Jagat

Sewa Kunj (PC Newsgram ) soḍhvāpi duḥkhāni suduḥsahāni tyaktvāpy aho jāti-kulādikāni | bhuktvā śvapākair api thutkṛtāni vṛndāṭavī-vāsam ahaṁ kariṣye ||2.17|| Tolerating even intolerable sufferings, leaving behind identity with my caste or kin, and eating that which is spit out even by untouchables, but I shall make my residence in Vrindavan. Here again Prabodhananda is making no differentiation between residing in Vrindavan and renunciation. One who takes sannyāsa must be ready to suffer because he places himself entirely at the mercy of the Supreme. But the price one must pay for spiritual perfection is complete surrender. To achieve any great thing one must persist despite obstacles, and obstacles to the attainment of the goal are always painful. Yet if the goal is good, and one persists with faith, those sufferings always bear the sweetest fruit. Tapasyā means to accept physical hardships because they favor the healthy awareness of the limitations of pleasure...

An oft-repeated error of orthodox Vaishnavas is that the the love of Radha and Krishna has "nothing to do" with the romantic love of human experience, especially not where parakiya-rasa is being considered. I say that it would take only the blindest and most deluded observer to say such a thing. The Gaudiya Math and ISKCON have deliberately obfuscated the connection between Krishna's madhura lila and our human experience to promote the pan-Indian belief in sannyas that arises from the Buddhist and Shankarite schools. As I often say, the entire corpus of Rupa Goswami's work is meant to demonstrate the superlative position of madhura rasa. But any such hierarchy of rasa must be based in real human experience. Ideals have a relation to reality; they are meaningless without them. You need to see the madhura lila of Radha and Krishna as an object lesson in how to deal with sexual desire, not how to destroy it. Through worshiping Radha and Krishna we become aware of t...

In the conclusion to the previous article ( Part I ), I summarized my objectives there, which was to show that since any activity engaged in with expertise is yoga, or sādhanā , therefore there was no reason to think that sex could not be a part of that. I will continue on the same theme, and in so doing, will counter one or two of Abhaya Mudra's points. First of all, let me remind everyone that we have, after great good fortune, attained the human form of life, which is the plavaṁ sukalpaṁ , the most suitable boat for crossing the ocean of saṁsāra . The guru will do the steering, and the Lord will blow the winds of grace. Why would you not take this opportunity to attain the experience of prema, the summum bonum of human life? nṛ-deham ādyaṁ sulabhaṁ sudurlabhaṁ plavaṁ sukalpaṁ guru-karṇa-dhāram| mayānukūlena nabhasvateritaṁ pumān bhavābdhiṁ na taret sa ātma-hā|| This human body is the original form [for it is God's own svarūpa , and the human being was made in God...

Just as I finished writing about my renewed sense of purpose about teaching about the role of sexuality on the bhakti path, I came across an article posted by Abhaya Mudra Dasi on the Sampradaya Sun. Abhaya Mudra is a Bulgarian disciple of Suhotra Swami who has a jyotish website with Prabhupada disciple Patita Pavan Das. At first view, her article, Sex and Spirituality , is a defense of standard ISKCON teaching on sexuality, though it adds a few interesting twists. I have personally come to the conclusion that even though mainstream Western devotees still following ISKCON and the Gaudiya Math start out deeply committed to a doctrine that marginalizes sexuality, as the years go by, a great number of them become frustrated by double standards and hypocrisy that seem endemic in the movement. The Western Krishna consciousness movement has no bigger " shadow " than sexuality. Though child abuse scandals have rocked ISKCON and repeated "falldowns" or sexual peccadill...