Nitai Pada Kamala

It was on this day in 2015 that Swami Veda Bharati left his body in Rishikesh. I was in Vrindavan at the time but left the same day to be there for the jala-samādhi and I stayed for several weeks until the mourning period was over. Someone also sent me a photo of the Nitai Pada Kamala, which evoked memories from 1976 or thereabouts. This date was also Guru Purnima in 2011, and my remarks inspired a long thread with plenty of comments.

Facebook memories.  July 14

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2020

Chapter 28 of Another Side of Bhaktivinoda Thakur by Gadadhar Pran Das is now available. There is only one more chapter, which will be appearing soon. Then what happens? Probably a final edit and then publication. How that will be organized I do not know, but it seems that GP Prabhu has finally got a few disciples who are faithful and will help get it done. Which I think is at least in part due to the publication on line on my blog.

I was checking yesterday. Some chapters have had only a couple of hundred hits, while the most for any chapter was about 2000. It ain't the T-Series, but it is admittedly a niche of a niche market.

[There were in fact 30 chapters altogether. Altogether those articles had a total of 20,512 hits for an average of 684. Top of the list was Chapter 14 about Ananga Manjari with 2430 hits, making it about #10 on the all time list of articles on this blog.]   

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2016

 
I was on the maiden voyage of the Nitai Pada Kamala in 1976. We went from Mayapur down the Ganga to Kolkata. A few Gurukul boys, myself and some others, including the to-become-infamous Shatadhanya Swami. Did a lot of swimming in the Ganga, visiting villages and doing kirtan and book distribution. A great deal of fun. 

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2015 Swami Veda Follows Grandfather Bhishma

I just received a call from Adhikari in Rishikesh that Swami Veda Bharati has left his body. My condolences to all his disciples and followers. Swamiji was a good friend and guide to me. I hope that all his projects will be maintained and carried out in the way that he envisioned and that someone who can genuinely carry his mantle comes forth to lead.

Swamiji's body had been experiencing a lot of difficulty for the past few years, but he had a great deal of determination to finish his projects, especially the Yoga Sutra. Now the third volume has almost been completed, but what happens with the Fourth will have to be seen. I did not think he would leave without doing so.

Swamiji told everyone that the astrologers had told him that mahā-māraka yoga was on him but that he "refused to die." Unfortunately, he ran out of time. Swamiji's contributions to understanding meditation and the benefits of meditation will long be remembered.

He was an eminently good man, who had fierce dedication to his mission, his dharma and his guru. There are yogis everywhere, and the definitions of yoga are multiple. Swamiji's favorite definition of yoga is "Yoga IS samadhi."

He left his body in samādhi. He has entered kaivalya-samādhi. He loved samādhi. He taught samādhi. And indeed, whichever yoga system you follow, including bhakti, the goal is ALWAYS samādhi.

May he live in immortality.

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2012

 
To know love, we must also know not love. This world is where we learn the distinction.

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2011

"A religious symbol is not based on opinion. And error is relevant to opinion only." Wittgenstein.

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2011 

Guru Purnima here in Vrindavan. One thing I am noticing... Although you hear "Jai Radhe" in the street, what is mostly on the mikes is a lot of "generic" Hinduism--Rāma Carita Mānasa, Lakshmi Narayan, Hare Krishna, and Shrimad Bhagavatam. It appears that even here in Vrindavan, Radha is still something of a secret. Perhaps as it should be.

[Many of the comments expressed pessimism about Vrindavan and its future, to which I responded by an effort to promote optimism. It is my belief that religion itself is merely optimism about life: Life does have meaning. Since Vrindavan embodies our faith, we cannot be pessimistic about its future.]   

There is hope everywhere, and where more hope than in Vrindavan? At least, where else should we devotees of Radha look for hope?

Well, let us hope for action.

Barbara Ehrenreich: 

Fortunately, the alternative to optimism is not pessimism, which can be equally delusional. What we need here is some realism, or the simple admission that, to paraphrase a bumper sticker, "stuff happens," including sometimes very, very bad stuff. We don't have to dwell incessantly on the worst-case scenarios — the metastasis, the market crash or global pandemic — but we do need to acknowledge that they could happen and prepare in the best way we can. Some will call this negative thinking, but the technical term is sobriety.

 

Besides, the constant effort of maintaining optimism in the face of considerable counterevidence is just too damn much work. Optimism training, affirmations and related forms of self-hypnosis are a burden that we can finally, in good conscience, set down. They won't make you richer or healthier, and, as we should have learned by now, they can easily put you in harm's way. The threats that we face, individually and collectively, won't be solved by wishful thinking but by a clear-eyed commitment to taking action in the world.

