Jagat

It's funny how sometimes one makes a search for one thing and finds another... it's called serendipity, I believe, amazingly named after some dvipa (island), Srilanka, I think. A search for the Sarva-samvadini turned up an old thread on Gaudiya Repercussions where I was lambasted as follows: The personal attacks are meant to show that particularly Jagat, who swapped two sannyasa vows for a PhD, a non-devotee wife, and cannot even name his child after Krishna (even Ajamila managed that!), really is the last one to establish a new sampradaya, as he calls the foundational acharyas 'backwards.' It's not personal. I have known Jagat for 23 years, and apart from his intellectual arrogance, his ambitions to be a Jagad-guru and his diplomacy, he's a groovy guy. Hate the apostasy, not the apostate. It seems odd, after all this time and struggle, that I am still stuck in a time warp and have not really been able to move on from this spiritual zone of paralysis. As I wrot...

I spent all day at the university for the Sanskrit conference. Third annual. Sanjaya put me as the first speaker. तिक्तेन समारभ्यताम् ! In fact, I was very tired and my talk was not very well prepared. So I just talked off the cuff. Sanjay followed; he was well-prepared with a Power Point presentation about Bhishma's आश्रमधर्म . He is very eloquent and droll. Next speaker was Giribharatan, the Sanskrit Bharati missionary. Sanskrit Bharati has come out with a very nice book on scientific advances and found in the Sanskrit literature, which was the basis of his talk. Ajaya Rao, a young professor at the University of Toronto, spoke about making Sanskrit a living language. All of these speakers were followed by lively question periods and discussions, which was perhaps the best feature of this year's conference. Arvind Sharma said to me that it seems everyone is losing their inhibitions. An elderly engineering professor from India named Brij Kashyap read some Sanskrit poems he had ...

Kutichak Prabhu invited my wife and me to come to Ste-Agathe for a program with Bhaktivedanta Sadhu Maharaj. Kutichak kept repeating that Paramadvaiti Maharaj, Sadhu Maharaj's sannyasa guru, insisted that we meet. To tell you the truth, decent sadhu sanga is hard to come by in this part of the world, and I have long wanted to meet this Brajavasi of noble origins and get to know him better. There is an article about him on the old VNN site. (www.vnn.org/world/WD0304/WD10-7978.html) On arrival, I gave Maharaj my last copy of Madhurya Kadambini , which was left over after my course. I had never met Maharaj before, but after talking with him a little, I found out that he was never forced to give up his initiation in the Nityananda parivar. Radha Govinda Das Babaji was the first preacher of Gaudiya Vaishnavism in the Munger region, probably in the late 19th century. If I am not mistaken, this Baba is mentioned in Vrajake Bhakta by O.B.L. Kapoor, which will need to go back and check out...

A potentially useful article here from the Washington Post, On Faith . Various leaders from different religious groups, including Bishop Desmond Tutu, answer the following question: Can a Christian, Muslim or Jew embrace eastern spiritual practices -- yoga or Buddhist meditation, for example -- and remain true to the laws of the God of Abraham?

Oh mega ! Omega ! Oh Ma go ! Oh my! Mega was my ego. These days, I take the bus down Sauvé every day. Sauvé, how ironic in a synchronistic way-- What Frenchman was saved, from what and when? From death? From damnation? Now some latter next of kin has bequeathed his name... redeemed are those who walk this street! Today I walk; it’s sunny and spring, I feel brash; I bounce my mala before me like a proud panache-- my banner, my identity, my mark of salvation, my dance on this road of tenements housing Arab immigrants. Between two cages, work and home, the japa walk is sweet. Sauvé becomes Côte Vertu as it starts heading west; The names waken whimsy that appears like a guest-- Does scaling the hill of virtue lead to salvation, or does one climb that slippery slope after liberation? Am I headed in the right direction? Need I retreat? More ironies… just a hop across these cinder blocks lies another immigrant generation's white duplex. I often think of you, as I pass, you of the last Gre...

Risley's book on Bengali tribes and castes would have been required reading for anyone entering the British civil service, probably right to the end of the Raj. Unfortunately, the descriptions are sketchy and reflect strong biases of the missionaries and the civil servant sycophants. Here are a couple of quotes from that book, under the rubric "Boishtom." [This was a reading from the last section of my course.] Two endogamous classes are recognized--(1) Jati Baishnab, consisting of those whose conversion to Vaishnavism dates back beyond living memory, and (2) ordinary Baishnabs, called also Bhekdhari or "wearers of the garb", who are supposed to have adopted Vaishnavism at a recent date. The former are men of substance, who have conformed to ordinary Hinduism to such an extent that they are now Baishnabs in little more than name. In the matter of marriage they follow the usages of the Nabasakha; they burn their dead; mourn for thirty days; celebrate sraddh, an...

I have been a bit negligent in resuming the results of my teaching experience. I was rather hoping to start developing a text book that could be used in teaching such a course, using my interaction with the students as a source of inspiration. But I am a free molecule, being batted around in the atmosphere, and it seems that no one's will power is more at the mercy of events than mine. So Jiva Goswami and the Prema Vilasa bounced all these good intentions onto the back burner. A back burner that is so full of worthwhile endeavors that it seems the world will starve without them... At least Krishna on the altar will starve for lack of finished offerings. Today is the last course. My students will be taking a short vocabulary quiz. Then we will have to go over the post 16th century material in half the normal course time. Totally impossible. I will try to post the readings for the last three courses on line in a couple of days and add a few comments to illustrate the directions the d...

