At the university

I talked about bloguilt, now I will talk about backblog. No I won't. This is just to say that I am in the sanctuary of McGill this morning. Last week was reading week, so I was hoping to use Tuesday to get caught up, but I ended up spending most of the day in bed, digesting.

I left home earlier than I usually do on Tuesdays. It is a bit milder than it has been--we've been having a fairly protracted cold spell since the middle of January--and I stopped in a coffeeshop to read before coming to my office at McGill.

I have been reading an article by James Hillman on the fiction of the case history. I don't read as quickly as I used to; somehow, everything I read has some significance, some value that is worthy of reflection. I no longer think that I need to swallow the whole universe, there seems to be plenty of nourishment to be had in smaller doses. That is, of course, if the doses come from the right source. "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." (Francis Bacon)

Which nicely brings me to the passage from Hillman that gave me good cheer this morning. Without going into the context too extensively, for it is a complex article, Hillman says that he is speaking of "history... as an equivalent for soul-making, as a digestive operation." In this context he writes:

All haste comes from the devil, as an old saying goes, which psychologically means that one's devil is to be found in one's indigestion, in having more events than are experienced. What we do experience by putting through an imaginative process such as history (in the soul sense) is taken off the streets of time and out of the ignorant sea of my mental turbulence. We beat the devil by simply standing still.

For this reason, I worship psychologically especially at the altar of the God of historical time and slowness, Saturn, the archetypal swallower, who teaches us the art of internal digestion through the syndrome of his magistral depressions.


A wonderful writer, no doubt. I immediately put on my japa beads and began to digest with the help of those Harinam enzymes.

What I am trying to do, standing still as I am in this limbo of a life, is change paradigms; change stories as you will have it. This is what Hillman means by digestion. Accounting for the naked facts of Divine Mercy. This is difficult when so much of what has gone before is centered around the acceptance or rejection of a single monolithic story--the one that starts: "brahmande bhramite kono bhagyavan jiva, guru-krishna-prasade pay bhakti-lata bija."

Of course, I do not reject this story; it has simply taken me down roads that I did not expect, roads that require new explanations, new narratives to account for them. The Brahmanda Bhramite story I call "the Sharadiya Rasa." The new story is inside that one, and I call it "the Vasanta Rasa."

End of interlude.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

O Mind! Meditate on Radha's Breasts

Image
Flickr As I go through the dāna-līlā episode of Chandi Das's Śrī Kṛṣṇa Kīrtana , there are many songs in which Krishna describes Radha's beauty, and a regular feature of that includes descriptions of her breasts. In fact, breasts are a subject that is prominent in all Sanskrit poetry, and is even standard in prayers to goddesses. There does not seem to have been any inhibition in talking about breasts in the ancient Indian culture, even though I dare say, there is more of one in the modern society, in spite of Bollywood. There is, however, an apparent restriction in talking about genitals, male or female, in the so-called erotic poetry of India--Sanskrit or vernacular--even when lovemaking etc., is described. Such descriptions would automatically fall into some other genre. In Radha and Krishna descriptions, I cannot recall ever seeing or hearing a passage that mentioned genitals or overt sexual activity. It is nearly always spoken of somewhat euphemistically. I remember ...
Read more

Swami Vishwananda's Bhakti Marga and Parampara

Image
It has been a little strange here at Jiva these past few days. Swami Vishwananda is here with his troupe of disciples, of whom there are a goodly number, perhaps 80 or so. When I arrived in Vrindavan already a couple of weeks back, almost the first thing I noticed at the corner of Mathura Road and the Parikrama Marg was a big billboard with Swami Vishwananda’s charming smile and glowing tilak staring charismatically out at the world and announcing that he would be giving darshan on March 8 at the Jiva Institute. Below him, in a smaller frame was Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji, who besides being his host will be speaking on the Bhāgavatam at the darshan event. This is not the first time that Vishwananda and his group have been at Jiva. Satyanarayana Dasaji calls Vishwananda a friend, and indeed the relations between the two are very cordial. Vishwananda's group is mostly young and enthusiastic, predominantly European (German and points east), who are very enthusiastic about...
Read more

Erotic sculptures on Jagannath temple

Image
This was written on the basis of Sundarananda Vidyavinode's Sri Kshetra and intended for a devotee audience, as it was done on a commission by disciples of Bhakti Promode Puri Maharaj. It has never been published. I decided to put this on line since there was a discussion on Facebook on the subject and I thought I would revisit what I wrote here nearly twenty years ago. This is from chapter ten on temple renovations. Please note that I have removed the images that I had found of some of the sculptures. I have been blocked from posting links to this blog on Facebook for some infringement of its "community standards". The only thing I can think of on this blog that might have offended some prudish person in cyberspace is this. I do not have much hope for redemption as it has been over six months since my ban is "under review" and there has been no sign of action. Needless to say, I find this heavy-handed action on the part of Facebook dangerously authoritar...
Read more