Jagat

श्रीमधुसूदनसरस्वतीपादानां गूढार्थदीपिका टीका अत्युपकारिणीति मन्ये । सा अतितरां विस्तृता पाण्डित्यपूर्णा गूढार्थप्रकाशिनी च । मम चिरदिनं तत्पिपठिषा वरीवर्तते । तस्माद् इदानीं गम्भीरानन्दस्वामीपादानां आंग्लानुवादं अवलम्ब्य अग्रेसर्तुमिच्छा वर्तते । आशासे तत् सर्वेषां संमतं । हरिः ॐ तत् सत्॥ We recently finished the fourth chapter in our daily Gita class that I am giving on Zoom. Up until now, we have been reading the Gita with three Sanskrit commentaries, those of  Sridhara, Vishwanatha and Baladeva. Occasionally we turned to Madhusudana Saraswati's Gūḍhārtha-dīpikā  for insight, but with the above message, I announced that beginning with the fifth chapter, we would read Madhusudan in his entirety as well.  Though I have long recognized the justifiable reputation of Madhusudana's commentary, we are generally not encouraged to read him because he is a known opponent of Vyasa Tirtha, the accarya of the Madhva line and senior contemporary of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. He is, ergo, ...

The inner path is the way of the singular. The external is that of the plural. Their meeting place is in the dual. Like the lamp on the doorstep that sheds light both inside and out, it reveals both the one and the many. Know this and you know the path of Sahaja.  (See  Lessons from Sanskrit: Singular, dual and plural . (April 06, 2011)  

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...

We already know very well that there are four seed verses from which the entire Bhagavatam is said to have grown. The Gītā also has its four essential verses , or seven essential verses . I posted those, but did not make much commentary on them, as this can be found easily. On the other hand, I thought my series on the five principal verses of Gita Govinda was very important. Prior to that, I had already pointed out somewhere that there are four key verses to the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, but I had never posted or commented on these on this blog. The four verses come in the beginning of the second sector of the BRS, where Rupa Goswamipad is going to explain the various ingredients of rasa, using the categories of the rasa-śāstra . There are five chapters in all, on the vibhāvas, anubhāvas, sāttvikas, vyabhicāris and sthāyi-bhāvas . But before doing so, Rupa Goswami gives his own expanded version of the rasa-sūtra . bhakti-nirdhūta-doṣāṇāṁ prasannojjvala-cetasām śrī-bhāgavata-rak...

Whiteboard from class on rasa. [Earlier articles on psychological models in the context of Radha Krishna can be found here  and here .] We have been studying Madhusudana's Bhakti-rasāyana and some other texts on rasa and I finally managed to diagram things in a way that seems to me to explain the idea as a kind of psychological model, and which can be used to include all the rasa theorists from Bharata to Rupa Goswami. Actually Madhusudana does not fit this model exactly, even though he provides an important element in the understanding of the interface of rasa and psychology. There are a number of posts that explain aspects of this model, others that are forthcoming and hopefully we will be able to tie them all in together eventually. The overall idea is based on the concept that the personality is formed by impressions that are the result of emotional experiences that leave imprints on the unconscious mind. There are, according to Bharata, eight rasas, with śān...

proktena bhakti-yogena bhajato māsakṛn muneḥ | kāmā hṛdayyā naśyanti sarve mayi hṛdi sthite || All material desires in the heart of the wise person who constantly worships me through the process of bhakti-yoga as it has been described [here] are destroyed, for I am situated there in his heart. (11.20.29) Comment by Madhusudan Saraswati in Bhakti-rasāyana, 1.1: By following statements like this by the Lord and having firm faith in the practices by which one attains bhakti, one sends the entirety of the love one has for his objects [of love] and [thus] his mind becomes indifferent to the sense objects. The mental modifications ( mano-vṛtti ) of such a greatly fortunate person, whoever he is, are imbued with the form of the Lord upon being melted by hearing works of literature that gather together the profound glories of the Lord, and this taking of the Lord’s shape is the goal of all sādhana [whether bhakti or yoga, etc.].  This taking on of the Lord’s shape is known ...

