We are all icebergs… melting: FB memories, May 5
A lot of stuff from a wide range of preoccupations--Gītā Govinda, Vr̥ndāvana-mahimāmr̥ta, Yoga-sūtra, American politics. Quite a mishmash. I chose for the title an utterance from seven years ago, when I seem to have been having deep thoughts.
2021
I just heard that Pankajanghri Das of Mayapur, longtime pujari, has entered the nitya-dhāma. I had not seen him in more than 40 years but in my memory I have always considered him and his brother Jananivas to be exemplary humble Vaishnavas, completely dedicated to the service of Radha Madhava.
Of course, the deity service in Mayapur was expanded tremendously with the temple's ever increasing opulence, but these two brothers, consistently and reliably served there without interruption for nearly fifty years and made that expansion possible. They were the backbone of the deity service, and to a great extent a defining feature of Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir itself.
I should apologize for speaking of Jananivasa Prabhu in the past tense. He is still there and continuing in the same way as described. Nevertheless, if there is any praise for Pankajanghri, it almost by definition accrues to his brother as well.
I am sure he will be missed. Jai Gaur! Jay Sri Radhe!
1 year ago
[From Prisni] Reading an old blog post by Jagadananda Das, and found this gem:
“All spiritual practices are experiential. The practitioner is the laboratory in whom the experiment of yoga is conducted. Yogi-pratyakṣa or the direct experience of the yogi is the ultimate arbiter of success. This direct experience is more important than scriptural injunctions or even the preceptor's teachings. It is more important than logical reasoning.”
Direct experience more important than scriptural injunction, or preceptor's teaching and logical reasoning? I am surprised this would come from someone who loves just those things and who frowns on direct perception and experience as less or even fake.
If I was smart, I would learn the argument he comes with, to throw in the face of the next person who calls it fake. But I don't care, direct experience is superior after all.
[In this connection the "We are all icebergs" utterance is applicable.]
3 years ago
[Commenting on politics is cringeworthy in hindsight. It makes the profession of political pundit seem like a fool's errand. Just trying to see which way the wind is blowing in so many directions. But I do seem to have a point. I have been advised repeatedly to abstain from doing so.]
Where USA is concerned, I am currently favoring Warren and Harris. They are both very impressive. Kamala Harris had an Indian mother from Chennai and a father from Jamaica, both university professors, one at Stanford.
The other candidates are too old -- Bernie, Biden. Or too young and unknown -- Beto, Buttegieg, etc. But I like that progressive ideas, climate change, etc., are all being treated seriously and are being discussed by all the candidates.
There are a lot of people in the USA who are against progressive ideas and they will do almost anything -- suicidal in fact -- to stop them. Like the conservative saying goes, "There has been a lot of progress in this country over the last century, and we have been against all of it."
I tend to be socially a bit more conservative than most people on the left, but I don't think that globalization and multiculturalism is something we can stop.
As a devotee, I recognize that globalization is what made Vaishnavism a meaningful choice for me. I see the history of globalization, beginning with the British Empire, as leading to the spread of ideas, including religious and spiritual ones. Perhaps those ideas are playing catchup, but I see the test of Vaishnavism to be how much we can make an intellectual impact on the discourse surrounding religion and spirituality in the context of a world of ideas where everything is to be examined and tested.
[The problem is "progressive ideas." I won't dwell on it too long but some comment is needed. Currently looking back on this mind fart from the vantage point of a war in Ukraine. And of course the whole point of the exercise is to tell everyone that we must worry, we must worry – about globalization, about Covid, about global warming and now here it is again, back for another run on Broadway—nukes! And politics in a democracy is just entertainment for the most part. Circuses.
And despite the attempts of Jordan Peterson and his section of thought leaders, the rehabilitation of the West has not yet satisfied my mind. The point about a global civilization is that it can take from anywhere and emphasize things that come from a different cultural resource. It has happened repeatedly in history. This is something that I have been reflecting on a little and it will probably show up in another article.]
May 5, 2018
As I work on Vrindavana-mahimamrita, I find myself turning more and more inward. At present I have to concentrate my mind on Bhakti Sandarbha also and so it is beginning to crave a different environment. After all, bhajan is really my calling in life. And at my age, who really wants to run around?
