Jagat

Well today FB coughed up only a few memories, one of which was rather significant and never posted to my blog. I mentioned the other day that "archetypes" was a word used to diminish my credibility to devotees who are literalistic in their beliefs. On this blog, the label archetype or archetypes are used and you can see how I am using the term generally. I think this may be one of the most instructive: Archetypes: Remembering the Essence .

An old baba looked at my hand and told me I would not die in Vrindavan. Perhaps a relevant post from five years ago in view of my present circumstances. Of course I do the best I can and all the advice is respected as relevant. Krishna is indeed everywhere, just sometimes more apparent than others,

I seem to reflect quite frequently on the difficulties I have in getting my primary task done. Five years ago I was struggling with Bhakti Sandarbha and now I am struggling with Prīti Sandarbha. It seems like a dreadful bore to inflict these kinds of reflections on my readers but at least once in a while something else comes out of it -- a verse translation or something else, a realization of some kind. I really want to get Prīti Sandarbha finished this summer, but my in depth reading of the Bhāgavatam and editing the commentaries takes up a lot of my time. For the last couple of days I have been working on a small portion of the prakaraṇa that deals with rasābhāsa. I have already written one article  ( two actually ) on the subject and there will hopefully be more.  Rasābhāsa arises when the perfect ideal conditions for rasa are not met. For Jiva Goswami this is a problem, since in the Bhāgavatam we cannot have any imperfection. I have being using the word "occlusion" to tr...

  2010  I was thinking about Voltaire's statement: "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." Which I heard translated as "the IDEAL is the enemy of the good." The image of perfection, i.e., God, which is the essence of the spiritual life, of self-improvement, can at the same time destroy our attempt to make the best of what will always be flawed--our human existence. Forgiveness is the bridge between the two poles.   2017 There has been a lot about mānava-sevā = mādhava sevā , with the recent visit of Ammachi and the event at the Ramkrishna Mission hospital the other day and I have been thinking about it. Jiva Goswami in the Sandarbhas, especially in Krishna Sandarbha, discusses various ways of looking at Krishna. Kaviraj does the same thing when talking about Mahaprabhu in the early going of CC. They say, yes, however you see Krishna or Mahaprabhu is OK, because they are the root of all things, so everything is contained within them. According to your adhik...

This was a response to something an ex-devotee posted about self-love. As often is the case, something else crossed my path at about the same time, namely this verse by Haridas Shastri. It provoked certain thoughts in me that I felt worth sharing. As prayers go, it seems particularly good to me and I had  even included it in an earlier post . I wrote this comment on Facebook but never posted it on the blog, though I rather like the trend of the meditation.

2018 Today is Hit Harivanshji's appearance day. What a good fortune to live in Vrindavan. I am just sitting here in the VT office and new neighbors are celebrating his appearance. It seems we have a Radha Vallabhi family moving in next door. 2011 It may be asked that since direct perception in the philosophy of logic requires close contact between a perceiver’s senses and the object perceived (Gotama’s Nyāya-sūtra 1), how can a yogi perceive the subtle, the hidden or the distant beyond such contact? The answer is that the internal sense ( antaḥ-karaṇa ) is undivided and all-pervading. It is in close contact with all realities at all times. āgamenānumānena dhyānābhyāsa-rasena ca |  tridhā prakalpayan prajñāṁ labhate yogam uttamam || By authority ( āgama ) and by logic ( anumāna ), and through enjoyment of the practice ( abhyāsa ) of meditation ( dhyāna );  Cultivating wisdom in these three ways,  One gains the highest yoga. ( Vyāsa-bhāṣya,  YS 1.48) 2011 I must be ...

  I was remembering back to my first time in Vrindavan in the 70s and 80s. There used to be a semi-crazy guy in Loi Bazaar who was dressed as a Haridasi sadhu, but embellished with various colorful accoutrements. This is a current version, but he is not the only one. To some degree we are all crazy like that. I was walking back home in the evening through Kishore Pura, and this fellow rolls up on his motorcycle. He is covered in flashing electronic signs that say Radhe Radhe and peacock feathers everywhere, flower garlands both real and in paper. He quickly attracted a crowd of children and had them all shouting Radhe ! Radhe!

