“Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Kīrtana Standards,” installment 27
Apart from kīrtana, devotees may sing bhajanas, or songs of devotion to the Lord, as Śrīla Prabhupāda did and encouraged. As Śrīla Prabhupāda said on a morning walk, “What is sung by mahājana—Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura—that can be sung.”1 Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote:
Songs composed by the ācāryas are not ordinary songs. When chanted by pure Vaiṣṇavas who follow the rules and regulations of Vaiṣṇava character, they are actually effective in awakening the Kṛṣṇa consciousness dormant in every living entity.2
The bhajanas we sing should be those composed or accepted by our ācāryas, they should be sung at appropriate times and with appropriate tunes, and they should be suitable for the level of spiritual advancement of the devotees gathered.
For the most part, guidelines for bhajanas lie outside the scope of this book. Various devotees have written about them, including Acyutānanda Swāmī in Songs of the Vaiṣṇava Ācāryas (with a Foreword by Śrīla Prabhupāda), Bhakti Vikāsa Swami in his essay on kīrtana, and Bhakti Gauravani Goswāmī in Sacred Song Symphony.
Don’t alter songs
We may at least, however, note the problems that arise when we add new lines to old songs. We often hear tacked onto the end of Śrī Guru Vandana the lines prabhupāda loilo śaraṇa and dui pade loilo śaraṇa. Bhakti Vikāsa Swami says that these two interpolations are “popular, unnecessary and meaningless.”3 And Kṛṣṇa Abhiṣeka Dāsa (Dr. Abhishek Ghosh), a Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava scholar who is a native Bengali speaker, has confirmed to me that these lines don’t make any sense.4
One is best advised to chant the bhajanas as our ācāryas have written them.
As another example, Yaśodānandana Dāsa recalls that on one occasion while Śrīla Prabhupāda was singing the prayers to Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva,
some Indian lady in the crowd starting to sing oṁ jaya jagadīśa hare. Prabhupada interrupted the prayer and said, “Who has said this?” He said, “No, no. Not oṁ jaya jagadīśa hare. It is jaya jagadīśa hare. Don’t concoct.”5
An exception: In Los Angeles on the disappearance day of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, sometime around 1973, Dānavīr Dāsa (now Goswāmī) began singing the song ye anilo prema dhana karuṇā pracura, heno prabhu kothā gelo ācārya ṭhākura.
Just then Śrīla Prabhupāda, seated upon his vyāsāsana, stopped the singing and said, “You can replace the words “ācārya ṭhākura” with “siddhānta ṭhākura.” We sang it again inserting siddhānta ṭhākura.6
Dānavīr Goswāmī reasonably concludes that on the disappearance days of the ācāryas one can replace ācārya ṭhākura with the departed ācārya’s name.
Bhajanas that include “Jaya Rādhe”
Though Śrīla Prabhupāda disapproved of adding “Jaya Rādhe” to kīrtanas, he approved of two “Jaya Rādhe” bhajanas. One was the song by Kṛṣṇa Dāsa beginning jaya rādhe jaya kṛṣṇa jaya vṛndāvana. The other was the song by Hari Vyāsa Devācārya beginning jaya rādhe jaya rādhe rādhe, jaya rādhe jaya śrī rādhe. Giriraj Swami tells this story about a kīrtana group that came to chant at the ISKCON Juhu temple:
One highlight came at the end when a female devotee from the group sang, “Jaya rādhe jaya rādhe rādhe, jaya rādhe jaya śrī rādhe. Jaya kṛṣṇa. . . [jaya kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa, jaya kṛṣṇa jaya śrī kṛṣṇa]. Later, Mr. Sethi told us that when Prabhupāda was listening to that song, tears of ecstatic love were streaming down his cheeks.
“That kīrtana was wonderful,” Prabhupāda told me the next day. “We should invite the whole group to stay at Hare Krishna Land.”7
Śrīla Prabhupāda also sometimes (though rarely) sang the bhajana by Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī beginning rādhe jaya jaya mādhava-dayite (for example, on Rādhāṣṭamī in Montreal on August 30, 1968).
We should not use these bhajanas to slip “Jaya Rādhe! Jaya Rādhe!” into kīrtanas, circumventing Śrīla Prabhupāda’s instructions.
The bhajana “Rādhe rādhe rādhe, jaya jaya jaya śri rādhe” seems to have entered ISKCON kīrtanas after Śrīla Prabhupāda’s departure, through the association of Śrīla B. V. Nārāyaṇa Mahārāja, who used to chant it. Śrīla Prabhupāda, however, did not chant it or teach us to do so.
