Sanātana Gosvāmī reached Benares where he was overjoyed to learn that Mahāprabhu was staying at the house of the physician, Candraśekhara Vaidya. Sanātana Gosvāmī did not go straight into Candraśekhara Vaidya’s house but waited on his front porch. The Lord, the in-dweller of all souls, knew of His devotee’s arrival and sent Candraśekhara Vaidya to the door to invite him in. As soon as Sanātana Gosvāmī entered, Mahāprabhu immediately rushed to embrace him. The meeting affected them both so intensely that they were overcome by the transformations of ecstatic love. In His affection for Sanātana Gosvāmī, the Lord made him sit next to Him and started to brush off the dust accumulated on his body from his travels, but this caused Sanātana Gosvāmī to feel uncomfortable. He told the Lord not to touch him, but the Lord answered:

“I touch you in order to purify Myself. Your devotional force is so great that you can purify the entire universe. I look at you, I touch you and I sing your glories. By so doing, all my senses attain their most perfect use. This is proclaimed in the scriptures.” (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 2.20.56, 60)

The Lord repeated again and again that He was touching Sanātana Gosvāmī for His own purification and for the purification of the entire universe. Then He immediately added, “Listen, Sanātana. Kṛṣṇa is the ocean of mercy, He saves the most fallen. He has delivered you from the hell known as Raurava.”

Sanātana Gosvāmī is, of course, an eternal associate, so there is no question of his being truly fallen, but Mahāprabhu wished to make a point for the benefit of the people of the world. He wanted to teach that worldly honour measured in terms of one’s fortune and accumulation of sense objects is in truth misfortune since the accumulation of material possessions for the sake of gross or subtle sense gratification ultimately leads to a hellish existence.

While Mahāprabhu was in Benares, He stayed with Candraśekhara Vaidya and took His meals at the house of Tapana Miśra. Mahāprabhu introduced Sanātana Gosvāmī to these two devotees, and Tapana Miśra invited Sanātana Gosvāmī to come to his house and take Mahāprabhu’s prasāda remnants. After many days in prison and traveling, Sanātana Gosvāmī’s hair and beard had grown long. The Lord told him to get shaved. Vaiṣṇavas, in general, are clean shaven, growing neither beard nor mustache. With the exception of the cāturmāsya period when one does not shave nor cut the fingernails, this is the accepted practice for Vaiṣṇava men. Vaiṣṇava sannyāsīs, however, usually shave only once a month on the full moon day, as for them to shave daily would be considered to be indulging in unnecessary preoccupation with the body or pleasures.

After being shaved, Sanātana Gosvāmī took his bath in the Ganges. When he came back to the house, Candraśekhara Vaidya wanted to give him some new cloth, but Sanātana Gosvāmī refused it. Later he asked for the used cloth from Tapana Miśra. Though he had been rich enough to give clothes to thousands of mendicants, on this day he was reluctant to accept new cloth for himself. When one’s desire to worship the Lord is real, one becomes indifferent to nice clothes or good food. However, accepting gifts from Vaiṣṇavas or taking their remnants do not have the poisonous character that other sense objects have. Every single one of Sanātana Gosvāmī’s actions contains an unmatched lesson for the conscientious sādhaka.

Mahāprabhu was extremely pleased to see Sanātana Gosvāmī’s renunciation. Renunciation is the predominating characteristic of every one of Mahāprabhu’s devotees. When Lord Gaurāṅga sees their renunciation, He is very pleased. (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 2.6.220)

There was a Maharashtrian brāhmaṇa who invited Sanātana Gosvāmī to come daily to his house to eat for as long as he stayed there. Sanātana Gosvāmī refused, however, saying that he preferred to maintain his life by eating only madhukarī, that is to say, by begging a handful of food from several houses each day. A pure devotee has no desire for bodily comfort.

Sanātana Gosvāmī had the old cloth torn in to two to be used as his lower cloth (bahirvāsa) and upper cloth (uttarīya), but even so, he continued to wrap himself in the Bhutanese wool blanket. Mahāprabhu looked repeatedly at this blanket, and Sanātana Gosvāmī realized that Mahāprabhu did not approve of it. That day, when he went to the Ganges, he exchanged his expensive blanket with a Bengali mendicant’s torn quilt. When Sanātana Gosvāmī came back wearing the threadbare quilt, the Lord was pleased.

The Lord said, “I had been thinking about this. Kṛṣṇa has cured you of your disease of attachment to sense enjoyment. Why then would He allow you to hold fast to the last bit of material attachment? After restoring someone to health, a good physician does not allow any trace of the disease to remain. It is contradictory to practice mādhukarī while wearing a blanket worth three gold coins. By so doing, you would have lost your spiritual strength and become a laughing stock.” (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 2.20.90-2)