Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

Qu'est-ce que l'Absolu ? Dieu existe-t-il ?

Krishna is God in person; formless Brahman is his radiance

Un Dieu personnelIl le dit expressément

Chaitanya wrote almost nothing; his theology reaches us through his biographers, above all Krishnadasa Kaviraja’s Chaitanya Charitamrita, which puts long teachings to Rupa and Sanatana Gosvami in his mouth. According to that text the Absolute Truth is known in three ways: as impersonal Brahman, as Paramatma in the heart and as Bhagavan, the personal Lord, its fullest aspect. That Lord is Krishna, and formless Brahman is only the radiance of his body. The relation between God, his energies and souls is formulated as inconceivable oneness and difference (achintya-bhedabheda). Chaitanya argues with Shankara’s followers and rejects the idea that the personal is an appearance: the ultimate is someone to be loved and served.

Qui suis-je ? Existe-t-il un vrai soi ?

The soul is Krishna’s eternal servant, one with and distinct from Him

Une âme créée et immortelleIl le dit expressément

According to the Chaitanya Charitamrita, Chaitanya taught Sanatana Gosvami that the constitutional nature of the living being is to be Krishna’s eternal servant. The soul (jiva) is a minute part of God’s energy, the so-called marginal energy, situated between the spiritual and the material: it can turn towards Krishna or towards illusion. It is eternal and was not created in time, but it never becomes identical with God: the relation between them is one of inconceivable oneness and difference. The ego that thinks itself lord of the world is an identity lent by maya; the true self is discovered in the relation of love and service. His own self-description as servant of the servant of Krishna’s servants sums up this idea of the self.

Pourquoi souffrons-nous ?

The soul forgot Krishna, and maya gives it the world’s pain

La séparation d'avec DieuIl le dit expressément

According to the Chaitanya Charitamrita, Chaitanya explained to Sanatana Gosvami that the soul, having turned away from Krishna since beginningless time, falls under the sway of maya, which imposes on it the suffering of material existence. Pain therefore comes not from a specific sin but from forgetting one’s own relation to God. Yet Chaitanya’s tradition also knows another pain, that of loving separation (vipralambha), which it considers the highest form of love: in the Shikshashtaka a blink of the eye becomes an age and the whole world is empty in Govinda’s absence. The first suffering takes one away from God; the second is the most intense way of being united with Him.

Que se passe-t-il après la mort ?

The devotee does not merge into God: he serves Him forever in His abode

Vie éternelle et résurrectionIl le dit expressément

Chaitanya’s tradition accepts rebirth for the soul still forgetful of Krishna, but its attention is on another goal. According to the Chaitanya Charitamrita, liberation understood as impersonal merging with Brahman is undesirable for the devotee, who regards it as inferior to love. The ultimate end (prayojana) is prema, pure love of Krishna, and the soul that attains it lives eternally in the spiritual world, in the transcendent Vrindavan, serving Radha and Krishna in a personal relationship. In the Shikshashtaka Chaitanya asks not for liberation but for unmotivated devotion in every one of his lives. Eternal life here is not bodily resurrection but endless loving service.

Comment atteint-on la libération ou le salut ?

Chanting Krishna’s Name, with the humility of grass

Par la dévotion et l'abandonIl le dit expressément

Chaitanya’s central teaching, condensed in the Shikshashtaka, is the collective chanting of Krishna’s Name (nama-sankirtana): it cleans the mirror of the mind and puts out the fire of existence, as the first stanza says. The third stanza sets the attitude: humbler than grass, more patient than a tree, seeking no honour and honouring others. The goal is not liberation in the Advaita sense but prema, pure love of Krishna, which the devotee prefers to any other reward. The Chaitanya Charitamrita presents this path as the one suited to the present age (kali yuga), open to all regardless of caste. The grace of Krishna and his devotees accompanies every step.

Faut-il un maître ?

The guru is Krishna’s mercy in person

IndispensableIl le dit expressément

Chaitanya received initiation from Ishvara Puri in Gaya, and his life changed after that meeting, as his biographers recount. The Chaitanya Charitamrita teaches that the soul wandering in the cycle of births receives the seed of devotion through the grace of Krishna and the guru; the guru is a manifestation of Krishna’s mercy and must be honoured as such. To that figure is added the company of devotees (sadhu-sanga), which the text regards as the root of bhakti. Chaitanya, however, presented himself as servant of the servants, and the Shikshashtaka’s demand for humility reaches the teacher too: no one owns devotion; it is received.

