Bhakti-våkña - The Basic Ideas
In each issue we will try to cover some aspects of the whole concept of Bhakti-vrksa. We are very grateful to His Holiness Jayapataka Maharaja and his disciple His Grace Kaunteya prabhu for compiling the Bhakti-våkña manual. This manual serves not only as a reference book for the ideas and concepts of this newsletter but it is the inspiration behind our whole endeavour to inform others of this important method of spreading Krishna consciousness. Indeed we are grateful for the permission to be able to quote from the manual, which we do in many cases.
Why is it called "Bhakti-våkña?"
In Sri Caitanya-caritamrta, Lord Caitanya and His movement are compared to the tree of devotion, the bhakti-våkña. Srila Prabhupada writes in his summary of Adi-lila, Chapter Nine:
"It is figuratively described that both the tree itself and the trunk of the tree are Çré Caitanya Mahäprabhu… The tree surrounds the entire world, and the flowers of the tree are to be distributed to everyone. In this way the tree of Lord Caitanya Mahäprabhu intoxicates the entire world."
Çréla Prabhupäda also says:
"Our International Society for Krishna Consciousness is one of the branches of the Caitanya tree. -Caitanya-caritämåta, Ädi-lélä 9.18
Every small group in ISKCON’s congregation is therefore a branch of the branch, stemming from the bhakti-våkña, the tree of bhakti of Lord Caitanya. The Bhakti-våkña group is a type of Nama hatta group especially geared toward branching out. Just like a tree, a branch of a certain thickness branches off into two. This branching process keeps going until the tree has thousands and thousands of twigs all connected to the main root. Lord Caitanya is the original root, and even one single branch from the tree can grow and form thousands of sub branches, small twigs, leaves and so on.
We are part of the Caitanya Tree. This is the ISKCON branch and Çréla Prabhupäda is our connection. A tree begins from one small sprout, but when it grows it has numerous branches, similarly from a simple beginning a Bhakti-våkña programme will grow into a massive affair, as predicted by Çréla Bhaktivinode Öhäkura.