Jagat

Since my visa extension was refused I have been undergoing something of a revisiting of my devotional past--visiting the seven temples, seeing an old Nabadwip friend at Gokulananda. Then on Thursday going to Iskcon for Vyasa Puja. It has been a bit like a palimpsest -- scraping off layers to see what was there below. So going to Iskcon represents the beginnings of my life as a Vaishnava, and since for better or worse I am still in this game, Srila Prabhupada remains my guru. I heard several teary-eyed testimonials read by Brahmananda Prabhu from a published volume, as well as others given by a number of other Prabhupada disciples who were present. They recounted many stories of amazing achievements by young and inexperienced Prabhupada disciples, such as Gunarnava Das, who somehow during Prabhupada's presence were endowed with almost superhuman capabilities to achieve tasks like the building of the Vrindavan temple. Indeed, it is almost impossible for anyone who lived through t...

Swami Veda quoted this Bhagavata verse last night in Yoga Sutra class while discussing sutra 4.25. vāg gadgadā dravate yasya cittaṁ rudaty abhīkṣṇaṁ hasati kvacic ca | vilajja udgāyati nṛtyate ca mad-bhakti-yukto bhuvanaṁ punāti || One who is united with me in bhakti yoga, whose words are choked with emotion, whose mind has melted, who cries constanty and sometimes laughs, who shamelessly sings alound and dances... such a devotee purifies the entire world. (11.14.24) Swamiji does not usually quote full verses in his classes, though he makes a point of teaching his disciples the Sanskrit terminology used in the Yoga Sutra. Needless to say, it was a pleasure to hear him recite this sweet verse so nicely. And he pointedly said that he was doing so for me. Because "Jagat knows the Bhagavata." The context here was the following sentence from Vyasa's bhashya, yathā pravṛṣi tṛṇāṅkurasyodbhedena tad-bīja-sattānumīyate, tathā mokṣa-mārga-śravaṇena yasya r...

Disconnect to reconnect. Radha and Krishna are my device. But there is a little recharging necessary. The recharge comes itself from the device, but it needs to be rebooted through realization, understanding, sadhana, deep penetration, application in other dimensions, etc. But the basic premise is the same. The thing about religion is that it is full of symbolic content that requires lengthy contemplation. These contents arise from the depths of the collective unconscious through the medium of the extraordinary spiritually aware individuals who plunged those depths. There is little way to prove the validity of their value objectively. Of course, the psychological, social, or even physical benefits of religion have been shown to some extent through various studies, but to the rational people who see the negative consequences of religious intolerance, etc., these do not hold much weight. The balance shifts to the negative side and the blame is given to irrationality. After al...

It really is time to get this beast shaking again. Over the past few months I have not been doing much original writing. I had a few translation jobs that preoccupied me, and it would have been quite possible to comment publicly on that work. In fact, two different projects were directly connected with Ishopanishad, and I lectured on the Ishopanishad for a month at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama. There was definitely material that would have been of interest to my readers in that and now I am rather sorry that I did not take the trouble to publish my notes. Perhaps we can do it later. (He said with a sigh.) One of the reasons I did not of course is that this blog has a somewhat specialized purpose, unclear as that may seem, and I would like to stick to that, rather than enter into an arcane discussion of the meaning of an ancient Upanishad. Though, since part of my work involved reading A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami's totally idiosyncratic interpretation of that work, it might have been wor...

After writing the first draft of the previous post, I was sitting in my room working. There was a group of Italians from Sarva Yoga in the ashram, and I was more or less aware that Swami Veda would be lecturing, but I was not intending to attend, as I have all this work I have to do. Suddenly, though, I felt the pull that Swamiji was calling me. I am getting used to these subliminal messages, whether they are intentional from Swamiji or from anyone else, I don’t know, but I didn’t bother to question and immediately left for the meditation hall. The lecture was in progress and Maharaj was talking very poetically about the Yoga tradition. He was placing the historical context into the universal context of infinite time and space. Usually we put ideas into historical context, but Swamiji was rightly reminding us that there was no first person, and that there will be no last person, to whom the revelation of the Infinite was made. It is not that Yoga came into any religion, but rather that...

A number of different things coming together here, so I will try to pull them together as best I can. (1) Just finished reading Lajja by Taslima Nasreen, in the Hindi translation. The story here is really that of Muslim violence on Hindus in Bangla Desh, in all its historical manifestations from Partition in 1947 to 1992, when the Babri Masjid incident set off a series of communal clashes in India. This also gave Bangladeshi Muslims yet another opportunity to engage in a round of ethnic cleansing in their country. The book is about a Hindu family that both loves their country and considers themselves non-religious, even atheistic. Despite their identification as Bengalis first and nothing else, they are forced into a communal identity by circumstances. In the end, despite a long-held determination to stick it out, in the faith that this was their country, they make the decision to leave. There is no longer any place for them in their own country. That is their "shame" ( lajj...

