Jagat

A couple of days ago I wrote on Facebook: It is good to be 73. I feel as though everything I have done in my life is coming to a ripening. Eventually the fruits that have been growing for a lifetime start to ripen. Just as long as you water. Fortunately, I have had plenty of water, and still have, and hope to have more. I wasn't even thinking about my birthday when I wrote the above, though I suppose there must have been some subliminal processes going on. But it is more like a coming to terms with being in Canada and staying here for so long, something that was both unexpected and has been challenging. It is often hard to find a synthesis between the various worlds that one inhabits. The Vedic system always seeks to minimize disruption through simplification. The theory is that the sattva guna is the highest promoter of happiness and one should increase the sattva guṇa throughout life. It is not that growing old inevitably means only tamas. The varnashram concept sees a ni...

श्रीमधुसूदनसरस्वतीपादानां गूढार्थदीपिका टीका अत्युपकारिणीति मन्ये । सा अतितरां विस्तृता पाण्डित्यपूर्णा गूढार्थप्रकाशिनी च । मम चिरदिनं तत्पिपठिषा वरीवर्तते । तस्माद् इदानीं गम्भीरानन्दस्वामीपादानां आंग्लानुवादं अवलम्ब्य अग्रेसर्तुमिच्छा वर्तते । आशासे तत् सर्वेषां संमतं । हरिः ॐ तत् सत्॥ We recently finished the fourth chapter in our daily Gita class that I am giving on Zoom. Up until now, we have been reading the Gita with three Sanskrit commentaries, those of  Sridhara, Vishwanatha and Baladeva. Occasionally we turned to Madhusudana Saraswati's Gūḍhārtha-dīpikā  for insight, but with the above message, I announced that beginning with the fifth chapter, we would read Madhusudan in his entirety as well.  Though I have long recognized the justifiable reputation of Madhusudana's commentary, we are generally not encouraged to read him because he is a known opponent of Vyasa Tirtha, the accarya of the Madhva line and senior contemporary of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. He is, ergo, ...