Jagat

The first thing everyone asks is, "Does he belong to my club?" This is because in the first stage of sadha sanga one is busy creating his sadhaka deha, and in order to do so, he needs models to follow. A model has an external and an internal side. In the first stage, one focuses on the externals primarily to forge the identity of the sadhaka deha. This means differentiating from those who are not "in my club." The Vrindavan sampradayas came to the conclusion that "as long as you are a member of this club of clubs, i.e., you just belong to one of the clubs and you can join the club of clubs." The irony is that to establish a club you must differentiate yourself. By differentiating yourself, you become not  a part of the club. Like Gaudiya Math to Goswamis and Babajis, like Iskcon to Gaudiya Math. And so on. It usually takes a few generations to start seeing that the differences are not as important as the common elements. (FB  From six years ago)

So my spare time is being spent contemplating the question of the phenomenon of sectarianism, and thinking about remedies. Whether there is a remedy for the disease of sampradāya . Yet without  sampradāya  we have no history. And in fact, it is not untrue to say that it is through  sampradāya  that we are meant to arise above  sampradāya . No one can be without an identity, but ultimate love includes the capacity to transcend identities to find oneness everywhere. And that is really the fruit of prema , without which prema has little meaning. In other words you have to be able to find something universally true in your symbol system for you to be able to communicate with the universe, to commune with ultimate reality. So, the story I have been sitting on at Vrindavan Today for the past month or more is that the Radhavallabhi and Gaudiya rivalry is threatening to flare up again in the courts. Some disciples of the Radha Vallabha sect have filed a case against ...

The four sampradayas. P.C. " My Krishna Our Krishna ." The principle of Guru-tattva is a cornerstone of the Hindu, and certainly of the Vaishnava, tradition. Rupa Goswami's enumeration of the 64 limbs of bhakti begins with taking shelter of a guru, followed by learning about Krishna from him and then taking initiation: guru-padāśrayas tasmāt kṛṣṇa-dīkṣādi-śikṣaṇam viśrambhena guroḥ sevā sādhu-vartmānuvartanam "First take shelter of a spiritual master, then take initiation in the Krishna mantra and instruction about Krishna from him. Then serve the spiritual master with confidence and trust and follow the path established by previous saints." (BRS 1.2.74) It is not our purpose here to argue for the necessity of taking a guru, which I assume every one of my readers will accept. Bhaktivinoda Thakur himself writes on the subject often, and never deviates from the injunctions of the Upaniṣads, Gīt ā   or Bh ā gavatam in this matter. In Daśa-mūla, o r th...

It is not altogether surprising that many of those in the West who have come into contact with the Krishna consciousness movement have undertaken research into Bhaktivinoda Thakur, in great part inspired by this autobiography. Most notably, Shukavak N. Das broke the ground in 1999 with his seminal work, A Hindu Encounter with Modernity . Shukavak noted the effect the discovery of this work had on him as a university student trying to reconcile the worlds of his spiritual path and the empirical ethos of scholarship. "… [my] book is about how Chaitanya Vaishnavism began to change under [Bhaktivinoda Thakur's] influence as a modern reformer. But even more importantly, it is about my struggle as a Western devotee to enter the world of Hindu devotionalism and at the same time maintain relevance in the modern West. Hindu Encounter with Modernity was the completion of my spiritual, intellectual, and emotional conversion, my normalization, into this world of Hindu devotion, and Sv...