The righteous men or tsaddiqs are like pillars that uphold the entire world. They are often in disguise and look like ordinary men

Tinkadi Baba

Nitai das: When I first met Baba, tears did not begin flowing from my eyes. I didn’t feel like I had met an old friend again after a very long time. Instead, I was a bit surprised at Baba’s appearance. It was only slowly, after watching him move about giving directions to his disciples and others on how to celebrate the entrance of a fellow devotee of Krishna into eternal sport that I began to get a sense of who he was. I first noticed the way he dressed. He wore only a kaupin or loincloth over his genitals and a cloth over his shoulders and his hair was long, stringy, and uncombed, hanging down to his shoulders. Around his neck were some of the largest tulsi beads I had ever seen and on his forehead was the tilak (sectarian mark) typical of Nityananda-paribar (associates of Nityananda), made not out of the white, powdery gopi-candana that was typical of ISKCON and Gaudiya Math, but out of the dark, thick, greyish mud which, as I later found out, came from Radhakunda. Except for the tilak, he looked more like a Sakta than a Vaisnava.

As I watched him I began notice how genuinely jovial he was and how humble. He seemed thoroughly happy. He had next to nothing and yet he was happy. All of his clothes were made of burlap. Even his slippers were made of burlap. Apart from that he had nothing else but his beads. What a difference there was between the really humble, simple lifestyle of this poor servant of Krishna, who depended for everything on Krishna, and that of most contemporate Gurus, who live like a kings wearing silk and gold and complaining if their food wasn’t prepared just right.

A whole new world of Vaisnavism began to open up before me in the presence of Tinkudi Baba, a world strange and beautiful and, truth be told, also somewhat terrifying, especially to someone like me who had not fully surrendered to the will of Krishna.

Baba sat out in a lonely kutir in the distant reaches of Vraja, wild snake-infested places where few people dared to go. He ate whatever could be begged from the local villagers, and if they gave nothing, that is what he had.

Reflecting back on my first experience of Baba a couple of things stand out. The first is the realization that part of the shock of my first meeting with Baba was contributed by the sense of having come face to face with something very ancient in India. His nakedness, his simplicity, his possessionlessness, his austerity, and as I later discovered later his ecstatic madnesses, all point to a kind of religious lifestyle and experience that is quite ancient in India. One need only recall the naked philosophers that Alexander the Great encountered when he came to India, three centuries before the common era. One of these gymnosophists accompanied Alexander back to Greece and displaced Aristotle as the conqueror’s teacher. Even in the time of Alexander, however, such asceticism was ancient. The hymn of th Rig Veda called ”The Long-hair” (10.136) indicates similar practices at least seven centuries before Alexander. The second verse of that hymn reads:

The ascetics, swathed in wind, put dirty red rags on.

When gods enter them, they ride with the rush of the wind.

(O’Flaherty, p. 137)

Certainly much has changed in the intervening thirty centuries. Then it was Rudra; now it is Radha and Krishna. Still, much remained the same. I felt like I had arrived in the company of Rupa and Sanatana. Certainly, they lived much like this.

The second thing is that in Baba I am reminded of the belief in the ”righteous man” in the Jewish mystical tradition called Kabbalah. The righteous man or tsaddiq is like a pillar that extends to heaven and upholds the entire world. It is said in the tradition: ”the righteous one is the foundation of the world.” If it weakens, the world cannot endure. If the world contains just one righteous person, that person sustains the world. (Matt, p. 78) I wonder if it is similar with the siddhamahapurusha, that they are the foundation of the world. Without them the world would collapse. The other thing about the tsaddiq is that often it is impossible to recognize one. There is a wonderful story from the Zohar called ”The old man and the ravishing maiden” in which the righteous one appears as an old donkey driver who seems rather cracked. Similarly, I wonder if the siddha is often to be found in unlikely places. Perhaps, he is not to be found on the simhasana in front of the lights and cameras, but out in the darkness lit up only by the dim glow of a kerosene latern and perhaps it is only because of him that Krishna has not smashed the whole world.