Jagat

I seem to reflect quite frequently on the difficulties I have in getting my primary task done. Five years ago I was struggling with Bhakti Sandarbha and now I am struggling with Prīti Sandarbha. It seems like a dreadful bore to inflict these kinds of reflections on my readers but at least once in a while something else comes out of it -- a verse translation or something else, a realization of some kind. I really want to get Prīti Sandarbha finished this summer, but my in depth reading of the Bhāgavatam and editing the commentaries takes up a lot of my time. For the last couple of days I have been working on a small portion of the prakaraṇa that deals with rasābhāsa. I have already written one article  ( two actually ) on the subject and there will hopefully be more.  Rasābhāsa arises when the perfect ideal conditions for rasa are not met. For Jiva Goswami this is a problem, since in the Bhāgavatam we cannot have any imperfection. I have being using the word "occlusion" to tr...

I have a young friend who is teaching me the harmonium. He is also my main audience for evening classes in Dana-keli-kaumudi , thirsty for bhakti-rasa , AND he uses my internet, so he is here quite a bit. My friend, Rupa, is going home to Mumbai in three weeks and is in some anxiety about it. His father is actually a well-known classical singer, at least according to him. Rupa also says that his father and grandfather's musical tradition ( gharana ) is very special and has features that are unique to it. But because he spent a lot of time over the past few years wandering around Braj, he stopped practicing for three years. He only took it up again fairly recently and has been teaching, but he feels he needs to get a little bit more from his musical guru. Only trouble is that his father is also his music guru, on whom he depends for his perfecting his art. And his father does not care much for his Vaishnava trip. He is all in favor of him continuing the tradition, but he wa...