I was just over at Vineet Narain's house next door where he is putting on a big bash to celebrate the birth of a second grandson. Vineet knows how to party, Braj style, and he can get the most important local Bhagavata speakers to accept his invitation -- brahmins, politicians, ultrarich businessmen and so on are all friends with him for many reasons, not least of which is his very successful seva to Braj Bhumi. But it is also safe to say that this is Vineet Narain's natural milieu to begin with.
I am just an unimportant neighbor, and acquaintance, and of course not at all of that milieu. A bit of a party crasher when you come down to it.
I was hoping to introduce myself to the local MLA and some of the other political and social figures at their table, but they were obviously busy with their world. It felt somewhat worldly also.
On leaving I said my polite goodbyes to the VP of the BJP for UP in Lucknow. I apologized that I hadn't recognized him, and he said we would meet again. I said I hoped so, but that I am getting too old to run around to politicians' offices. Nevertheless, I had faith in Bharatavarsha and was attempting to get some service done to this land before I left the world.
And I am sincere. But rather than sweeping the streets myself to set the example as someone suggested to me the other day, I truly think that the greatest service I can do is to get to the bottom of things spiritually and to write about it. And my primary medium for understanding the Supreme Truth is the sadhana of Braja-vasa. That is what I think I am supposed to share at this stage in my life.
My basic premise is that foreigners have merged into Braja culture, and they do so not without leaving their mark. Those who come with a dream to live in a particular place, the immigrants, enrich that place by enriching the dream, even when they come with a lot of samskara baggage. But the dream of Vrindavan is not the same as the American dream, not by a long shot.
So there is something of a learning process that goes both ways, and certainly anyone who plans on being a Brajavasi has to honor the people who live here and whose roots are here, across the entire spectrum of life and society, caste and class. Indeed, such is the duty of an immigrant anywhere.
It is puzzling to me that foreigners come to live in Vrindavan or Braj and can think that the people born here, even of low caste and uneducated, are somehow not real Brajavasis because they are not marked Vaishnava sadhakas. Or that they are here to teach rather than to learn, thinking that everything they need to know is already known.
For those who come to Vrindavan from afar, with whatever motivation, the highest motivation or ultimate goal is to enter into the Divine Vrindavan, which is a brilliant state of conscience above all others, the abode of Prema, the abode of Radha and Krishna. And since Brajvasa sadhana includes all the others, especially the most powerful ones, it is the only place where a complete sadhana of prema bhakti is possible.
Dhruvadas writes how a real rasika sādhaka sees Vrindavan: Even doing bhajan elsewhere is not as good as simply sleeping in the dust of Vrindavan and drinking the water of the Yamuna.
I read Vrindavana Mahimamrita and I think about what it really means to be a Brajavasi. To just let the dust and water take over and propel my plunge into the Radha ocean where the mind fish of Shyamasundar swims.
May 5 2018
Left door to office open. Monkeys got in. Destroyed three books. Some people never learn.
We are all icebergs… melting.
We are all icebergs… melting.
We keep our personas happily masking the meltdown,
going on below the surface
and we don’t know what it is.
Our philosophies are our attempts to explain
and perhaps be honest. But the melting goes on
and the tip of the iceberg is anxious for its survival.
What is my philosophy?
Can you have certainties where God and love are concerned?
Nothing is certain but believe in Love anyway.
God says look at love, look at the human. I am there.
Love me, love my dog. And all the rest that is mine,
but especially that which is made in my image:
all the “me’s” that I have manifested everywhere for you to love.
You have found Me, you think, on the altar, in the Bhagavatam,
in words and paper and stone, in the rules of dharma
supplication and surrender to the God Above and Within.
And even in the golden alleyways of Vrindavan.
Your bliss is your praman, but your journey has only begun.
Where am I?
I am the Waldo of the world. Where will you find me?
In the clouds or in a kiss? Where do I reside?
If Prema is the prayojana, then look in the direction of prema.
As your eyes improve, you will see more clearly
and I will appear to you with form as the Beloved
and without form as Love Itself;
Its rays will shine forth through you and light the world.
Can you have certainties where God and love are concerned?
Nothing is certain but believe in Love anyway.
Run blindfolded, you will not slip or fall,
I will be there to catch you always.
When you finally see Me, you will finally know what
a kataksha is. How one eyeblink length glance
has more content than a thousand pages of shastra.
This is how you enter the lila, one kripa kataksha at a time.
One glimpse at a time until you get the composite picture.
Says Jagat: Below my iceberg tip, below my philosophies
Radharani’s glance is melting me into the ocean of rasa.
