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...

Very few languages in the world still have the dual number, like Sanskrit. This helps account for the large size of Sanskrit's conjugations and declensions, but it has a certain logic that has provoked a bit of thought in me about relationships. It seems that by insisting on a dual number, Sanskrit is giving a great deal of importance to the one-on-one relationship. It is true that one is usually different when by oneself, in the company of one other person, particularly one with whom one has an intimate relationship, or in a crowd. Prema, which is both the sādhana (means) and the sādhya (end) of spiritual life, is to be experienced on all these three levels of relationship. The singular Love of the personal God comes in the "singular." One might think that since there is a duality ( bheda ) between the individual and the Supreme Other, this is a "dual" relationship. This is philosophically true and is the main reason that we have proposed the singula...