Jagat

Just imagine if you were brought up speaking Sanskrit. Do you think that you would have a different sort of brain? I have spent a lot of time thinking about the psychology of language and identity. Identity is central to raganuga bhakti, both on the level of the sadhaka deha and the siddha deha. I was thinking about this earlier (since in class I had mentioned that you more or less have to be crazy to want to learn Sanskrit). We were discussing this verse as an illustration of different classes of athematic verbs being used in the same sentence, all in the third person singular. The following verse has six verbs, each from a different class: ददाति प्रतिगृह्णाति गुह्यमाख्याति पृच्छति । भुङ्क्ते भोजायते चैव षड्विधं प्रीतिलक्षणम् ॥ One gives and accepts [one another’s gifts], one tells and inquires about one another’s private matters, one eats what the other offers and one invites the other to eat. These are the six kinds of signs of love. ( Upadeśāmṛta 4) Here √दा, ददाति (3P), √ग्रह्, गृ...

जीव तीर्थ संस्कृतम् I don't want to leave Vrindavan or my cave in the Jiva Institute, but I have been obliged to change my plans somewhat and resume a responsibility towards my family because of these very painful circumstances. These are the crazy years of Covid. I will continue giving classes in Sanskrit and even if I cannot be back in Vrindavan by Karttik (because of visa and flight restrictions) I will continue to give them on Zoom, as currently. It is best when we have live students present physically on the premises, but in the current circumstances, easy movement between countries has been disrupted, and India is considered to be a particularly tough place for Covid, even though in terms of cases per population [342 per million, compared to USA nearly 2000 or Brazil 2700.], it is quite far down the list. But there are still a huge number of cases. So the new normal appears to be Zoom. Let me state unequivocally, however, that I am committed to my students and I am looking f...

आख्याहि विश्वेश्वर विश्वमूर्ते त्वद्भक्तियोगं च महद्विमृग्यम् ।  "Tell me, O Lord of the Universe, O Form of the Universe, all about your bhakti-yoga , which is sought after by all the great souls." (11.19.8) I was just going through my Sanskrit manual over a lesson we completed not too long ago. I am trying as far as possible to find examples from our primary texts like Gītā and Bhāgavatam, but also from other sources as well if I find the grammatical lesson it teaches is particularly useful. This was given as an example of a second person imperative in athematic parasmaipada conjugations, ending in - hi . For some reason, I decided to track down all the -hi ending imperatives in the Bhāgavata and Gītā, and I can up with eight or ten that were frequent and also had easy examples to use, like this one. Now it is almost impossible to give good examples without going beyond what the students have already learned. Like here vim ṛ gyam , which is only going to come up i...

Jai Jai Sri Radhe.   It is a little late, but here is my invitation to all Jiva bhaktas to learn Sanskrit with me this academic year. At Jiva this year I will be offering two courses on Zoom, beginning Oct. 15th.   * Beginners Grammar Course (following the Jiva Tirtha Sanskrit manual): 3:30-4:30 IST   * Bṛhad Bhagavatāmṛta reading course: 430-5:30 IST   Check with jiva.org jiva.org to find out about registration and participation or contact me directly. I hope that some of you will take this valuable opportunity to learn Sanskrit.   The beginners' course is meant to give a good general introduction to the use of Sanskrit in our sampradāya, remembering that there are several genres within the Gauḍīya corpus. It fits a lot into a one-year period, but it is meant for people who are serious about going deeply into the scriptures.    Those who understand Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji's mindset and his goals for the Jiva Institute and the Jiva Ti...

Today we had the closing ceremony for the fourth year of Srila Satyanarayana Dasaji's ambitious Jiva Tirtha program. Because of the Covid-19 lockdown, many of our students have already left, but about 20 persons were present for the session. Many of these have been coming for all the four years, which frankly is a great achievement, both for those individuals who have been able to commit to spending six months in Vrindavan to study with Babaji and for Babaji himself, who has inspired them. Babaji's course is extremely far-reaching. This year the main course for study was Paramātma Sandarbha and Sāṅkhya Kārikā . His plan is to cover basic texts of the six philosophical schools -- Nyāya, Vaiśeśika, Sāṅkhya, Yoga, Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāmsā. So far fundamental texts of the Nyāya, Sāṅkhya and Yoga schools have been studied. Next year his plan is to cover Artha-saṅgraha , a basic manual for the Pūrva-mīmāṁsā school. Babaji joked that some scriptures are go-mukha-vyāghra ...

This has been a very good year for the Jiva Tirtha Sanskrit course and things are progressing quite nicely, though in the usually bumbling way. This is the second year we have been doing this course at Jiva and it is still a work in progress. One student Stuart Trusty pushed to have the manual published in a small number after the first year was over. This year we have been able to build on that work and at the end of this year we should have a second edition. Even so, I think it will take one more year before it will finally be publishable, as what I have learned this year will need to be better assimilated to the overall method. By an interesting coincidence, one of my students this year is Vinode Vani Dasi. She was in Dallas in 1973, the first full year that the original ISKCON Gurukula was in operation. Like many things in ISKCON, the early days were the headiest, filled with the most enthusiasm. We had a rather good reminiscence about it in yesterday's class. The...

Vinode Vani, who is one of my new pupils at Jiva Institute Sanskrit, asked me to answer some general questions about my method and objectives. So I thought I would share what I wrote here. My earliest idea was not very ambitious at all. I started teaching and developing the course and method while in Rishikesh, but the yoga students there were less interested in pursuing Sanskrit. This is not so unusual as I have found very few foreign devotees to think that it is at all necessary. After all, it is well nigh impossible for foreigners to develop the kind of fluency in Sanskrit that comes from being born in a living, breathing cultural environment. For me personally, Sanskrit began as an inexplicable attraction, based probably on hearing Prabhupada chant shlokas like the Shikshashtakam or Shadgosvamyashtakam or Gurvashtakam , etc. So I assume that there will be some few people who will have that inclination and it is important to give them facility. Love of Sanskrit will be helpful...

This book is the first draft of a Sanskrit text book that was used in the 2016-2017 academic year at the Jiva Institute in Vrindavan. It is still in need of revision and refinement, which will be undertaken during the next academic year of the Jiva Tirtha course while being used for a second group of students. It will also be expanded as the first year students continue in their studies. Exercises and vocabulary are an important element in such a course and I have integrated many verses and texts that I prepared in an earlier publication, Sādhaka pāṭhyam, which was done on behalf of the Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama in Rishikesh. The Jiva Institute under the direction of Mahant Satya Narayan Das Babaji started the Jiva Tirtha program in the autumn of 2016 with 25 students from Europe and America. The Sanskrit course started with a couple of trial and error efforts using different texts, including Hari-nāmāmṛta-vyākaraṇam, the grammar text composed by Srila Jiva Goswami himself. Since he...