The essence of mananam is doubt

A few different subjects came up on this date. (1) Devotees and learning Indian languages like Bengali and Sanskrit. I have written about this several times, like Love and Language. (2) I engaged in a response to Meena OM, a self-styled guru from Mumbai who is fairly popular "master" on Speakng Tree, where current Hinduism daily shows its blandness and abandonment of its tradition. I was posting there for a while but abandoned it quite some time ago. Anyway, about "becoming an avatar", apparently that is possible. (3) Comments on Bhaktivinoda's statement that party spirit and sectarianism are the two great enemies of progress. (4) Some verses from Govinda-līlāmr̥ta. FB Memories July 19.

2016

Here at Dwadash Mandir, the birthplace of Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur, I have been thinking....
I give class every day in Bengali to a handful of local devotees, but I must say that it gives me so much pleasure to be able to read a text like Caitanya-caritāmṛta, or quote from it and NOT have to translate. It is DIRECT. Even the Sanskrit verses are easier to translate into Bengali since many of the words are the same and have the same nuances in Bengali as in the Sanskrit.

 
So I have been mulling over an idea: I would like to give Western students the opportunity to study Bengali and also to read Bhaktivinoda Thakur's books in the original. Perhaps we could start with a month-long retreat of some kind and then gradually expand.

 
I am a little nervous about suggesting this because at present there is little facility here for housing students, so that is a consideration. But if serious people are ready to rough it, then I might try to make a go of it.

 
Jai Gaura!

I have found that this lack of interest is practically fatal to one's culture of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. I am teaching Sanskrit at Jiva, but even there the interest is limited. But we did have a good dozen serious students who stuck through to the end. I hope to have my book ready by the end of the next school year.

[This was another plan that never came to fruition. I had no extra time for teaching Bengali. I barely have time for Sanskrit.]  

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2012

 
This posting was written in response to the Speaking Tree's "master" Meena OM's post, linked to here: http://www.speakingtree.in/public/spiritual-blogs/masters/philosophy/difference-between-a-guru-and-avatar

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It is interesting that these discourses take place with only a superficial reference to the shastras. What an avatar is, the difference between avatar and guru, these are things that are discussed extensively in the Hindu tradition over thousands of years. You make reference, for instance to the Gita, sambhavāmi yuge yuge, and so on. In fact, the Vaishnava tradition is the source of the concept, so to pretend to have any knowledge of the matter without reference to that tradition will prove to be shallow.

The Bhāgavata Purāṇa, for instance, discusses the characteristics of the avatar extensively. And the later traditions of Vallabha, Ramanuja, Madhva, Chaitanya, etc., go into even greater detail.
I appreciate, of course, that you are making the distinction, because every Changu, Mangu and Pangu who has a little knowledge and can act the part, as soon as they become a little successful at the guru game, tries to "up the stakes" by claiming to be an avatar. At present in India, especially, there is a great deal of competition among people who claim to be avatars. Going to the next level and becoming an avatar, this is the sign that one has "arrived." So who does not want to be an avatar? But basically, anyone who does so, in my humble opinion, is a cheater of the first order.

Most of these newly made avatars, like weeds at the onset of the monsoon, are really little different from gurus in the way they play their role. The only difference is that they are totally unabashed in their demands for worship from their gullible followers. They are usually able to demand more money from them, most of whom are primarily impressed by the performance of some magic tricks. If the current crop of weeds is anything to go by, they consider Krishna's rasa-līlā as a part of their avatar duties, with some of them even introducing homosexual rasa dances.

They do this all shamelessly. And of course, if anyone draws attention to such misbehaviors, their gullible disciples immediately accuse you of offense committed directly to God himself. And the result is that Hinduism becomes a laughing stock of world religion. Anyone who can fool enough people can make the preposterous claim to be God himself and excuse himself by calling it some kind of "evolution."

Thus to claim to be an avatar is a greatly audacious act. I think you have made a big mistake by saying that it is something that we can aspire to evolve into. This is an error that many well-meaning and sincere aspirants make. How can one evolve into being God? God is God and you are the eternal servant of God. This is a constitutional fact. You are servant now, subservient to the laws of time and nature, and even if you become guru, you still remain servant and externally subject to those laws.

Krishna showed the virāṭ rūpa to Arjuna. But this was because he was indeed "Time". Can you do this? Can His Holiness Dattaswami do so? (He also is involved in this competition of establishing himself as God's avatar, the only ONE for this age.) This is the unfortunate game that all these competitors for avatarhood are playing. This is a very dangerous form of cheating. Perhaps it is the most dangerous form. To claim to be the all-pervading, all-powerful, all-knowing Godhood is no small claim, and there is little doubt that all who make such claims are in fact knowingly attempting to dupe others for little purpose other than their own self-aggrandizement.