A longtime friend of mine whose FB handle is Sri Sri wrote the following. He later changed "Steven Hawkins" to "Captain Kirk" since the idea of going "where no western gaudiya has gone before" and "to a different universe" etc., do indeed seem to be more appropriate to that. Anyway, I am certainly no intellectual giant, or perhaps it is that the Gaudiya Vaishnava world is unfortunately full of intellectual pygmies. Nevertheless, I have occasionally gotten positive feedback and I do think that there is some need of a cogent intellectual defense of religion in general and Vaishnavism in particular. I am totally inadequate to the task, but perhaps I have seen some glimpses of directions that such defenses could be made -- and they are not found in the direction of blind and literal belief. There are a few other reflections later in this post.   jagadananda pabhu is the stephen hawkins of gaudiya vaishnavism......we all read him and have no idea ...

I thank God that entering Vrindavan is so arduous. Arduously pleasurable at every step. I thank God that Radha and Krishna's sweetness is infinite, and that it will take an infinity of lifetimes to relish it, but that even then I will still not be filled. And I thank God for Srila Rupa Goswami's insight into the Divine Couple. Jai Sri Radhe! May everyone see the sweet presence  of Radha and Krishna in all phenomena, in separation and union, relishing the rasa. (9 years ago)

জন্মস্থান বিষয় নিয়ে গৌডীয় মঠ আর পারম্পরিক বৈষ্ণবদের মধ্যে একটা সবচেয়ে বড় বিবাদের স্থান হয়েছে । আমরা যারা ভক্তিবিনোদ ঠাকুরের সঙ্গে জড়িত আর নিত্যানন্দ প্রভু -- জাহ্নবা মাতা -- রামাই ঠাকুরের দীক্ষা পরম্পরা আম্নায সিদ্ধ পরম্পরা মানি, বড়ই বিপদে পড়ি । এটা নিয়ে আমার বহু অনুসন্ধান আর মননের পরে এই বক্তব্য--

"So it is clear that the yogis receive their knowledge through non-imaginary, non-fictitious ( a-vikalpita ) samādhi , and use the fiction ( vikalpa ) of āgama and anumāna to convey the true knowledge." [Vachaspati Misra to Yoga-sūtra I.43 (trans. Swami Veda Bharati)] [ I get  the problem here, but it is hard for me to believe that any experience is free of an overlay of memory and certainly when śabda is given as much importance as in Vaishnavism, one expects that "direct experience" will conform with what one has learned, heard or become conditioned to. But even a yogi who is directing his practice and self-conditioning is also working towards an expected experience that is strongly influenced by memory. This is a significant point and requires clarification, Memory is notoriously fallible just like sense perception -- indeed the defectiveness of both is intertwined -- but for Vaishnavas, memory is the locus of the practice, which is distinct from dhyāna altho...

The law of karma from this date (April 18 of 2021). Obviously I was taking a strong position here so I must have believed in what I was saying.  I think that this is the last of the series.  I haven't included many counter comments but this time I did include a post by  Lee Yue Heng , since I think it formed a very nice conclusion, a bookend to this "kerfuffle."  In fact it is true that sympathy for victims is a necessary part of the overall picture that perhaps I did not give enough emphasis to, and it is especially true when speaking to victims with inadequate capacity for understanding. The world is a place of cheaters and cheated; one requires the other. Beginners on the path are easily deceived and may have to go through the process of being deceived many times. From the internet, don't know where it originated. One year ago I think that many devotees, especially the children and women who have been abused and the others who support them, do not believe in the l...

13 years ago (Rishikesh) : It is now officially hot. Love it. Lots of flowers. The malatis and juthi are just emitting powerful lusty fragrances. Down by the Ganges, there are all sorts of spring birds passing through. I love how flocks fly just above the surface of the river. Probably to keep themselves cool.

The thing is to see the real without ever abandoning the ideal. The idea is to cultivate prema that is so strong no stench can affect it. Because prema is stronger than stink. But, of course, if the prema is not strong enough, then you surround yourself with perfume and call it prema."