8 years ago
Our young malati is about to bring forth its first pink and white flowers! And what a sweet fragrance the beloved they give off in the summer nights! Welcome, welcome, sweet buds. If only we could have jasmine, honeysuckle and rat ki rani to turn our world into a perfumed paradise.
[If I am not mistaken this is from when I was living at Ananga Sukhada Kunj, where we had planted a malati that grew quite well and is still there.]
8 years ago
When you are young and fresh
in the creative arts,
you still have more wisdom
than us tired old farts.
8 years ago
सर्वं सर्वात्मकम्
sarvaṁ sarvātmakam
"All and everything is interconnected." (Yoga-sūtra bhāṣya 3.14)
समाः सन्तश्च विप्राग्निविषामृतमृतिष्वपि ।
भान्त्येवं तद्विदां सर्वमिदं सर्वात्मकं यतः ॥ ११ ॥
samāḥ santaśca viprāgniviṣāmṛtamṛtiṣvapi |
bhāntyevaṃ tadvidāṃ sarvamidaṃ sarvātmakaṃ yataḥ || 11 ||
The tolerant sage looks alike and takes in equal light all apparent differences; since they know that all these varieties in the world, are but manifestations of the One all pervading and invariable soul.
The context where I would have come across this phrase and been prompted to share it was Vyāsa's Bhāṣya to 3.14 (the chapter on saṁyama and miracles).
May 5, 2013
Now these [Gīta Govinda] poems are very sensuous. They are meant to be. They are not vulgar, but they are very suggestive. As I may already have stated, when it comes to erotic love, the eros and the love are not separated by any kind of distinction or by an overlay of prudery. Of sannyāsa culture, yoga, jñāna, what have you, not a whisper. No sāṅkhya philosophy of counting tattvas and this and that. It has all been forgotten. Even the characters have been pared to the bone. There is a transparent sakhī, a go-between who passes from her to him and him to her, but she has no independent personality. The drama is purely between Radha and Krishna. It is the drama of the eight nāyikā avasthās, and it culminates with the svādhīna bhartr̥kā.
Radha and Krishna are in love, but practically speaking there is no why to their love. There is no real introduction, no reason why or how they fell in love.
In Gita Govinda we have the ten avatar stotra, but that is more or less a formality. And even that is given no explanation. Krishna has long ago left the realm of tattva and is simply an archetype and the story being told is really just the a bare-bones of an archetypal tale, a myth, and that is precisely where its power and message lie.
We can only assume that the court audience of cultivated connoisseurs would have been in on the fact that Krishna is God, or an avatar, or a divinity of some kind. But what would that have meant for them?
So here, after Krishna kneels next to Radha, his hands folded like Garuda in expectation of an order, Radha begins to speak. You have to hear this sung, but we will skip the raga and tala instructions... as they are still meaningless to me.)
The refrain or dhruva pada: She said to Yadu Nandana, the delight of her heart, as he played with her.
The verses are what she said: "Do..." She opens with an order, kuru. Ah, what a long path these two syllables takes us on from the opening words of the Bhagavad Gita...
Oh Yadu Nandan! With your hand cooler than sandalwood, make musk decorations on my breasts, which are brothers to the auspicious pots marking the sacrifice of Cupid.
So karma-yoga is based on ritual, and here the sacrificial ritual is the act of lovemaking. And here, Krishna is the priest who makes auspicious markings of black musk or red vermilion to invoke the gods into the jugs, full of nectar, that mark the sacrificial ground. But is he the priest, or Radha the priestess? She is the acharya for she dictates how the sacrifice is to be performed.
Prabodhananda says that the mention of Krishna's cool hands are only a way of saying that she intends to light his fire once again by having him touch her intimately.
And of course, we must mention this classic:
vācā sūcita-śarvarī-rati-kalā-prāgalbhyayā rādhikāṁ
vrīḍ-kujcita-locanāṁ viracayann agre sakhīnām asau
tad-vakṣo-ruha-citra-keli-makarī-pāṇḍitya-pāraṁ- gataḥ
kaiśoram saphalī-karoti kalayan kuñje vihāraṁ hariḥ
With his words, Krishna made Srimati Radharani close her eyes bashfully before her friends by hinting at their amorous activities from the previous night, all the while demonstrating the greatest expertise by painting pictures of playful dolphins on her breasts. In this way, Hari made the most of his youth by enjoying these pastimes in the forest bowers. (BRS 2.1.231)
See also VMA 2.47-49
VMA 1.96 Oh mind! Meditate on Radha's breasts!
