Jagat

I was accused of Vaishnava nindā for my response to an excerpt from a Narayan Maharaj conversation. For the record I am presenting that excerpt [May 23, 2009 darshan] along with which I shall make some remarks. This conversation took place around 11-08-2017. I was a little confrontational so I have mostly edited my remarks. Bear in mind that those who objected and accused me of committing offense to Narayan Maharaj paid no attention whatsoever to my remarks and simply condemned me for disagreeing with their authorities. I have spoken on that elsewhere on Facebook, but have gathered those remarks and shall post everything to my blog for reference. I have already responded to many of the things Narayana Maharaj said in a blog post addressed to Rocana Dasa a few years ago as he was saying pretty much the same stuff, but with a bit less of the combativeness that Narayan Maharaj shows here. Bhaktivinoda Thakur's meat-eating and Lalita Prasad Thakur. The numbers are annotations ...

pustaka-pratyayādhītaṁ nādhītaṁ guru-sannidhau | sabhā-madhye na śobhante jāra-garbhā iva striyaḥ || Learning taken from books according to one's own impressions, but not learned with a guru, is unfit for the public space, like a woman who is pregnant with an illegitimate child. (Chanakya) I think that actually having the association of rāgānugā sādhakas , my own diksha guru, Lalita Prasad Thakur, Ananta Das Babaji in Radha Kund and many others over the years, has made a bit of difference in the way that I approach the issue of rāgānugā-bhakti and mañjarī-bhāva . Like my guru wrote on the back of the siddha-praṇāli sheet he handed out to his disciples: "You can't just get it from books." This offends people who are convinced that everything can be found in books, because why were the books written if not to inform of them? Of course, that Bhaktivinoda Thakur's books talk about taking siddha-praṇāli from or through the medium of a guru somehow seems irr...

I get regular mailings from the Pure Bhakti website of Narayan Maharaj's sangha. The last few days have been full of messages citing Narayan Maharaj's warnings about Ananta Das Baba. Today was the bouquet, as we say in French, as the headlined audio file was "Satsvarupa Goswami confirms Srila Narayan Maharaja saved him and others from Ananta Das Babaji."

As I mentioned recently , I have been in contact with a new Facebook page that is attempting to reunite cyberspacially all of Srila Prabhupada's some 4500 initiated disciples. As of this writing, some 560 people have joined, for the most part the "less important" folk rather than the ones running ISKCON these days. It is turning out pretty much as I expected, a lot of nostalgia, reminders that we are coming closer to death and many of us have already left these bodies. There is also a bit of stirring up of old controversies. Today, one devotee posted the following Prabhupada letter: I am in due receipt of your letter dated September 3, 1975 with the enclosed statement about Van Maharaja. So I have now issued orders that all my disciples should avoid all of my godbrothers. They should not have any dealings with them nor even correspondence, nor should they give them any of my books or should they purchase any of their books, neither should you visit any of their temple...

Probing the pramans with Prem Prayojan Prabhu, one of the brightest lights on the Gaudiya Vaishnava horizon.   A short time ago, I met Prema Prayojan Prabhuji in the MVT restaurant. We have met several times before, and he even honored me with an invitation to address his congregation at Ananda Dham in Vrindavan last year. The ostensible purpose for the meeting was to discuss certain aspects of shastra. Prema Prayojan has been following a train of thought about manjari-bhava and was asking some questions about the Mañjarī-svarūpa-nirūpaṇa of Kunja Bihari Dasji, which I translated way back in 1983 and copies of which are still floating about despite the fact that it has never been officially published. Prema Prayojan thinks that Kunja Bihari Dasji, probably based on Haridas Das's translation of the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu , promoted the widespread and (he believes) erroneous interpretation of bhāvollāsā rati as being equivalent to mañjarī-bhāva as well as an independent ...

A small book I have had lying around for a few months was given to me by the author, Ramdas , Ronald Engert, whom I met at the Munger temple in Vrindavan. He is a jovial 50-year-old German devotee from Berlin. He has been publishing a good quality magazine in German on spiritual topics, called Tattva Viveka and has also been making forays into other kinds of publishing. He is trained in religious studies, and although engaging in bhakti since 1989, was only formally initiated by Bhaktivedanta Narayan Maharaj in 2003. Currently, he is a leading supporter of Bhaktivedanta Sadhu Maharaj in central Europe, and the numerous German-speaking devotees at the Munger temple from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, are a testament to Sadhu Maharaj's laid back approach, which Ramdas is also promoting. The book, which he told me has met with considerable criticism from conservative ISKCON ranks, is called Natural Bhakti : Bhakti without fear – the lost science of attraction (Rati) . He has a...

mugdhaṁ māṁ nigadantu nīti-nipuṇā bhrāntaṁ muhur vaidikāḥ mandaṁ bāndhava-sañcayā jaḍa-dhiyaṁ muktādarāḥ sodarāḥ | unmattaṁ dhanino viveka-caturāḥ kāmaṁ mahā-dāmbhikaṁ moktuṁ na kṣamate manāg api mano govinda-pāda-spṛhām || Let the sharp moralist accuse me of being illusioned; the experts in Vedic ritual may slander me as misled, friends and relatives may call me lazy and irresponsible, while my brothers, no longer respectful or affectionate, call me a fool. I don't mind. The wealthy mammonites will point me out as mad, and learned philosophers assert that I am much too proud. Still, my mind does not budge an inch from its determination to serve Govinda's lotus feet. ( Pady ā vali 81, M ā dhavasya ) Actually, I don't think it is just "I don't mind." It is a kind of relish. We Hare Krishnas have been thumbing our nose at the Establishment since 1966. And they called us irresponsible and told us to get jobs, or to be good Christians, or philoso...

Srutakirti Das, Jayapataka Swami, Bhakti Rakshak Sridhar, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Tamal Krishna Goswami, Bhavananda Swami (photo from ca. 1976) Jayadharma Prabhu revived this Facebook note from March 2010, but as the intro makes clear, these were written in 2002. Please bear that in mind. I could not find any of this on the blog, so I just repost it here without further comment. It seems strangely relevant. Anyway, I am backposting to March 2010, but sharing it today. (9/6/2019) Some friends have asked me about recent statements I made to Isa Das in response to his claim that Iskcon had no bhakti and no sat-sanga, etc. In case people make the improbable claim that I favour Iskcon over Narayan Maharaj or indeed have any favouritism towards any branch of the Gaudiya Math, I am posting a number of articles written many years ago on various forums. Bear in mind that they were written eight years ago and I may have a slightly different point of view now, or the people named ha...