What is dham (Holy place)?

By editor - 27.7 2021

The main qualification for a place to become holy or called as Dham is that the Lord or His pure devotee should have appeared or had pastimes there.

Several other things that constitute a Tirtha /Holy place/ Dham:

1. Devotees must have performed (or be performing) spiritual activities in the place, and the tirtha must be visited by sadhus, saintly persons. In fact, the Vedic scriptures state that a person who visits even the historically bona fide places of pilgrimage only to take bath is no better than a cow or an ass. Visiting a tirtha means associating with the saintly persons in attendance. Canakya Pandita warns that we should avoid a place devoid of saintly persons. And a place bereft of talk of Krsna, or God, and service to Him cannot claim holy place status.

2. By visiting a tirtha we should feel enlivened in our Krsna consciousness; the tirtha should carry that potency.

3. The chanting of the holy names must be present as a prominent feature of the tirtha. Concurrent with that should be deity worship. Srila Prabhupada told us that as he established the various deities around the world, he worried that his disciples would begin to feel the worship as a "burden in the neck." But if the deity worship is going on uninterrupted and the devotees in the area are taking shelter of the deity, then that place is holy.

4. Prabhupada defined a holy place as wherever the Srimad-Bhagavatam was being honored. That might be in a large temple or under a tree, and it may be in India or elsewhere, but wherever there is respectful and repeated reading of the Bhagavatam, that place becomes holy.

Why should one visit dham?

Srila Prabhupada invited devotees from all over the world to come to Mayapur and Sri Vrindavan dham to associate with one another and to absorb the infinitely merciful environment of bhakti that permeated this holy place and to utilize our every moment to hear and to chant and to serve. This is the rule of the yatra to Dham. This is not necessarily a rule that we enforce, but it is a rule that we must discipline ourselves with by our free will. Every moment of life is precious. This human life is very rare, every moment is so precious. And the rarest of all things is the association of the Lord's devotees. Caitanya Mahaprabhu taught through Rupa Goswami, five very important principles, most important to make spiritual progress.They are – To associate with devotees, chant the holy names, to hear Srimad Bhagvatam, worship the deities and be in the holy dham. All of these 5 is really all we have. There is nothing else to do. We hear hari katha, we chant the holy names, and to perform such activities in the holy dham, even that is increased many folds here. We have such a rare opportunity to make such spiritual progress in short time while residing in dham.

Where are all the holy places located?