Jagat

The body was put in a box and then slid along bamboo tracks into the deeper channel of the Ganges. So today (the 29th) was Swamiji's Shodasi, i.e., the end of the official mourning period after his jala-samadhi. Plenty of sadhus from the various akharas showed up. Swami Satyamitrananda Giri was the chief guest and he spoke very nicely in praise of Swamiji and of their friendship. He also said some things about Guru-tattva and urged his disciples onward in their sadhana. But clearly his most important act was to verbally confirm Swami Ritavan Bharati's role as Swamiji's successor and to physically garland him. Nearly all the other prominent sants and sannyasis present, which included the head of the Niranjani Akhara and several other Mahamandaleshwars spoke of the succession and how Swami Ritavan would need support -- just like Krishna was doing all the heavy lifting at Govardhana, but the other cowherds still lifted their sticks into the base of the hill out of a d...

In the debate between those who support a purely literal interpretation of scripture and those who prefer a symbolic or esoteric interpretation, I would say that the literal is literally not understood without the esoteric. Truth lies where symbol and life merge. There are always multiple levels of interpretation, none of which are incorrect and which are probably hierarchical, but all are nevertheless anchored in real experience in the world, usually taken in an idealistic form, or as some would have it as a projected wish-fulfillment fantasy. Though that may indeed be true, it is possible to understand the literal as something that is self created, as per the verse in the Bhāgavata : tvaṁ bhakti-yoga-paribhāvita-hṛt-saroja āsse śrutekṣita-patho nanu nātha puṁsām| yad-yad-dhiyā ta urugāya vibhāvayanti tat-tad-vapuḥ praṇayase sad-anugrahāya || O Master! You take your seat in the lotus heart that has been made worthy of you through love. Even so, the way to reach you can ...

An oft-repeated error of orthodox Vaishnavas is that the the love of Radha and Krishna has "nothing to do" with the romantic love of human experience, especially not where parakiya-rasa is being considered. I say that it would take only the blindest and most deluded observer to say such a thing. The Gaudiya Math and ISKCON have deliberately obfuscated the connection between Krishna's madhura lila and our human experience to promote the pan-Indian belief in sannyas that arises from the Buddhist and Shankarite schools. As I often say, the entire corpus of Rupa Goswami's work is meant to demonstrate the superlative position of madhura rasa. But any such hierarchy of rasa must be based in real human experience. Ideals have a relation to reality; they are meaningless without them. You need to see the madhura lila of Radha and Krishna as an object lesson in how to deal with sexual desire, not how to destroy it. Through worshiping Radha and Krishna we become aware of t...

Ultimately all Krishna devotees will have to give up the literal interpretation of myth and turn to a symbolic understanding, or their faith will collapse on its own contradictions. The reason a Gaudiya Vaishnava cannot be a literalist is because a literalist is always an unconscious dualist. As with all seekers of Truth, we hold that "when one's ultimate concerns are relative truths, that is called idolatry." (Paul Tillich) In other words, it is misplaced and misguided faith. The literalist may appear to be unitarian who has resolved the problem of duality, but in fact he has a big unacknowledged Jungian "Shadow". Therefore his views are unsynthesized. This is why I say his position will ultimately collapse on its own contradictions. We are acintya-bhedābheda-vādis . Acintya means paradox or mystery. Acintya-bhedābheda is not about artificially throwing up one's hands and saying, "It is all one anyway!" it is about the experiential and con...

My Friday night Gita classes have finally arrived at the sixth chapter. This being a yoga ashram, people are generally most interested in what this chapter, known variously as dhyāna-yoga (the most authentic name, it seems, as it is given by Shankara and Sridhara) or abhyāsa-yoga . I have also seen it called ātma-saṁyama-yoga (based on 4.27ff, where the first descriptions of aṣṭāṅga-yoga are given). Madhusudana calls it adhyātma-yoga . Since this chapter's topics parallel most closely what is found in Patanjali, it has a great deal of appeal, and always did for me also when I first contacted the Gita. My first lecture was last Friday, and it was mostly spent discussing the last verse of chapter 5 and the first 3 of chapter 6. The use of the word yoga in the Gita is quite different from the way people generally understand it these days. Tilak has gone to some pains to show that the primary meaning is "stratagem" or "device." Certainly "means" ha...

With regard to some of the questions raised by Swami Prem Ananda in his letter here . “In trika-shaivism it is also said that Shiva is the Supreme Lord and the only Person in the whole of creation… Trika-shaivism answers that the veiling is happening because Shiva wants it to. Shiva enjoys this game of veiling and revealing himself. It is His Lila.” I don’t think that there is a substantial difference between this and the Gaudiya viewpoint, except that we would say that the distinction between the jiva and the Lord is nevertheless real and therefore indicates an implicit, eternal relationship. Therefore we insist on this difference as well as the oneness and consider the status of jiva as real and eternal, existing both in the conditioned and the liberated state. Nevertheless, the only way to really conceive of this liberated state rationally is in the identity of oneness with God, a oneness that pervades our mutual participation in Absolute Being. This helps to explain the problems th...