Rasābhāsa refers to the eclipsing of a pure sentiment by some incompatible elements -- actions or feelings that are not in harmony with the dominant mood. In sections 174-202 of the Prīti Sandarbha , Jiva Goswami raises possibilities of such rasābhāsa from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa . The subject of the Prīti Sandarbha is to analyze the poetic and devotional sentiments ( rasas ) expressed in the Bhāgavata . The Bhāgavata is the first text to recognize the relation of rasa theory with religious experience. A folio from the  Bhagavata Purana: Krishna leaving Dwarka  Nepal, circa 1775 Depicting blue-skinned Krishna three times, once at middle left taking the blessing of a sage, once at center inside the palace walls in a procession with his brother, the white-skinned Balarama, as they head towards the city gates, and again on the shores as the procession leaves the city; within red borders with an inscription below and page number at upper left. (Christie's)

Since arriving in Montreal I have been having dreams. I don't really know why, it may be the coffee-drinking that I started since I came here. My son had purchased a whole box of coffee beans from a wide variety of countries and had become something of a fledgling connoisseur. So it is a part of what he left behind that I am consuming in his honor and memory.

In Christianity, one cultivates the sense of being a sinner through constant, ever more subtle self-examination. The purpose of this is to see one's own utter incapacity of attaining salvation from the material conditioning and to thus take complete shelter of the Lord. Ammachi's bhaktas say she became blue like Krishna in Vrindavan. She came to Vineet Narain's place right next door to Jiva on this date 2016. Big event. Big crowd. She did not come alone. My crappy picture.

I here post the post I made on Facebook on April 10, 2021 about my meeting with Paramadvaiti Swami nearly three years after the scandals that pretty much destroyed his society of disciples called VRINDA. This was picked up and posted elsewhere on the internet , where it was a source of some glee to the Schadenfreude crew. I likely would not have posted but was motivated by an encounter with a neighbor who was one of the leading advocates for the victims on line and elsewhere. This led me to post what was an objective  leaning to sympathetic assessment of my encounter with Paramadvaiti. I have a bit of a suppressed journalistic instinct that occasionally gets me into trouble.  In the beginning there were favorable comments to this post but the tide turned and those who advocated for the victims and for a hard line against all abuse took me to task for being too soft. This then resulted in a campaign of complaints against me that had unpleasant consequences for me.  I don't...

April 11 of last year was a significant date for me on Facebook. I posted some comments related to B.A. Paramadvaiti Swami (BAP) that excited a lot of comment and had real-life repercussions for me when some advocates for the victims of BAP's abuses decided that I was their enemy and needed to be cancelled. There were complaints made about me to Satyanarayana Dasaji and my life at Jiva was made quite uncomfortable. It was one of three events that made 2021 particularly notable, the others being the death of my son and my return to Canada. I never discussed the Paramadvaiti issue on this blog but I think it is time that I at least publish the salient portions of what I wrote on this matter for the record.   I am not really an activist by nature, but a few years ago I participated in activities related to the environmental and heritage issues in Vrindavan. This is the ground on which I encountered Paramadvaiti Maharaj on many occasions as he was very active in the Braj Vrindavan Her...

I may have mentioned before that I am working on Prīti Sandarbha where currently I have been doing the sections on the secondary rasas and the mixing of rasas and rasābhāsa . For that purpose I have been doing a lot of side work like editing the Muktā-phala with its commentaries and also the last section (Part 4 ) of the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu . All this background research will hopefully enrich the Prīti Sandarbha , a lot of it will have to wait for another occasion for its effects to be shown. Understanding rasa is for me the key to understanding bhakti as it is taught in our tradition and I believe the greatest contribution for a psychological approach to the study of religion and religious experience. Haridas Thakur's trial. I will try to share some of this eventually. Here is just one tidbit that I found interesting: Making a display of devotion is rasābhāsa , "a mere semblance of rasa," i,e,, not real rasa. There are three kinds of  rasābhāsa pertaining ...