Jagat

Satyanarayana Dasaji left for Faridabad today and will leave for Europe tomorrow. Since being in Vrindavan I have not been at particulary high energy levels. It is quite a bit hotter here than in Rishikesh. Still, I managed to go through the first 25 anucchedas of Bhagavat-sandarbha , so that completes the second reading. We will need to do one more when the book is finished. Still, there is a long way to go. SN assures me that the first few sections are the most difficult in terms of language, but at the same time warns me that the Paramatma-sandarbha keeps the same level of difficulty throughout. He says that is the most difficult of the six books. Satyanarayana Dasa came to India and lived in Vrindavan Iskcon starting from 1986. He started studying Sanskrit right away from a pandit. After a little while he went to Haridas Shastri, who had already more or less stopped teaching, but managed to persuade him to teach him the Sandarbhas. SN left Iskcon in 1993 after the imbroglio...

More discussion of Christopher Hitchens on Guardian.uk. Right but Repulsive. A lot of people seem to be undergoing the same kinds of inner conflict as expressed on this discussion forum. The atheists are very strong and mostly well-informed. They do, however, have a limited fund of vision. One person discusses the hope for a "spiritual atheism" which is what Buddhism and Mayavada are. Sorry I don't have the time to comment. I am in Vrindavan, still recovering from my bus ride from Hardwar. And the internet is a lot less fun here than in my protected domain of Rishikesh.

From a friend: I am feeling a bit on the agnostic side these days. I love the idea of God and his grace and all that, but I feel as if, despite the lovely memories, the warm comfort of a life of faith, I must finally make it official that Santa Claus really does not exist. There is no harm in continuing celebrating Christmas, and even cheerfully hanging the stocking over the fireplace, but the truth is that I now know that the gift placed under my tree does not come from an immortal father ridding a sleigh in the sky. It comes from my wishing him to be. All that sense of self and confidence in my life has come from this sense of him being there at all times. But he isn't there without my hard work. And I am tired. I don't want to make up God, I want him to be. Why, for a change, can't I be surprised? Why must I work so hard, always, to come up with a mere match to my tired, narrow self needs? I am really sorry that you are having these particular doubts. I will admit that i...

One of the points that Siddhanta Saraswati liked to make in his critique of Sahajiyaism (in his generalized acceptation of the term) is that they affect union rather separation in their meditation. For Saraswati Thakur, viraha was the path to perfection shown by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and therefore the process that should be emulated. I was not too long ago surprised to hear a Rabindra Swarup statement that manjari bhava sadhana was not integral to Gaudiya Vaishnavism, but came about as a later development as a result of association in Vrindavan with Nimbarkis and other sakhī-bhāva sampradāyas. Since we are accustomed to hearing Gaudiya Vaishnava defenses of their originating worship in sakhi or manjari bhava, I found this a rather striking commentary. Of course, something in that spirit has been floating around in the Gaudiya Math for a long time, in which one sees the argument that siddha pranali, for instance, does not exist in the writings of Rupa or the other six Goswamis, not ...

With regard to some of the questions raised by Swami Prem Ananda in his letter here . “In trika-shaivism it is also said that Shiva is the Supreme Lord and the only Person in the whole of creation… Trika-shaivism answers that the veiling is happening because Shiva wants it to. Shiva enjoys this game of veiling and revealing himself. It is His Lila.” I don’t think that there is a substantial difference between this and the Gaudiya viewpoint, except that we would say that the distinction between the jiva and the Lord is nevertheless real and therefore indicates an implicit, eternal relationship. Therefore we insist on this difference as well as the oneness and consider the status of jiva as real and eternal, existing both in the conditioned and the liberated state. Nevertheless, the only way to really conceive of this liberated state rationally is in the identity of oneness with God, a oneness that pervades our mutual participation in Absolute Being. This helps to explain the problems th...

Here they say silence is the closest thing to God. I heard this one yesterday: "If Krishna is Brahma, then Radha is silence." I thought about it a bit and decided there is some logic to it. But where you are concerned, your silence means an absence, not a presence. Only in that convoluted Buddhist way of thinking, where the negative is a logical category like mathematical zero, and therefore has a sort of existence, can it be thought of otherwise. We have heard of Vaishnavas who, in their obsession with separation, and with presence in absence, also think of it otherwise. But this too is a flailing grasp at mathematically proving something for which faith and a sense of presence have been lost. Your absence is an absence, no matter how mesmerizing the mirage. Krishna's absence was an absence for the gopis, and not a substitute for being with him, ever.

A couple of hopeful developments going down on the Gaudiya Grantha Mandir front. I am going to Vrindavan at the end of this month to discuss Bhagavat-sandarbha with Satya Narayan, but also to meet with him and Shrivatsa Goswami about whether there is any way that the GGM project can be pushed ahead. Both of them have recognized the importance of the project and expressed interest in doing something. Let us see whether a spirit of benevolence and cooperation can be established. I have also been asked to speak about the GGM on a video conference that will be held at the Universidad de Antioquia in Bolivia. Of course, what I say there will be more about hope than realities, because the truth is that the current situation at GGM is pretty pathetic. Madhavananda's abdication has left us with even less resources than before. From the time he went to Radha Kund he pretty much stopped keeping the site functioning. Actually, GGM was almost totally dependent on Madhava and his contrib...

Someone asked for pictures of Gadadhar Pran. These were taken by Anadi Krishna Das, who was there at the same time I was. He took many videos during the time there. I imagine he has posted some of them, only the most flattering ones I hope.

Since I just wrote about how you meet interesting people... Just before leaving Montreal, I made contact with an old friend from my teenage years--the first one, in fact, since I returned to Canada in 1985. She wrote me a few days ago to tell me that a friend of hers from Montreal was coming to Rishikesh, and so we set up a meeting. This woman, Maila Shanks, first came to India in 1996 and lived in Vrindavan for 7 or 8 years, staying at the Neem Karoli Baba ashram on the Parikrama Marg, not too far from Ananda Dham, where many Narayan Maharaj disciples stay. She learned Brijbhasha, mostly by ear, and did a lot of seva and things. Then a few years ago she got married to a Kashmiri who owns a hotel on the beach in Goa, Meems Arabian Sea . Their season in Goa has finished and they are in Rishikesh for a bit of a spiritual refresher before she goes to Canada for the first visit in a couple of years. Maila (Neem Baba ki Maya) came by yesterday and we had an interesting talk about life in In...

It has been hard to keep up on my correspondence. It seems that the busier I get, the more work I take on. This weekend, believe it or not, I gave Bhagavad-gita classes in Hindi on both Saturday and Sunday at the Madhuban temple in Muni-ki-reti , not far from Ram Jhula. I actually proposed myself earlier last week as I really felt the need to do some direct bhakti activity or bhakta sanga. When introducing myself, I did not hide anything about my checkered (in Iskcon terms) past. When you see Madhuban, it makes you appreciate what Srila Prabhupada accomplished. Bhakti Yoga Swami has done an admirable job of building a striking temple with beautiful deities--Gaura Nitai, Radha Krishna and Jagannath-Baladeva-Subhadra. The guest house and restaurant are modeled on the Vrindavan concept and maintain the same if not a higher standard. One of the temple’s major annual events is the Rathayatra, which they conduct not only in Rishikesh, but in Dehradun, Hardwar and other towns in the region. T...