Jagat

 FB Jan 4, 2016: Seems somewhat applicable to my current situation. Only replace Yoga Sutra with Prīti Sandarbha.

I made a quick trip to Rishikesh to get some of the books that I had in the library there. I offered to give a talk and was asked by Adhikariji to talk on Yoga-sūtra 1.23, īśvara-praṇidhānād vā , which is a rather significant  sūtra  for theists and devotees, since this is a rare direct mention of God. The phrase īśvara-praṇidhāna appears no less than four times in the YS, making it well worthy of attention, but we would be mistaken to read to much into it. After all, devotion to God is not the primary purpose of the YS, worship of God serves the end of liberation. But from a devotee's point of view, it is an opportunity to discuss the subject of God. But since it is not the subject most interesting to the yogis, it presents an interesting challenge, one that I have faced since the beginning of my relationship with SRSG . I worked on the revised first volume of the YS written by Swami Veda Bharati (SVB), which is the main text that is followed by his disciples, so I spoke ...

I was talking with some friends about śraddhā on Facebook and I thought I would post this from Swami Veda's Volume I of the Yoga Sutra (1.20). श्रद्धावीर्यस्मृतिसमाधिप्रज्ञापूर्वक इतरेषाम्॥२०॥ śraddhā-vīrya-smṛti-samādhi-prajñā-pūrvaka itareṣām ||20|| The samādhi of (some) others has as its preconditions faith, strength, intentness, meditation and the awakening of wisdom in samprajñāta.   [Vyāsa] upāya-pratyayo yogināṁ bhavati | śraddhā cetasaḥ samprasādaḥ | sā hi jananīva kalyāṇī yoginaṁ pāti | tasya hi śraddadhānasya vivekārthino vīryam upajāyate | samupajāta-vīryasya smṛtir upatiṣṭhate | smṛty-upasthāne cittam anākulaṁ samādhīyate | samāhita-cittasya prajñā-viveka upāvartate | yena yathāvad vastu jānanti | tad-abhyāsāt tad-viṣayāc ca vairāgyād asamprajñātaḥ samādhir bhavati ||20||   Samādhi, the causal cognition of which is cultivated through method (upāya-pratyaya) accrues to the yogis: Faith ( śraddhā ) means full clarity and pleasantness of the mind-field...

Meanwhile, back at the blog. Poor blog has been quite neglected these past few months. It really started in Karttik when I was doing both Krishna Sandarbha and Vrindavan Today . Even so, a little surprisingly, readership has not diminished overall, and I am still running an average of close to 10,000 pageviews a month, which is up slightly from before I stopped posting. In particular I notice I have been getting a surge of Russian readers of late and Russia surged to the top of the list of countries from which readers are coming. This is not altogether unsurprising. VT, on the other hand, gets triple that, over 60% from India, 40% just from Delhi alone, which is also unsurprising. Articles are generally shorter and less demanding. Vrindavan Today is a fantastic and important project, but so far I haven't been able to find good people who will be able to help move it forward, other than the occasional contributor. We have had a few promising candidates, but so ...

The world exists for bhoga (experience) and apavarga (liberation). These are the two options the material world gives you. The spiritual world, however, offers you the added option of prema . It is the hope of this prema , its transmutation, sometimes into bhoga and sometimes into apavarga , that keeps saṁsāra rolling around and around. One of the other important ideas that comes up in Yoga Sutra and has its origins in Sāṅkhya is the following: "Prakṛti is parārtha (for another), Puruṣa is svārtha (for itself)." This terminology is very significant, as it pervades "normative" Hindu philosophy, including both Advaita and Vaishnava Vedanta, though with some adjustments, especially in the latter. According to Sāṅkhya, the Consciousness Principle is called Puruṣa. In this philosophy, the Puruṣa is consciousness only . To even be aware of the world requires that consciousness be reflected in the material nature, starting with its subtlest form, which is buddhi ...

As if in preparation for my return to Vrindavan, a Bhagavata saptaha has been going on within close loudspeaker distance, with a very good musical team. We have been graced with renditions of the best of Rasik Pagal, Gaurav Krishna Goswami and Vinod Agrawal's greatest hits. It has had a nice effect on me. In the meantime, I am reaping the benefits, slowly of my Yoga Sutra work. Today I was working on 3.18, which says that by concentration on samskaras, one can know one's own and other's previous lives. Since I don't have much time left and still quite a bit of work, I was going to avoid evening meditation, but something impelled me to go today. So, quite buoyant actually, with the Bhagavata going on this way, and the Yoga Sutra going on that way, I sat down in meditation and started thinking of YS 3.18. संस्कारसाक्षात्करणात् पूर्वजातिज्ञानम्।। saṁskāra-sākṣhāt-karaṇāt pūrva-jāti-jñānam By realising, seeing as real, the saṁskāras , [there arises] the knowled...

Someone was chastising me the other day that in order to attain the siddhi of the gopis one had to give up the puruṣābhimāna and think of oneself as a beautiful gopi maiden expert in the arts and dressed in the remnants of Radharani’s own wardrobe, with flowers in her hair, and so on. He is pleased by our prema for Him in one of the five rasas. But it requires a change in identity, from thinking you are this material body, to knowing that you are His lover, young friend, servant or parent. If you want to be His lover, you have to identify as a young and very attractive woman, expert in all the arts, witty, expert in word jugglery and thus equipped in all ways to bring Him pleasure. You cannot approach him, thinking you are an old man, and that the material illusory form of your partner is Radha. You cannot enter madhurya at all with a male form or identity. A beautiful picture indeed. And it seems so easy. Just like that, puruṣābhimāna disappears. Now what makes anyone  think ...