Diksa Samskara

0:00Oh Ma Gyanati Mirandasya, Gyanam Djana Shalakaya, Chaksurun Militame, Tasmaishri Gurajma, Sri Chaitanyama Bishta, Skapi Nabutale, Swajamrupayam, Dațiwa Dantikam Vandeham, Sri Guru, Sri Yudapadka Malam, Srivscha Sri

0:45Ram Saga, Sabhana Rabunatam Vetam Sajevam Sadvaitam Sadotam Parijana Sahitam Krishna Chaitanya Devam, Sri Radha Krishna Pada, Saganamadam, Srivisakadamsa, E Krishna Pana Sindho dena wanthu jagatpate

1:22gopesha gopikatanta, radakantanasti tapta kanchana gurangi Radebrindavaneswari Rishavam Sudadevi Pranamani Havikri Pancha Paupa Tarudes Chakripa Sindu Bevacha, Patitanam

1:48Pavane Byu Vaisnava Yonamamha, Dai Sri Krishna Chaitanya Prabunitananda, Sriadvaita Gadata Sri Vasadivaura Bhakta Vindha Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Ram Hare Ramam Rama Rama

2:11Reb Namaswamati sachitramatraskaru pamrupam tasyakra jamura kuri madurin bhostavu radakundirivaram Radika madava sumpraptowya se patiripaya sriburu tamma tosni yam tah pradi mamavacham prasuctum sanjeevaya taki wa

2:34shakti darakswadam nanyamstahastasricharanwana Pagadin Panamau Bhagavad Shah Biham Harikna Sripak Pakti Kasmarajan Mudja Ades Dia ki me atsprava dunga Denga Meh Pryaskarunga, Mehradishai, Diksha Kebadi Name Borunga Legin

3:20Mah Hindi Puranahi Bol Saktaho isrime andrazing Bolonga. Hare Krishna and Indiana Rod of Ferrari

Significance of Diksa Samskara

3:38Sun Satan Indiana Translation Indi Today we are celebrating a very significant event in the lives of those who will be getting initiation,

4:01specifically Dīkṣā-saṁskāra brāhmaṇa initiation and also in the lives of all other devotees. This event is called Dīkṣā-saṁskāra. Prabhu, who was speaking before me, he very nicely

4:24explained the varṇāśrama aspect of this second initiation, brāhmaṇa initiation. He said that Prabhupada wanted to establish varṇāśrama-dharma, and

4:38therefore, second initiation is for those who proved himself to have this brāhmaṇical nature and who can serve Krishna with his brāhmaṇical qualities.

4:53I will speak from a slightly different angle about this event. This event is called Diksya Samskara. And the meaning of samskara, the primary meaning

5:08of the word saṁskāra, besides being the impression or sometimes Śrīla Prabhupāda, oftentimes Śrīla Prabhupāda would call it purificatory ritual. But the primary, the original meaning of the word saṁskāra.

5:28Samyak, uh, the prefix sam is coming from samyak, and kara means uh from the verbal root kṛ. So it's a perfect ritual which creates lasting impression or which changes you permanently.

5:51The word saṁskāra means that your nature will be changed. And that's exactly the reason why do we undergo saṁskāra? The meaning of saṁskāra is to change our nature.

6:10And of course, we can understand that saṁskāra is not something cheap. Saṁskāra is not something when you just throw some rice into the fire. This is not real saṁskāra.

6:25Real saṁskāra is the complete change of the heart which may take place over a long period of time.

6:37And the very moment of initiation when as brahmacārī who was speaking before me said Ātma Samarpaṇa, Dīkṣā Kāle, the Lord Himself, when He sees that you surrender, when He

6:53sees that you do this Ātma Samarpaṇa complete surrender that you're not independent anymore, you are not an independent living entity anymore. You're not trying to look in this life some independent

7:10enjoyment, then this is the real saṁskāra. And at that moment of time, Krishna will make you Ātma-sama. He brings you to the same spiritual level.

7:25The reality of saṁskāra is that through the process of surrender your being elevated on a spiritual level. Ātma-sama doesn't mean that you become equal to Lord.

7:40You become equal in a sense that your spiritual nature will be firmly established within your heart. You are not anymore this material body. You are the spiritual being who is not independent

7:58because in the material body the very meaning of material body the very essence the very purpose of material body having material body and material mind is to manifest our independence.

