The guru's silence is the discourse

It appears  that I was recycling old poems and that recycling process seems to have taken place more than once, which goes to show that just by cutting down lines into digestible chunks can make them seem more profound or at least is an attempt to imbue them with profundity. Profundity is in the eye of the beholder, but a trick of arranging things into lines signals to the reader "this is profound." Occasionally, it is. But profundity is cheap in our day and age.

Anyway, today's poem on the Rasa Dance is one that I have commented on several times in this blog, which presupposes that I thought I was hitting on something deep. The other links are given below. Facebook Memories May 8.

---

8 years ago

While on the subject of gurus:

चित्रं बटतरोर्मूले वृद्धः शिष्यः गुरुर्युवा
गुरोस्तु मौनं व्याख्यानं शिष्यास्ते छिन्नसंशयाः

citraṁ baṭa-taror mūle vṛddhaḥ śiṣyaḥ gurur yuvā
guros tu maunaṁ vyākhyānaṁ śiṣyās te chinna-saṁśayāḥ

"A wonder! Under the vata tree
the disciples elderly, the guru but a youth.
The guru's silence is the discourse,
and lo! the disciples' doubts are cut asunder." (Manu)

---

8 years ago (Rishikesh)

SRSG. The ashram is full of trees with red, yellow and lavender colored flowers. The champa trees are bursting with clusters of white and gold blossoms. The koils are singing gloriously from the mango trees. The sky is clear, the air is clean; it is quiet and the Himalayan foothills rise in the haze on the other side of the Ganga. Hari OM.

---

10 years ago

Maxime Lapointe cross-posted this from a blog article from 2012:

So many devotees in our movement have come to a ripe old age and they still don't have prema. And the main reason is that they did not love each other. They did not know how. They did not know that love actually both starts and culminates with erotic or romantic love.

We came to Krishna consciousness in the hope of finding love and happiness, and for us old farts who were hippies, we tripped on it for a while.

Harinam and prasad took us quite far. But then... something got lost. We got indoctrinated and we became foot soldiers for Krishna, "Onward Krishna soldiers!", and we forgot about learning the art of love.

We got caught up in proselytization, "selling books," collecting money and building temples, and we forgot that this was even meant to be an art of love.

There is a lot of enchantment in building institutions and beautiful temples and so on. But none of it is the final product. The only prayojan is prema, and we have to become experts in that. Let the other things follow naturally, as they will.

["Love actually both starts and culminates with erotic or romantic love." There is a heretical line and the essence of the Sahajiya position, as shown in the poem below also. This seems to go in the complete opposite direction from the path of renunciation and otherworldliness that is the primary insight of the Upanishads and the rest of India's spiritual literature. But ever since Shankaracharya the pravr̥tti-mārga has been on the defensive--despite the Bhagavad-gītā and its influence. Of course the path of nivr̥tti is the only ultimate destination since we all die, but the culture of consciousness is set in the context of the world and that is the unavoidable prerequisite of all spiritual endeavor.]

---

13 years ago

[I was reading and typing Prahlada lila from Vishnu Purana with Sridhara's commentary, but I said that this was on my mind.]

The Two Circle Dances

viharati vane rādhā sādhāraṇa-praṇaye harau
vigalita-nijotkarṣād īrṣyā-vaśena gatā'nyataḥ
kvacid api latā-kuñje guñjan-madhu-vrata-maṇḍalī-
mukhara-śikhare līnā dīnāpy uvāca rahaḥ sakhīm

When Radha saw Hari frolick in the forest,
treating all the women with equal love,
she sensed her own special status slip away.
Jealousy and rage arose in her, and off she went.

Somewhere, in a vine covered bower,
where bees buzzed in circles overhead,
she hid, and forlorn in her solitude,
began confiding in a friend.

kaṁsārir api saṁsāra-vāsanā-baddha-śṛṅkhalām
rādhām ādāya hṛdaye tatyāja vraja-sundarīḥ

Krishna, the enemy of Kamsa,
holding Radha in his heart, knowing she
is the link that bundles all his worldly wants,
left everyone else behind.

itas tatas tām anusṛtya rādhikām
ananga-bāṇa-vraṇa-khinna-mānasaḥ
kṛtānutāpaḥ sa kalinda-nandinī-
taṭānta-kuñje viṣasāda mādhavaḥ

He looked for Radhika everywhere,
his mind burning with the wounds
inflicted by the arrows of Cupid.

Overcome with remorse, he came to a bower
by the banks of the Yamuna
and there, Madhava began to lament.

==================================

And so the eternal cycle begins.

What is the difference between
the Rasas of the autumn and the spring?

The first tells of God and the jiva,
the second of God and his hladini;
the former, an archetype of the spiritual path,
the latter, of the divine comedy.

Both are circle dances,
revolving in opposite senses:
The Bhagavata is the circle without,
Gita Govinda, the one within.

Krishna is the axis of the outer,
And Radha, of the inner.

Together, They are
the center of both.

==================================

Without the balance of the two circles,
like unaligned gears, they cause
the machine to wobble and shake:
There is a frenzy of duality,
a great missing of the point,
a great failure of mādhurya.

Become a god to worship God.
While God becomes a man.
Whirl a while in both those circles,
but look for the eye of the storm.

The original poem here was written in 2007 and the first two articles here also come from March 2007. But I return to the subject later in 2012 and 2013:

• Three points to be elaborated on 
• More about the two circles 
• Psychic models and the Path of Prem 
• Five Essential Verses of Gīta-govinda (III)

Obviously to understand the point you have to read all those articles on the essential verses of Gīta Govinda.