Tattva-viveka
Nityananda's mercy
Karnamrita Das - February 13, 2006 3:51 pm
Here is Arcana's description of following Guru Maharaja's instructions for observing Sri Nityananda's appearance day along with some pics I took:
On the eve of Nityananada’s appearance day, I asked Swami for his advise how best to observe this most auspicious day. Without a moment’s hesitation he replied that I should spend some time with the bull calf in our community. When I asked Swami why he had chosen that particular activity, he replied that I should go and spend time with the calf, bring him a gift and that I would understand something more about Lord Nityananda.
Intrigued by this spiritual exercise, my husband, my son and I, all journeyed down to the pasturing area where the new bull calf, Dharma was staying. Dharma’s caretakers were away from home but they had told us to come any time during the day.
When we arrived, Dharma was fenced into a small area. He was alone and initially skittish. His owner had told us that Dharma was particularly fond of fresh green grass. So we brought that along with a small bag of oats. We used the grass to entice Dharma to come to us and after a few minutes he was eating out of our hands. Dharma wasn’t the least bit interested in the oats, but grabbed at the clumps of grass we had. Now he allowed us to pet him.
During this intimate time, I reflected on my purpose for coming. I thought about how Nityananda was often in the mood of a young cowherd boy. Although a young adult, Nityananda often lost touch with his external reality and took on the mood and activities of Balarama as a young child. Thus some of his activities such as drinking the breast milk of Malini, and going naked before the devotees, seemed strange and inappropriate to the uninformed. I thought about how much Krsna and Balarama love the cows and that if we render a little service to this dearest of animals, we will receive the Lord’s mercy.
Karnamrita Das - February 13, 2006 4:05 pm
After about 20 minutes, I began thinking it was time to leave since I still had to cook something for Lord Nityananda’s feast. I thought coming had been a nice way to reflect on Nityananda. I wasn’t disappointed but there was a yearning for something more realized in the experience. Just when I had that thought Dharma managed to escape out of his pen. We watched him run with abandon across the field to his horse friend, Silver.
Dharma thinks he's a horse!
It became quickly apparent to the three of us that we weren’t going catch Dharma. The only hope was to somehow bring Silver across the field and into Dharma’s pen. Silver wasn’t interested in going for a walk. Remembering the small bag of oats, I used them to get him to walk with me. For every few feet, I feed him some oats. We made good progress with this method until we got to the pen. Silver refused to budge and it seemed hopeless that he would ever go inside. After we meditated on Lord Nityananda who expands as super soul in everyone’s heart, Silver followed me into the pen with the last little bit of oats.
The oats gone and not much grass in the area, I expected, Silver was going to bolt from pen. To our surprise, Silver stayed in the pen. Dharma followed Silver to the outside of the pen but made it clear to all of us that he had no intentions of going inside. After some futile attempts to direct him inside, we decided it was time to leave and that there wasn’t anything more we could do. I felt really bad that Dharma’s owners would come home and have to capture their calf, but we had exhausted all of our options.
As we started to walk away, to our great delight, Dharma went inside of the pen. “Thank you Nityananda!” We all got an experiential glimpse of Nityananda’s playful nature. What also came to mind was Mother Yasoda binding Krishna. The rope was always two fingers too short. Finally when Krsna was pleased with Mother Yasoda, he allowed himself to be bound by her love in the form of a rope. The two inches represent endeavor and mercy.
Back in the pen!!
So in our Dharma escapade, we endeavored but we weren’t successful until we invoked the mercy of Lord Nityananda. Being compassionate upon us, Lord Nityananda rectified the whole situation. Now I felt Nityananda’s presence and felt deeply grateful for the experience. Who would have thought Swami's instruction would lead us on this adventure?!
Lord Nitai's mercy agent
Tharshan - February 14, 2006 12:45 am
Thank you Karnamrita Prabhu & Arcana-Siddhi Prabhu for this nice story. He looks really adorable!
Jaya Sri Guru!
Caitanya-daya Dd - February 16, 2006 7:11 am
thank you, karnamrita prabhu, for sharing the beautiful writing of arcana-siddhi. Lord Nityananda Rama is truly merciful, and his mercy comes in all forms.
i know this isn't necessarily an "audarya note," but i am just responding to karnamrta prabhu's post, which happened to be in here and happened to be about lord nityananda.
For me, this year his mercy came through permission to be in holy sri vrndavana dhama. For his appearance, i went to the abhisekha at the temple of his descendents (i forget the name, it's near imlital. i'm sure someone knows). What a wonderful, spiritually surcharged place! The deities were glowing, flowers were everywhere--everyone was genuinely excited and anxious to witness the abhisekha of the temple's sila (couldn't tell you if it was a govardhana or salagrama sila, sorry).
One thing that was truly wonderful to see was the gallons and gallons of milk and substances the pujaris would pour; the crowd would burst out spontaneously with "haribol!" and various praises to nityananda avaduta (unfortunately, i didn't get a picture of the milk pouring). Not to minimise other abhisekas i've witnessed in the west, but def here it struck me, "this could possibly be something out of a scripture," just how everything looked and sounded. There were two bhajan groups (i'm including a picture of one of them) playing continuously, and one of them had the sound system hooked up outside and could be heard def from the parikrama path and almost to the radha-damodara temple. The alley had streams of silver tinsel stringing above the pathway, assisting those who could possibly be confused about where to go (meaning, in my opinion, if you were hard of hearing or didn't happen to notice the stream of people flowing toward the temple direction).
Another good fortune of mine on this trip was that i got to travel half the time with gaura krsna. We went to the abhisekha together. When we were about to leave, a man pulled us aside and asked if we could take our picture with him. We stood next to him, but there was no one standing before us with a camera. We turned to him and he looked at us: "so where's your camera?" He'll kill me for doing this, but i'm including that picture.
i will be posting pictures (with commentary) of my trip sooner than later; i have to go through them and edit, etc. (there's a lot). If anyone would be interested in seeing them, just let me know. For the meantime, here are the abhisekha pictures. 
And the rest ...
