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Silence in Rishikesh

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Contents of an Indian street cow’s stomach (Gomata Gau Seva Trust, 2016) What is this light above the water in the shape of an umbrella? It is not submerged even when the whole earth is submerged in water. Is it the eternal Brahman, enumerated in hundreds of statements of the Upanishads, that has taken the form of an umbrella to give shelter to those suffering from the threefold miseries? We have become perfect merely by seeing it, O Teacher of the Universe. O Janardana, and you are also glancing at it repeatedly. Although you are the personification of wonder, you look at it as though you also find it wonderful. FB Memories July 11 (2015)    2012 It has taken a long time, but on occasion I am finally hearing -- or imagining that I am hearing -- the voices of the writers of the Sanskrit texts. 2011 For Love to be realized, it must be experienced internally as emotion (bhava) and externally as reciprocation (prema). Thereafter Lord Vishnu replied:   The light in ...

Prema's testing ground and laboratory are in the human

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In the last three articles, Another look at Aropa and Vatsalya , Worshiping Krishna as the substratum in all beings and The natural loves and prema , I have been responding to Muralisvara Dasa's letter. In these posts we have established several things that beginner devotees find problematic. Indeed, it takes a bit of a paradigm shift to move from the beginning level of duality between God and man in aiśvarya to the eradication of this difference in mādhurya . This is the human dimension of love. To summarize: Without giving up the basic practice of arcanā , one has to cultivate the middle stage of devotion, which is, as we have all read in the Bhāgavatam: īśvare tad-adhīneṣu bāliśeṣu dviṣatsu ca | prema-maitrī-kṛpopekṣā ṁ yaḥ karoti sa madhyamaḥ || One who behaves with love towards God, friendship to those who depend on the Lord, with compassion to those who are innocent, and indifference to those who hate the Lord, is on the middle level of devotional achievement ...