8:13And as long as we try to manifest our independence, we will be, we will remain in this material body and the material mind will be attached to this material body. But as soon as we get this decision, Ātma Samarpaṇa, I'm completely surrendering myself, I'm surrendering my independence to the Lord, then Atmasam, Krishna makes you equal to Himself.

8:45He recognizes you as a spiritual being.

Five elements of Panca Samskara

8:50Before that, he is there in your heart, he's sitting, he's watching at yourself, but he doesn't really recognize you as a spiritual being because you yourself do not recognize you as a spiritual being.

9:05So this is the meaning of the word saṁskāra and the saṁskāra which we undergo during initiation actually consists of five angas. It's Pañcāṅga saṁskāra or pañca saṁskāra, as it is known in Sri Sampradaya.

9:29It's actually Pancharatri Kavidi. And according to the strict rules of Pāñcarātrika-vidhi, we are undergoing this saṁskāra and this scientific process is meant to bring about the permanent change within our heart.

9:47And this pañca saṁskāra or pañcāṅga saṁskāra consists of first saṁskāra tapa, second saṁskāra Urdhva Puṇḍra, third saṁskāra is called Nāma, Fifth Saṁskāra is called mantra, and sorry, fourth saṁskāra is called mantra and fifth saṁskāra is called yāga so by undergoing these five types of uh saṁskāras uh your process of changing yourself will be complete.

10:24Even if you miss one of them, it will not be complete. Of course, it may contradict a little bit to what the previous speaker said when he said that second initiation is not for everyone.

10:40But you know it's it's a technical detail. Basically, in any case, we should understand

10:49the science behind this pañca saṁskāra. And the science behind pañca saṁskāra starts with tapa. Tapa saṁskāra, which is the first saṁskāra, we have to undergo.

11:01Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura explained the inner meaning of it. He said that there are so many people who externally goes through this pañca saṁskāra process. But in reality, there is no permanent change within their heart.

11:20In reality, they remain the same. Same ideas, same conceptions, same bodily identifications,

11:29same upādhis which were there. Like it was said that you know sometimes you think you're already Brahman, you got your initiation when you were two and a half years old, or six years old, or whatever years old.

11:46That's an upādhi. So the first saṁskāra is tapa saṁskāra and tapa saṁskāra actually means tapa means the fire.

11:56And this fire or heat which is there is supposed to burn upādhis. And without burning upadis, we will not even start the process of initiation.

12:11And what is this heat which is burning upadis, which is burning the bodily identification, identification with the mind and with the body.

12:21Ātma buddhi and mano buddhi and whatever buddhi we may have. All these upadis which we may have. You know, this tapa saṁskāra, this fire, you know, externally it is manifested as you being stamped.

12:38And acharya takes some iron thing, puts it into fire and then stamps you on the shoulder and puts here the stamp of conch and discus, chakra, and shankha. And then you feel you know, yeah, little bit and

13:02four hands will appear from my shoulders. But the real meaning, Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura explains that this is just the external ritual,

13:15but the real meaning behind this external ritual is pañca-tapa, pāścāttāp, pāścāt tāp, anu-tāp. This tapa saṁskāra means you become repentful, you become regretful about all the sinful activities which you have committed due to the bodily identification. You created some theft, some murder, some illicit sex, all kinds of things may be there. And murder doesn't mean the murder of a human being.

13:52You may kill so many animals or you know partially kill so many animals. So this pāścāttāp, this repentance is very much necessary. Without repentance there will be no uh permanent change within our heart.

14:11We may get harināma, we may get mantra-dīkṣā, we may get even deity to worship, but if the heart is not cleansed by the fire of repentance, There will be no room within the heart for the holy name.

14:31You will chant the holy name, but uh you know, actually, in the heart there will be no holy name, the holy name will be only in your head, not in the heart. In the heart there will be all kinds of desires. Why?

14:45Because you didn't undergo this first saṁskāra, which is sincere repentance about so long identification with the material body.

14:59And this repentance can only be possible if you are in contact with guru. When you see guru, when you see his qualities, when you see his purity, his determination, his spiritual power, you will

15:19you will never be able to repent really because you will always compare yourself with somebody who is lower than you. You will see somebody and there will always be somebody who is lower than you, somebody who is less qualified than you. And you will see him and you say, "Oh, I'm not so bad."

