Bhakti Vriksha Preaching

Lord Caitanya used to go from village to village. And wherever He went, each person to whom He preached would branch out and make five more families Krsna conscious. Each of those families would make five more. Such branching is more dynamic than the simple cell multiplication—from one to five is more than from one to two.

Therefore, instead of calling it “cell preaching,” we are calling it Bhakti-vriksha Program, or Bhakti-vriksha Preaching. A tree begins from one small sprout, but when it grows it has thousands or hundreds of thousands of branches. Similarly, from a simple beginning the Bhakti-vriksha groups will grow into a massive affair, as predicted by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura.

What is the goal of the Bhakti-vriksha Program?

Lord Caitanya said, “I order every man within this universe to accept this Krsna consciousness movement and distribute it everywhere.”   (Caitanya-caritamrita, Adi 9.36)

The Bhakti-vriksha Program is meant to enable everyone to practice, to grow, and to preach the process of bhakti-yoga. By practicing, the devotee will grow in Krsna consciousness. He or she should also learn how to help others in their Krsna consciousness, so that they will be able to preach to new people. The Bhakti-vriksha Program provides association and spiritual community support, and when the new devotee becomes strong he should preach. One cannot carry out Lord Caitanya’s orders without preaching.

To achieve this in a systematic way requires a great stress on training, on all levels, and on all aspects of practice and preaching. To be successful, the Bhakti-vriksha Program needs to implement a “culture of training.” It is a brahminical, Vaishnava effort, dealing with people’s hearts and minds. It needs ongoing training of every member of every group—by seminars and courses, by practical engagement and philosophical study, by personal development, and by preaching experiences.