Verse 1.11.57

Bengali text, Devanagari and Unicode transliteration of verse 1.11.57:

ধীরে ধীরে ‘কৃষ্ণ’ বলিলে কি পুণ্য নহে? নাচিলে, গাইলে, ডাক ছাডিলে, কি হযে?” ॥ ৫৭ ॥

धीरे धीरे ‘कृष्ण’ बलिले कि पुण्य नहे? नाचिले, गाइले, डाक छाडिले, कि हये?” ॥ ५७ ॥

dhīre dhīre ‘kṛṣṇa’ balile ki puṇya nahe? nācile, gāile, ḍāka chāḍile, ki haye?” || 57 ||

dhire dhire ‘krsna’ balile ki punya nahe? nacile, gaile, daka chadile, ki haye?” (57)

English translation:

(57) “Is there no piety in softly chanting Kṛṣṇa’s names? Must one chant, dance, and shout loudly?”

Commentary: Gauḍīya-bhāṣya by Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura:

Ordinary persons who were engaged in fruitive activities utilized their mundane experience to accumulate piety for their better arrangement of sense gratification. According to the logic, kāmukāḥ kāminī-mayam paśyanti nikhilaṃ jagat—“a lusty man sees the entire world as full of women,” people thought that on the pretext of serving Hari the intelligent pure devotees were also accumulating piety to gratify their temporary senses like themselves. Being controlled by such base considerations, they thought that the Vaiṣṇavas, like themselves, had a thirst for accumulating piety in all their activities. That is why the nondevotees, who were averse to the Lord, displayed a difference in opinion with the devotees’ abhidheya-sādhana, or method of achieving the goal of life.

They were partial to the artificial chanting of the holy names in a solitary place and opposed to the all-auspicious congregational chanting of the names of Kṛṣṇa, thus they were misguided due to their concocted imagination. They foolishly declared that the Vaiṣṇavas’ activities for achieving the goal of life like singing and dancing for the pleasure of Kṛṣṇa and loudly calling out the names of Kṛṣṇa with love were equal, or even inferior, to artificial nirjana-bhajana, or chanting of the holy names in a solitary place.