"I Am Saranga's Murari!"

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh (evening Nama-hatta)
4 January 2020, part 2

I am remembering now the last day of Nabadwip Dham parikrama, and I want to tell you some very important thing. We always glorify Mamgachhi, that is Modadrumdwip, and speak about the birthplace of Srila Vrindavan Das Thakur there, but there is also one small temple beside it called Saranga Murari's temple. Radha-Gopinath Deities were installed in this temple a few hundred years ago, and some devotees serve those Deities to this day. What I am about to speak is the glorification of the Holy Name and the power of suddha-vaishnav's chanting of the Holy Name—the reaction that comes through great Vaishnavs' chanting of the Holy Name.

There was an old Vaishnav, an associate of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, named Saranga Thakur. He served the Deities of Radha-Gopinath in that temple. Eventually, he became very old. One night he cried to Radha-Gopinath, "Prabhu, please send someone. I have gone so old now that I cannot do Your service properly. Please send someone to take over the service." When he left the temple room and went to bed that night, suddenly he got a dream. Gopinath came to him and said, "Do not worry about that. Give the Harinam maha-mantra to whoever you see first tomorrow—he will be your servitor."

Actually, Saranga Thakur walked a few kilometres every day early in the morning to bathe in the Ganges, after that he did the mangal arati, etc. So, that night, after Gopinath told him that, he suddenly woke up. Excited, he thought, "Oh, Gopinath has given me a dream and told me to give Harinam to someone—that person will be the servitor of Radha-Gopinath!" He started walking to the Ganges to take bath.

In the early days, it often happened that somebody was bitten by a snake, and people did not go to doctors (there were not so many doctors in those days), instead they would go to some ojha (healer) to take the poison out. So, that day a small boy was bitten by a snake, but the ojha could not save him, so, according to the tradition, his parents wrapped his body into banana leaves and put it into the Ganges with some incense and a flower garland.

So, when Saranga Thakur went bathing, he saw a child's body floating in the Ganges, coming his way. He saw the boy was dead, but he remembered what Gopinath had advised him; so when the body floated to the bank of the Ganges, he chanted the Holy Name into the boy's ears—Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare / Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare. Suddenly, the boy opened his eyes—he sat up and looked around.

Then, Saranga Thakur took him to his ashram (the temple in Mamgachhi, near Srila Vrindavan Das Thakur's birthplace). He gave him initiation and the brahman thread. The boy's name was Murari. Having received the mantra, Murari started serving Radha-Gopinath. After some time, the news reached his parents that he was alive, and they came there to take him home, but when they came Murari said, "I will not go with you! You have already thrown me into the Ganges, so I am not your son any more, I am now the son of my Guru. I am not your Murari, I am Saranga's Murari!"

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