Jagat

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...

Someone was chastising me the other day that in order to attain the siddhi of the gopis one had to give up the puruṣābhimāna and think of oneself as a beautiful gopi maiden expert in the arts and dressed in the remnants of Radharani’s own wardrobe, with flowers in her hair, and so on. He is pleased by our prema for Him in one of the five rasas. But it requires a change in identity, from thinking you are this material body, to knowing that you are His lover, young friend, servant or parent. If you want to be His lover, you have to identify as a young and very attractive woman, expert in all the arts, witty, expert in word jugglery and thus equipped in all ways to bring Him pleasure. You cannot approach him, thinking you are an old man, and that the material illusory form of your partner is Radha. You cannot enter madhurya at all with a male form or identity. A beautiful picture indeed. And it seems so easy. Just like that, puruṣābhimāna disappears. Now what makes anyone  think ...

This is from a couple of old posts from Gaudiya Discussions. I made no changes. utpanna-ratayaḥ samyaṅ nairvighnyam anupāgatāḥ kṛṣṇa-sākṣāt-kṛtau yogyāḥ sādhakāḥ parikīrtitāḥ “ These devotees who have attained rati (or bhāva ), yet are still not completely free from obstacles, who are worthy of attaining a direct vision of the Lord, are known as sādhakas . ” ( Bhakti-rasām ṛ ta-sindhu 2.1.276) Bhaktivedanta Swami : “A person who has attained the stage of attraction for Krishna and who is not freed from the material impasse, but who has qualified himself to enter into the kingdom of God, is called sādhaka. Sādhaka means one who is cultivating devotion in Krishna consciousness.” (NOD, 203) Dhanurdhara Swami : “ Sādhaka refers to an advanced devotee, not just to any practitioner. Only one who has ecstatic love can inspire that love to arise in others. Therefore, in this context , Srila Rupa Goswami has defined sādhaka as a devotee on the platform of rati , or one who feel...

These are some notes on the word bhāva as it appears in the BRS and UN, compiled while I was working on Mādhurya-kādambinī . They were originally posted a few years ago on Gaudiya Discussions and the now defunct Wise Wisdoms site. Somewhat modified and updated here. prāyo dvividha evāyaṁ bhāvo dvividhānāṁ bhaktānāṁ dvividha-cid-vāsanā-sanātheṣu hṛdayeṣu sphuran dvividhāsvādyatvaṁ bhajate, ghana-rasa iva rasāla-panasekṣu-drākṣādiṣu praviṣṭaḥ pṛthak-pṛthaṅ-mādhuryavattvaṁ bhajate . When this bhāva , which is usually of these two types, enters into the hearts of the two kinds of devotees ( vaidha and rāgānugā ), which are ruled by two different kinds of transcendental desire, it is relished in two different ways. It can be compared to the water ( ghana-rasa ) that enters various kinds of fruit—mangoes, jackfruit, sugarcane or grapes—but takes on a different flavor in each of them. ( Mādhurya-kādambinī 7.4) The point being: Vishwanath seems to be saying, nay emphasizing...