Jagat

For the first time since I have been here, Swami Veda gave a public lecture in both English and Hindi. I had heard him speak before on Christmas, when he wrote a poem he had written and said a few words of introduction to the program. However, today after meditation, he invited everyone to stay and spoke on the subject of atmavabodha . Swamiji has an interesting style. He speaks slowly and deliberately, almost hypnotically, and repeats his speech almost word for word in Hindi afterwards. He has clearly prepared his thoughts in advance and rarely has to correct or add anything further in either English or Hindi. He also includes a guided meditation in the course of speaking. I noticed from his book, The Philosophy of Hatha Yoga , which seems to be based on a series of public lectures, that he did the same there. The overall effect is very powerful in a group of committed disciples--everyone is very attentive and goes deep into meditation when given the appropriate suggestions. In fact, ...

Part I. All in all, on reading this book I expected to come to some more earth-shattering conclusions about celibacy or discover some new facts that might make me adjust my opinions. Rather to my surprise, after reading through more than 400 pages of historical information, I felt rather less enlightened than more. Nevertheless, Abbott's summary of modern developments, celibate movements in the current environment, did resonate with me. She describes, as I occasionally have also on these pages, the malaise in today's society that has grown out of the commodification of sexuality and its use as a tool for commercialization. (Indeed, the growth of sexual liberty seems to be an integral part of the consumer culture.) I also described in an earlier post my horror at the kind of sexual escalation that has developed in youth culture, to a great extent the result of easy accessibility of pornography . Obsessions with the body, bodily appearance, the idealization of sexuality itsel...

The first day I listened to one of the speakers, I held my peace, but wanted to say something. Finally I contented myself by giving one of my verse cards to a student here who is an ex-Iskcon devotee from Bombay. As a matter of fact, there are several members of this ashram who have a devotional background, especially a number of Oriya bhaktas who told me they had spent years in Vrindavan studying the Bhagavata. I find it hard to believe that their samskara will be so shallow as to be inaccessible. For the most part, I enthusiastically greet everyone with the words "Radhe Shyam," without for all that being obnoxious about it. The verse I offered was the one that rang through my brain while listening to these talks, bhava-bandha-cchide tasyai spṛhayāmi na muktaye bhavān prabhur ahaṁ dāso jñānam yatra vilupyate I do not aspire for the liberation that frees us from bondage to this world, if therein the awareness that you are my master and I your servant is lost. On...

Today I hit on a meditation that was very powerful and looks very promising. The way they do meditation here is to sit with proper back support (these are really the first people I hae seen who make a big deal out of it, finally!) have simple abdominal breathing in and out in an even rhythm and one is advised to chant the mantras as one can. At first I was chanting Harinam on my beads, but I found that I was not getting the full benefit of the breathing. Then I switched to the Gopāla Mantra, and that was better. Today, I switched to Gopāla Mantra on the inward breath and Kāma Gāyatrī on the outward breath and found that it was full of possibilities and very powerful. You breathe in with a small Mūla-bandha (contracting the sphincter and muscles and the base of the genitals), then visualize the mantra climbing up the spine with the inward breath. oṁ śrīṁ klīṁ at the first chakra, kṛṣṇāya at the second, govindāya at the third (navel), gopī at the heart (appropriately), jan...

I have been promising for some time a review of A History of Celibacy by Elizabeth Abbott . I did not do so primarily because I had not finished it and the book is fairly complex in its description of the varieties of celibacy, so I have been trying to come to some conclusion about what to make of it. Indeed, I think she may even have played with the title, The Varieties of Celibate Experience before settling on A History of Celibacy . Part of the hook used to publicize this book was the infobyte that Abbott had herself become celibate in the course of researching and writing it. This made her something of an oddity and short-lived media darling. She admits that she started the work with the idea that celibacy was aberrant or unnatural and finished with the conclusion that it is a genuine, normal human phenomenon that deserves attention on its own merits. Her general thesis, to which she returns again and again through all the complexities of rationales and motivations given for ...

I feel somewhat guilty that I did not mention my pleasant visit to Advaitaji in Radha Kund while he has spoken rather kindly of me over on Madan Gopal. Since there seems to be a kind of link between the two blogs, I really should have shared my perception of that meeting. The only disagreement he mentioned was related to the subject of projecting sexual desires on the lila. This was in fact a response to his misunderstanding that people like myself are projecting our own sexual desires on the lila; I was saying that Western psychology would argue that the lila is seen as the projection of repressed or unfulfilled (or unfulfillable) sexual desires. Which, if true, would mean that saying it is not is nothing more than denial, a refusal to accept the obvious. But of course, the relationship between material sexual desire and the lila of Radha and Krishna is more complex and sophisticated than projected repressed desires, and certainly seeing it as nothing more than titillation is equa...