The first day I listened to one of the speakers, I held my peace, but wanted to say something. Finally I contented myself by giving one of my verse cards to a student here who is an ex-Iskcon devotee from Bombay. As a matter of fact, there are several members of this ashram who have a devotional background, especially a number of Oriya bhaktas who told me they had spent years in Vrindavan studying the Bhagavata. I find it hard to believe that their samskara will be so shallow as to be inaccessible. For the most part, I enthusiastically greet everyone with the words "Radhe Shyam," without for all that being obnoxious about it. The verse I offered was the one that rang through my brain while listening to these talks, bhava-bandha-cchide tasyai spṛhayāmi na muktaye bhavān prabhur ahaṁ dāso jñānam yatra vilupyate I do not aspire for the liberation that frees us from bondage to this world, if therein the awareness that you are my master and I your servant is lost. On...

I was thinking about a section of the Bhakti-rasayānam by Madhusudan Saraswati that made a big impression on me when I first read it so many years ago. Madhusudan says that the goal of spiritual practice to transform the mind by reshaping it into the image of God. How does one shape the mind? In this, Madhusudan’s insight into the efficaciousness of bhakti is remarkably modern: he says that the mind is like a piece of sealing wax that softens on being placed near a source of heat; when overwhelmed by an emotion, it takes on the shape of whatever happens to come into contact with it. Then, subsequently, when the emotion subsides, the mind is left marked with formative impressions, just as the wax is after cooling off. These impressions are called vāsanās or saṁskāras in Madhusudana's terminology. We know that childhood experiences leave deep imprints on the subconscious that are indeed hard if not impossible to efface. These are the discoveries of depth psychology, which has i...

From both the Vaishnava and the Occidental points of view, what I am doing here may seem bizarre. For the modern Westerner, it is patently ridiculous to try to argue for a sacred sexuality; for some of them, sexuality is an animal instinct that should be indulged without guilt or fear, for others, the romantic premise has been so ingrained that a degree of sacredness to sexual love is axiomatic. Nevertheless, even those holding the latter idea would find any proposal to add rituals, mantras, yoga, and extensive philosophical rationalizations far in excess of necessity. The former would hold that this is a sign of some kind of deep ambivalence to sexuality, indeed neuroticism. On the other hand, those who have come through Iskcon and traditional Vaishnavism and who have been deeply convinced that the celibate standard is the objective and the compulsory prerequisite to higher levels of spirituality, will find all these arguments, no matter how sophisticated, just sophistry, word juggler...

In the previous post , the question I was basically trying to answer was this : What is the relationship between the symbolic superstructure of a religion, i.e., its theology, ritual, etc., which I called “content,” and the essential religious experience? I guess devotees may be a little surprised by my approach. Basically, my idea is this: By using an empirical approach to our own tradition, i.e., by looking at our tradition objectively, what meaningful interpretations can we find? I base this on the following item of faith: Since the very name of our doctrine is acintya-bhedābheda , a cornerstone of which is the reality of the world, we must be ready to extract meaningful conclusions from phenomena. This will have three benefits: (1) It will give us a more mature attitude towards our own doctrines; (2) It will enrich our appreciation of our symbols; (3) It will increase comprehension of our concepts in certain circles. =============

Plus ça change, plus ça reste pareil. One thing I did not mention in speaking of the June McDaniel book, because it was not relevant then, is that I am quoted in it. The reason I mention it now is because now it has become relevant. June McDaniel interviewed me in Nabadwip back in 1984. Nitai introduced us, as she was a fellow student of his at the University of Chicago. Evidently, she did not find speaking with me particularly fruitful as she only quoted the one statement, in which I say, "In the Western system, people try to invent things for themselves. In India, we try to follow previous people, to do what they did and get it down properly, the way that it was done before." (Page 19) Maybe I was thinking of this verse: etāṁ sa āsthāya parātma-niṣṭhām adhyāsitāṁ pūrvatamair mahadbhiḥ ahaṁ tariṣyāmi duranta-pāraṁ tamo mukundāṅghri-niṣevayaiva “Fixed in faith in the Supreme Soul in whom dwelt the great souls of yore, I shall cross over the boundless ocean of darkne...

There are several questions left open here. When I was reading Kant and his critics, I could not help but be reminded of Walter Kaufmann's comments on the Gita, in which he objected to the overwhelming pre-eminence of duty for its own sake, excluding all other rewards, which he found a dry and empty approach to life. Kant also seems to think that if it doesn't hurt, if one doesn't find it a struggle to fight one's instincts in order to obey the categorical imperative of moral duty, then it is of no inherent value. Righteousness is its own reward. Kant does not hold out any transcendental joys, no heaven as compensation, but only a kind of sense of rational justification that comes to one who follows this impersonal categorical imperative. Neither does Kant think much of sentimental human motivation, i.e., love, as a rationale for moral action, for these things belong to the realm of the passions. Of course, the Upanishads, in the bhūma-vidyā section of Bṛhad-āra...