Jagat

An oft-repeated error of orthodox Vaishnavas is that the the love of Radha and Krishna has "nothing to do" with the romantic love of human experience, especially not where parakiya-rasa is being considered. I say that it would take only the blindest and most deluded observer to say such a thing. The Gaudiya Math and ISKCON have deliberately obfuscated the connection between Krishna's madhura lila and our human experience to promote the pan-Indian belief in sannyas that arises from the Buddhist and Shankarite schools. As I often say, the entire corpus of Rupa Goswami's work is meant to demonstrate the superlative position of madhura rasa. But any such hierarchy of rasa must be based in real human experience. Ideals have a relation to reality; they are meaningless without them. You need to see the madhura lila of Radha and Krishna as an object lesson in how to deal with sexual desire, not how to destroy it. Through worshiping Radha and Krishna we become aware of t...

One of the most exotic and exuberant streams flowing from the spring of Sri Chaitanya and his followers is that of the Bauls, who are broadly classifiable as Sahajiyas and thus treated as a heterodox or apasampradaya sect by the mainstream followers of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. At various times over the past century, the Bauls have sprung into prominence in Bengal and further afield, without ever really penetrating the public consciousness. They remain, as Shashi Bhushan Dasgupta classified them, an "obscure religious cult." This despite the support they received from no less a figure than Rabindranath Tagore, whom Dasgupta even calls "the greatest of the Bauls of Bengal." [ Obscure Religious Cults , 187). In recent times, prominent members of the tradition such as Purna Das, Kisan Das, and Paban Das Baul have attracted some public attention, primarily as folk singers in the world music and fusion genres, rather than as a specific religious school. Some scholarly...