Jagat

lokā ḥ svacchanda-nindā ṁ vidadhati yadi me ki ṁ tato dīna-dīna ṁ sarva ṁ cet syāt ku ṭ umba ṁ kim iva mama tato durdaśā ḥ syus tata ḥ kim sevādhīśasya na syād yadi kim iva tata ḥ śrīla-v ṛ ndāvane’ha ṁ sthāsyāmy āsthāya dhairye mama nija-paramābhī ṣṭ a-siddhir bhavitrī  If the people here should freely condemn and criticize me, why should that bother me? And if my family and kinsman should become poverty stricken and thus put me into a perilous state, why should I let it affect me? Even if I should fail to attain the service to the Lord, I will remain here in Vrindavan, fixed in determination, and it will give me the perfection of life that I seek. (1.63) I have no ambition for riches or fame. Nor comfort, nor good food. Just let me roll in the dust of Vrindavan. Let me sit on Vrindavan’s pathways and watch the pilgrims pass. Let me call out Radhe Shyam! Radhe Shyam! as I watch the scruffy sadhus and sannyasis, crowding th...

As some of you may have realized by now, I am a bit scatterbrained, all over the map as it were. The last couple of months I have been absorbed in Bhaktivinoda Thakur's life, and that project, thought quite far along, is still incomplete. Now here I am in Birnagar during the annual festival celebrating Bhaktivinoda Thakur's appearance in this world, and I am unable to immerse myself in it fully due to a request from Satyaraj Das to contribute an article to the upcoming issue of Journal of Vaishnava Studies, which will deal with the subject of "tirtha." So I have been scouring my writings over the past eight years or so, since I started living in Vrindavan and writing for Vrindavan Today. I made a list on Facebook of 25 editorials that I posted there that in one way or another express my thoughts about living in Vrindavan. Some of these have been crossposted here, though not all. I have also been going through the verses of  Vṛndāvana-mahimāmṛta that I have ...

A few years ago I was examining the concept of aropa, i.e., projection or superimposition, in Gaudiya Vaishnavism. The term got a bad name because of the similarity to ahangrahopasana and its use in Sahajiyaism when lovers see themselves as manifestations of the eternal lovers, Radha and Krishna. Expressed simply, it means seeing Krishna in the not-Krishna. In the earlier discussion, I believe I argued that since everything was in one sense Krishna, that to practice seeing him everywhere was to nothing other than aropa. Since this world is a reflection of the eternal world, aropa simply means to remind oneself of that similarity. As I was reading Caitanya Caritamrita today (Madhya 1), I realized that the most famous verse of the CC is an example of such aropa, and Rupa Goswami explained it. yaḥ kaumāra-haraḥ sa eva hi varas tā eva caitra-kṣapās te conmīlita-mālatī-surabhayaḥ prau‚hāḥ kadambānilāḥ sā caivāsmi tathāpi tatra surata-vyāpāra-līlā-vidhau revā-rodhasi vetasī-tar...

Cross-posted from Vrindavan Today nāhaṁ vedmi kim etad adbhutatamaṁ vastu trayī-mastakaiḥ stavyaṁ prīti-bhareṇa gokula-patir yan nityam āsevate | kandaṁ prema-rasasya kiṁ madhurimotkarṣāntya-sīmno’dbhuta- sāndrānanda-rasasya vā pariṇatiṁ vṛndāvanaṁ pāvanam|| I do not know what this purifying Vrindavan, this most amazing substance that is praised by the chief portions of the three Vedas, in which the Lord of Gokula dwells with full love. Is it the root of all the secrets of love? Or is it the transformation of that thick flavor of incredible ecstasy that lies at the furthest limit of supreme sweetness? I really do not know.  Commentary Prabodhananda refers to the trayī-mastaka , here translated as “the conclusive portions of the Vedas” or more literally, “the heads of the three Vedas.” Generally speaking, when Prabodhananda uses this term, it is a reference to the Gopāla-tāpanī Upaniṣad, to which we have several commentaries, one of which is credited to ...

I suppose it was inevitable that once I started getting into Bhaktivinoda Thakur's life story that it would end up in trouble. I don't like it. It disturbs people's minds in the Gaudiya Math and ISKCON. And in a way, I understand that for them, this is a mere technicality. Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur and his disciples have proved their validity as spiritual masters by their scholarship, their valiant preaching and by their personal character. You cannot discount them all on the basis of what seems like a mere technicality. So that leaves me (and my guru) looking a little foolish to them. But I can't help myself. It bothers me. Even if ISKCON and the Gaudiya Math go from success to success and conquer the entire world, I will still feel the same way. Because for me, the ultimate conclusion of the meat-eating story is that there is no stronger evidence anywhere than Bhaktivinoda Thakur's personal account shows not just that he was the initiated disciple of ...

The origins of the śikṣā-sampradāya idea ISKCON's disciplic line, which we have here called a śikṣā-sampradāya , (30) is traced through Bhaktivedanta Swami to Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, then to Gaura Kishor Das Babaji and then to Bhaktivinoda Thakur. Bhaktivinoda (which is the title given to Kedarnath Datta, d. 1914) was the natural father of Bhaktisiddhanta, whose original name was Bimala Prasad Datt. In the disciplic line which was proned by Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, Bhaktivinoda Thakur's spiritual master was Jagannath Das Babaji. It is known from Bhaktivinoda's own writings,(31) however, that he was initiated by Bipin Bihari Goswami, a descendant of Ramacandra, the adopted son of Jahnava and founder of a dynasty of initiating gurus based in Baghna Para, a village about 20 kilometers southwest of Nabadwip.(32) One of Bhaktivinoda's eight sons, Lalita Prasad, took initiation from him and preserved the disciplic line which Bipin Bihari Goswami passed on to Bhaktivi...

This article was written in 1993 and was published in more or less this form in the Journal of Vaishnava Studies. It only recently came to my attention that it had not been published on this blog, which is an ovrsight that I am remedying now. No doubt there are things that should be corrected. For the time beings the links do not work. My apologies. I have not made any revisions, though I have not the slightest doubt that they are needed. I will do so as soon as I get the time to do so.. Great philosophers could not reach the end of your glories, oh Lord, even if they should think on them with increasing joy for æonchars. For, in the form of the intelligence within and the teacher without, you destroy all inauspiciousness and reveal the way to attain you. (1) Contents (Part I): Introduction ISKCON after the departure of Bhaktivedanta  Schismatic tendencies in post-Prabhupada ISKCON  The first ISKCON heresy: ṛtvik-vāda or the doctrine of the monitor guru...