To say ahaṁ brahmāsmi does not mean you are God. You all need to read a bit of Ramanuja, Madhva, Nimbarka, Vallabhacharya, Jiva Goswami and the other Vaishnava acharyas, all of whom recognized that to become one with God means to become his devoted servant.

This word jugglery, saying that the avatar is a manifestation of "Cosmic Intelligence"... what on earth is "Cosmic Intelligence"? Cosmic intelligence implies personhood. We are persons, and we value our personhood. This is why we struggle to improve our lives and attain some measure of spiritual maturity. So God is also the supreme person.

God's personhood is not a temporary construct of Maya, but an eternal fact. Why? Because personhood is our most valuable possession, our greatest value. Why? Because we cannot LOVE without being persons. And God, as the source of LOVE is the all-pervading ground of personhood and love. We are different from God because it is necessary to be different for the sake of love.

To claim to have become God is an abuse of love. If you love God, you become one with God, but not by losing your own individual personhood. What is the meaning of love if you cease to be a different person?

Now the question of avatar and avatari comes in. You seem to think that both are the same. Well, this already shows a surprising lack of knowledge. The avatar is the descent of the Supreme Being, who is a person. The avatari is that Supreme Being, the source of all the other avatars. How can we distinguish between them?

The shastras talk about various divisions of avatar--purushavatar, gunavatar, manvantaravatar, yugavatar, lilavatar, aveshavatar, etc. These different avatars perform different functions according to time and place. How do we understand what the avatari is? When Krishna says _krishnas tu bhagavan svayam_, this is another way of saying avatari.

Rupa Goswami, a follower of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, said the answer lies in rasa. Raso vai saḥ. So he says, Krishna is the akhila-rasāmṛta-mūrti. Rupa Goswami says that from one point of view, Narayan, etc., the various avatars, are the same (siddhāntatas tv abhede'pi) but from the point of view of rasa, only Krishna is superior, rūpam eṣa rasa-sthitiḥ.

In some ways you have spoken of this, but it is muddled up. You say the avatar appears like a human. You say the mother is guru. Why is she not an avatar? You must follow through with some rigorous knowledge of the bhakti shastra.

You have in some respect touched an important point though. The avatar is the intimate object of worship, whereas the guru is one who is worshiped as the representative of God in the form of a teacher. We say the guru, whether in the form of mother, father, school teacher or spiritual teacher, is to be honored as if they were God himself. But the original form of God is revealed in the avatar.

One can only be identified as an avatar if he or she becomes an entirely new symbol of the Divine. Simply coming along and saying aham brahmāsmi does not an avatar make. Saying, "I am Ram, I am Krishna, I am all the gods, etc." is complete hubris, or arrogance. Try to understand what is meant by raso vai saḥ and you will start to get an inkling. There is really no need for more avatars. Some decent truthful and honest gurus would be greatly helpful though.

Radhe Shyam.

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Afterthought. One reason that the discussion is shallow is because individuals deliberately keep it that way in order to deceive others into thinking that they are themselves avatars.

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2012 (From Pushkaraksha) Natural Brotherhood by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura:

 
"Gradually, when the offensive portions of the established religions are destroyed, there will be no more differences in the bhajana performed by the various Sampradayas nor any quarrel between them.
Then as brothers, the people of all castes and countries will spontaneously chant the Holy Names of the Supreme Lord together.

 
At that time, no one will hate anyone or consider others dog-eaters; nor will anyone be overwhelmed by the pride of high birth.

The living entities will not forget the principle of natural brotherhood."

"Mahaprabhu was naturally a soft-hearted person, though strong in His principles. He declared that party spirit and sectarianism were the two great enemies of progress."

Srila Thakur Bhaktivinode from "Sri Caitanya — His Life and Precepts."

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True enough that party spirit and sectarianism are two enemies of progress. But that will not be solved by pipe dreams of universal brotherhood in some distant future. To think there will be no differences in the bhajan of the different sampradayas assumes there will be no difference in adhikara, samskara, ruci or language. This is neither possible nor desirable.

The point is that even then, bhajan is external. The internal fruit is prema. If you attain prema, then there is some possibility of at least peace. But the above statement, though well-meaning, is actually counterproductive because it implicitly assumes that everyone will follow the path of Chaitanya Vaishnavism. This in itself promotes sectarian thinking.

Most people quote this internally to ISKCON and GM, who are among the worst sectarians in Hinduism, so much so that they don't even want to be called Hindu!! In actual fact, prema is only attainable by the individual and then by couples. But where groups are concerned, the rule of the lowest common denominator applies.

This means that though in group dynamics leadership is important, as the objective becomes size and quantity rather than quality, the overall possibility for widespread conceptualization and cultivation of prema diminishes. Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati pointed this out in his Putana article.

Śravaṇam, mananam, nididhyāsanam. Hear. Reflect. Focus. Reflection is part of the task implied by hearing. Though this instruction is usually considered part of the jñāna-mārga, it is actually in one of the most important teachings of the upanishads. It applies to all transcendentalists.

