Jagat

This strange new old life is providing a great deal of mental stimulation. Being a part of human society in this part of the world means having established networks, and a car, and the energy to keep them up. For me, I had no problem going to the temple which was a place where I felt at home, even nostalgic for a good period in my life, even if now I am more or less shunned. Where do the shunned go? But it is a goodly distance and so requires a certain effort that is not always easy to muster when more than one person is involved. At any rate it is all moot now that Madhuri is invalid for probably up to three months before there is a return to normal. She is the entirety of my real-life community, as even, by coincidence, I was shut out of Facebook, so even my virtual community seems to have dwindled down the handful of somewhat nebulous creatures who pay any attention to it. Perhaps that is why I am writing a little more candidly, maybe even a little less pretentiously. Madhuri is try...

Photo of Bhaktivinoda Thakur and signed by him dated January 14, 1896, on completion of the Jivani. I have been working on a project for the past more than one year now, revising a translation of Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur's Autobiography or Sva-likhita-jivani and then writing a rather long introduction. It looks like I am finally ready to send it off to the next step, for publication by the Jiva Institute, so I have decided to publish the intro here in 12 parts. Some have already gone up and you can look at the bottom of this page at the links. I will update the table of links as these short articles go up. It took longer for me than projected -- unsurprisingly I would say -- because such projects tend to have implications far beyond the simple academic work of studying Bhaktivinoda Thakur's life as he himself presents it. The more important Usually on some level of why is it important to me? What relevance does it have for me, or indeed for anyone else? Most of us fe...