Jagat

Now let us look at the second half of the verse: ata RSayo dadhus tvayi mano-vacanAcaritaM katham ayathA bhavanti bhuvi datta-padAni nRNAm The immediately obvious translation here is that the Rishis place ( dadhuH ) in You ( tvayi ) their thoughts, deeds and actions. But both Sridhara and Jiva divide mano-vacana-Acaritam in a different way as, "the actions of the mind" and "the actions of the speech." Sridhara interprets the first to be the tAtparya , or inner sense, and the abhidhA, which in the overall context of the chapter means the direct meaning. In other words, this is about the actions of the Shrutis: the inner meaning applies to You ( tvayi ), the personal God, as do the meanings of the words themselves. Now the last line is, according to Sridhara Swami the alankara (rhetorical device) known as nidarshana , to Jiva it is an arthantara-nyasa . There is also the alankara known as drishtanta , or example. The three are quite similar and it is a bit hard to ...

Slogging away on the Bhagavat-sandarbha . So many distractions it is hard to give the attention to this book that I am supposed to be giving it. I am currently working on the final leg of the journey through some of the most difficult passages of all. That is, the Shruti-stuti in chapter 87 of the Tenth Canto. In section 87 of the Bhagavat-sandarbha (according to our new number system, Heaven forgive us), Sri Jiva takes us through a number of the verses that are in this Stuti, which without a doubt is one of the most important in the entire Bhagavatam. Why? Well, the Bhagavatam indicates in the very first verses and claims in several others to be the essence of the Vedānta or the Upanishads. The Shruti-stuti is one place where many of the most important texts of the Upanishads are referred to, sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely, and so give a fairly good idea of the Bhagavata author's interpretation of the Vedānta. The verses themselves are mostly not very easy to unde...

When the breeze carrying the aroma of tulasī leaves from the toes of the lotus feet of the lotus-eyed Lord entered the nostrils of those sages, their bodies and minds were disturbed, even though they were fixed in the imperishable Brahman. tasyāravinda nayanasya padāravinda kiñjalka miśra tulasī makaranda vāyuḥ antar gataḥ sva vivareṇa cakāra teṣāṁ saṅkṣobham akṣara juṣām api citta tanvoḥ When the breeze carrying the aroma of tulasī leaves from the toes of the lotus feet of the lotus-eyed Lord entered the nostrils of those sages, their bodies and minds were disturbed, even though they were fixed in the imperishable Brahman. (SB 3.15.43). About the phrase antar-gataḥ sva-vivareṇa . Translated literally and without any decoration, it means "went inside by own holes." The translation in the BBT edition reads: When the breeze carrying the aroma of tulasi leaves from the toes of the lotus feet of the lotus-eyed Lord entered the nostrils of those sages, their bodies and minds...

Going through the Bhagavat-sandarbha, some verses are rather difficult to deal with. The basic problem is this: Jiva Goswami is quoting the verse for a particular purpose. The immediate sense of the verse may not be obvious. Sridhar Swami's interpretation may not support Jiva's purpose. Now when presenting the verse in translation, we have to remember that Sri Jiva has no filters: i.e., as someone who is living and breathing Sanskrit, he is naturally imbibing the verse on numerous levels, probably seeing several meanings at once. Nevertheless, even when several meanings are present, one of those will be primary to him, as it is with anyone speaking his mother tongue or another well assimilated language. At the same time, Sri Jiva sometimes has to consult Sridhara or other previous commentaries in order to get through passages that might be difficult even to him. Sridhar Swami wrote a commentary primarily because the Bhagavatam is a difficult book and some words are obs...

Finally sent off another installment of Bhagavata-sandarbha . This section was almost entirely about Vaikuntha and establishing its identity with Bhagavan. Satya Narayan Baba does an extensive discussion of the phrase tato'skhalanam , "No one ever falls down from Vaikuntha," which is the thing that really launched his career. You can see that he was debating the issue a lot and knows every possible argument that Iskcon people came up with. He wrote Not Even the Leaves Fall with Kundali's help, which I haven't read, but I assume that this is the abbreviated version. =========== A lot of what I am doing is about retranslating the BBT verses, which Satya Narayan used in his original version. Copyright considerations are important, but they are not really appropriate to an edition that will hopefully stand the test of time as authoritative. The BBT translations tend to add a lot to the original Bhagavata text's meaning, which makes them pretty irrelevant to Jiva ...

Yesterday, Swami Veda gave a rather animated lecture about atheism. He likes to tell the story of how he wrote a book called simply "God" which he proudly showed to his guru, Swami Rama. Swami Rama apparently countered a few months later with his own book, based on the Mandukya Upanishad, called "Enlightenment without God." In this lecture, though, Swami was talking about imbuing life with the sacred. How the lack of awareness of the sacred element in life makess it dry and empty. He used the words astika and nastika several times in order to make his point. Since I have been working on Bhagavat-sandarbha , following a discussion on several verses from the Bhagavatam where the words neti neti are discussed, I wanted to ask what the relation between negation and assertion of Divine Truth were, in his vision. Of course, I think I know what he will say--pretty much the same thing that Osho says--"Being empty [of illusion] is the same as being full [of the divin...

There has been a niggling question about Krishna's different prakāśa forms, which was left over from debates a long time ago on Gaudiya Discussions. If Krishna is one, does each of his different forms have a separate sense of identity? Radha and Krishna are One. There are countless quotations that support this siddhanta. But how should we understand this? If Radha is just another form of Krishna, then how can they be considered different, having truly different identities, for the sake of lila? My instinctual argument all along was that the imperative of madhurya means that such fragmentation of God's personality is factual and necessary. This is an aspect of Krishna's acintya- ś akti . How many different ways can Krishna be simultaneously one and different from Himself? So, here is confirmation from Bhagavat-sandarbha 35: यत एवं सत्योरपि तत्तदाकारप्रकाशगतयोस्तदारम्भसमाप्त्योरेकत्रैव ते ते जन्मकर्मणोरंशा यावत् समाप्यन्ते न समाप्यन्ते वा तावदेवान्यत्राप्यारब्धा भव...

