Jagat

I was just out and about in Vrindavan. I ran into Jack Hawley, a great scholar of Surdas who happens to be in Vrindavan doing a research project on the current state of affairs here. Because of Vrindavan Today, he has already been to see me once. But I have stopped Vrindavan Today for the last two months and practically never go out in the street any more, even to go to the temples. It is too painful for me. It is Karttik and Purnima is just a couple of days away. The streets are full of people, Traffic jams. Impatient motorists honking incessantly when there is no way to move forward. Crowds of people in front of the banks trying to get their 500 and 1000 rupee notes changed. The town is filled with more garbage than ever. If there is a garbage can, it is empty and surrounded by mountains of styrofoam cups, empty bottles, plastic wrappers and other crap being fed on by cows, monkeys and crows. It is not a scene from the holiest place on earth. Every day, the situation in Vrind...

Looking for something else, I came across a thread on Gaudiya Discussions from June 2004 . I am posting some of it here, just for the record and future reference. I think it was the first time I used "prema prayojan" as my motto online; Dr. Jaya also reminded me of another line, which I began using as my other motto: Formed through and through by Gaura's love-- that is a Gaudiya Vaishnava. ========================= This is a very good question and I think that it is worth discussing further. Here are a couple of quotes: Love’s torments are understood as the natural form of religious discipline…. [There] is a whole field of poetry in Braj dedicated to making this point, to demonstrating how the gopis, separated from Krishna, endure mortifications by virtue of the sundering of their love that are deeper by far than any austerities or yoga can concoct. They manifest all the marks of yogic discipline naturally. A yogi must learn through years of practice the art o...

Joshua Greene (Hofstra University) There is a theory that the Gaudiyas "went underground" in the post-Caitanya period, to avoid persecution by Muslim invaders. This idea would explain the reclusive nature of the community in the 16th and 17th centuries. I believe both David Haberman and Alan Entwistle have posited this idea. Does anyone have access to their writings on the subject. John Stratton Hawley (Professor and Chair, Department of Religion, Barnard College, Columbia University) I'd be very grateful to you for tracing out this "theory"--who says this? The very most important Gaudiya texts were produced in this period of time, evidently very publicly, and some of the most influential among them were produced by gentlemen who were apparently recruited by Chaitanya because of the expertise they brought to their tasks in part from having served in "Muslim" courts--Rupa and Sanatana. Furthermore, Akbar's patronage (with more than a little ...