This reminds me of a discussion I was having recently with a friend, who said the following:

In Candide, Voltaire goes through all these reflections (and in his time the world was really cruel, worse than presently: Inquisition, slavery everywhere, atrocities of all imaginable sorts) and he vehemently questions Leibinitz on the latter's theodicy, i.e., the conviction that everything is not only right but is best in the best of all possible worlds. 

 

At the very end of his novella, Voltaire says that one must "cultivate one's own garden." He suddenly concludes that things do turn out fine after all because everyone, after going through the most horrible experiences, focuses on their respective talents and work. Voltaire thus indicates that being idle is the worse thing that can happen to a human being.

I often bring up, in these discussions on the net, the point of action: How Krishna advised Arjuna in Bhagavad-gita to act, for acting is being.

 
Nowadays, everyone is stunned by inaction because of the negative circumstances and the resulting philosophy is atheism, or in fact nihilism. Because idleness is the devil's workshop, we feel overwhelmed by a sense of evil. People feel as though their hands are tied. We are paralyzed, unable to act. No action, no God.

 
This is why it is better to live for a cause. Even if the cause is not explicitly related to God. We are dying for some meaningful action. And indeed, in such meaningful action, we find God.

 
So to conclude: Negativity is useful only if we can offer some hope, some tangible course of meaningful action.

Being realistic is not an action. It is only a starting point for intelligent action. We must make a distinction between realism and pessimism, which leads to hopelessness and inaction. Like my friend said, "No action, no God."

I have heard it said that Radha means love. Thus if we go to the very root of the problem, all problems, everywhere, we find the absence of Radha. So let us start with Radha, first of all through understanding the truth of Love and by absorbing ourselves in that truth, becoming empowered by it, becoming imbued with hope and faith through that experience. That is the beginning point, the true reality.

And because Braj-Vrindavan is the locus for that constellation of meanings, whatever the current apparent situation is or appears to be, it is here that the investigation into Radha and the experiment of "putting Radha into action" begins.

To come back to the original status. To be honest, I have mostly been staying inside since I came here over a month ago. I have been trying to get some writing done with only moderate success, as usual.
To talk about the historical developments in Vrindavan's mood over the past 50 years would make an extremely interesting piece of research. The core rasika sampradayas seem to be much less present and that is not such a great thing in my opinion.

The current emphasis is on the Bhagavata, which though it is the basis for present-day Vaishnavism (pramāṇam amalam), it is only the departure point. Vrindavan sampradayas can be divided into two groups: (Vedanta or) Bhagavata-based and pure rasika (i.e. Rādhā-dāsya). Some have a bit of a split personality. Vallabhis are pure Bhāgavata-based. Nimbarkis are both Vedanta and pure rasika. Gaudiyas are also Bhāgavata and pure rasika. Haridasi, Radha-vallabhi and a few other small sects are pure rasika and therefore only peripherally interested in the Bhāgavata.

The other day I went to Krishna Chandra Shastri Thakurji's Bhagavata class and listened to it. He is a generalist Bhāgavata preacher, initiated in the Ramanuja sampradāya, like many others, using the sampradāya as a way of preaching a modern, shape-shifting Hinduism.

He was discussing the Govardhana lila and in the introductory portions of that chapter (10.24) where Krishna glorifies karma. That led to, of all places, a discourse on Hindu nationalism and the need for action, even talking about cleaning the Yamuna, etc.

 
Then the other day there was a program just near where I am staying on the Parikrama Marg. One of the ashrams was having a Guru Purnima program. They seemed to be Shri Sampradaya and most of the guest speakers were from Shri. Though there was no overt nationalism, it had that same mood of a Hinduism in search of itself: a grand tradition that is extremely rich, but is still looking for ways to fit in the modern context.

All these Bhāgavata preachers who are going to the West -- mostly to preach to the diaspora Hindus -- are an important part of this development, as are ISKCON-Gaudiya Math, etc. All these various "external" Hindu dharma approaches seem to me to be necessary to get to the point of talking about Radha. Like the Gaudiya Goswamis did. Once you get to Raghunath Das, all the rest seems to be a little superfluous, but without it, it is pretty hard to get to Rupa and Raghunath.

So I am not complaining or negative. I am just trying to figure out how to bring Radharani back into the forefront. 

Even if her primary presence in today's Vrindavan seems to be in shop names like "Radha Sweets," better that than no than no Radha at all. In Kolkata I was so dismayed to see Gauranga almost entirely absent from shop names, picture stalls, anything. Ramkrishna, Kali, Vivekananda, Loknath Brahmachari... almost anybody but Mahaprabhu. It is perhaps a sign of sa-kāma bhakti, but even so; if there is Radha this or that in Vrindavan, it is something at least.

Vrindavan is still Vrindavan. I keep my eyes open to see what is going on in _my_ Vrindavan. In my Vrindavan, Radha will always be the Ishvari.

