Jagat

One of the verses that struck me when reading the Haṭha-yoga-pradīpikā was the following tatra vastu-dvayaṁ vakṣye durlabhaṁ yasya kasyacit | kṣīraṁ caikaṁ dvitīyaṁ tu nārī ca vaśavartinī || I will now tell you of two things that are very rare for anyone in this world. One is milk. The other is an cooperative woman. (HYP 3.84) I found the verse a little troublesome, first of all because milk does not seem all that hard to find, not like a spiritual partner for bhajan, and also because this word vaśa-vartinī seems to indicate a kind of patriarchal model of male-female relations, which I as a worshiper of the female deity, Radharani, i.e., as a worshiper of the Divine Feminine, Shakti, felt was philosophically incompatible. After all, Radharani is known as the one who controls Krishna through bhakti, indicating a primacy of the feminine. My position has always been that of the spiritual complementarity of the sexes, a position that is closer to the Shakta philosophy than to t...

Bhaktivinoda Thakur's Gaur Gadadhar deities in Svananda Sukhada Kunj This article appeared in its original form in Nitai Das’s little publication, Gifts of Sacred Wonder  (Calcutta: Subarna Rekha, 1985), where it was given the title “The Role of Shakti in Gaura Lila.” This title was somewhat misleading as the article does not fully answer the questions implicit in it. This was my first real publication, and that book is quite a wonderful little collectors’ item, with two article by Nitai, one by Advaita Das, and another by Gadadhar Pran Das, with a lot of nectar in it, despite its many flaws. The follow article was meant to research the various Vaishnava texts for a more complete understanding of Gadadhar Pandit Goswami. The train of thought and the goal of the text were not always clear, so I thought that I would revise it and make it public again. That was done on Gaudiya Discussions in 2004, where the article is still being archived . I am posting it in view of rece...

So the day has been getting imperceptibly closer and is finally here. My flight is this evening and I have a lot of last minute preparations still to do. My books are still filling their shelves, their future uncertain. Countless photocopied pages lie piled up in boxes, some dating back to undergraduate days, waiting in futility for one kernel of wisdom to be picked up, one significant quote to be cited in a magnum opus, and which now will most likely be forever overlooked. I spent much of the last two days scanning books and articles into PDF format. I wish that I had done much more, but now that will have to wait. At least much of what I will need to consult for the work I know I will have to do in the next few months is available to me for consultation. The following verse comes to mind-- pustaka-sthā tu yā vidyā para-hasta-gataṁ dhanam kārya-kāle samutpanne na sā vidyā na tad dhanam Knowledge that is in books is like money in another's hand. When the time to use it com...