Jagat

There has been a niggling question about Krishna's different prakāśa forms, which was left over from debates a long time ago on Gaudiya Discussions. If Krishna is one, does each of his different forms have a separate sense of identity? Radha and Krishna are One. There are countless quotations that support this siddhanta. But how should we understand this? If Radha is just another form of Krishna, then how can they be considered different, having truly different identities, for the sake of lila? My instinctual argument all along was that the imperative of madhurya means that such fragmentation of God's personality is factual and necessary. This is an aspect of Krishna's acintya- ś akti . How many different ways can Krishna be simultaneously one and different from Himself? So, here is confirmation from Bhagavat-sandarbha 35: यत एवं सत्योरपि तत्तदाकारप्रकाशगतयोस्तदारम्भसमाप्त्योरेकत्रैव ते ते जन्मकर्मणोरंशा यावत् समाप्यन्ते न समाप्यन्ते वा तावदेवान्यत्राप्यारब्धा भव...

I started my Hindi blog today. It will be difficult to manage two blogs, but I figure if I am going to speak in Hindi, I may as well write in Hindi, too.

The meaning of seeing God in the direction of love means that the presence of love confirms the presence of God. What is interesting here is that physical love is not excluded, but is accepted as being at the very basis of love itself, since the expression of romantic love in Radha and Krishna is seen as the ultimate truth. Just as Ashley Montague discovered in the 60's how important the skin and the sense of touch were to the healthy psychological development of the infant, and to the further spiritual sense of well-being in the adult, the sense of touch is also an integral part of love and bhakti . Therefore it is said,  tviṣaḥ phalaṁ tvādṛśa-gātra-sparśaḥ, sudurlabho bhāgavato hi loke. "The fruit of the skin is to touch your body, for great devotees like you are so rare in this world." Radha and Krishna are Love; they are the core of love. Love is formless, anaṅga , but it takes form. The form it takes must be dual, because the very basis of love is interaction...

I mentioned Harivamsa in a post a day or two ago. The same idea is found in the following verse of  Vṛndāvana-mahimāmṛta -- जयति जयति राधा प्रेमसारैरगाधा जयति जयति कृष्णस्तद्रसापारतृष्णः। जयति जयति वृन्दं सत्सखीनां द्वयैक्यं जयति जयति वृन्दाकाननं तत्स्वधाम॥९।४५॥ jayati jayati rādhā prema-sārair agādhā jayati jayati kṛṣṇas tad-rasāpāra-tṛṣṇḥ jayati jayati vṛndaṁ sat-sakhīnāṁ dvayaikyaṁ jayati jayati vṛndā-kānanaṁ tat-sva-dhāma  9.45 Glories, all glories to Radha, fathomless with the essences of love; Glories, all glories to Krishna, unlimitedly thirsty to taste those flavors; Glories, all glories to the sakhis, who are one with that Divine Couple; Glories, all glories to Vrinda's forest, the personal abode of this one truth. About the Gauri-Shyama verse from Gopala Champu I quoted yesterday. The idea here is that we find Radha and Krishna in the direction of prema. This is the basic position. When we discover Radha and Krishna, they become the limitless foun...

The Gopāla-campū has a very nice verse, which appears at the beginning of the descriptions of madhura-rasa , when Snigdhakantha and Madhukantha start their recitations in the assembly of Radha and the gopis along with the select priya-narma-sakhas . This is actually part of the maṅgalācaraṇa , but as is often the case with Jiva Goswami, there is a big siddhānta involved. imau gaurī-śyāmau manasi viparītau bahir api sphurat tat-tad-vastrāv iti budha-janair niścitam idam sa ko’py accha-premā vilasad-ubhaya-sphūrtikatayā dadhan mūrti-bhāvaṁ pṛthag apṛthag apy āvirudabhūt Wise persons have determined that [though] these two are of a black and golden hue [respectively], in their minds they are of the opposite colors, so externally, also, are their clothes. This is some pure unblemished love that has become incarnate, taking on this form with a dual manifestation, which is both divided and a unity. Radha and Krishna are absorbed in thoughts of each other, so their minds ha...

I think that my entire day could go in Rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhi . I start the day with meditation, thinking about what I am going to say, preparing, preparing, preparing. Then the time for class comes and who knows what I am going to say? Probably not what I prepared. And then afterward, I want to write about it. Like now. And that would take a couple more hours. I am stretching myself to my limits really. My Hindi is not so adequate that I feel that I am expressing myself with the poetic force that I should be able to have at my command. I want to sing songs I don't yet know. Half verses come to my mind. I scratch the surface of lilas that I know are much deeper. I point vaguely to the significances for sadhana, for real life. But somehow or other I am muddling through. And today they put up a mike in the ashram so that my voice is joining in the sound pollution of an Indian holy town. There is already some patha-kirtana going on down the road. I guess the mike helps drown out t...

