Viraja
Jaya Jagannatha!
Everyone knows Gaur-Nitai.
The Nitai in the above is Nithyananda Prabhu, a close associate of Gaura (Chaitanya Mahaprabhu).
Tomorrow is Nithyananda Prabhu's appearance day and ISKCON Boston will be open with celebrations in the evening. However, owing to the distance from my home along with tough parking facilities, I have decided not to visit the temple.
A small leela that I heard from ISKCON pujari and guru Jagat Sakshi Das to grace the occasion:
This happened within the past 100 years, so a recent leela.
One old woman was serving the gaur-nitai deities at their temple in Lodi bazar, Delhi. Every single day it was customary for the temple to offer 20 kg of halwa alone to the deities. The old woman cooked it each day.
Then after a long time of serving gaur-nitai, she requested the deities for her retirement and then left the premises, after the temple appointed a young pujari to cook and offer the halwa to the deities.
But when the old lady one day visited the temple after a break, she sensed the deities of gaur-nitai were not feeling well. Upon her inquiry (the deities spoke to her), the deities told that their clothes were too much of a misfit for them, and many other such things.
So the old lady went to the young new pujari and scolded him for not serving the deities properly.
For that, the young pujar said, the gaur-nitai deities were too small and thus proper fitting clothes could not be made, and similar things on his side.
The old lady narrated the pujari's reply to the deities and they told her, "If she arranged to offer them twice the amount of halwa from next day, they would grow in size and thus better-fitting clothes could be made for them!".
Lo-and-behold! The old lady did arrange for 40kg of halwa to be served to the deities and to everyone's sheer amazement, within closed doors, a few witnessed the gaur-nitai deities actually grow in size, to much larger than their original size!
This happened just within the past century and a true story!
Sri Jagat Sakshi Das has recounted this tale in one of his lecture videos in Tamil language that I watched yesterday.
Hail Nithyananda Prabhu!
The Nitai in the above is Nithyananda Prabhu, a close associate of Gaura (Chaitanya Mahaprabhu).
Tomorrow is Nithyananda Prabhu's appearance day and ISKCON Boston will be open with celebrations in the evening. However, owing to the distance from my home along with tough parking facilities, I have decided not to visit the temple.
A small leela that I heard from ISKCON pujari and guru Jagat Sakshi Das to grace the occasion:
This happened within the past 100 years, so a recent leela.
One old woman was serving the gaur-nitai deities at their temple in Lodi bazar, Delhi. Every single day it was customary for the temple to offer 20 kg of halwa alone to the deities. The old woman cooked it each day.
Then after a long time of serving gaur-nitai, she requested the deities for her retirement and then left the premises, after the temple appointed a young pujari to cook and offer the halwa to the deities.
But when the old lady one day visited the temple after a break, she sensed the deities of gaur-nitai were not feeling well. Upon her inquiry (the deities spoke to her), the deities told that their clothes were too much of a misfit for them, and many other such things.
So the old lady went to the young new pujari and scolded him for not serving the deities properly.
For that, the young pujar said, the gaur-nitai deities were too small and thus proper fitting clothes could not be made, and similar things on his side.
The old lady narrated the pujari's reply to the deities and they told her, "If she arranged to offer them twice the amount of halwa from next day, they would grow in size and thus better-fitting clothes could be made for them!".
Lo-and-behold! The old lady did arrange for 40kg of halwa to be served to the deities and to everyone's sheer amazement, within closed doors, a few witnessed the gaur-nitai deities actually grow in size, to much larger than their original size!
This happened just within the past century and a true story!
Sri Jagat Sakshi Das has recounted this tale in one of his lecture videos in Tamil language that I watched yesterday.
Hail Nithyananda Prabhu!