Jagat

Thoughts after morning meditation. I am trying to attain asana siddhi, which means sitting for 216 minutes without moving - no stretching, twitching, itching, scratching. What is interesting about asana siddhi is that you can't achieve it without pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. But pranayama, etc., really only start after one has attained asana siddhi. Question: Doesn't Vipassana do it? Jagadananda Das : All meditation systems require sitting still. But Vaishnava meditation is meditation on Krishna mantra, Krishna rupa, Krishna lila, and on the world of prema. Prabhupada disciple : In this age Lord Caitanya gave the process of chanting Hare Krishna as the only and proper way quick spiritual advancement. Much better use of 216 minutes than trying to attain asana siddhi. Jagadananda Das : Thank you for your input. Now my question to those who talk like this is, what is the goal of chanting? Is one meant to concentrate on the Holy Name? Does chant...

[ I   am happy to have finally received a copy of the  Yoga-taraṅgiṇī , which has been published by Motilal Banarsidass with the Himalayan Yoga Publications Trust. When I was writing the introduction, I started also to describe the adventure that working on this text represented, and became quite bogged down as the self-examination and other external factors made it seem impossible to conclude. Finally, I just gave up on the idea and handed in the manuscript without this part of the introduction. This is the first part, which discusses the apparent conflict between the bhakti and yoga paths. ] In the SRSG library and research center. Bhakti and Yoga I often wonder about the relationship of a translation to the original text. The famous Italian saying that "to translate is to betray" indicates that any translation is inevitably an interpretation of some kind. A third person enters between the speaker and his audience, and neither the third person nor the audience wer...

Here I go again. Stop me if you have heard all this before. I heard through a grapevine that a particular GM sannyasi said that lovemaking between devotees is not one of the 64 angas of devotion, and so could never be considered a valid practice for Gaudiya Vaishnavas. I hold that loving intimacy with another devotee can indeed be considered an important anga of bhakti in the cultivation of madhura rasa. Sadhu-sanga is a bhakti anga, and touching the devotee is an element of sadhu-sanga. But it is not the touching in itself, it is the accompanying feelings of love. Bhakti is of two kinds, that practiced externally and that practiced internally. The former is supposed to lead to the latter. Bhakti means feeling, cultivating feeling. If making physical love did not have the potential to create and aid in the cultivation of such feeling, I would say, OK, you are right, it has no possible role in bhakti yoga. But the very concept of madhura rasa depends on the presumption that it does. Eve...