Jagat

Radhe out, Shyama in. That is all. Actually, all such sexual meditations are dependent on a certain amount of built capacity to resist orgasm. If either partner has an orgasm, this results in a break in the meditation and thus a decrease in the pleasure. Krishna enters the kunja where Radha awaits. Radha chants Shyama. Then Radha rushes forth to greet Krishna. Krishna chants Radhe. Start slowly, meditating on the picture of Radha meeting Krisha in the kunja. Feel their bhava. Witness the union of the Divine Couple after you and your manjari companion have achieved the goal of your service and brought them together after a long separation. Feel the sights and sounds, smell the fragrances of their sacred bower. Gradually build up until the chanting of Radha and Shyama's names becomes a all-encompassing explosion absorption in the sound and all else but the names are erased from the consciousness. Continue until exhausted. Then slow down and start again. Or, simply return t...

Yesterday we were reading in the Philosophy of Hatha Yoga class the section from the Yoga-sūtras dealing with asana, i.e. 2.46-48. There is a long discussion at 2.47. Anyway, the basics are: āsanas are to be steady and comfortable (46). They can be perfected by relaxing the effort and by meditation on the infinite (47). When one perfects the āsanas , one becomes indifferent to the dualities (48). The discussion about "meditation on the infinite" (actually, Swamiji translates samāpatti by "coalescence" with the infinite, but that is a little harder to follow) was pretty interesting. I have to say that I got a glimpse of that in meditation today in relation to my sahaja-sādhanā and my siddha-svarupa . There was a moment when I was literally dancing in my Jaya Manjari form, my blue dress covered with silver sequins literally swirling in the sky and merging into the milky way. Anyway, in his discussion there, Swamiji gives two interpretations of the phrasa an...

One of the points that Siddhanta Saraswati liked to make in his critique of Sahajiyaism (in his generalized acceptation of the term) is that they affect union rather separation in their meditation. For Saraswati Thakur, viraha was the path to perfection shown by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and therefore the process that should be emulated. I was not too long ago surprised to hear a Rabindra Swarup statement that manjari bhava sadhana was not integral to Gaudiya Vaishnavism, but came about as a later development as a result of association in Vrindavan with Nimbarkis and other sakhī-bhāva sampradāyas. Since we are accustomed to hearing Gaudiya Vaishnava defenses of their originating worship in sakhi or manjari bhava, I found this a rather striking commentary. Of course, something in that spirit has been floating around in the Gaudiya Math for a long time, in which one sees the argument that siddha pranali, for instance, does not exist in the writings of Rupa or the other six Goswamis, not ...

हरे कृष्ण हरे कृष्ण For people like me, who have a tendency to get lost in the woods of faith and doubt, our Gaudiya Vaishnava dharma has a wonderful fallback position: Acintya-bhedābheda . Brahma-Paramatma-Bhagavan. कृष्ण कृष्ण हरे हरे Brahman is satyam. Sat , existence. We are that. So take a deep, nasal breath. Sit down. Clear your head. Forget all the details that you are supposed to believe in and just be. Let becoming take care of itself. You are that peace, eternity and love. हरे राम हरे राम Brahman is oneness. Paramatman is difference. Bhagavan is inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference. Be Brahman. Pray to Paramatman. Be one with Bhagavan in love. राम राम हरे हरे Take a deep breath. Forget the details. The Holy Name has no content. It is pure being. It is prayer. It is being one with God in love. Take shelter of the Holy Name. This is the essence. The rest is filler. Jai Sri Radhe Shyam!

Today I hit on a meditation that was very powerful and looks very promising. The way they do meditation here is to sit with proper back support (these are really the first people I hae seen who make a big deal out of it, finally!) have simple abdominal breathing in and out in an even rhythm and one is advised to chant the mantras as one can. At first I was chanting Harinam on my beads, but I found that I was not getting the full benefit of the breathing. Then I switched to the Gopāla Mantra, and that was better. Today, I switched to Gopāla Mantra on the inward breath and Kāma Gāyatrī on the outward breath and found that it was full of possibilities and very powerful. You breathe in with a small Mūla-bandha (contracting the sphincter and muscles and the base of the genitals), then visualize the mantra climbing up the spine with the inward breath. oṁ śrīṁ klīṁ at the first chakra, kṛṣṇāya at the second, govindāya at the third (navel), gopī at the heart (appropriately), jan...

Hatha-yoga names several sitting postures for meditation purposes. There is a hierarchy in these posture, and there are definite advantages for the person chanting japa to make use of these techniques to improve concentration on Harinam and smarana. There are probably more, but the main sitting postures are: sukhāsana, siddhāsana, svastikāsana, ardha-padmāsana, vīrāsana, gomukhāsana and padmāsana . The main point of the sitting posture is that it should be comfortable enough to sit in for a long stretch of time. Changing postures can be helpful when the legs or back get tired, and occasionally getting up to walk around or to stretch the legs and back may be necessary. For most people, some kind of back support is beneficial in all the sitting postures. You should place a pillow or something else (a rock, a piece of wood, a book (!) ... anything) under the sacrum (the tailbone). This will help keep the back straight. The straighter the back, the deeper one can breathe, since the...

Prerequisites: The ability to sit for one hour with the back straight and without moving or agitation. Control of breath. There is to be no physical touching in this exercise. The couple sits facing each other with a few centimetres of space separating them. The mantra is so’ham , or other mantras done in so'ham consciousness, e.g., the 18-syllable Gopala Mantra on the inward breath, the Kama Gayatri on the outward; done at a count of 1:2, or at a natural rhythm. With the inward breath, the meditation is as follows: “The Supreme Person has come in the form of my beloved to give me His/Her love. I breathe in that love.” With the outward breath, one meditates: “With my outward breath, I return that love. I serve that love, I serve that Person.” The focus is the heart center, the anahata chakra . Let the heart fill with the divine shakti. Please note that the three lower chakras are all primarily concerned with the most external layers of consciousness. This chakra is the first that ...

Looking for something else, I came across a thread on Gaudiya Discussions from June 2004 . I am posting some of it here, just for the record and future reference. I think it was the first time I used "prema prayojan" as my motto online; Dr. Jaya also reminded me of another line, which I began using as my other motto: Formed through and through by Gaura's love-- that is a Gaudiya Vaishnava. ========================= This is a very good question and I think that it is worth discussing further. Here are a couple of quotes: Love’s torments are understood as the natural form of religious discipline…. [There] is a whole field of poetry in Braj dedicated to making this point, to demonstrating how the gopis, separated from Krishna, endure mortifications by virtue of the sundering of their love that are deeper by far than any austerities or yoga can concoct. They manifest all the marks of yogic discipline naturally. A yogi must learn through years of practice the art o...