Jagat

premā dvayo rasikayor ayi dīpa eva hṛd-veśma bhāsayati niścala eva bhāti | dvārād ayaṁ vadanatas tu bahiṣkṛtaś cet nirvāti śīghram athavā laghutāṁ upaiti The Prema of the Rasika pair is a wondrous lamp that floods the room of the heart with light and burns bright with a steady flame. Should the door of the mouth be opened and the lamp brought out into the wind, it quickly is extinguished, or its effulgence reduced. Prema-sampuṭikā 68 Secrecy is the essence of romantic love. Secrecy means being able to control your sexual desire. The problem is that no one today is trained in this. I was reading in Gopinath Kaviraj's explanation of "Tantric" society, by which he was giving a Tantrik explanation to the Vedic or Varnashram social system, he says that the first stage of life, the student life or  brahmacaryā , is all about controlling the bindu . The essence of education is to control the bindu . It was being able to control the bindu that made you eligible fo...

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...