Jagat

kadā śrīmad-vṛndāvanam iha mṛṣā sneha-nigaḍaṁ samucchidya svānāṁ śaraṇam upayāsyāmi vikalaḥ | kvacit svāntaḥ-śalyoddharaṇam abhipaśyan na hi manāg api śraute vartmany akhila-vidusām anumate ||1.98|| When will I cut off the chains of false affection of my family and loved ones, and approach Vrindavan for shelter in this world? I see no other means for extracting the spike of suffering from my heart, not even by following the path of the Shrutis, accepted and taught by all the wise. Commentary Prabodhananda continues to speak of his desperation in worldly life. It feels like he is in the midst of a conflagration that burns in whichever direction he turns. The love my family and friends show towards me is false, he declares. After all, this is one of the fundamental realizations of the Upanishads. In particular I speak of this passage in the Bṛhad-āraṇyaka (2.4.5): Truly, it is not due to love of the husband that the husband is dear, but due to one's love of ...

nirvidya kṛtyādy-akhilāt kadāhaṁ cchittvā samastāś ca jagaty apekṣāḥ | praviśya vṛndāvanam atyasaṅgas tad-īśa-vārtābhir ahāni neṣye ||1.97|| When, losing all hope in the efficacy of all works, cutting off all expectations and responsibilities in the world, and entering Vrindavan with absolutely no attachments, will I pass my days in talk of Vrindavan's king and queen? Commentary As Prabodhananda comes closer to concluding his first century, he bounces back from his sphūrtis of Radha and Krishna's eternal erotic love games into the real-life situation of external consciousness. And so he makes this samutkaṇṭhā prayer of longing. samutkaṇṭhā nijābhīṣṭa-lābhāya guru-lubdhatā || "Longing" means a deep greed to attain that which one desires. (BRS 1.3.36) . One of the 64 bhakti-aṅgas described in BRS is called vijñapti , which basically means speaking or revealing one's mind to Krishna. This vijñapti then takes three forms: praying for som...

Crossposted from Vrindavan Today . sādho śaknoṣi no cet sakalam api haṭhāt svapna-kalpaṁ vihātuṁ tarhi tvaṁ dhyāya vṛndāvanam aniśam athopāsya vṛndāvaneśau | tan-nāmāny eva nityaṁ japa satatam atho tat kathāṁ saṁśṛṇuṣva śrīmad-vṛndāvana-sthān atha paricara bho bhojanācchādanādyaiḥ || O sadhu! If you cannot immediately abandon everything as if it were a dream, then meditate constantly on Vrindavan, even as you worship the Divine Couple of Vrindavan.   Do japa of their names without cessation, listen to talk of their pastimes, and serve the residents of Vrindavan with food, clothing and other gifts.  Commentary The strict renunciate view is the absolute commitment to a Reality distinct from that of the visible world. One gives up one's entire life as nothing more than an illusion, a dream. This awareness is called jñāna . ahaṁ cātmātmajāgāra-dārārtha-svajanādiṣu bhramāmi svapna-kalpeṣu mūḍhaḥ satya-dhiyā vibho I too am deluded in this way, O...

One of the verses that struck me when reading the Haṭha-yoga-pradīpikā was the following tatra vastu-dvayaṁ vakṣye durlabhaṁ yasya kasyacit | kṣīraṁ caikaṁ dvitīyaṁ tu nārī ca vaśavartinī || I will now tell you of two things that are very rare for anyone in this world. One is milk. The other is an cooperative woman. (HYP 3.84) I found the verse a little troublesome, first of all because milk does not seem all that hard to find, not like a spiritual partner for bhajan, and also because this word vaśa-vartinī seems to indicate a kind of patriarchal model of male-female relations, which I as a worshiper of the female deity, Radharani, i.e., as a worshiper of the Divine Feminine, Shakti, felt was philosophically incompatible. After all, Radharani is known as the one who controls Krishna through bhakti, indicating a primacy of the feminine. My position has always been that of the spiritual complementarity of the sexes, a position that is closer to the Shakta philosophy than to t...

I want to say something about the impression that people have that I am always talking about sex. Perhaps it is because I have been open about the subject in a way that others have not been that has created this impression. Women are ready to talk about misogyny, but fail to recognize that ambivalence and confusion about sexuality itself are an important contributing factor in misogyny, and a spiritually viable response is needed to assimilate sexuality into our culture of the sacred. There are many people who feel uncomfortable with any mention whatever of sexuality, and tell me to emphasize love. After all, our tradition has always hidden direct references to sex and dressed it up in Radha Krishna's "love dalliances" or whatever. I think that a little direct talk is not only useful but necessary. That does not make me a sex maniac or a lusty old womanizer. Indeed, most people in the modern  materialistic view of sexual liberation would find me a fusty conservative ...

Historically, is Sahajiyaism not more dependent on Orthodox Vaishnavism than the other way around? This is a good question and I don't know if I can properly answer it. I believe that universally, up until the present day, the major world religions have always had an extremely ambivalent attitude toward sexuality. There are good reasons for this, which need to be explored. In this, Hinduism is no exception. Despite the existence of a Tantrik subculture, the dominant Hindu ethos has been one geared towards either the K ā ma-ś ā stra of unadorned pleasure-seeking through sexuality, in which Woman is the principal instrument for achieving worldly happiness, or towards a misogynistic attitude in which Woman represents the principal danger to the achievement of spiritual beatitude or mokṣa . These are called, respectively, the pravṛtti and nivṛtti m ā rgas . Bhakti is, in my view, the middle course between these two paths. The Tantrik idea that sexuality can be accommodated to s...