Interesting conference of “Spirituality and the Science of Consciousness” in Kolkata at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture. This is the second time I have come here, both times in the somewhat awkward position of being Swami Veda Bharati’s representative and thus more or less as an observer and student. Last year I was somewhat aware of the rather odd cultural disconnect that I felt in the surroundings of an ersatz Western institution, reproducing in me memories of aspects of my old Jesuit-run high school, like the auditorium and refectory. The use of English language and European dress in a milieu that was 95% Bengali also seemed somewhat strange. Also, the aging and somewhat eccentric nature of much of the audience was particularly evident. This year, however, I was more conscious of other aspects of the Ramakrishna Mission. First of all, the institution seems to be very well run. Things are clean, on-time; staff is polite and helpful, etc. But more particularly I was think...

The last couple of weeks I have been plugging away at the Bhagavat-sandarbha and as a result I have been cutting back on almost everything else. I would really like to get it finished before going back to Canada, but the way I usually work, it does not look hopeful. It has taken this long to get 472 pages done and there are still approximately 180 to go. Can I do it in a month? The last 85 pages took about a month. The last few days have been difficult as I have been a bit sick--for the first time, I may mention, since coming here, if you don't count one or two brief encounters with the runs. I even missed my Sanskrit class on Saturday, as well as RRSN and Gita on Sunday at Madhuban. The last two days I have been working in my room rather than the office, basically just doing reformatting, spell-checking, etc., before getting down to the real work. It is starting to heat up pretty good here. It must be getting close to 40 degrees at noon nowadays. Yup, hot season definitely h...

From time to time I listen to New Dimensions , a program on New Age teachings hosted by Michael Thoms. I discovered it on the Australian Broadcasting Company, which is where I usually listen to it. This program gives me an introduction to many of the current popular meditation teachers in the West. Today I am listening to More love, more compassion, more joy with Jack Kornfield, a Buddhist psychologist. The reason I am blogging this is what this program is making me reflect on the differences between Vaishnavism and this new realm of popular New Age spirituality. It is also making me reflect on what I am doing here in this ashram? These thoughts are also connected to those in the post I made on Thanksgiving. As Kornfield demonstrates in the beginning of this program, these people take pains to distinguish their activities from religion--it is a philosophy, it is practical psychology, it is a process of self-improvement, etc., anything but a religion. This is that "scienti...

Yesterday, Swami Veda gave a rather animated lecture about atheism. He likes to tell the story of how he wrote a book called simply "God" which he proudly showed to his guru, Swami Rama. Swami Rama apparently countered a few months later with his own book, based on the Mandukya Upanishad, called "Enlightenment without God." In this lecture, though, Swami was talking about imbuing life with the sacred. How the lack of awareness of the sacred element in life makess it dry and empty. He used the words astika and nastika several times in order to make his point. Since I have been working on Bhagavat-sandarbha , following a discussion on several verses from the Bhagavatam where the words neti neti are discussed, I wanted to ask what the relation between negation and assertion of Divine Truth were, in his vision. Of course, I think I know what he will say--pretty much the same thing that Osho says--"Being empty [of illusion] is the same as being full [of the divin...

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 many projects that I have on my desk right now is a translation of a French book on Krishna's teachings in the Bhagavad-gita by a longtime and very worthy Prabhupada disciple named Vishnurata Das. Practically speaking, it is a simplification of the Bhagavad Gita As It Is, seen through the eyes of the author. I recently went through his sixth chapter, which as you know is the one on rāja-yoga . According to Madhusudana and Vishwanath, this is the last chapter of the first set of six, which deal with karma-yoga . In Vishnurata's version, the instructions on mind control, etc., have been reduced to practically nothing more than the merest skeleton, and the bulk of the chapter is focused on the impracticability of the practices described in the age of Kali. This is coupled with frequent references to the superiority of bhakti-yoga . Yoga is seen as an exercise in mind and sense-control, but since there is no practical engagement of the mind and senses in the medit...

I received several warnings from devotee friends about coming here to Rishikesh, to stay in a "Mayavadi" ashram. We are generally very protective of our faith, down to its most arcane details, and the idea that it could be challenged is fearful. Over the years, I suppose my faith has suffered as many challenges as anyone's faith ever could have, and this may have inoculated me to the fear of Mayavada. Whether that is good or not remains to be seen. Certainly I am using the opportunity given me here to look into yoga philosophy a little more seriously than I have in the past, but not with a view to "defeat" it. As a matter of fact, the "defeating" mode is not highly approved in the Gita. The other night, I had supper with Swami Veda along with a number of his close disciples. The topics discussed were many. One thing that he said, perhaps in relation to the loss of innocence, was that it took him a long time to realize that not everyone was engaged ...