westerners ok

As a preacher, Bhaktivinoda Thakura wanted to make the teachings of Lord Caitanya understandable to people in general and popular among them. This missionary spirit followed the express desire of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu. Although Lord Caitanya Himself wrote only eight short verses on His teachings, He ordered His chief disciples to write volumes of books explaining, codifying and substantiating these teachings with Vedic authority. It is quite evident from Bhaktivinoda's books that he took great pains to make these topmost transcendental teachings readily appreciable. For instance, in his speech on Srimad-Bhagavatam, we see the Thakura making an old, massive Sanskrit tome really interesting because he writes about it in such an honest and charming way. He writes: "The Bhagavata has suffered from shallow critics both Indian and foreign. That book has been accursed and denounced by a great number of our young countrymen who have scarcely read its contents and pondered the philosophy on which it is founded. It is owing mostly to their having imbibed an unfounded prejudice against it when they were in school. The Bhagavata, as a matter of course, has been held in derision by those teachers who are generally of an inferior mind and intellect. This prejudice is not easily shaken off when the student grows up unless he candidly studies the book and meditates on the doctrines of Vaisnavism. We are ourselves witnesses to the fact. When we were in college, reading the philosophical works of the West and exchanging thoughts with the thinkers of the day, we contracted a hatred of the Bhagavata. That great work seemed like a repository of ideas scarcely adapted to the Nineteenth Century, and we hated to hear any argument in its favour. To us then a volume of Channing, Parker, Emerson or Newman had more weight than whole lots of Vaisnava works. Greedily we pored over the various commentations upon the Holy Bible and the labours of the Tattva-bodhini Sabha, containing extracts from the Upanisads and the Vedanta, but no work of the Vaisnavas had any favour with us. But when we advanced in age and our religious sentiment received development, we turned Unitarian in our belief and prayed as Jesus prayed in the Garden. Accidentally, we fell upon a work about the Great Caitanya, and on reading it with some attention in order to settle the historical position of that Mighty Genius of Nadia, we had the opportunity to gather His explanations of the Bhagavata, given to the wrangling Vedantists of the Benares school. This accidental study created in us a love for all the works which we could find about our Eastern Saviour. We gathered with difficulties the famous Kūrcas written in Sanskrit by the disciples of Caitanya. The explanations we got of the Bhagavata from these sources were of such a charming character that we procured a copy of the Bhagavata complete and studied its texts (difficult, of course, to those who are not trained in philosophical thoughts) with the assistance of the famous commentaries of Sridhara Svami. From such study it is that we have at last gathered the real doctrines of the Vaisnavas. Oh! What trouble it is to get rid of prejudices gathered in unripe years!" It is rare to find such honesty in the field of religion, where blind faith often demands dishonesty in order to keep itself intact.    (More...)