Due to the difficulties of getting online, I have fallen far behind in posting on this blog। In particular I wanted to give my impressions of Rishikesh and the ashram where I am staying. Getting settled in has been difficult, as I had a cold that left me fairly exhausted, my computer cable adaptor went completely dead, and I hadn't started teaching Sanskrit yet. I have been teaching for two days now and my cold is a bit better. The computer problem still has not been overcome, but hopefully tomorrow we shall overcome. These are going to be briefs. Sorry. =============== As I was blogging at 3.30 on Christmas day, Tim, a yoga teacher from Calgary came up to me and said that as part of the Christmas celebrations he thought it would be nice to recite the Hail Mary in Sanskrit in front of the statue of Madonna and Child that is near the meditation hall. I had approximately half an hour to do it. I obliged with the following, which has now been somewhat corrected and revised. h...

I am writing quickly just in case there is another power failure, which interrupted my last attempt to blog. Unfortunately, I seem to have come down with a bad cold. I got up at 2.00 a.m. and could not go back to sleep my nose was running so much. I followed the meditation program, but did not do any yoga. I took some ayurvedic medicine a few minutes ago and I already feel a bit better. Could it really be that effective? Sanjay (the person who got me this gig) is here and I attended both his English and Hindi classes. Nearly all the ashram people come to listen to him speak on philosophy in Engish. He introduced me with great praise. He reminds me a bit of SN, but he is younger and better looking (maybe I should not say that publicly! Well Sanjay is a householder and SN a bearded renunciate). I think he also is a little more skeptical. Afterwards he told me that he thought he had benefited greatly from being in the west, which makes him a lot less blind in his faith. His philosoph...

I am writing from the Jiva Institute in Faridabad, where Satyanarayana Dasaji and his brothers have their main center of activities. There are three of them involved in the Institute, one is an Ayurvedic doctor (Dr. Pratap Chauhan) who has now become something of a celebrity. He appears on television giving advice on health and people can then call in to ask questions about their personal health problems. Next door there is a very nice, modern, private clinic where people can get the Pancha Karma treatment. The main buildings also house a private school which one brother's wife runs as the principal. Two of Satyanarayana Dasaji's nieces also work in the business, in sales and publicity, i.e. sending out Ayurvedic medicine, etc. There is also an American man named Steve Rudolph who has an MA in education who plans the curriculum and also helps with the marketing side of things. I think that he has had a lot to do with the very slick packaging, etc., that has no doubt helped ...

Well I am having a grand old time in Vrindavan. I really should have someone to take care of me, because I just slip into avadhuta mode so easily. Yesterday I decided to walk to Athkhamba and check out the bookstores and dropped into the Radha Vallabha temple on the way. I have some feeling of affinity with Radha Vallabhis for some reason, don’t ask me to explain. Their cheerful jai radha-vallabha hita-hari-vamsa kirtan rattles around in my brain. So Harivams ate pan on ekadashi... and if Radha gave it him the pan, well who could object? Gopal Bhatta, I guess. Anyway, they were having kirtan of Chaurasi Pada and I joined in. After it was over, the lead singer took me to his room and gave me a box of prasad and we talked for a while. He (and others there) kept asking me if I was Mr. Rupert, meaning Rupert Snell, who wrote his doctorate on the Chaurasi Pada and, as it happens, is the source of most of what I know about it. He is now, if I am correct, head of Indology at SOAS. So th...

I am writing on my computer for the first time since arriving in India, which is now three days already. And with the long trip getting here, fraught with one misadventure, namely missing the connecting flight from Paris, was that makes six days since I have even thought of blogging. I got to do a lot of reading on the plane and in the waiting rooms—when I wasn’t traipsing up and down the interminable terminals at Charles-de-Gaulle, trying to negotiate Air France and Air Canada for the next step of my changing itinerary. There is a lot to say--six days of accumulated experiences and reading, but for now I will just copy what I wrote on my home computer, copying and pasting onto the blog. Hopefully better connections will be available in Rishikesh and the human-internet interface will be smoother. Sakhī-bhāva What follows here is a summary of Sharan Behari Goswami’s six points of difference between sakhī-bhāva and gopī-bhāva (pages 188-193 of the work already mentioned). I talked...

So the day has been getting imperceptibly closer and is finally here. My flight is this evening and I have a lot of last minute preparations still to do. My books are still filling their shelves, their future uncertain. Countless photocopied pages lie piled up in boxes, some dating back to undergraduate days, waiting in futility for one kernel of wisdom to be picked up, one significant quote to be cited in a magnum opus, and which now will most likely be forever overlooked. I spent much of the last two days scanning books and articles into PDF format. I wish that I had done much more, but now that will have to wait. At least much of what I will need to consult for the work I know I will have to do in the next few months is available to me for consultation. The following verse comes to mind-- pustaka-sthā tu yā vidyā para-hasta-gataṁ dhanam kārya-kāle samutpanne na sā vidyā na tad dhanam Knowledge that is in books is like money in another's hand. When the time to use it com...

