Jagat

I am currently engaged in a multi-pronged research into the intersection of compassion, rasa, v ā tsalya and madhura-rasa , with specific reference to the rasa-śāstra. Since I am under pressure to finish my work here in Rishikesh on the third volume of the Yoga-sütra, I am surprised that I find the time to write anything on this blog, but frequently, this is the way things happen. Creativity often arises when there are conflicting pressures that percolate and hubble and bubble, bringing many thoughts to the surface. Anyway, I rapidly wrote the following on Facebook as a reply to the post  that I put up yesterday. I would think that there would have been a personalized description somewhere.  Mādhurya-kādambinī  is the closest thing we have in our sampradäya to such a thing, which otherwise in most mystic lineages is fairly commonplace. It is a very nice book. Anartha-nivṛtti is presented as a catalog of flaws rather than a road map, but I guess it is the closes...

My dear friends, God was alone and he said, "This is no fun." And so he split himself into two and became "as a man locked in embrace with a woman." Thus it is said, Radha and Krishna are one soul in two bodies. All romantic love is an attempt to recreate this original simultaneous oneness and difference. In one dimension we recreate, in another we serve, that ideal. The transformation of the world through love passes through this gate. We worship Radha and Krishna and no other. We pray for the Love that inundates them to guide our intelligence. Proper loving relations have to be based on liberty and equality. This means that the patriarchal attitude is automatically excluded. Where power relations are dominated by the male and the woman is seen as subservient, i.e., where the guru-chela spiritual dynamic is essentially a one-way street, the relationship may reach a certain level of love, but never the fullness of madhurya. Parakiya bhava means that a woman t...

Here is the formula for Sahaja Bhajan. upāsya-rūpaṁ yugalātmakaṁ vai upāsakatvaṁ yugala-svarūpe | upāsanā śrī-yugalābhidheyaṁ tathopadeṣṭṛ-yugalena prāptam || The worshipable object is the Divine Couple. The ideal worshiper of the Divine Couple is the sadhaka couple. The worship of the Divine Couple is based in the chanting of their Names. The Guru Tattva for this worship also takes the form of a Divine Couple. This formula condenses most of the points that are made on this blog. 1. The worshipable object is the Divine Couple, Radha and Krishna. Needless to say, this is repeated again and again here, most recently in the article Do Radha and Krishna really have nothing to do with human love? Radha and Krishna are the worshipable object of all the rasika sampradayas of Vrindavan, but little thought is given to the implications of the distinction that is made between the Dual form of God as represented by the Divine Couple and any other form of God in either ...