Jagat

  This is the second time that I mentioned that I was preparing to leave for Canada three years ago and how I was nervous. Often before traveling to Bengal or elsewhere I would try to spend a few days at Priya Kunj. Baba even arranged for me to stay in a nearby house one time for a week. Usually though, I would stay in a guest house on the main entry road to Barsana a few hundred meters away. I often had to climb over the fence outside to get in at night because the kirtan would end at 11 when everyone at the guesthouse was already tucked away in their own quarters. I liked the top floor room at Radha Guest House, because I could work there nicely during the day in peace and privacy, but still get to observe the street  life down below. This time also I missed getting Babaji's association. On account of Covid I hadn't been to visit for the whole two years I was back. I get to see him on video, which is uploaded every day, but it's not the same. The last two years were weird...

Seems this time that I have memories of the "clean up Vrindavan" activist stage of consciousness that I was going through -- this time of year in different years. The poem at the end I have posted before; it has some autobiographical relevance as I am back to where I was before going through that crisis. Facebook Memories from May 7.

So  I have decided to return to my confessions. One of the things I have been thinking about of late is the Sva-likhita-j ī van ī  of Bhaktivinoda Thakur. I have been reading a lot of his other writings, especially the earlier ones, along with the SLJ and trying to form a proper understanding of his life and work. I have also been reading some of the scholarship about BVT mostly from devotees in academia and trying to imagine this man, who has played such a big part in my life. I have just been talking with a critic here who like so many others objects to my writings about Sahajiyaism . This critic has also very calmly told me that I am self-absorbed and a poseur, and that I am dishonest when I claim to have received the grace of various gurus because I don't follow any of them, as none of them would approve of my Sahajiya doctrine.. Do I feel entirely comfortable with my self-claimed title of Sahajiya? I occasionally get letters from people who sympathize with some of the...

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 ...

Dear friend, First of all, I want to express my sympathies to you for all you have gone through. Moreover, I would like to thank you, since it is clear to me that you were deeply affected by something I have written and wanted to share your experience with me. I was very moved. I will try not to disgrace myself by writing platitudes. Who can count the ways, subtle and gross, in which Maya makes us suffer? Suffering is always personal, and reducing it to headers like adhibhautika, adhidaivika and adhyatmika or other categories seems to be of little help in unveiling its mysteries. But the miseries that come to us through nature, other creatures, or our own mind and body all contain, through the workings of the illusory potency, a mystification of agency . Suffering comes to us through personal and impersonal agencies, just as do love and happiness, but the true and ultimate cause lies beyond them. All psychologists will tell you that forgiveness is an important step in healing, and forg...

I received the following letter from a young devotee, which rather nicely illustrates the conflict. I will reserve comment for now, but I want to stress that the question has complex aspects, which I would like to continue discussing. Radhe Radhe! My father abandoned our family when I was only 5. It was an agony for him to stay. He was an artist - a musician, a bard in the classical sense. His muse and his heart demanded that he flee the family home and seek his fortune on the wide open road. Quite the romantic! To this day I remain so fundamentally damaged from being abandoned by him that it infuses every aspect of my life. There is no situation so mundane, trivial, or grand that it escapes the filter of the absent father. Dharma dictates various karmas. These karmas are unique to each person. Dharma is mysterious and hard to fathom. By following dharma one does not escape pain in this life nor karma in the next. It is simply done because it is dharma. The pain and psychological wound...