In the Land of Vrnda

“When I think of home, I think of a place where there is love overflowing.”  Home, as this contemporary verse of the song suggest, is not only a place where there is peace, harmony, happiness, and security; home is a place where there is love. And the writer uses the modifier overflowing to describe this kind of love. I was taught that there is only one place in the whole universe where there is an overflowing love; that place is  Vrndavan, the abode of God, The Supreme Lord of Love.

Vrndavan, the land of Vrnda, is geographically located in India.  Vrnda is another name of Tulasi, a devotee plant, which is present everywhere in Vrndavan. Vrndavan is a place of pilgrimage, a holy land. Because five thousand years ago, The Supreme Lord, The All-Attractive Krsna, The Absolute Truth, spent his childhood in the forest of Vrndavan where He enjoyed the company and love of His family and friends. The Supreme Lord performed so many wonderful extra-ordinary heroic deeds in the Land of Vrnda. And according to the confidential friends and lovers of Krsna, Krsna is inseparable from Vrndavan; Krsna is always in Vrndavan, and Vrndavan is a place where Krsna is.

Since Krsna, God, is the loving Father of all living being and because He resides in Vrndavan;  Vrndavan is home, the real home of every living entity. But why is it that we do not have the longing for our real home, the yearning to go back to Vrndavan? And even if we go to Vrndavan, we do not feel that it is a home? The reason is enviousness, deep within our hearts is a desire to become lord. We do not want to be with the Supreme Lord; we do not want to serve; we do not want to be in Vrndavan. We do not want to go back home; rather, we want a new home, a place away from our Father. This material world was given to us  so that we can enjoy separately from God, so that we can be lords.

Where is Vrndavan? According to my Spiritual Teacher, Vrndavan is not a geographical area, it is actually a state of consciousness, it is a place located in our hearts. If the heart of a person is devoid of love for Krsna, love for God, that person can be geographically in Vrndavan but not in Vrndavan. Similarly, without love for God, a person can be with Krsna but not in Vrndavan. However, a pure lover of Krsna, wherever he is, because he is immersed in love for Krsna is in Vrndavan. As God is everywhere and all-pervading, Vrndavan is also everywhere and has no boundary.

Demons, people who are envious of God, cannot enter Vrndavan. Unfortunately, most of us are envious of God. We are here in this material world because of envy, we want to enjoy separately away from God. We do not want to be in Vrndavan; because Vrndavan is a place centered on God, a place where God The Supreme Enjoyer resides. We want to be lords not servants; the enjoyer not the enjoyed; we do not want to serve. And because deep within our hearts, we do not want to be in Vrndavan: the All-knowing God, whose plenary expansion as “Paramatma” is in our hearts, grants our desires.

God is love and he resides in our hearts. His love is unconditional and based on freedom; and we must love Him, if we want to experience the joy of God’s love. If we want to be truly happy, we should reciprocate with love the love that God is giving to us. We can only truly experience the real happiness of being in love, if we love The Supreme Lover; if we are in-love with God. Nowadays, because of sad experience of loving the wrong person, some people are reluctant and are afraid to love. But their so called love, being conditional and selfish, is actually lust not love. Moreover, because of envy, they seems to had forgotten that there is a perfect person to love; and to be truly happy is to be in love with that person. Love is the greatest source of happiness, and loving the Supreme Being is the ultimate supreme source of happiness. A saintly person said that we can never trully understand and experience love unless we love our loving Father, who is The God of love.

In our hearts is Vrndavan, but  we cannot perceive it because our own land of Vrnda is covered with full-grown weeds of envy and  endless material desires. If we do want our “heart of gold” to shine, we must cut the weeds of envy; and we must clean our minds from so much rust and dirt of material contamination.

Five hundred years ago, out of his love and kindness, God descends as “Lord Chaitanya” and inaugurate a simple but very effective process so that anyone can easily be with God, so that we can be in Vrndavan. “Chant the Holy Name! Chant the Holy Name! Chant the Holy Name!”, He said; “in this age of quarrel, chaos, and confusion there is no other way to achieve liberation”. And not only liberation, because the sweetest nectar (of love for God) is also available to the Chanters of The Holy Name.

Lord Chaitanya prayed: O my Lord, Your Holy Name alone can render all benediction to living beings, and thus you have hundreds and millions of names, like Krsna, Govinda, Allah, Jehovah, etc. In these transcendental Names You have invested all your transcendental energies. There are not even hard and fast rules for chanting these Names. O my Lord, out of Your kindness, You enable us to easily approach You by chanting Your Holy Names, but it’s so unfortunate that I have no attraction for Them. 

There is no other way to reach Vrndavan; The Holy Name is our only passport to Vrndavan. And because God is absolute, The Holy Name is none different from Him; The Holy Name itself is Vrndavan: our refuge, our home.