Now, to take you down the fascinating and tortured path of a translator-cum-editor struggling to earn his crust of bread. The verse was: tasmād idaṁ jagad aśeṣam asat-svarūpaṁ svapnābham asta-dhiṣaṇaṁ puru-duḥkha-duḥkham tvayy eva nitya-sukha-bodha-tanāv anante māyāta udyad api yat sad ivāvabhāti Word for word:  tasmāt  = therefore;  idaṁ  = this; jagat = world;  aśeṣam  = entire;  asat-svarūpaṁ  = unreal/false in essence;  svapnābham  = like a dream; asta- dhiṣaṇaṁ  = setting or disappearing awareness, consciousness;  puru-duḥkha-duḥkham  = full of abundant and repeated misery; tvayi = in You; eva = alone; nitya-sukha-bodha-tanau = possessing a body of eternity, knowledge and bliss (in apposition to "in You"); anante = infinite (in apposition to "in You");  māyātaḥ  = from Maya; udyat = arising (present participle agreeing with jagat ); api = even, and; yat = which or since; sat = existing, real, tr...

There are some verses that ring so sweetly, even when they are not immediately about a subject that one would call madhura. In the Bhagavat-sandarbha , sections 31-40 in most editions, but what will I think be one section (28) in this edition, contains a series of verses from Brahma-stava. These are not the most usually quoted verses from that chapter, and that is saying something because there are so many fine verses there. It is truly one of the top ten chapters of the Bhagavatam. (Which would make an interesting poll...) Anyway, the main topic that Brahma is covering in these verses (10.14.11-22) is the nature of Krishna's form, the main point being that it is this very form of Krishna, the one who showed the universes in his mouth to Yashoda, who manifested as all the cowherd boys and calves, who is within the universe and without it. This is the most fantastic, audacious piece of theology that one could possibly imagine. The concluding verse to the section is this one: ...

I hear that some person or persons are conducting some kind of ill-conceived campaign against my editing Satya Narayan Prabhu's translation of Bhagavat-sandarbha . Such is the way of the world. I have enemies whom I have not wronged. But let me say, first of all, that Satya Narayan's Bhagavat-sandarbha will be better than any edition of this book, in any language whatever. I am looking at several editions as I do this work and I say this with utmost confidence. And I include my editing work as a contributing factor to this enhanced quality. Let me tell you a few of the features that will set this edition apart: (1) The reading of the Sanskrit edition itself is being revised. Currently, the Puri Das edition is the standard for all the Sandarbhas and was used by Haridas Shastri and Shyamlal Hakim, who are the most recent publishers of translations in Hindi. There are other editions of Bhagavat-sandarbha, the most recent in Bengali is that done by Kanailal Adhikari and pub...

One of my many projects is, as I have already mentioned, is a translation of a summary study of Prabhupada’s Gita by Quebec devotee Vishnurata Das. He is one of the original translators of the Gita into French and he has done a rather nice job of summarizing the essence of the verses and purport, mixing them together into a coherent whole that builds up a pretty good pace. Anyway, ever on the lookout for things that promote my conception of sadhana, I pluck out the following from the ninth chapter, which is a commentary on 9.16-19. No doubt my reading is somewhat different from the author’s, but it just goes to show how razor thin the difference separating Sahajiya understanding from the orthodoxy is. In fact, all that exists is nothing but a manifestation of the Supreme Being. No matter what we may think, the Absolute is not indefinable, but is on the contrary perceptible in everything that attracts, preoccupies and fascinates us. It is up to us to establish the necessary connect...

Satyanarayana Dasaji left for Faridabad today and will leave for Europe tomorrow. Since being in Vrindavan I have not been at particulary high energy levels. It is quite a bit hotter here than in Rishikesh. Still, I managed to go through the first 25 anucchedas of Bhagavat-sandarbha , so that completes the second reading. We will need to do one more when the book is finished. Still, there is a long way to go. SN assures me that the first few sections are the most difficult in terms of language, but at the same time warns me that the Paramatma-sandarbha keeps the same level of difficulty throughout. He says that is the most difficult of the six books. Satyanarayana Dasa came to India and lived in Vrindavan Iskcon starting from 1986. He started studying Sanskrit right away from a pandit. After a little while he went to Haridas Shastri, who had already more or less stopped teaching, but managed to persuade him to teach him the Sandarbhas. SN left Iskcon in 1993 after the imbroglio...

This article was written in answer to some questions from a Swami Prema Ananda. I revised it subsequently to make it less like a letter, but it still tends to feel like one. The tripartite system of sādhaka s has been frequently referred to on these pages. I recently made a decision that I will no longer use the term kaniṣṭha , as this is generally considered by orthodox Vaishnavas to be somewhat insulting, and is frequently used to condemn someone as not being very advanced. Someone recently told me a nice story about Bhakti Promode Puri Maharaj, though, which should put that into perspective. It seems that Sridhar Maharaj was talking about different levels of adhikar (or qualification for spiritual life) and, following the Bhagavata’s description of the kaniṣṭha being primarily interested in the worship of God in the temple, cited Puri Maharaj as an example. Some of Puri Maharaj’s followers were there, and eager to find insult in Sridhar Maharaj’s words, went and told Puri. But...