Jagat

Taj Bibi's samadhi in Gokul . duḥkhāny eva sukhāni viddhy apayaśo jānīhi kīrtiṁ parāṁ manyethā adhamaiś ca duṣparibhavān saṁmānavat sattamaiḥ | dainyāny eva mahā-vibhūtim atisallābhān alabhān sadā pāpāny eva ca puṇyamanti yadi te vṛndāvanaṁ jīvanam|| Know suffering here to be joy. Know ill-repute here to be the greatest glory. Accept that being defeated here at the hands of the lowliest people is equal to being honored by the saints. Know that poverty here is the greatest wealth and the greatest pious gains here are as nothing of any value at all. Know too that sins here contain piety within them. If you can know all this, then alone will Vrindavan be your life. (1.30) Commentary In the previous verse, Prabodhananda Saraswatipada exhorted his fellow aspirants for Braja bhakti to practice indifference to the dualities of this world. Now, however, he goes on to explain that Vrindavan is different: things here are not what they seem. In his allegory Prema...

A book that I have been interested in finding for a considerable amount of time is the Prema-pattanam of Rasikottamsa (Yadupati Bhatta). I did not know much about this book other than that it has been quoted once or twice here and there, especially in relation to Prabodhananda and Harivamsa and their rejection of many of the rules and regulations of vidhi bhakti . I have, as I sometimes do in such cases, dropped everything [though I can ill afford to] to go through the book, typing furiously verses and tika for the Gaudiya Grantha Mandir . Will I manage to finish in this race against all external pressures, in this extreme act of renunciation for the sake of rasa? Probably not! But in the meantime, I am discovering a delicious bit of rasika literature, and it is incumbent on ME (!) to share it, after first tasting whatever few drops of this fruit of this all-too-little-known early 18th century Gaudiya text I can manage to swallow. For this is what the Grantha Mandir was meant for!...