Jagat

श्रीमधुसूदनसरस्वतीपादानां गूढार्थदीपिका टीका अत्युपकारिणीति मन्ये । सा अतितरां विस्तृता पाण्डित्यपूर्णा गूढार्थप्रकाशिनी च । मम चिरदिनं तत्पिपठिषा वरीवर्तते । तस्माद् इदानीं गम्भीरानन्दस्वामीपादानां आंग्लानुवादं अवलम्ब्य अग्रेसर्तुमिच्छा वर्तते । आशासे तत् सर्वेषां संमतं । हरिः ॐ तत् सत्॥ We recently finished the fourth chapter in our daily Gita class that I am giving on Zoom. Up until now, we have been reading the Gita with three Sanskrit commentaries, those of  Sridhara, Vishwanatha and Baladeva. Occasionally we turned to Madhusudana Saraswati's Gūḍhārtha-dīpikā  for insight, but with the above message, I announced that beginning with the fifth chapter, we would read Madhusudan in his entirety as well.  Though I have long recognized the justifiable reputation of Madhusudana's commentary, we are generally not encouraged to read him because he is a known opponent of Vyasa Tirtha, the accarya of the Madhva line and senior contemporary of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. He is, ergo, ...

We appear to still be on the Gurukula issue here in 2016. I am rather pleased with that reflection. Weather snippets -- exhaustion from the hot season. A discussion on the connection of yoga to the bhakti-yoga path: pravartaka - sādhaka - siddha , a major subject of discussion in the early period of this blog and very important matter indeed for my way of understanding the spiritual path. A lot of articles. FB Memories May 24.

In the previous post, Vishwanath Chakravarti stated that the word yoga in Gītā 2.40 refers to svarūpa-siddhā bhakti because only such devotion is transcendental to the guṇas . Jñāna and karma are within the guṇas and therefore do not fulfill the conditions of yoga that the verse itself promises: through yoga one will transcend the guṇas . He looks at the totality of yoga with bhakti as its culmination. Thus there is a sequence or progression in the process leading to that bhakti. Śrīdhara and other commentaries have defined yoga here as bhagavad-arpita-karma , and it is precisely this that Vishwanath finds to be inadequate. This is also the definition given by commentaries on the īśvara-praṇidhāna of the Yoga-sūtras . But bhakti is not subordinate to yoga, it is the fruition of yoga; it is the complete manifestation of yoga. Now we look at Vishwanath's commentary to 2.41 where he continues his argument:

So I was thinking about Vishwanath Chakravarti's commentary to 2.40-41. He makes a bold statement that the word yoga (in buddhir yoge tv imāṁ śr̥ṇu ) means bhakti-yoga , and he continues this argument in the following verse when explaining vyavasāyātmikā buddhi . Now everybody else takes yoga to mean karma-yoga , so is Vishwanath's interpretation strained ( kaṣṭa-kalpanā )? Let's look at it...

So in my last post, I spoke a little of my own experience on the Sahajiya path and how I found that the experiment as I had been conducting it had been deemed a failure. I was contemplating whether one should be pessimistic about my philosophical understanding, in view of the seeming rarity of success. In actual fact, what is happening, my friends, is that we are giving the juices time to ferment. I really do not know what the outcome of this experiment will be, because whatever happens, the repercussions of it will remain. In other words, very strong samskaras were created in the last ten years, and I really don't think it will be possible for me in the long run to accept the orthodox position, as expressed to me by a friend: This world is a shadow of the spiritual world and so resemblances exist in form....but not in substance. Male and female forms exist both here and there, so there is a slight resemblance of form. However the substance is entirely different. Visvanath Cakr...

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...

Yoga takes one only as far as kaivalya , which is the perfection of the singular, going "solo." All other yoga systems, including bhakti , also pass through kaivalya , in the sense that they are the establishment, as far as is possible, of the self in the self, without which relationship is meaningless. But in the relishing of bhakti-rasa , it is indeed only a stage: both the work of vidhi-bhakti and yoga are elements of the pravartaka stage or preliminary stage of practice in rasika-bhakti . This is because in yoga, the culture of love is restricted to the yamas and niyamas and some other general internalizing processes, whereas in bhakti, love is the culmination, both the means and the end. In other words, in yoga, love is one of the means, and a subordinate one at that, but in bhakti, love is the one and only all consuming goal. Nevertheless, the gains of yoga, both as a psychological force (as expounded on in the Yoga-sutra ) and as a psycho-physical force (fro...

In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna describes the joy that a devotee feels in the execution of devotional service. Those who emphasize the jnana, karma and yoga practices described in the Gita have no understanding of how the bhakta experiences such joy in his love for the Lord and the association of other devotees. mac-citt ā mad-gata-pr ā ṇ ā bodhayanta ḥ parasparam | kathayanta ś ca m ā ṁ  nitya ṁ tu ṣyanti ca ramanti ca || Their minds fixed on me, their lives totally dedicated to me, they spend their time in explaining the path of devotion to one another. Speaking of me constantly, they feel intense delight and pleasure. [Gita 10.9] The Bhagavata Purana also describes the joy the devotee feels in the company of other devotees. satāṁ prasangāt mama vīrya-saṁvido bhavanti hṛt-karṇa-rasāyanāḥ kathāḥ taj-joṣaṇād āśv apavarga-vartmani śraddhā ratir bhaktir anukramiṣyati If you have the good fortune to be in the company of devotees, you will hear of my glorie...