15:39Why should I repent? So many people are lower than me. I'm very spiritual, you know, I will I have all this, you know, this and this and that and, you know, sari and dhoti and tilak.

15:55No, but the first thing is to establish firmly. I'm not this body, and therefore there is no question of me to be happy by trying to establish myself as a body or establish myself as a s— as a mind.

16:13You know, and that repentance, this fire of repentance, has to burn every day of our life. Because the day when it subsides, again the bodily identification will come.

16:28Śrīla Prabhupāda says that as long as we have this body and mind, as long as we, the spirit soul, are in intimate connection with this body and mind, all the desires dictated by the body, More or less inflicted upon us by the body, they will come back immediately.

16:52So every day, this fire of repentance has to be there. This fire of yajña, today it will be over, you know, for maybe 40 minutes, half an hour it will be burning.

17:05But you have to take the wood from this fire and put it in the heart. And there will always be heartburn. You will always have this thing because you will have the fire within the heart.

Urdhva Pundra and directional focus

17:20So that's tapa saṁskāra.

17:22And the second saṁskāra is called ūrdhva-puṇḍra, and Bhaktivinoda explains, no, and ūrdhva-puṇḍra, uh, technically speaking, means uh vertical tilak—like Śaiva tilak, it's not vertical, it's horizontal.

17:42But ūrdhva-puṇḍra means vertical tilak, but there is a meaning behind it, and every time when we put on tilak and technically speaking again we

17:53can only—we only have a right to put on tilak when we underwent this saṁskāra, not before that. So Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura explains what is the meaning of tilak, what is the essence of tilak, why do we put this tilak?

18:10He says ūrdhva-puṇḍra, ūrdhva means up, ūpar. Urdva means the direction up.

18:19And Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura says that ūrdhva-puṇḍra matlab ūrdhva-gati. It basically means that ūrdhva-gati, your destination, your goal is higher up, not on this plane.

18:38And that basically means again that every time when you put tilak, you have to remind yourself, I'm not of this world. I belong to the higher realm. And I want to be there.

18:50And my gati, gati means destination, gati means the purpose, the goal of my endeavors, but gati also means the gate, the how you go there.

19:06So, my gati, my progressive march in life, whatever I'm doing every day, is to reach this higher destination.

19:18Every day when I put on tilaka, I have to remind ourselves, I have to remind myself, you know, I don't want to crawl in this material world.

19:30I don't want to crawl in this soil because my Gati is there and therefore I'm marching to this destination. And today is yet another day when I can make some progress, some pragati,

19:48some little pragati I can make through this gati by chanting the holy name, by serving devotees, by doing some devotional service. That's the second saṁskāra.

20:02And I only have three more minutes of four more minutes to explain three remaining saṁskāras. And the third saṁskāra is Nāma Saṁskāra, which signifies externally and internally the change of your self-identification.

20:27Our previous name, no matter how you know Sanskritized it was, whatever it was, our previous name was the name of an enjoyer. My main purpose of having this name is to distinguish myself from other enjoyers.

20:50You know, there is one enjoyer called Vikash, there is another enjoyer called Prakash, there is another enjoyer called you know Sanjay, there is another enjoyer called somebody else. But the essence is the same.

21:07I am trying to establish my power over this material realm. I am trying to establish my authority here. As Prabhupāda said, the purpose of material life is to lord it over material nature.

21:25And therefore, Śrī Guru, at the moment of pañca-saṁskāra, the moment of dīkṣā-saṁskāra, he very mercifully gives you the name which is augmented with the name Das or Dassi or Devi Dassi.

21:48And basically it means that from now on I am not the Lord of my surroundings, I am the dās, I am the servant of my surroundings. Before that I was looking around myself and I was enjoying.

22:04Like Prabhupada once he caught a cockroach. The cockroach was crawling in his room in Māyāpur. And he took this little cockroach and he came to a window.

22:18And he, you know, placed the cockroach outside of the window, and the cockroach fell down and he said, This is the material world, lord it over the material world.

22:32He told the cockroach. So in the same way as this little cockroach by crawling in this material world is trying to lord it over and having his domain, his area where he established his authority in the same way we are doing the same thing.

22:49You know, and Prabhupada is saying, you know, if you want to lord it over material world, do it.