Songs suitable for our level of advancement
Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote to Acyutānanda:
Regarding the songs by Jayadeva, “Srita Kamala” is not approved. Sometimes our Krsnadasa Babaji sings, but it is not approved by Prabhupada [Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī]. Those songs are for siddha bhaktas, not for us who are sadha[ka] bhaktas or learning bhaktas. Lord Caitanya never divulged in public, he enjoyed them in the company of his selected three or four devotees. There is one song by Jayadeva, “Worshiping the Ten Incarnations,” that song is all right.8
Śrīla Prabhupāda told Yamunā Devī that his favorite prayer was Narottama Dāsa Ṭhākura’s Hari Hari Biphale.9
Appreciating Jayaśacīnandana Dāsa’s translation of the poem Mārkine Bhāgavata Dharma, Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote of the poem, “I think it can be included in the front of the new printing of the song book, and it can be sung in kirtana like the other [sic] songs of Bhaktivinode Thakura.”10
“Just follow the guru”
Hari Śauri Prabhu tells of an exchange in which Śrīla Prabhupāda gives some further instructions about bhajanas:
There is a devotee here from Chicago, Trāṇa-kartā dāsa, who is very interested in singing different bhajanas. Several times I have heard him sing jaya rādhā-mādhava, jaya kuñja-bihārī, jaya gopī-jana-vallabha, jaya giri-vara-dhārī, jaya giri-vara-dhārī [with some extra jaya’s] rather than sing it the way Śrīla Prabhupāda does. In view of what Prabhupāda recently said about not changing anything given by the ācāryas I approached Trāṇa-kartā and asked him where he had learned this new version.
He said that he had heard it on a tape made by Acyutānanda Swami. He was also singing other bhajanas that are not in our song book, and said that he got them from Prabhupada’s Godbrothers. He even had a tape of himself singing a song written by B. R. Śrīdhara Mahārāja.
We had a bit of a debate about the merits of what he was doing, and so I decided to bring the matter to Śrīla Prabhupāda for clarification. I brought up the issues about chanting new versions of existing songs, and the chanting of new songs.
As far as the new version of Jaya rādhā-mādhava is concerned, Prabhupāda said it was all right. But he added, “Bhaja Hare Kṛṣṇa is not all right. The thing is, they add these things without asking, and that is the danger. It is better to just follow the guru.”
Śrīla Prabhupāda confirmed that the song, and the singing, of his Godbrothers was also all right. Nevertheless, his preference is clearly that we stick to whatever he has introduced and not be so interested in running here and there to gather up new songs, as this may cause a distraction for us. As he has said before, our Western mentality is to always seek out something new—we are never satisfied with what we already have.11
Notes:
1 Māyāpur, April 8, 1975.
2 Songs of the Vaiṣṇava Ācāryas, Foreword.
3 Bhakti Vikāsa Swami, “Kirtana,” p. 22
4 Personal interview, November 22, 2021.
5 Yaśodānandana Dāsa, in Memories, Vol. 1, p. 98. Sometimes instead of oṁ we hear svāmī added. But as Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “It is jaya jagadīśa hare. Don’t concoct.”
6 Danavir Goswami, “Kirtana Katha.” https://danavirgoswami.com/kirtan-katha/. Originally published in Vaiṣṇava Society, Vol. 18.
7 I’ll Build You a Temple, p. 524‒525. Giriraj Swami writes, “Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted only one thing from them: they should chant Hare Kṛṣṇa day and night.”
8 Letter to Acyutānanda, July 15, 1972. Śrīla Prabhupāda also wrote to him on June 8, 1972, “In your song book, poet Jayadeva’s high madhurya rasa songs may be avoided because they are meant for highly advanced devotees.” In the July 15 letter Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote, “The other songs that you mention are all right.” Acyutānanda has confirmed to me that “the other songs” meant the other songs in the book (personal communication, November 15, 2021). Śrita-kamalā, if I recall, appeared in a manuscript of the songbook and perhaps even in an early printing, but was thereafter dropped.
On the other side, though, Kauśalyā Dāsī has written me about Śrita-kamalā, “I sang it several times in front of Śrīla Prabhupāda and he never said anything to me about it.” As a member of a small group of devotees blessed to travel around India with Śrīla Prabhupāda in 1970 and spend much time with him, she writes, “I noticed that his instructions would often change depending on the circumstances.” (Personal communication, May 26, 2022) So I won’t try to give a verdict about Śrita-kamalā. But, more generally, singers of kīrtanas and bhajanas can take into account Śrīla Prabhupāda’s broader instruction about avoiding songs meant for highly advanced devotees.
9 The Kirtan Sutras, p. 22.
10 Letter to Jayaśacīnandana Dāsa, February 8, 1976.
11 Transcendental Diary, Volume 4, p. 582. Entry for October 6, 1976.
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