Jagat

He is the best of the saintly who is compassionate to all, inimical towards no one, and forbearing. Truth is his very essence, and as such he is faultless, equipoised, and works for the welfare of all. His awareness is never overcome by desire, his senses are subdued, and his heart is soft.

So I don't believe in gurus / who fall whole from the sky. / Gurus are forged in the furnace / like every other finished thing. //

Krishna always tells Radha that he is merely a servant of the god of love, who is the real king of Vrindavan. And who are we? Servants of the goddess of love, the real queen of Vrindavan. How, indeed, will Love be served? Furthermore, the Guru of Vrindavan is a woman, Paurnamasi, who also serves Love and teaches God Himself service to Love. Strange, complex symbols. (12 years ago)

Kaladhari Ashram, Vrindavan anādau saṁsāre kati naraka-bhogā na vihitāḥ kiyanto brahmendrādy-atula-sukha-bhogāś ca nyakkṛtāḥ | tadāsminn ekasmin vapuṣi sukha-duḥkhe na gaṇayan sadaiva śrī-vṛndāvanam akhila-sāraṁ bhaja sakhe || In this beginningless world of repeated birth and death, how often have you not been condemned to suffer hell? And how many times have you not relished pleasures that eclipse even those of Brahma, Indra and the other gods? So, my friend, for just this one lifetime, give up all consideration of happiness or distress, and forever worship Sri Vrindavan, the essence of all things. This verse echoes an earlier one, " Give up chewing the already chewed (2.14) ." In  the previous verse , we traced the concept of Nature as manifest in Vrindavan, i.e., Vrindavan as archetypal Nature, seen as existing in the service of God, and thereby itself partaking of the sacred. The essence of the Vaishnava view is that of the non-differe...

It also has something to do with brevity. In our day, wisdom has to be Twitter length. Madanmohan Dasji wrote: Well, as for that, I noticed that when I post some verse or other, people only 'like' it if it is posted with an illustration; then I wonder if it was the picture or the writing that was 'liked". Maybe since the introduction of film and TV and ubiquitous screens in every home, we have lost, to some degree, the capacity to visualize in the mind, which is necessary in reading and hearing, and its real pleasure. Mathura Dasji wrote: The visual arts or written/spoken word coupled with sound or music is the most powerful of art forms, and that is why TV, cinema, drama and theatre are so popular. More senses are involved and hence for the majority of people (the masses) these art forms thrive. That also holds for spiritual music such as kirtan, bhajans and other forms of classical Indian music, and is why it is so important to understand aesthetics and t...

My problems in Krishna consciousness arose out of the mostly literal interpretations given to the shastras by the devotees. There is a huge caveat in the Bhagavatam about everything that is said in that text: Krishna favors indirect speech.

I can't help but get the feeling that a lot of people are going, "What on earth is he on about? What do Freud and Jung and all the rest of it have to do with Krishna consciousness? Didn't our acharyas already give us a foolproof and time-tested method for attaining Krishna consciousness? What does all this have to do with that?"

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...

In the viṣkambhaka (or introductory interlude) of Dāna-keli-kaumudī , Vrinda Devi speaks a couple of verses in glorification of Radha. She starts out with an expression of humility, anālocya vrīḍāṁ yam iha bahu mene bahu-tṛṇaṁ tyajann īrṣāpannāṁ madhuripur abhīṣṭām api ramām | janaḥ so’yaṁ yasyāḥ śrayati na hi dāsye’py avasaraṁ samarthas tāṁ rādhāṁ bhavati bhuvi kaḥ ślāghitum api || , Even though to give me honor, the enemy of Madhu shamelessly abandoned the Lakshmi Devi he cherishes, like nothing more than so much grass, despite her jealousy, I have never had the opportunity to serve Radha. Who then on this earth can possibly praise her adequately? (DKK 11) Vrinda Devi appears to be refering to her marriage to Shalagram in the form of Tulasi Devi, with whom she is identified. Here, though, she shows that like Radha's other sakhis, despite their own personal glorious attainments, she has put aside any such claims in order to give recognition to Radha’s vast superiority...

A lot of what I write on this blog comes out of concern from seeing young devotee couples who are conflicted about their spiritual endeavors and their material engagements, especially their family relationships. The family can become a huge and pretty meaningless burden if the basis of it, namely the loving attraction between husband and wife, is felt to be outside the realm of direct sāsaṅga, svarūpa-siddha bhakti , which is really the ideal kind of practice for the sādhaka . A busy working person has so many obligations, work, family, outside interests, that it becomes difficult to find a place for all the bhakti aṅgas . For married couples with children, what to speak of bhajana , even finding time for personal intimacy or making love often becomes difficult, and for many, it loses a lot of its charm because of that--it is hurried, obligatory, unsatisfying, even exhausting. It loses a lot of its meaning, even though we instinctively know that it is necessary in order to anch...