Jagat

This is a photo of my friend Vishnu Panigrahi taken at the final rituals on the day of Swami Veda's jala samādhi. They were offering flowers to his body, which was about to be taken to Haridwar to be placed in the fast flowing Ganges in a place where the water was deep. Swamiji's akhara oversaw the rituals. Many people will be posting photos and videos, so I decided just to take pictures of some of the people who came. Not everybody, just the ones I recognized.  Here is my album from that day in 2015. There are other Rishikesh-related memories. FB memories July 17.   2017   One of my favorite songs. I heard this in the film Nīlācale Mahāprabhu , but the link has been lost. I did not post a translation the first time, so here it is.   ki rūpa herinu madhura mūrati pirīti rasera sāra| hena laẏa mane e tina bhūbane tulanā nāhi go tāra|| What beauty have I beheld, a form of sweetness, the essence of the taste of love It seems to me that this form has no equal anywher...

Contents of an Indian street cow’s stomach (Gomata Gau Seva Trust, 2016) What is this light above the water in the shape of an umbrella? It is not submerged even when the whole earth is submerged in water. Is it the eternal Brahman, enumerated in hundreds of statements of the Upanishads, that has taken the form of an umbrella to give shelter to those suffering from the threefold miseries? We have become perfect merely by seeing it, O Teacher of the Universe. O Janardana, and you are also glancing at it repeatedly. Although you are the personification of wonder, you look at it as though you also find it wonderful. FB Memories July 11 (2015)    2012 It has taken a long time, but on occasion I am finally hearing -- or imagining that I am hearing -- the voices of the writers of the Sanskrit texts. 2011 For Love to be realized, it must be experienced internally as emotion (bhava) and externally as reciprocation (prema). Thereafter Lord Vishnu replied:   The light in ...

Yesterday was Mauni Amavashya, or Silence Day. The ashram arranged a special program of meditation and related activities which included all the paid staff, including gardeners, cleaners and office workers. Since I am have gotten back on my daily schedule of about 4-5 hours of meditation, split up into four sessions, I thought this provided me with a good opportunity to go for "asana siddhi" which according to Swami Veda Bharati means being able to sit in one's meditative posture for 9 dandas or 216 minutes without moving. I almost made it and it looks within grasp. All in all, I sat for nine hours, which I don't think I have ever done before. My lower back has become quite strong over the years, but today it was groaning. My knees are surprisingly unaffected. I usually take a nap after lunch, and although it is customary to wake up after a midday nap, especially in winter, with a bit of a drag in the consciousness, I was for other reasons feeling a little down an...

Over the next two weeks, I will be giving my attention back to  Yoga-taraṅginī commentary to Gorakṣa-śataka  as this project needs to be completed, and all that is left to do is a final redaction of the text and translation, and writing an introduction. So I will try to communicate those portions that I think are important or which affected me as I was doing the work. I must confess that there has been a considerable change in lifestyles between the way I was living in Rishikesh at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama and the way I am right now in Vrindavan. The three months at SRSG were fairly intense. Most of that time I spent in at least verbal silence, although I still used the internet. But even in that I was far more disciplined than I am now, as I kept my personal computer internet free. Besides that, I regularly meditated three hours a day and did hatha-yoga on a regular basis, including many of the disciplines that are described in the book I was working on. Since coming bac...

There was a kirtan for Guru Purnima last night, but I went to my room and conked out early. Had good meditation this morning. Feel more normal after a disruptive few days. Hopefully it will mean improved work ethic. Silence is actually a good thing, but requires a bit of getting used to. One thing is that here in this ashram, people are used to other people doing a mauna-vrata, and they just ignore you. You become practically speaking invisible. Then, as I found out, when you finally do talk, they still ignore you! You realize that most of what you say is not really of any great significance -- to you or to others. Observing my own body is not something I have done very well in this lifetime. Even now, with the yoga, it feels like I haven't explored my own body very well. But with the Yoga Tarangini work, I have been zeroing in on at least the essential original hatha yoga practices, which require a lot of internalization focused on the body itself. That is really what hatha...

I am slowly coming out of silence. I don't really know if I still am or not. The actual vrata was to stay in silence until I finished a particular project, which is still not finished. So it feels a bit like an incomplete vrata and I will probably have to plunge again. It has been and is being a very interesting experience overall. I tried so many times to do a perfect vrata in my life, especially when I was younger. In ISKCON and as a babaji I started to do very strict Chaturmasyas on at least three occasions. Even eating plain kitcherie for weeks in yoga mudra and so on. But it never lasted to the fullest extent. Once, when I was a babaji in Nabadwip, I did a vrata in Agrahayan, the Katyayani vrata. This is in around 1984. I tried to keep it simple. I went at 2 a.m. every night to Porama Tala (Paurnamasi Tala) and meditated for two hours, chanting japa. It was only to be for a month. It was a very interesting experience, because Pora Ma is a very powerful Shakta and Tantric...

I just could not work today, so I decided that I had better get out of the ashram. I packed my kartals and RRSN and headed for the Ganges where I used to give classes, on the ghat near Sadhana Mandir. But it started raining. Having the cooped up consequences of nearly six weeks without going outside. The clouds were rushing towards the mountain, at first there was a hanging cloud dropping from the black and grey above, all of which surrounded the mountains across the Ganges with mist. The hanging cloud had broken away and was moving swiftly towards the mountain. At first it looked like she had hands outstretched towards it, and then the shape changed and it looked like she was kneeling in prayer, until she merged with the mists and rain. I went inside the Sadhana Mandir and it was 4.10, so I asked a woman in the meditation hall I could do kirtan for a while. She gave me permission and so I sang Bhaja Hunre Mana and Radha Ramana. Then I went out and talked about Radharani to a coup...