Jagat

The guru-prakaraṇa continues in this anuccheda with the discussion of the dīkṣā-guru or mantra-guru , , emphasizing his singularity. This has become something of a difficult issue. It should be noted that everyone involved in the writing and editing this translation and commentary originally took initiation from one Vaishnava guru and then made a change to another, which appears to be inappropriate in keeping with Sri Jiva Goswami's verdict in this anuccheda . Whether our reasons for doing so are valid or not may be a matter of debate, but I will attempt a brief explanation of my own (Jagat's) position here. In this anuccheda , Sri Jiva Prabhu quotes the verse as the only valid reason for giving up the mantra-guru , avaiṣṇavopadiṣṭena mantreṇa nirayaṁ vrajet punaś ca vidhinā samyag grāhyed vaiṣṇavād guroḥ One goes to hell by receiving a mantra from a guru who is not a Vaiṣṇava. Such a person should again accept a mantra from a Vaiṣṇava guru, in con...

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 ....