The RRSN class yesterday was wide-ranging, but one thing I spoke on was the following verse ( Govinda- līlāmṛta  10.16, CC 2.8.209) in glorification of Radha’s dasis. Here it is with Gadadhar Pran’s (orthodox) translation and commentary: sakhyaḥ śrī-rādhikāyā vraja-kumuda-vidhor hlādinī-nāma-śakteḥ sārāṁśa-prema-vallyāḥ kiśalaya-dala-puṣpādi-tulyāḥ sva-tulyāḥ siktāyāṁ kṛṣṇa-līlāmṛta-rasa-nicayair ullasantyām amuṣyāṁ jātollāsāḥ sva-sekāc chata-guṇam adhikaṁ santi yat tan na citram Nandimukhi goes on: “And look! As Radha and the sakhis’ pleasure is synonymous, the sakhis are one with Radha. Krishna is like the moon for the ‘lilies of Vraja’ (the gopis), and Srimati Radhika is the essence of his pleasure potency. She is likened to a desire creeper of prema ( prema-kalpa-lata ) and the sakhis are the leaves, flowers and new buds on this creeper, and as such are non-different from her. So it isn’t surprising that when the Radha creeper is nourished by the shower of Krish...

You see, my friends, at some point one has to make a decision in life. Does one want to push through with the gifts one has been given, or is one going to be hampered by doubts to the very end? saṁśayātmā vinaśyati . I figure if you are, like me, a vicāra-pradhāna personality, you can allow yourself until the age of say, 57, to come to some state of equilibrium with the intellect and reason. But when you get to the age of, say 57, then you have to surrender to the limitations of reason. These limitations are hard-wired into the nature of our world and existence. Like Krishna who is lying down and being fanned by Radha, forgetting everything other than the sweetness of her movements, that is a point where one simply surrenders to the mercies one has been given. Call it "a return to ruchi." People were asking me about my attitude to Bhaktivinoda Thakur, etc., after I published those articles. Like I said, most of those questions were answered in the followup articles, bu...

I was actually a little sick for most of the day and took a couple of naps. But I went to my Rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhi class after making the previous post and feel much the better for it. We are, as I said, discussing the first verse still, which is-- yasyāḥ kadāpi vasanāñcala-khelanottha dhanyātidhanya-pavanena kṛtārtha-mānī yogīndra-durgama-gatir madhusūdano'pi tasyā namo'stu vṛṣabhānu-bhuvo diśe'pi  I bow down to even the direction which leads to the daughter of Vrishabhanu. The breeze that sometimes arises from the play of the movement of her clothes is so exceedingly fortunate that even Madhusudana himself, who is the unattainable goal of the great yogis, considers himself perfected by being touched by it. (RRSN 2) The portion of the commentary we covered today was this, which I give in the Sanskrit for the afficionados, because I find it rather elegant-- अपीत्यसम्भावनाभासमुद्दीपयन् विशिनष्टि-योगीन्द्राणां शिवसनकनारदशुकादीनां दुर्गमा गतिर्यस्येति। उपायखि...

Sorry about the lack of content here over the past little while. I have a half-dozen posts in the works, but haven't been able to bring them to the publishable stage. For whatever standard this blog aspires to. Currently I have taken on a further task which may be the proverbial drop that makes the vase overflow. That is a Rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhi class at the local Radha-vallabhi temple, which is within cycling distance on the road to Rishikesh. The idea to do this came to me when I first came to Rishikesh and discovered that this ashram was started by the same sadhu who published the edition of RRSN I had just purchased, and who coincidentally also comes from Satya Narayan's home village. Too many coincidences. But recently I decided I had to do this, or I would be forever mired in Yoga-sūtra and Bhagavad-Gītā . Even now, my Saturday and Sunday classes at Madhuban are pretty loosely connected to the Gita--since the words kṛṣṇa-bhāvanāmṛta appear so often in Prabhupada...

Yesterday I posted the article about Bhaktivinoda Thakur, but was having a few misgivings, so I took it down. Why stir up this infernal can of worms again? Perhaps it is something about the American election, to which I am paying far too much attention, and the brazen, cynical, perpetual telling of lies that has been characterizing it, which has made me think, “Dammit, does the truth not count for anything?” (See this post for a discussion of Truth.) I put the post back up later, after Satya Devi told me that she had received it. Clearly there was a lot of sadness in that article, even when I wrote it. There was a disappointment in our Vaishnava history that extended into the next article about the three books, all of which was followed by a reflection on what to do with this kind of information and the challenges that it presents. I have now also uploaded these two articles, which may be useful for those who had objections, etc., most of which I have countered therein. Just foll...

No one can blame me for being a dishonest translator. Rocana has excerpted my translation of Bhaktivinoda Thakur's life from Chaitanya and His Associates by Bhakti Ballabha Tirtha. In that chapter, there is not one mention of Bipin Bihari Goswami! Is there not something wrong there, my friends? By any standard of truth, but especially in a disciplic succession that promotes so avidly the concept of Guru, that a writer should so cavalierly glorify one's own spiritual hero without mentioning his guru's name, as though he never existed. Tell me if this is not a classical case of ardha-kukkuṭī nyāya ? I have written on these matters several times, including this article Bhaktivinoda Thakur's meat eating and Lalita Prasad Thakur , which was also inspired by a similar type of distortion on Rocana's site. So, for the occasion of Bhaktivinoda Thakur's appearance, and to thumb our nose at those who would deny Bipin Bihari Goswami's role in the Thakur's lif...