Jagat

I was astonished recently to find myself debating with many devotees over what seemed to me to be a resistance to mañjarī-bhāva . I felt obliged to ask why these devotees, most of whom were from Iskcon, felt it necessary to argue that it was not necessary to want to be Radha's dasi, but could be whatever they liked, why they did not try to figure out why that was the desired goal of all our acharyas with practically no exception? If you follow a guru, you partake of his mood. And if the guru has a different mood from the one you seek, then why are you with that guru? If you want to be a lawyer, you go to law school, not medical college, is it not? One expects the guru to be of the same mood ( svajātīyāśaya ), otherwise what is the point of a guru? And if you don't know what your guru's mood is, then what do you follow? The line of grace is in getting the special prize that is the heart of the guru. This is why I believe that paramparā is more than just śikṣā ....

I need to be doing more Harinam sankirtan and publicly talking about bhakti. For twenty years I have been mucking about on the internet. To what avail? When I started my blog, it was really to avoid public forums like Facebook. Of course, at that time I had just gone through the whole Gaudiya Discussions fiasco, when the private correspondence I was having on that site was hacked and a romantic relationship with another member was revealed. It was also made clear and public at that time that my thoughts on Krishna consciousness tended to the Sahajiya side. Many people on Gaudiya Discussions felt personally deceived by me and the entire site crashed and everyone went their own way. For a short time -- but it only takes a few moments for epiphanies to take place -- GD was something of a "magic place" where discussions were hot but polite, where information was shared and everyone was curious and eager to know, where much poetry was written, some original, some translation....

Your theory is irrelevant, in my view, where it does not offer a solution to the problem of sustainability in relationships. You insist that this is achieved through incorporating yoga in the routine, but I disagree that it needs even consideration at this stage of the commitment of two bhaktas. Body is not the first priority in our tradition. Let me say that I think that this  sādhana  is at least potentially a solution to the sustainability of relationships. Prema Prayojan Dasji's model of  sādhana  in a couple, i.e. where the husband and wife participate as companions in bhajan of Radha and Krishna, is pretty much right on. I certainly don't think that any relationship can be sustainable if there is not a third point to the triangle , which is the Sacred, which in our case as Vaishnavas means Radha and Krishna. Without that external focus of the Divine Ideal, how can there be sustainability? Even the Catholics say the family that prays together stays...

I get regular mailings from the Pure Bhakti website of Narayan Maharaj's sangha. The last few days have been full of messages citing Narayan Maharaj's warnings about Ananta Das Baba. Today was the bouquet, as we say in French, as the headlined audio file was "Satsvarupa Goswami confirms Srila Narayan Maharaja saved him and others from Ananta Das Babaji."

I recently posted a review of Universalist Radha-Krishnaism , which led to personal discussions with the author and others. Without divulging the content of those discussions, I would like to share some thoughts. It seems to me that one of the purposes of religion is community creation. For many sociologists and anthropologists, of course, that is the primary purpose of religion. It has now become the habit of those who are individualists to say they seek “spirituality” and make a strong distinction between the social forms of religiosity and the personal. I believe this is a false dichotomy, as society is made up of individuals, and a society of strong individuals is a strong society. But all societies need commonalities, otherwise there is no community. We should perhaps distinguish between society, with which an individual may have only tenuous identification, and community, where such identifications are much stronger. Society is larger, community more intimate. One finds on...

mugdhaṁ māṁ nigadantu nīti-nipuṇā bhrāntaṁ muhur vaidikāḥ mandaṁ bāndhava-sañcayā jaḍa-dhiyaṁ muktādarāḥ sodarāḥ | unmattaṁ dhanino viveka-caturāḥ kāmaṁ mahā-dāmbhikaṁ moktuṁ na kṣamate manāg api mano govinda-pāda-spṛhām || Let the sharp moralist accuse me of being illusioned; the experts in Vedic ritual may slander me as misled, friends and relatives may call me lazy and irresponsible, while my brothers, no longer respectful or affectionate, call me a fool. I don't mind. The wealthy mammonites will point me out as mad, and learned philosophers assert that I am much too proud. Still, my mind does not budge an inch from its determination to serve Govinda's lotus feet. ( Pady ā vali 81, M ā dhavasya ) Actually, I don't think it is just "I don't mind." It is a kind of relish. We Hare Krishnas have been thumbing our nose at the Establishment since 1966. And they called us irresponsible and told us to get jobs, or to be good Christians, or philoso...