Jagat

I was enjoying this verse as I bicycled into work this morning. kritākṛṣṭi-krīḍaṁ kim api tava rūpaṁ mama sakhī sakṛt dṛṣṭvā dūrād ahita-hita-bodhojjhita-matiḥ hatā seyaṁ premānalam anu viśanti sarabhasaṁ pataṅgīvātmānam murahara muhur dāhitavatī My girlfriend Radha saw your form as it played some kind of attracting game. She saw it just once from afar, but immediately lost all sense of what is beneficial and what is not. That benighted girl immediately rushed into the fire of love, like a moth, and there, O Murahara, she repeatedly immolated herself. Lalita spoke this verse to the swan, giving it to him as a message to be spoken to Krishna. This is the glorification of Krishna's rupa . But it emphasizes some important aspects of Krishna's character and the character of prema .

(2) The unification of male and female principles in sexual ritual SS has given a great deal of emphasis on this second item. Evidently this is the subject that attracts the most interest from students and dilettantes alike. Here it is stated that Radha and Krishna have been appropriated as replacements for Shiva and Shakti: “…supreme bliss ( maha-sukha ) is said to arise from their union. This blissful unity forms the foundational basis for nearly all Tantric religion.” Here SS says, “… this state of blissful union is conceived of through the worship of Krishna, who is seen as the supreme power of the universe. While Krishna occupies a central place in the tradition, unlike in the Gaudiya system, the focus is more on his abstract cosmic principle rather than his mythological principle (Glen Alexander Hayes, “The Vaishnava Sahajiya Traditions of Medieval Bengal.” in Religions of India in Practice , 333). As noted in the article related to Su.'s paper on Radha, Donna Wulff has astut...

3. "The Vaishnava Sahajiya Tradition within the Tantric Paradigm" by SS. SS was the youngest student of the three and the only undergraduate. She had also taken the fewest courses in religious studies and so was much less familiar with many of the basic heuristic concepts or comparative methodology. She was also, as I learned, a little overstretched with greater than average course load. As such, I expected less from her than I did from the others. Nevertheless, I was quite pleased with her paper. I am measuring these things on what I get from it. It seems to me that there is so much knowledge out there that anyone who is even reasonable perceptive and makes a modicum of effort should be able to find an original and interesting viewpoint to present. What I liked best about this paper was SS’s decision to follow S.C. Banerji’s schema of the eight characteristic features of Tantrism and to examine to what extent they were valid for Vaishnava Sahajiyaism. These eight are: (1) A...

A very nice interview with Martha Nussbaum: The Clash within - Islam and Hinduism in India , on Australian national radio. Martha Nussbaum : Yes, I think Gandhi was a tremendous genius of human perception. He understood that often when violence breaks out it's all about men, in particular, being eager to show their manliness by showing that they can bash others, and what he tried to convey--and did successfully convey as long as he lived--to his followers, was that being a real man doesn't mean learning how to bash others, it means learning to stand up with nothing but your naked human dignity around you and endure, if you have to, the blows of others. Stephen Crittenden : The British novelist Martin Amis has described contemporary Islam as "quivering with male sexual insecurity." You in a way, show that exactly the same process has been operating in Hindu India. Martha Nussbaum : Yes, and I think it was compounded in this case by the fact that the British really desp...

Some may recall that a couple of years ago I caused a bit of a tempest in a teapot by arguing that Bhaktivinoda Thakur himself composed the Prema-vivarta and attributed it to Jagadananda Pandit. A couple of days ago, Tripurari Maharaj sent me the following exchange between Aksayananda Swami and B.R. Sridhar Maharaj, which I quote here: Aksayananda Swami : Prema Vivarta was written by Bhaktivinode, somebody told, not Jagadananda. Sridhara Maharaja : I told. If we can think out that the teachings of Sri Caitanyadeva is the highest, full-fledged theism as told by Prabhupada several times, and Bhagavat is the highest development, then that has got reality, that is true, that cannot but be true. Whatever is felt, any more, any single division, that is generally bonafide. That is the only truth. That the revealed truth means that thousands and thousands of years back it was revealed in some rishi or so and that cannot be, the revelation cannot come at present, I don't think like that. ...