These notes are just for future reference and are a bit sloppy. Sharan Behari Goswami is very critical of the dating of the Nimbarka sampradaya as given by the tradition itself. I personally have never been able to find any clear or decisive information about that sect, and a wide variety of authors gives a rather wide variety of dates for Nimbarka and his principal followers. The tradition itself says that he appeared at the end of the Dvapara yuga, which we can discount. Scholars give a variety of speculations, which need to be examined. Bhandarkar gives his birth as 1162 CE, and others like Baladeva Upadhyay say he is the “oldest among the Vaishnava acharyas” ( vaiṣṇava ācāryoṁ meṁ pracīnatama ), but the speculations run from 531 CE (Virajakant Ghosh) to post Vallabhacharya (R.L. Mitra) The most credible scholars say that he comes after Ramanuja, since certain texts in his Vedanta commentary appear to be based on the Sri Bhashya. If this is the only evidence, it is not particula...

I am going through a period of intellectual dullness. It has much to do with the move, which is very final. I am not using this blog as a confessional of late, though the temptation to do so is great. Kutichak recently compared me to a flame covered by a basket, refering to the description of Devaki's pregnancy. Clearly, the changes that I am going through are meant to bring that flame out into the open, but a flame in the open can easily be blown out. Who knows the future? Sometimes we just have to make a move. Like the Bhagavatam says--even if you run with your eyes closed, you won't trip, you won't fall. That is the essence of faith, the leap. Reading Christopher Hitchens' sharp comments on today's Slate makes me realize just how much work there is to be done. Hitchens is a veritable cutting machine in his analysis of American obsession with faith and belief against the background of the American founding fathers' secularism. Recently someone on the Guar...

Most of the eleventh chapter ( vil ā sa ) of HBV is about the Holy Name. More than the Vedas, more than any tirtha--nothing compares to the glories of the Name. kiṁ tāta vedāgama-śāstra-vistarais tīrthair anekair api kiṁ prayojanam | yady ātmano vāṣchasi mukti-kāraṇaṁ govinda govinda iti sphutaṁ raṭa || My dear boy, what need is there of all the vast body of Vedic and Tantric scripture? And what need have we of visiting all the holy places? If you truly want the liberation of your soul, then loudly repeat the names Govinda Govinda! (11.384) I just noticed in the commentary to 11.631, Sanatan refers to Rupa Goswami as śrīman-mahānubhāva , saying, "As (Sri Rupa) has discussed these matters in detail in Bhakti-rasārṇava (i.e. Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu ), I have not gone into it any further here." This would indicate that BRS (which mentions HBV) was written before the commentary to HBV. However, Sanatan mentions Bṛhad (Laghu?) Bhāgavatāmṛta several times also. In the com...

One week to go before I leave. It is a nice day, one of those bright, blinding white, after snowfall days. Did some more shoveling out back; been shoveling for three days. I chanted the gopī-gīta and went for a walk, then I read about 30 pages of my sakhī-bhāva book. On page 155, Sharan Bihari Goswami, whose stated thesis is that Haridas Swami is the originator and main man in advancing the cause of sakhi-bhāva , finally admits that there is no equal to the Gaudiya Sampradaya for an analysis of gopi-bhāva, sakhi-bhāva and madhura-rasa . It had been a bit startling to see him restate his principal idea on page 137, after having quoted two pages earlier Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu about the sambhogecchāmayī and tad-bhāvecchā-mayī moods. If any concept makes a clear and official distinction between nāyikā and sakhī-bhāva , it is there. I found the following verses, which seem worthy of reflection, taken from the Skanda Purāṇa-- līlaiva dvividhā tasya vāstavī vyāvahārikī vāstavī ta...

naivākṣi-lagnaṁ dayitaṁ vilokase chāyāṁ nijāmanya-janīṁ ca manyase | sarvatra candrāvalikāṁ viśaṅkase citraṁ tavedaṁ praṇayākhya-nartanam || Kundalata says, “Sakhi Radhe! You cannot recognize your prāna-priyatama even when he is right before your eyes, and you mistake your own shadow for someone else! You suspect Chandravali's presence everywhere. This dance of yours known as praṇaya is truly amazing! (GLA 14.26) Even though the word praṇaya seems to be being used as a technical term, the prema-vaicittya circumstances do not fit the definition as given in Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi , which surprises me a little, as Krishnadas was thoroughly familiar with UN. Praṇaya is, as noted in a recent post , the state of love imbued with trust or viśrambha. Viśrambha is defined by Jiva as "a sense of oneness with the beloved" ( abheda-mananam ), while Vishwanath defines it as belief ( viśvasa ) without fear ( sambhrama ).