Mananam means to relate received wisdom to one's own experience of reality. When we do so, the things we have heard take on multiple dimensions of meaning. When we only hear, without mananam, then they remain one-dimensional, which means basically, devoid of meaning.
The essence of mananam is doubt. The purva-pakṣa.

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2011 Shukas and Saris Discuss Mana

vāmya-valkala-sanchannā dṛḍha-mānāsthi-saṁvṛtā
nārikela-phalānāṁ vā gopikānāṁ rasa-sthiti
bahir-antaś caika-rūpā doṣa-heyāṁśa-varjitā
drākṣā-phalotkarasyeva svāmino me rasa-sthitiḥ

The Shukas retort: “O Sharis! Although the gopis are sweet on the inside, they’re covered by an outer layer of orneriness, and then by tough shell of māna—just like the hard layers covering the sweet coconut meat. That is the the shape of rasa where they are concerned. But where Krishna is concerned, he is the same inside and out, without any flaw or wasted elements. He’s sweet inside and out, like a bunch of grapes.” (13.20-21)

antaḥ sadā rasa-mayo’pi bahiḥ samudyat-
kauṭilya-dhārṣṭya-vara-valkala-parva-rukṣaḥ
mānākhya-yantraṇam ṛte na rasa-prado’sāv
ikṣu-prakāṇḍa iva vaḥ prabhur acyutākhyaḥ

The Sharikas answer with a grin: “Oh Shukas! Your master may be rasamaya within, but his dishonest, pert behavior is coarse and knobbly like sugarcane bark. So, just as sugarcane juice isn’t available until the cane has been run through the juicing press, your rasika Krishna doesn’t supply any rasa until he's been run through the mill of the gopis’ māna! No wonder he is called acyuta!” (GLA 13.22)

Acyuta meaning, not a drop of juice falls.

Yes, the parrot is making a joke, punning on the word. Krishna is like a piece of sugar can, but not one drop of its juice will fall unless it goes through the juice squeezer. So that is why his name is Achyuta! In other words, no rasa without Radharani!

And, another thing about this meaning of acyuta. You have to put Krishna through the ringer to get the juice out, otherwise a drop won't fall. Your bhakti is what extracts the juice. But what is bhakti, it is anuśīlanam, "constant practice or study (of a science , &c ), repeated and devoted service"; in other words it is effort, work, assiduous attempts to extract the rasa as though you were a prospector trying to find ways of extracting oil from the bowels of the earth. Without the committed effort, raso vai saḥ... remains acyuta. Not a drop falls.

Now you can take the word even further. Krishnadas Kaviraj has discovered another meaning for acyuta. And we can discover another one: That without rasika bhaktas like Krishnadas not one drop of nectar will fall from Radha and Krishna's lotus feet into our hungry ears and mouths!

This is the essence of all instructions according to Sri Rupa Goswami:

tan-nāma-rūpa-caritādi-sukīrtanānu-
smṛtyoḥ krameṇa rasanā-manasī niyojya |
tiṣṭhan vraje tad-anurāgi-janānugāmī
kālaṁ nayed akhilam ity upadeśa-sāram ||

Pass all the rest of the days of your life staying in Vrindavan in the company of rasika bhaktas, devotees who are excited by bhakti and attached to topics of Radha and Krishna, and engage your tongue and mind... [and all the senses in between], in chanting their names and meditating on their pastimes. This is the essence of instruction.

Of the five main angas of bhakti, four are found in this one verse. Only vigraha-seva has been left out, but can be understood as "in between".

If you have a taste for Radha Krishna prema kathā, you are indeed fortunate. Bliss, bliss, bliss.

na hi saṅkuca paṅkajekṣaṇaḥ
pādayos te nidadhātu nūpurau |
anayor dhvanibhir vilajjatāṁ
kalahaṁsīva vipakṣa-kāminī ||

One of Chandravali’s sakhis says, “Don’t draw back. Let lotus-eyed Krishna place the ankle-bells upon your feet. Let their sound shame your rivals, as it will the cackling geese.” (14.113)

pātivratyaṁ kva nu para-vadhūtvāpavādaḥ kva cāsyāḥ
premodrekaḥ kva ca para-vaśatvādi-vighnaḥ kva cāyaṁ
kvaiṣotkaṇṭhā kva nu bakaripor nitya-saṅgādy-alabdhiḥ
mūlaṁ kṛṣṭvā kaṣati hṛdayaṁ kāpi śalya-trayī naḥ ||

Tungavidya declares, “She is so faithful to her beloved, and yet everyone says she is an unfaithful wife. She loves him so deeply, and yet she is dependent on others who impede that love. Her anguish to meet Krishna is so great, and yet she is rarely able to be with him. These three daggers pierce my heart and slice its very roots.” (Govinda-līlāmṛta 11.121)