The full moon festival of Holi, celebrated in Phalgun Poornima, heralds the Vasanta-ritu, the spring season.
In Mathura and Vrindavan areas, the festival is for three days .The image of Lord Krishna is placed on a swing (popularly called as “dola”). The swing is rocked 21 times at the end of the festival. Thus the festival derives the name “Dolyatra”. Barsana, the birth place of Radha and Nandgaon, the village home of Sri Krishna are marked with the play of “lathmar” holi. Women dressed up with colourful costumes and long ‘ghunghats’ or veils carrying well oiled ‘lathis’ or sticks to beat their male counter parts who protect themselves with ‘dhals’ or gears. The famous Bankey Bihari temple at Vrindavan and Mathura’s Dwarakadhees temple are fully flooded with the devotees during the festival of colours.
The state of Bengal observes Phalgun Poornima as the birthday of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu(1486-1533 A.D).
For the devotees of Bhagawan Sri Ramakrishna, the event of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s birth on this day is the prime reason for its celebration.
Sri Chaitanya’s plain, simple and practical religion offered a key to solve in a practical way some of the complicated social, political and economic problems that confronted the society in those days.
Democracy of spirit based on love for fellow beings improved the conditions of people and conferred on them the joy of living. The tenets of love, equality and fraternity as taught by Mahaprabhu were found to be the most significant method of integration.
Sri Sri Thakur used to advise his disciples to read the traditional biographies of Mahaprabhu such as “Chaitanya Charitamrita” and “Chaintanya Bhagavata”. All through his life Sri Ramakrishna showed great respect even to the descendants of the followers of Mahaprabhu.
We find in the Gospel, Sri Sri Thakur often emphasizing the efficacy of Mahaprabhu’s teachings as to chanting of Lord’s name - “….Chaitanya and Nitai, after some deliberation, made an arrangement to attract the worldly. They would say to such persons, ‘Come, repeat the name of Hari, and you shall have a delicious soup of magur fish and the embrace of a young woman.’ Many people, attracted by the fish and the woman, would chant the name of God.
After tasting a little of the nectar of God’s hallowed name, they would soon realize that the ‘fish soup’ really meant the tears they shed for love of God, while the ‘young woman’ signified the earth. The embrace of the woman meant rolling on the ground in the rapture of divine ecstasy.”
Excerpted from an article by Swami Nishthatmananda, Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama, Muzaffarpur, Bihar
© Smiling Buddha, 2016
