Jagat

A few days ago, a group of devotees connected to Jiva got the following letter: Radhe Radhe to all devotees. Yesterday I finally got around to printing out the translation by Jagatji that Vilasaji had sent (below). However, I noticed that the translation of a key verse does not agree with me at all, even though the translation appears literally correct. The translation asserts that the gopis are 'sullied by the sin of adultery'. The gopis are not adulterous at all; their behavior only *seems so*. I reproduce Babaji's translation below Jagatji's for comparison. Jagatji's translation: kvemāḥ striyo vana-carīr vyabhicāra-duṣṭāḥ kṛṣṇe kva caiṣa paramātmani rūḍha-bhāvaḥ nanv īśvaro ’nubhajato’viduṣo’pi sākṣāc chreyas tanoty agada-rāja ivopayuktaḥ Contrast these forest-dwelling women, who have been sullied by the sin of adultery, with this ascended stage of love for the Supreme Soul, Krishna. Surely God brings the most direct auspicious benefit to those who worship him c...

I was reflecting on my Gopala Champu class for which I had not prepared myself properly and wrote: The sin of a translator, of which I am often guilty, is to start translating before becoming the original.   How do you become the original? Samadhi. By which I mean you should at least completely forget the language of arrival for as long as it takes to get to the end of the passage you are translating. In other words, not to translate. To get to the point of not translating. I don't particularly like the "mysterious" style. I am more of a verbose and boring explainer. So I began to examine what provoked those thoughts. In my class, I explain the passage word by word, so I am translating right from the very beginning. If I haven't understood the passage properly before I start that process, then in the public situation I will only produce an unclear sense, or one that deviates from the purpose of the passage. We were doing GC 1.1.17 and tomorrow we will have to...

The evolution of religious ideas As I return to this theme of svakīyā-parakīyā and the research work I did while doing my doctoral dissertation in connection with the current work on Kṛṣṇa-sandarbha , some thoughts have been coming to me about the general thrust of my own thought about the history of religions and what I see as being the purpose of my own intellectual quest in this regard. Krishna consciousness, like any other thought system, is based in positive principles that are universal and should be exportable to other religions and ideologies. In other words, they are translatable. Now in order to translate religious experience from one linguistic and symbolic conversation, often one that has been going on for thousands of years, first one must discover what that experience is, not just by looking at the entire complex in isolation, but also by looking at the universal experience of humanity. This is the logic behind the study of comparative religion, just as it is wi...

This article was published in Journal of Vaishnava Studies. Details not available. It was also on Gaudiya Discussions, but I did not have a copy on the blog. So here it is for the record. I have just recorded myself singing the Śikṣāṣṭakam and you can see it on YouTube . I have embedded the video at the end of this document. This article is fairly long for a blog, but I have not split it up. Notes are at the end, but there are no internal links.  No short account of Krishna Chaitanya’s life fails to note something like, “Chaitanya only left eight verses by which we can know his belief system.” But the authorship of even these verses has been cast into some doubt by scholars on the basis of statements by Karnapur and others, who declare unequivocally that Chaitanya wrote nothing at all. Over time, a number of a number of works have been attributed to Chaitanya, but few of these claims are credible. Even the most consistently attributed text, the Radha-prema-rasāyana-stotram ,...

I have started making video lectures on the Manaḥ-śikṣā by Raghunath Das Goswami. These are being posted on my YouTube channel . I found this translation on the internet and made a few changes.   Manaḥ-śikṣā by Raghunath Das Goswami gurau goṣṭhe goṣṭhālayiṣu sujane bhū-sura-gaṇe sva-mantre śrī-nāmni vraja-nava-yuva-dvandva-smaraṇe sadā dambhaṁ hitvā kuru ratim apūrvām atitarāṁ aye svāntar bhrātaś caṭubhir abhiyāce dhṛta-padaḥ ||1|| O mind, I grasp your feet and beg you with sweet words: Please cast away all hypocrisy and develop intense, unprecedented love for the spiritual master, Vrajabhumi, the people of Vraja, the Vaishnavas, the brahmins, your initiation mantra, the holy name, and in remembering the fresh young couple of Vraja, Radha and Krishna. na dharmaṁ nādharmaṁ śruti-gaṇa-niruktaṁ kila kuru vraje rādhā-kṛṣṇa-pracura-paricaryām iha tanu | śacī-sūnuṁ nandīśvara-pati-sutatve guru-varaṁ mukunda-preṣṭhatve smara param ajasraṁ nanu manaḥ ||2|| O mind, don’t concern y...

Go to Part I stavakita-maṇi-dāmnā preyasā gumphitātyad- bhuta-sulalita-veṇī-preyasī-kḷpta-cūḍau | mitha udayad-akhaṇḍa-prema-rajjū-vibaddhau smara nibhṛta-nikuñje rādhikā-kṛṣṇa-candrau ||14|| Flower-clusters dangle from both sides of Sri Yugala Kishor’s jewel-ornamented hair, but still Keli Chand Krishna wants to decorate Rai’s wonderful veni, and she begins to arrange his chura! With every second they are becoming more and more bound within the limitless ropes of prema! Oh my mind! Just meditate on Radha and Krishna within the hidden nikunjas! jaghana-lulita-veṇī-visphurad-barha-cūḍau kanaka-rucira-cūḍā-kaṅkaṇa-dvandva-pāṇī | vilasad-aruṇa-rociḥ-pīta-kauṣeya-vāsau smara nibhṛta-nikuñje rādhikā-kṛṣṇa-candrau ||15|| When Rai Kishori’s veni is braided, it dangles over her buttocks; Krishna’s peacock-feathered crown is captivating. The Divine Couple both wear bangles and bracelets on their wrists. Radha’s silken undergarment is red and Krishna wears his pitambara. Oh my m...

This prayer is sometimes attributed to Rupa Goswami, but I am almost completely convinced that it is by Prabodhananda Saraswati, whose mood seems to pervade it. This 32-verse rasika poem was introduced to me by my Godbrother Sashanka Shekhar Balniyogi, Doctor Babu as we called him. He published a Bengali translation by Dina Sharan Das Babaji on a flimsy sheet of paper, which I carried around with me for a long time. The rasika mood is very intense, and I believe that Doctor Babu himself was a closet Sahajiya who meditated on this poem at the appropriate moment.  nivṛttānupayogitvāt . May I suggest the same to my friends. Just repeat the refrain:  smara nibhṛta-nikuñje rādhikā-kṛṣṇa-candrau ! "Oh my mind! Just meditate on Radha and Krishna within the hidden nikunjas!" May their lilas bless you all. This is a revised version of Gadadhar Pran's translation. Nikunja-rahasya-stava nava-lalita-vayaskau nūtna-lāvaṇya-puñjau nava-rasa-cala-cittau nūtana-prema-vṛtta...