Disconnect to reconnect. Radha and Krishna are my device. But there is a little recharging necessary. The recharge comes itself from the device, but it needs to be rebooted through realization, understanding, sadhana, deep penetration, application in other dimensions, etc. But the basic premise is the same. The thing about religion is that it is full of symbolic content that requires lengthy contemplation. These contents arise from the depths of the collective unconscious through the medium of the extraordinary spiritually aware individuals who plunged those depths. There is little way to prove the validity of their value objectively. Of course, the psychological, social, or even physical benefits of religion have been shown to some extent through various studies, but to the rational people who see the negative consequences of religious intolerance, etc., these do not hold much weight. The balance shifts to the negative side and the blame is given to irrationality. After al...

There has been a heat wave in most of Northern India with new record temperatures being set for May. The papers announced 46C the other day and two deaths attributed to the weather in Mathura district. I will be honest and tell you that other than buying fruit and vegetables in the evening, I have not been out of the house at all. I am enjoying my bhajan and writing so much that I find it hard to leave my station. Just now I was thinking, though, that Vikram yoga probably has it wrong with their heat it up and sweat it up yoga. I won't criticize because I really don't know who it's for or what it is attempting to accomplish. But as the heat sinks deeper and deeper into the days, it comes to me that Vikram is right about this: yoga was indeed born in the heat. Most of the Western people who come to India come in the cool season and run away when the weather starts to bear down. Those who stay are hiding behind fans and coolers and A/C if you can afford it...

Just as I finished writing about my renewed sense of purpose about teaching about the role of sexuality on the bhakti path, I came across an article posted by Abhaya Mudra Dasi on the Sampradaya Sun. Abhaya Mudra is a Bulgarian disciple of Suhotra Swami who has a jyotish website with Prabhupada disciple Patita Pavan Das. At first view, her article, Sex and Spirituality , is a defense of standard ISKCON teaching on sexuality, though it adds a few interesting twists. I have personally come to the conclusion that even though mainstream Western devotees still following ISKCON and the Gaudiya Math start out deeply committed to a doctrine that marginalizes sexuality, as the years go by, a great number of them become frustrated by double standards and hypocrisy that seem endemic in the movement. The Western Krishna consciousness movement has no bigger " shadow " than sexuality. Though child abuse scandals have rocked ISKCON and repeated "falldowns" or sexual peccadill...

In the last two posts I spoke about meditation and sitting. I added a link at the end of the sitting post to another older one that had the same subject but gave a little more detail about the different meditation sitting postures, which you can check out. Now I must continue this little discourse with a few words about breathing. As I may already have said, the elaboration of prāṇāyāma in haṭha-yoga is not directly connected to the aṣṭāṅga-yoga system. Any attempts to introduce this elaboration of breathing exercises into the aṣṭāṅga - or rāja-yoga process of meditation is not of great interest to us, though a knowledge thereof may have some beneficial aspects in the service of meditation and general physical health. Physical health as taught by haṭha-yoga is entirely intended to serve the purpose of mental control and single-pointedness on the object of concentration. Breath actually serves as an intermediate point of concentration and a vehicle for channeling the mind towar...

My Friday night Gita classes have finally arrived at the sixth chapter. This being a yoga ashram, people are generally most interested in what this chapter, known variously as dhyāna-yoga (the most authentic name, it seems, as it is given by Shankara and Sridhara) or abhyāsa-yoga . I have also seen it called ātma-saṁyama-yoga (based on 4.27ff, where the first descriptions of aṣṭāṅga-yoga are given). Madhusudana calls it adhyātma-yoga . Since this chapter's topics parallel most closely what is found in Patanjali, it has a great deal of appeal, and always did for me also when I first contacted the Gita. My first lecture was last Friday, and it was mostly spent discussing the last verse of chapter 5 and the first 3 of chapter 6. The use of the word yoga in the Gita is quite different from the way people generally understand it these days. Tilak has gone to some pains to show that the primary meaning is "stratagem" or "device." Certainly "means" ha...

I am still writing my posts on Na Hanyate , which are backdated to when I first started working on it at June 19. At any rate, quite coincidentally, I came across the following terse statement in Bhojaraja's commentary to YS, given in the context of defining yoga in 1.1: puṁ-prak ṛ tyor viyogo’pi yogaḥ . The intention here is, "Separation between the conscious self and its attachment to matter is also yoga ." (Swami Veda's translation, See YS I, p.75). But the wording as given could be rendered: "The separation of puruṣa (man) from prak ṛ ti (woman) is also yoga." On one level, of course, this is the very basis of the yoga idea, in which the goal is kaivalya : "A human being is a compound of the power of pure consciousness and the corruptible, alterable, mutable material, including mental, components. When a person rediscovers the separation of the spiritual component from the material one, that is called isolation of the self from matter ( kaivalya...

Yesterday we were reading in the Philosophy of Hatha Yoga class the section from the Yoga-sūtras dealing with asana, i.e. 2.46-48. There is a long discussion at 2.47. Anyway, the basics are: āsanas are to be steady and comfortable (46). They can be perfected by relaxing the effort and by meditation on the infinite (47). When one perfects the āsanas , one becomes indifferent to the dualities (48). The discussion about "meditation on the infinite" (actually, Swamiji translates samāpatti by "coalescence" with the infinite, but that is a little harder to follow) was pretty interesting. I have to say that I got a glimpse of that in meditation today in relation to my sahaja-sādhanā and my siddha-svarupa . There was a moment when I was literally dancing in my Jaya Manjari form, my blue dress covered with silver sequins literally swirling in the sky and merging into the milky way. Anyway, in his discussion there, Swamiji gives two interpretations of the phrasa an...