Jagat

Vrindavan is, I have taken to repeating, the de facto spiritual capital of India. The main reason for this is the proximity of Vrindavan to Delhi and the increasing ease of access through modern communications. It is no longer a labor to get from the metropolis to Vrindavan. And speakers of the Bhagavata currently dominate the religious television networks.   But the second reason for Vrindavan's rise in status is the acceding to power of the BJP. The BJP is considered by outsiders to be a party of religious nationalism and an engine of identity politics in the interest of the traditional dominant caste of India, the brahmins. Commentators from other political perspectives condemn Hindu nationalism because they associate it primarily with certain backward social ideas, especially racism and communalism. Therefore they make facile comparisons of the BJP to the rise of the racist right wing in the USA (with the politically incorrect Donald Trump) and Islamic fundamentalism.   A ...

Tweet from Trump: "Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren't told to go to my events. Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!" Why the hell should the Arabs have all the fun? Why don't we have a war at home? I thought war is such a good thing we are always exporting it. Why not develop the domestic market? Let's reap the benefits of all our good works and have us some jolly little brownshirts and blackshirts rioters fighting it out in the streets of our cities. Summer’s here and the time is right... We could burn down neighborhoods and stuff like that too. Why the hell not? Our police are armed to the teeth with tanks and even drones, why shouldn't they get to bloody use their toys without fear of being video’d? Or why not video it and become a reality TV cop? Or a reality TV rioter? Why is it only on TV and video games and drone operator offices that you get to spray bullets into target rich targets? And surely all those Cl...

I was talking with some friends about śraddhā on Facebook and I thought I would post this from Swami Veda's Volume I of the Yoga Sutra (1.20). श्रद्धावीर्यस्मृतिसमाधिप्रज्ञापूर्वक इतरेषाम्॥२०॥ śraddhā-vīrya-smṛti-samādhi-prajñā-pūrvaka itareṣām ||20|| The samādhi of (some) others has as its preconditions faith, strength, intentness, meditation and the awakening of wisdom in samprajñāta.   [Vyāsa] upāya-pratyayo yogināṁ bhavati | śraddhā cetasaḥ samprasādaḥ | sā hi jananīva kalyāṇī yoginaṁ pāti | tasya hi śraddadhānasya vivekārthino vīryam upajāyate | samupajāta-vīryasya smṛtir upatiṣṭhate | smṛty-upasthāne cittam anākulaṁ samādhīyate | samāhita-cittasya prajñā-viveka upāvartate | yena yathāvad vastu jānanti | tad-abhyāsāt tad-viṣayāc ca vairāgyād asamprajñātaḥ samādhir bhavati ||20||   Samādhi, the causal cognition of which is cultivated through method (upāya-pratyaya) accrues to the yogis: Faith ( śraddhā ) means full clarity and pleasantness of the mind-field...

My problems in Krishna consciousness arose out of the mostly literal interpretations given to the shastras by the devotees. There is a huge caveat in the Bhagavatam about everything that is said in that text: Krishna favors indirect speech.