chanting these names, and [thereby] he is fulfilling his three unfulfilled desires [as described in Cc. adi 1.6].

That intensity of the crying of the Lord must have deeply entered the heart of Srila Raghunath Das. After the physical disappearance of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Raghunath Das went to Vrindavan and chose to stay at Radhakund, near to Govardhan Hill. It was there that he wrote his immortal prayers Govardhana-vasa-prarthana- dasakam revealing his heartfelt desire to attain residence near Giri Govardhan. Arising from deep within the heart of Raghunath Das, these prayers are an echo of Mahaprabhu's ardent crying in the Gambhira. To attain residence at Govardhan was also one of the last expressed desires of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur Prabhupada and Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta left this world in Kolkata. However, he was only there for a short time before departing. Immediately prior to that he was staying in his small house on the top of Chatak Parvat, the hill in Jagannath Puri that Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu saw as Govardhan. Manifesting a pastime of being sick, at that time Srila Bhaktisiddhanta was engaging devotees in daily reciting to him Srila Raghunath Das' Govardhana-vasa-prarthana-da Sakam. Similarly, just before he left this world, Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada expressed the desire to go to Govardhan to perform parikrama in an ox cart.

This issue of Sri Krishna Kathamrit is the result of honoring the remnants of the though S' and desires of these acaryas. We pray that these great personalities and the saintly readers may be pleased with our humble efforts.