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2011 

 
There is a nice verse at the beginning of the Vidagdha Mādhava (1.9)

 

udāsatāṁ nāma rasānabhijñāḥ

kṛtau tavāmī rasikāḥ sphuranti |

kramelakaiḥ kāmam upekṣite’pi

pikāḥ sukhaṁ yānti paraṁ rasāle ||

 

May those who are ignorant of rasa be indifferent to this play, while the rasikas take delight in it. Koils find the greatest pleasure in the mango tree which is completely ignored by the camels.

You are either a camel or a koyil. If the former, Radha and Krishna will not mean much to you. If you are a koyil, lucky you.

Of course, Śikṣāṣṭakam was a great way to end Caitanya Caritāmṛta, but read the whole book. Krishnadas Kaviraj was a great rasika who also wrote the Govinda-līlāmṛta, which he himself quotes many times in the CC. But just contemplate these wonderful verses:

 

caitanya līlāmṛta pūra, kṛṣṇa-līlā sukarpūra

dohe meli hoy sumādhurya

sādhu guru prasāde , tāhā jei āsvāde

se jāne mādhurya-prācurya

je līlāmṛta bine, kāya jadi anupāne

tabu bhaktera durbala jīvana

jāra eka bindu pāne, utphulla tanu mane

hāse gāya karaye nartana

ei amṛta koro pāna, jāhā sama nāhi āna

citte kori sudṛḍha viśvāsa

nā paro kutarka garte, amedhya karkaśāvarte

jāte parile hoy sarva-nāśa

The nectar of Chaitanya līlāmṛta mixed with the camphor of Krishna līlāmṛta makes the most tasteful combination. Whoever savors this nectar, by the grace of guru and sadhu, comes to know the greatest abundance of sweetness.

 

Do not neglect this līlāmṛta and rely on other forms of nourishment, lest your spiritual life weakens. On the other hand, if you drink a single drop of this līlā-rasa, it will invigorate your mind and body and make you laugh, sing and dance in ecstasy.

 

Therefore, relish the līlā-rasa and keep strong faith in the process. Though nothing compares to such a sādhana, you must beware not to fall into the ditch of conflicting arguments, because if you do, everything will be lost. (CC 2.25.270-272)

Krishna lila here, of course, means Radha Krishna lila.

What is the worst that can happen? You "fall into material sex life"? Well, first of all, if you fall into material sex life thinking of Radha and Krishna, it is hardly "material sex life" any more, is it? Unless you think Radha and Krishna is the same as say, Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie, or whatsisname Bachchan and Aishwarya Ray, or whoever the current couple du jour is. And then the problem is not the sex, it is something else.

 
But even if you THINK Radha and Krishna are material (which of course is impossible for you, as a devotee) and you meditate on their pastimes of love, they are like chintamani, they are like the Holy Name itself... after all, it is THEIR names.

And if you do have faith, well any problems with kama should be taken care of... if you believe the Bhagavatam of course.

vikrīḍitaṁ vraja-vadhūbhir idaṁ ca viṣṇoḥ

śraddhānvito yaḥ śṛṇuyād atha varṇayed vā

bhaktiṁ parāṁ bhagavati parilabhya kāmaṁ

hṛd-rogam āśv apahinoty acireṇa dhīraḥ

The wise person who faithfully listens or describes these pastimes of Lord Vishnu with the Vraja gopis, attains the highest degree of devotion and very quickly becomes free of the disease of the heart, lust. (Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 10.33.39)

I am not saying you believe or have faith, of course. Just, if you do... But if you don't, well who are you to judge those fortunate people who have been given the gift of being able to relish these lilas? It is not good to be envious of the spiritually more fortunate...

And of course, there are ways of presenting things which both preserve this ultimate essence of bhakti and the natural modesty of romantic love.

So, rather than go into further length here, may I suggest you deeply contemplate the following two verses of Śrīmad Bhāgavatam:

tyaktvā sva-dharmaṁ caraṇāmbujaṁ harer

bhajann apakvo 'tha patet tato yadi

yatra kva vābhadram abhūd amuṣya kiṁ

ko vārtha āpto 'bhajatāṁ sva-dharmataḥ

One who has forsaken his material occupations to engage in the devotional service of the Lord may sometimes fall down while in an immature stage, yet there is no danger of his being unsuccessful. On the other hand a non-devotee, though fully engaged in occupational duties, does not gain anything. (1.5.17)

na vai jano jātu kathañcanāvrajen

mukunda-sevy anyavad aṅga saṁsṛtim |

smaran mukundāṅghry-upagūhanaṁ punar

vihātum icchen na rasa-graho janaḥ ||

Never does a servant of Lord Mukunda who falls away from that service ever undergo material existence like others, because anyone who has once relished the taste of Krishna’s lotus feet remembers those ecstasies again and again, and can ultimately never give them up. (1.5.19)

Nothing is lost by plunging directly and deeply into the very subject matter that Lord Chaitanya came to give.