Jagat

Alanah and Jamie, a nice young couple from Nova Scotia, who are students staying here at Jiva, have been working the garden with organic methods and are breathing life into it. With our guests from Bhakti Marg contributing, the compost heaps are growing exponentially The time they have on their hands has given a positive result. Here it is April 23, 2020.  We have been in lockdown for more than a month. For some time now I have been reluctant to write and especially indifferent about revealing my personal situation. There were a couple of things that I did want  to say. I came back from Canada after a three month stay back in September last year. I think I was already on a bit of a downturn before leaving, with the residue of all that Vrindavan Today business that I went through back then. The whole episode still traumatizes me. Dr. Martins is here on the Jiva premises somewhere, but he is practicing social distancing with vigor and I have barely seen him once or twic...

Anyway, the whole subject must be looked at in the context of the sociology of religion. Religions, like any other social phenomenon, go through periods of stagnation and reform. All reforms, which are usually carried out by charismatic individuals. In the wake of a charismatic founder or reformer's death, the followers are bewildered because nobody can equal the divine messenger. So other lines of legitimacy have to be established. The primary legitimacy usually is "the person who was closest to the divine messenger, his companion, the greatest recipient of his grace, etc." In the first generation of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, this legitimacy was extended to ALL of Mahaprabhu's associates. That is the purpose of texts like Gaura-gaṇoddeśa-dīpikā and the other Vaishnava vandanās and śākhā-nirṇaya type texts. gaurāṅgera saṅgi gaṇe nitya siddha kari māne . And this legitimacy was extended to all their descendants. But of course there is a caveat, and certainly BB...

I suppose it was inevitable that once I started getting into Bhaktivinoda Thakur's life story that it would end up in trouble. I don't like it. It disturbs people's minds in the Gaudiya Math and ISKCON. And in a way, I understand that for them, this is a mere technicality. Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur and his disciples have proved their validity as spiritual masters by their scholarship, their valiant preaching and by their personal character. You cannot discount them all on the basis of what seems like a mere technicality. So that leaves me (and my guru) looking a little foolish to them. But I can't help myself. It bothers me. Even if ISKCON and the Gaudiya Math go from success to success and conquer the entire world, I will still feel the same way. Because for me, the ultimate conclusion of the meat-eating story is that there is no stronger evidence anywhere than Bhaktivinoda Thakur's personal account shows not just that he was the initiated disciple of ...

The origins of the śikṣā-sampradāya idea ISKCON's disciplic line, which we have here called a śikṣā-sampradāya , (30) is traced through Bhaktivedanta Swami to Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, then to Gaura Kishor Das Babaji and then to Bhaktivinoda Thakur. Bhaktivinoda (which is the title given to Kedarnath Datta, d. 1914) was the natural father of Bhaktisiddhanta, whose original name was Bimala Prasad Datt. In the disciplic line which was proned by Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, Bhaktivinoda Thakur's spiritual master was Jagannath Das Babaji. It is known from Bhaktivinoda's own writings,(31) however, that he was initiated by Bipin Bihari Goswami, a descendant of Ramacandra, the adopted son of Jahnava and founder of a dynasty of initiating gurus based in Baghna Para, a village about 20 kilometers southwest of Nabadwip.(32) One of Bhaktivinoda's eight sons, Lalita Prasad, took initiation from him and preserved the disciplic line which Bipin Bihari Goswami passed on to Bhaktivi...

This article was written in 1993 and was published in more or less this form in the Journal of Vaishnava Studies. It only recently came to my attention that it had not been published on this blog, which is an ovrsight that I am remedying now. No doubt there are things that should be corrected. For the time beings the links do not work. My apologies. I have not made any revisions, though I have not the slightest doubt that they are needed. I will do so as soon as I get the time to do so.. Great philosophers could not reach the end of your glories, oh Lord, even if they should think on them with increasing joy for æonchars. For, in the form of the intelligence within and the teacher without, you destroy all inauspiciousness and reveal the way to attain you. (1) Contents (Part I): Introduction ISKCON after the departure of Bhaktivedanta  Schismatic tendencies in post-Prabhupada ISKCON  The first ISKCON heresy: ṛtvik-vāda or the doctrine of the monitor guru...