Love is the sthāyi-bhāva . Prema is its rasāvasthā . According to Madhusudana Saraswati, God himself is the  sthāyi-bhāva  of love. When certain emotional upsurges heat the heart and allow him to be imprinted there. He is both the vibhāva and the sthāyi -bhāva . The first of these being the bimba , the latter the pratibimba , or reflection, related in exactly the same way as īśvara to the jīva . The same idea expressed in Vaishnava terms would be that it is the reflection of the  svarūpa-śakti. Only God is capable of melting the heart fully. Since He is all things, even the mundane nāyaka and nāyikā are nothing but He, but incapable of fully melting the heart, since they are He covered by Maya. Maya is God's own potency for self-covering. ============= Here is Rupa Goswami's definition of prema : samyaṅ-masṛṇita-svānto mamatvātiśayāṅkitaḥ | bhāvaḥ sa eva sāndrātmā budhaiḥ premā nigadyate || When that very same  bhāva  described in BRS 1....

I have been reading a book by Swami Karpatriji, Rādhā-sudhā  (Vṛndāvana: Rādhākṛṣṇa Dhānukā Prakāśana Saṁsthāna, 2004), which I picked up last time I was in Vrindavan. I have to admit that I am more than a little impressed by Karpatriji's erudition, as well as by Madhusudana Saraswati, with whom he seems to have had a spiritual connection. Madhusudan Saraswati is known mainly for a book called Advaita-siddhi , in which he counters the arguments of Vyasa Tirtha of the Madhva school, a part of the longstanding debate between the two views of the theistic and the monistic traditions of Indian religious thought. But as shown in the previous post, both in legends about him and in his own words, a distinct devotional streak can be observed in Madhusudan. His commentary on the Bhagavad-gita and another on the Bhagavatam are not the only books he wrote that have some interest for the devotionally minded. According to Anant Shastri Phadke, he wrote the following works: Bhakti-bhāṣya-nirū...

Anyone who has studied the Bhagavad- gītā  will know the following verse: ārurukṣor muner yogaṁ karma kāraṇam ucyate | yogārūḍhasya tasyaiva śamaḥ kāraṇam ucyate || For one seeking to rise to the platform of yoga, work is said to be the cause. For the same person when arisen to the platform of yoga, mental pacification is said to be the cause. (6.3) This somewhat innocuous verse says a great deal about the structure of the Gītā and the sixth chapter, and indeed about the entire Gītā philosophy of yoga. As many will already know, Madhusudan Saraswati has divided the Gītā into three six-chapter sections, on karma, bhakti and jnana, respectively. This scheme has been accepted by the two Gaudiya commentators, Vishwanath and Baladeva, also. The sixth chapter also serves as a bridge from the karma section to the bhakti section as the number of references that Krishna makes to himself, to thought of him, to the vision of him, etc., is substantially greater th...

I am occasionally asked to speak on bhakti here at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama. Interestingly, Swami Veda has been giving daily classes on the Gita's sthita-prajña-lakṣaṇam (i.e. 2.54-72), using Shankara and Madhusudan Saraswati's commentaries. One open secret here in this tradition is that Swami Rama himself was (or claimed to be) a reincarnation of this Madhusudan. Madhusudan Saraswati was an interesting personality whose scholarship was so multifaceted that there were few areas of traditional knowledge that he had not mastered. According to the information at hand, his forefathers escaped north India in the 12th century after the Muslim conquest and began by settling in Nabadwip. Later they moved to Faridpur in present-day Bangladesh. Madhusudan became renounced early in life and went to Benares to study Mimamsa. Some traditions have it that he first went to Nabadwip to study Navya-nyaya and there imbibed bhakti in the Chaitanyaite tradition. He was born after Chaitanya ...

I spoke at the meeting of SHEN to a group of about 40-50 people at the University of Waterloo on June 17. I used Powerpoint to help organize my ideas, many of which have previously been jotted down in these blog. It was nice to condense and clarify them in a public setting and the presentation was well received. I have tried to put it down here, but of course, it is still a condensation as many of the ideas are in need of elaboration. 1. Prema Prayojana The inspiration for this talk comes from Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the incarnation of divine love, who appeared in Bengal in the 15th century and inspired this movement of bhakti devotion. I have posted a statement attributed to him: সন্ন্যাস মোর কিবা কাজ, আমার প্রেম প্রয়োজন sannyāsa mora kibā kāja ? āmāra prema prayojana ! "What need have I of the renounced order of life? What I need is prema !" The expression prema prayojana really has a double meaning: On the one hand, perhaps Mahaprabhu was channeling ...