Jagat

On Facebook the other day, I posted a link to an article by George Monbiot, one of the few journalists whose work I admire, from the Guardian. Monbiot laments about the corporate culture and compares it to cult-like indoctrination and brain washing. He seems to be on a bit of a run about this because he had another similar article a couple of days later. Of course, having experienced a religious cult, spending nine years in the Hare Krishnas, I thought of Prabhupada's statement that he was indeed engaged in a brainwashing exercise, precisely because our brains did need to be washed. And that is quite true. The idea of "cleansing the mirror of the mind" is central to all yoga systems. We willingly submitted to the brainwashing process because we wanted to change our way of consciousness, our way of being. To fill our minds and senses with Krishna. To become Krishna conscious. And on the whole, I am glad of it. The process was based on the Bhāgavata-dharmas of the sc...

"So, you are 65 and you wasted your whole life being a Krishna devotee, and now here you are stuck with this stupid religion and you got nowhere to go. So now what to do?" Well, you came this far, you might as well just keep moving in the direction of Love. I see a lot of other people in this boat; maybe they are drawn to me because of what they perceive as a similar attitude of cynicism, but in fact I am not one to regret the past. We are finally puppets in the hands of Time, after all, and our lives are so conditioned that self-knowledge is something of a fool's errand. So I take responsibility for the pain I have caused others and the mistakes I have made, with regret and sadness for as long as I contemplate their suffering. And I do contemplate it, for it is only in understanding the suffering that one causes that one can eliminate the causes of suffering. I have tried to look at religion and Vaishnavism from both inside and out, just to try to make sense o...