Jagat

Chandan Goswami asked on Facebook, after hearing yet another person accuse almost everyone in the Vaishnava world of being a Sahajiya, "Have you found or met accidentally any such person in Gaudiya Sampradaya who you think is a Sahajiya?" In other words, have you met someone who fits your own description and still calls himself a Sahajiya? If there is any such thing as a "Sahajiya," it should be a person who calls himself by that name. If I call you a "Green Duck" that is me calling you something, not you yourself. If I then say "Green Ducks are like this or that" then it is clearly propaganda. Like people calling each other "Communists" or "Nazis" in political discussions. No one has asked the Green Ducks for their opinion. There are no doubt real Communists and Nazis, but before trying to define what one is, it may do well to find one and talk with that person to find out what they do and what they believe. Then your cr...

I wrote the last article in a rush of feeling. I have to admit, however, that there is a bit of rhetoric as well as truth-telling ( parrhesia ) in the post. Philosophy of History Making a comment like "history has decided" indicates a facile and yet sweeping generalization about History, with a capital H. It's a bit funny, because at the same time as the subject came up, I encountered an article by David Greenberg on Slate discussing George W. Bush's concept of history ( George Bush, Hegelian ). Simultaneously, I am proofreading a dissertation in which someone is attempting to analyze the Krishna consciousness movement using Michel Foucault's historical method, so I am getting a bit inundated with these theories. In an article I wrote about charismatic renewal in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, published in Bryant and Ekstrand's book , I began by saying that India, with its strong avatar doctrines, would subscribe to Carlyle's famous idea that "history is...