22:56But if you want to surrender, you're das. And das means the dust of your service, of whatever you see around yourself, you become the dust. Whoever you see around yourself, you are the dust of this.

23:12You're not some abstract dust, not some, you know, lofty concept. I am dust. Das of whom? Oh, dust of God. Where is God? I don't know. Far away. You know. No, I am the dust of whoever I see in front of me.

23:29If somebody is in front of me, I am his dust. Because I am das of the Lord, and he's the part of the Lord. Because this whole material world is his property and

23:41my identity my internal identity is to serve the Lord by interacting properly with his property because there is no other way for me to manifest my propensity and to develop my propensity of service unless I understand that I have to serve everyone whom I see and everything which I see.

Mantra and Yaga Samskaras

24:08Specifically the Lord and His representative spiritual master, but not only, everyone else also, in different capacities, in different ways.

24:20And this is the third saṁskāra, the fourth saṁskāra is Dīkṣā saṁskāra, which was the main topic of my discussion, but uh it's too late. But in two words, Dīkṣā saṁskāra means yes, brāhmaṇa saṁskāra for sure.

24:38It's brāhmaṇa initiation, Śrīla Prabhupāda was very clear about it. But it also, according to Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura and Vaiṣṇava-ācāryas, is the way to establish your concrete service relationship with the deity.

24:56You know, by tāpa saṁskāra you burn your connection with this world. By ūrdhva-puṇḍra you establish your destination which is beyond this world.

25:12By nāma saṁskāra, when you get the name and little word, which is the most important, dās or dāsī, you establish yourself as a general servant of the Lord, not a very specific

25:29servant, and your main destination is to serve the service.

25:35But the next step is mantra saṁskāra. And according to Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī, while giving you mantra, mantra is called manum, Mantra is called Divygyan, in the syllables of the mantra, the spiritual master gives you the connection with the Supreme Lord.

25:54Specific connection. And by chanting this mantra, this connection, this specific sambandha between yourself, your soul and the Supreme Lord will be revealed.

26:05That's the science behind second samskara, at least in case of Pancharatriki mantras.

26:13Pancharatriki mantras, especially Gopāla Mantra, 18 syllable Gopāla mantra, they contain the specific relationship which is revealed in the last mantra in Kāma-gāyatrī Mantra, specific relationship of the soul with the Supreme Lord established in the eternity.

26:36And then Yaga is the last samskara. Yaga basically means that usually traditionally Guru would give salagram sila or some deity to his disciple to worship to manifest this specific relationship.

26:54In this way, the whole process is complete from burning your material connection till the establishing your specific relationship with the Supreme Lord through the concrete service to the concrete deity of the Lord.

Application of spiritual initiation

27:12But in our settings, there is no need to get śālagrāma-śilā, you can go to the temple which you belong to, and there is Vigraha, and you can do deity service to this particular Vigraha which is given to you by your Guru Mahārāja or by Śrīla Prabhupāda and his society. But in this way, this is the science how the transformation takes place.

27:38There is a lot which can be said more about this process, but if you understand this, you will very clearly see the scientific idea behind this pancha samskara.

27:54And therefore, it's so important to understand the inner meaning of each and every element of initiation and to do it properly, not only at the moment of initiation, but throughout the life.

28:08As I said, this uh fire of repentance, uh this uh uh you know understanding of my ultimate goal uh in life, uh my service attitude and concrete service attitude and service to the deity. It has to be every day of our life.

28:31And in this way, this samskara, it's a lifelong process which will ultimately bring about amazing transformation within our soul, which we are hankering for.

28:46Please don't remain just ritualistic devotees who mechanically try to perform some bhakti, but try to understand the inner meaning and try to go deeper and that's actually why you need a guru.

29:04To do external things you don't need a guru.

29:08But to do it properly you need to see somebody who is doing it properly and follow his footsteps, and therefore I congratulate all of you who are getting second initiation and all of you who are witnessing this second initiation because uh you are also part of this whole process.

29:29You are also trying to do this, and this lecture is supposed to remind you what is the uh inner meaning of the whole procedure which will take place. Otherwise it's so easy to do it ritualistically, no problem.

29:48I am over this second initiation, see everyone has seen it, I am great, anyway, thank you very much, my time is over. Śrīla Prabhupāda kī jaya!