Le monde est-il réel ?

The world is Krishna’s real energy, not an appearance

Manifestation du divinIl le dit expressément

In the debate with the Advaita scholar Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, narrated in the Chaitanya Charitamrita, Chaitanya rejects Shankara’s reading whereby the world is an appearance superimposed on Brahman. For him the world is a real transformation of Krishna’s energy: not false, though temporary. Material energy (maya) is one of God’s potencies, distinct from the spiritual energy and from souls, and with all of them it holds a relation of inconceivable oneness and difference. What deceives is not the world’s existence but the belief that it exists by itself or for one’s own enjoyment. Seen as Krishna’s energy, the world can be used in his service.

Qu'est-ce que l'amour ?

Prema: pure love of Krishna, whose summit is separation

Le désir ardent et l'unionIl le dit expressément

Chaitanya’s tradition makes love of Krishna (prema) the supreme goal of life, above even liberation. In the Shikshashtaka he asks for unmotivated devotion seeking neither wealth, followers nor beauty, and in the last stanza the lover declares that whether he embraces her or tramples her, Krishna will remain the lord of her life. The Gosvamis classified that love into relationships or flavours (rasas): servitude, friendship, parental affection and conjugal love, the last the highest, embodied in Radha. For his devotees Chaitanya was Radha and Krishna in one body, and his life in Puri, consumed by the pain of separation, showed the summit of that love.

Sommes-nous libres ou tout est-il déterminé ?

He does not theorise freedom: the soul turned to maya and can return

Ne s'est pas prononcé

The teachings the Chaitanya Charitamrita attributes to Chaitanya do not expressly address the problem of freedom and fate. They explain that the soul, forgetful of Krishna since beginningless time, is subject to maya and karma, and that through Krishna’s grace and a meeting with a devotee it may receive the seed of devotion. This narrative presupposes that the soul turns away and can return, but does not clarify how the soul’s initiative and divine grace are shared out. The doctrine of the soul’s ‘minute independence’, which answers this, is an elaboration of later, largely modern, Gaudiya theology. Attributing it to Chaitanya would be anachronistic.

Pourquoi méditer ou prier ?

Chanting the Name cleans the mirror of the mind

L'amitié avec DieuIl le dit expressément

The prayer Chaitanya made popular is not silent: it is the collective chanting of Krishna’s Name, with drums and cymbals, through the streets of Navadvip and Puri. The first stanza of the Shikshashtaka sums up its effects: it cleans the mirror of the mind, puts out the fire of existence and swells the ocean of bliss. The second adds that Krishna has placed all his powers in his names and set no rules of time for remembering them. To pray this way is not to ask for favours but to cultivate a personal relationship with Krishna, which tradition describes in flavours: servant, friend, parent or lover. The aim of chanting is love, not liberation.

La raison peut-elle connaître l'ultime ?

The Bhagavata is the authority; reason interprets it, but God is inconceivable

L'Écriture et le raisonnementIl le dit expressément

According to the Chaitanya Charitamrita, Chaitanya was a brilliant scholar in his youth, a teacher of grammar in Navadvip, and never gave up reasoned argument: the text narrates his debates with the Vedantin Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya in Puri and with Prakashananda Sarasvati in Benares. In them he holds that revealed scripture, and in particular the Bhagavata Purana, which he considers the natural commentary on the Vedanta Sutras, is the source of knowledge about God, and that reason must interpret it without forcing it. But the central principle of his theology, inconceivable (achintya) oneness and difference, marks the limit: there are truths about God that reason cannot reconcile, accepted only through scripture and lived in love.

Se retirer du monde ou le transformer ?

He renounced, but asked others for inner devotion without display

La contemplation dans l'actionIl le dit expressément

Chaitanya took renunciant vows at twenty-four and spent the rest of his life in Puri, devoted to chanting and devotional ecstasy. Yet the Chaitanya Charitamrita relates that when the young Raghunatha Dasa wished to leave his wealthy family to follow him, he advised him to go home, make no show of renunciation and keep devotion within while living as an ordinary man. His movement of collective chanting, open to all castes, was moreover a public phenomenon that filled the streets of Bengal. The Gaudiya tradition has since combined renunciants and householders, and holds that love of Krishna can be lived in any state of life.