13 years ago
Five pillars of sadhana.
[Stillness, silence, fasting, celibacy, and conquest of sleep.
Not hard to figure out where I was when this was posted. Can't say I have gotten very far in this kind of meditative sadhana, but I am grateful to Swami Veda for giving me a few preliminary glimpses.]
भान्त्येवं तद्विदां सर्वमिदं सर्वात्मकं यतः ॥ ११ ॥
samāḥ santaśca viprāgniviṣāmṛtamṛtiṣvapi |
bhāntyevaṃ tadvidāṃ sarvamidaṃ sarvātmakaṃ yataḥ || 11 ||
The tolerant sage looks alike and takes in equal light all apparent differences; since they know that all these varieties in the world, are but manifestations of the One all pervading and invariable soul.
The context where I would have come across this phrase and been prompted to share it was Vyāsa's Bhāṣya to 3.14 (the chapter on saṁyama and miracles).
May 5, 2013
Now these [Gīta Govinda] poems are very sensuous. They are meant to be. They are not vulgar, but they are very suggestive. As I may already have stated, when it comes to erotic love, the eros and the love are not separated by any kind of distinction or by an overlay of prudery. Of sannyāsa culture, yoga, jñāna, what have you, not a whisper. No sāṅkhya philosophy of counting tattvas and this and that. It has all been forgotten. Even the characters have been pared to the bone. There is a transparent sakhī, a go-between who passes from her to him and him to her, but she has no independent personality. The drama is purely between Radha and Krishna. It is the drama of the eight nāyikā avasthās, and it culminates with the svādhīna bhartr̥kā.
Radha and Krishna are in love, but practically speaking there is no why to their love. There is no real introduction, no reason why or how they fell in love.
In Gita Govinda we have the ten avatar stotra, but that is more or less a formality. And even that is given no explanation. Krishna has long ago left the realm of tattva and is simply an archetype and the story being told is really just the a bare-bones of an archetypal tale, a myth, and that is precisely where its power and message lie.
We can only assume that the court audience of cultivated connoisseurs would have been in on the fact that Krishna is God, or an avatar, or a divinity of some kind. But what would that have meant for them?
So here, after Krishna kneels next to Radha, his hands folded like Garuda in expectation of an order, Radha begins to speak. You have to hear this sung, but we will skip the raga and tala instructions... as they are still meaningless to me.)
The refrain or dhruva pada: She said to Yadu Nandana, the delight of her heart, as he played with her.
The verses are what she said: "Do..." She opens with an order, kuru. Ah, what a long path these two syllables takes us on from the opening words of the Bhagavad Gita...
Oh Yadu Nandan! With your hand cooler than sandalwood, make musk decorations on my breasts, which are brothers to the auspicious pots marking the sacrifice of Cupid.
So karma-yoga is based on ritual, and here the sacrificial ritual is the act of lovemaking. And here, Krishna is the priest who makes auspicious markings of black musk or red vermilion to invoke the gods into the jugs, full of nectar, that mark the sacrificial ground. But is he the priest, or Radha the priestess? She is the acharya for she dictates how the sacrifice is to be performed.
Prabodhananda says that the mention of Krishna's cool hands are only a way of saying that she intends to light his fire once again by having him touch her intimately.
And of course, we must mention this classic:
vācā sūcita-śarvarī-rati-kalā-prāgalbhyayā rādhikāṁ
vrīḍ-kujcita-locanāṁ viracayann agre sakhīnām asau
tad-vakṣo-ruha-citra-keli-makarī-pāṇḍitya-pāraṁ- gataḥ
kaiśoram saphalī-karoti kalayan kuñje vihāraṁ hariḥ
With his words, Krishna made Srimati Radharani close her eyes bashfully before her friends by hinting at their amorous activities from the previous night, all the while demonstrating the greatest expertise by painting pictures of playful dolphins on her breasts. In this way, Hari made the most of his youth by enjoying these pastimes in the forest bowers. (BRS 2.1.231)
See also VMA 2.47-49
VMA 1.96 Oh mind! Meditate on Radha's breasts!
13 years ago
Five pillars of sadhana.
[Stillness, silence, fasting, celibacy, and conquest of sleep.
Not hard to figure out where I was when this was posted. Can't say I have gotten very far in this kind of meditative sadhana, but I am grateful to Swami Veda for giving me a few preliminary glimpses.]
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