Jagat

Prema Mandir, now the number one attraction in Vrindavan. I wrote the following article at the request of Steve Rosen , the editor of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies , for an issue about tirthas, so I tried to distinguish Braj from other tirthas in India. I have written a lot about Vrindavan over the past decade and it was something of a task to extract the essence of my experience of Vrindavan and express it in the present moment. I will publish the article on this blog in three parts. Part I of this three part series. [Introduction, Places of Pilgrimage: Tirtha, Kshetra and Dham, Vaishnava criticisms of tīrtha-yātrā, Braj/Vrindavan is a dhāma] Part II of this three part series. [How a Gaudiya Vaishnava performs pilgrimage to the Dham, The eternal glory of residence in the Dham] Part III : Sattva-guṇa and Nirguṇa, Globalization and the Dham, Can a culture truly be translated? Introduction The town of Vrindavan, now a part of the municipality of Mathura-Vrindavan , ...

Satyaraj Prabhu asked me to write about Vrindavan as a tirtha for the upcoming edition of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies. I have written so much over the years, you would think that I had some kind of clear idea of what I want to say. I have been spending my time looking over the old material and trying to reduce it all to around 5000 words and to make a coherent presentation. The problem is, as always, what do I want to say? What is my “big” realization of the moment? Or the inspiration that guides my understanding of the Dham? Well, first of all I think it is necessary to distinguish the tirtha from Dham. Tirtha is a place you visit, the Dham is a place you stay. I think that needs to be narrowed down a bit more. Dham includes tirtha, but tirtha does not include Dham. A tirtha is usually primarily about expiating sins, one's own or those of one's forefathers. Its primary goal is mukti, whereas the Dham is about bhakti and enhancing one's devotion to Krishna. Resid...

A couple of decades ago I worked for Raoul Ramdas Goff of Mandala Press translating. Ramdas is a disciple of Srila Bhakti Pramode Puri Maharaj , the founder of the Gopinath Gaudiya Math , which is now headed by Sripad Bhakti Bibudha Bodhayan Maharaj . My relationship with Mandala came to a sudden end when the company went through a period of financial difficulty and so many of the projects that I worked on never found their way to the printing presses. One of those projects, which was in an advanced state of completion, started out as a translation of Sri Kshetra by Sundarananda Vidyavinoda, but since Sundarananda's book was written near the end of the pre-Independence period (pre-1947) a lot of the information was out of date and required considerable supplementary research. We prepared maps and so on, but needed photography and I felt I needed to do some on the spot research. My relationship with Mandala was severed before that took place and the project was left in limbo. S...

I just want to say that as I slowly start to get deeper into Bhakti Sandarbha (I reached Anuccheda 10 today), I am gaining even more appreciation for Satya Narayan Dasji, not only of his understanding of the Sanskrit text, but his commentaries. These, I feel, are getting better as we go through the Sandarbhas , and I am sure that the Priti Sandarbha will truly be the crown jewel, the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. In the meantime, we follow Jiva Goswami's path through these six books, where we have just now arrived at the abhidheya , bhakti . In a sense you could say that the other four books were just preparations for this. The actual journey really starts with Bhakti Sandarbha . Jiva stated in the very beginning that you should know what to do now that you have gone through the first four books (and in fact, just by going through them, you already have), but now you are going to stop looking so much at the external tattvas and start to consider what is going on ins...