Jagat

In Daśa-mūla-rasa , Bipin Bihari Goswami tells a little of his life story, some of which I summarized in an earlier article about him . Those details were taken from Kanan Bihari Goswami’s book on the Baghnapara tradition, but reading here directly I think it worthwhile giving a bit of nuance to that. This information is supplementary to that. Bipin Bihari lost both his parents when quite young. He had been having trouble applying himself to his education and after their departure he fell into bad company and was about to mess up his life when a friend of his father’s, Anupam Chandra, set him straight. Bipin Bihari then asked him what he should do, and was told to take up devotion to Krishna. As a result of this advice, Bipin Bihari started frequenting Bhagavan Das Babaji in Kalna. Bipin Bihari refers to Bhagavan Das Babaji in several places in the course of this book, and it seems that Bhagavan Das was quite familiar with the Baghnapara tradition and literature. Bipin Biha...

The evolution of religious ideas As I return to this theme of svakīyā-parakīyā and the research work I did while doing my doctoral dissertation in connection with the current work on Kṛṣṇa-sandarbha , some thoughts have been coming to me about the general thrust of my own thought about the history of religions and what I see as being the purpose of my own intellectual quest in this regard. Krishna consciousness, like any other thought system, is based in positive principles that are universal and should be exportable to other religions and ideologies. In other words, they are translatable. Now in order to translate religious experience from one linguistic and symbolic conversation, often one that has been going on for thousands of years, first one must discover what that experience is, not just by looking at the entire complex in isolation, but also by looking at the universal experience of humanity. This is the logic behind the study of comparative religion, just as it is wi...

Now are the myths of Radha and Krishna to be qualified as "mental idolatry where, removed from the direct experience of the guiding force of unconditionality, theoretical frameworks and vestigial linguistics conjure up a surface mirage in terms of which the experience is interpreted, under which the experience is subjugated"? Well, in the sense that all words do that to some extent until their real meaning is discovered. But the nature, I think, of words is their capacity to create realities within which we have our direct experience. This is how, it seems to me, rasa works. For instance, at the age of 64, as a result of my life's culture of Krishna bhakti, I have chosen a particular way of perceiving the world (to a great extent against the received dominant culture to which I was born), through the framework of Radha-Krishna bhakti and its myriad forms and expressions, including a lot of peripherals -- including India itself as it is in the present day, non-Vaishnav...

Several people commented on my recent note on Rupa Goswami and History , that they could not see any reason for a conflict between the empirical approach and the devotional or spiritual life. On the surface, it seems reasonable to think that there should be no conflict, but those who are on the inside know that historical and other kinds of research do in fact conflict with what the shastras and traditional gurus with a literal belief in them say or have said. And this leads to doubt and schism. And if the doubter perishes ( saṁśayātmā vinaśyati ), then this is certainly going to create problems. In questions related to the past, there is no better illustration of this than the conflicting versions of paramparā history. The first problem is that if one is bound out of loyalty to a tradition to ignore empirical data or evidence, then certainly one's commitment to Truth, written large, is compromised. This devalues one's God-given intelligence and one develops a habit of ...

Yesterday I gave a talk at Gopinath Bhavan here in Vrindavan. On Srila Narayan Maharaj's order, his disciples hold an annual conference on Rupa Goswami in English and Hindi. The English event takes place in the morning and the Hindi assemblies are in the evening. Many speakers come, especially in the evening, most of them being sannyasis from the Gaudiya Math, though a few other scholars attend, such as Shrivatsa Goswami and Achyutalal Bhatta Goswami. The daytime program is fairly well attended, 30-40 devotees, with senior English-speaking devotees holding forth on Rupa Goswami from various perspectives. Somehow or another, despite reservations about me personally, the organizer of that event kindly put me in as a speaker. I was not so keen at first, but then I was persuaded. I haven't been doing any public speaking in ages, and it is probably best that I get back in the habit. In order to keep me from saying anything controversial, however, the organizer originally asked m...

While on the subject of Chandidas... The Chandidas mystery has troubled writers on Bengali literary history for over a century. It is pretty clear that Boru Chandidas, the writer of Sri Krishna Kirtan, was known to Mahaprabhu and the Goswamis, and that his stories of Radha and Krishna, were greatly influential, at least where certain pastimes and probably certain themes within those pastimes are concerned. But most of the scholars in Bengal were a little disturbed by the thought that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, with his elevated sentiments and pure devotional mood, could ever have spent much time listening to Sri Krishna Kirtan with Raya Ramananda and Svarupa Damodar. One thing is certainly true is that other than the one MS of SKK, very little of Boru Chandidas, at least what is recognizably this Boru Chandidas' work, was picked up and used by Lila-kirtan singers in the post-Chaitanya period. To the point that for all intents and purposes, his work was completely lost. It was surel...

Last time I was in Vrindavan I picked up a book called Nāgarī dāsa kī vāṇī (ed. Vrajavallabha Sharan, Vrindavan: Sri Sarvesvara Press, 1966) . Nagari Das was a Nimbarki virakta who lived in the mid-18th century (b. 1699, d. 1765). Some of you may have read my article on Prabodhananda Saraswati. What really struck me about the research I did for that article is the extent to which sectarian feeling dominated the Vaishnava world and how historical accounts differ, preserving the extensive prejudices and resentments that exist in one or the other factions. Not that these may not have foundation. For instance, for all of my appreciation of the Radha-vallabhi tradition, I take it that the evidence points to the kind of ingratitude and inability to acknowledge the human avenues of divine mercy I wrote about in a previous post. The Radhavallabhi tradition says that Harivamsa wrote the  Rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhi  when he was five years old. Do I have any takers for that one? They ...

The Rasa-kulyā commentary on RRSN is pretty interesting, which will gradually come out. As you may already know, there are several points of connection between Gaudiyas and Radha-vallabhis, not the least of which is Prabodhananda Saraswati's role in developing the theology of the school--even if we don't accept that he is the author of RRSN. Of course, since Prabodhananda was an independent spirit and became more of a Radha-vallabhi than a Gaudiya, there is no point in trying to interpret RRSN as a text following pure Gaudiya siddhanta. (One of the arguments by today's defenders of Harivamsa's authorship are based on the premise that if Prabodhananda wrote RRSN, why does it not follow Gaudiya siddhanta?) Nevertheless, it is clear that Harilal Vyas had a very thorough knowledge of Gaudiya literature. The reason I am writing this now is because I came across a reference to the Gopa Kumar story from Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta (to verse 96). So far I have come across numerou...

No one can blame me for being a dishonest translator. Rocana has excerpted my translation of Bhaktivinoda Thakur's life from Chaitanya and His Associates by Bhakti Ballabha Tirtha. In that chapter, there is not one mention of Bipin Bihari Goswami! Is there not something wrong there, my friends? By any standard of truth, but especially in a disciplic succession that promotes so avidly the concept of Guru, that a writer should so cavalierly glorify one's own spiritual hero without mentioning his guru's name, as though he never existed. Tell me if this is not a classical case of ardha-kukkuṭī nyāya ? I have written on these matters several times, including this article Bhaktivinoda Thakur's meat eating and Lalita Prasad Thakur , which was also inspired by a similar type of distortion on Rocana's site. So, for the occasion of Bhaktivinoda Thakur's appearance, and to thumb our nose at those who would deny Bipin Bihari Goswami's role in the Thakur's lif...