Here are a few more notes on Prema-vilāsa . I was hoping to finish reading the book, but there certainly is a lot to tell. As I keep saying, the book is more interesting than I was given reason to believe. In the last four chapters – more appendices to Caitanya-bhāgavata and Caitanya-caritāmṛta , both of which are mentioned by name. One of the main purposes seems to be to establish the Gaura-gaṇoddeśa-dīpikā identities, even though he does not mention this book by name. This seems to be one of the features of the Prema-vilāsa in general, as well as filling out some details about a lot of the individuals who played a role in Chaitanya lila, as already has been shown in the previous offerings on this blog. He often mentions the siddha name of a disciple, or the act of asking for or receiving the siddha name. I would say that this general mood is a confirmation of what I have written in my article about Khetari. Nityananda Das describes more than one Khetari festival. I jumped the...

Jesus said unto them, "Who do you say I am?" They replied, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood revealed." And Jesus replied, "What?"

I used those words in my previous post... "by curious coincidence." And as I rushed out of the office, I noticed on Deborah (professor of church history in Canada, with whom I share it)'s desk: There Are No Accidents , by Robert H. Hopcke. All about Jung's synchronicity theory. The theory is simple. Our lives are a story. "Coincidences" are meaningful connections that move the story along. Who knows what triggers will move us out of our sloth and lethargy? The wife burning a husband's clothes so he can look at an insect bite... the coded letter of a brother... the words of an old woman? It is not so much the event as the surge into consciousness that it produces. The same coincidence for a rushed and harried businessman passes by unnoticed. I pray for that trigger. Here I am, laughing, thinking maybe this is it, maybe this is the trigger. This collection of small, vairagya-related coincidences.

Those "suspicious chapters" are surprisingly full of new nectar. One reason may be that the last four chapters were not as frequently in circulation and the Bhakti-ratnākara , etc., became more popular. Whatever the reason, there is some historical information, some anecdotal nectar, which are completely new to me. I wish I had gone through it before. As I said already, I don't see why this work should be considered less authoritative than Bhakti-ratnākara , which was written a century later, when stories would have been even more embellished by time. Here is an example. There is a famous story in the BRK (5.1627-1670) about Vallabha coming to Vrindavan and criticising a verse in the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu , namely the one that calls the desires for liberation and sense enjoyment "witches." Rupa defered to the senior acharya and agreed to excise the verse, or at least modify it. Jiva, who was newly arrived in Vraja, was irritated by Vallabha Bhatta’s criticis...

I find the Prema-vilāsa a bit confusing; it seems to switch times, people, voices without giving full warning. Some of it is acknowledged in the appendix (the half vilāsa ). There it says that chapters 15 and 16 have been erroneously switched around. It was already mentioned that Jahnava's two trips seem to have gotten mixed up. This confirms it. However, the appendix also confirms the contents of the chapters, putting aside any suspicions of interpolation. For instance, the case of Krishnadas Kaviraj leaving his body on hearing about the missing books is confirmed. Sometimes I think that there have been scribal errors. For instance, in chapter 17 (page 145), two Vaishnavas come back from Vrindavan and meet Ramachandra and Narottam in Khetari. Then there is this verse: rāmacandra kohe ṭhākur koho mukhe śuni more kibā rūpa gosāi jānila Ramachandra said, "Thakur, please tell me how did Rupa Goswami come to know about me?" Rupa Goswami had left this world even b...

The hammer is coming down on this reading of Prema-vilāsa . I am becoming more convinced of the importance of this book, in spite of some of the problems it presents. In general, I feel that Nityananda Das's presentation is simple and credible. He was born in 1537 in Srikhanda, was an eyewitness to many of the events he describes, such as at the beginning of chapter 14, where he recounts the meeting of Srinivas Acharya with Raghunandan Thakur in Srikhanda. रघुनन्दन रूपे भुवन मोहन । श्रीनिवासेर रूप ताहे आत्यन्त शोभन ।। देखिया मोहित हैल चित्त जे आमार । से जाने दोंहार रूप नयने लागे जार ।। He is also present in Jajigram when Ramachandra Kaviraj meets Srinivas. Vyasa Acharya is also there in Srinivasa's entourage and engages in debate with Ramachandra. There are few specifics about their discussion, but it does seem to confirm Yadunandan's account in Karṇānanda that Vyasa and Ramachandra tended to have disagreements. Nityananda Das does not recount the legend of Srinivas ...

As I review this historical material, I am reminded of the things that struck me the first time around. As mentioned in the previous post, we have a problem--the CC date given at 1581 AD. Karṇānanda is supposed to be written in 1607 by Yadunandan, who was a disciple of Hemalata Thakurani, Srinivasa Acharya's disciple. Since there are numerous quotes and references to Caitanya-caritāmṛta in this work, if we accept the 1607 (1529 Saka) date of completion, our 1615 date for CC becomes problematic. The Karṇānanda is dominated by the  svakīyā  / pārakīyā question. This arises in particular in conversations between Ramachandra Kaviraja and King Birhambir. The issue seems to have arisen out of the impact that Gopāla-campū had when it came to Bengal. Everyone, it seems, had become quite used to the pārakīyā mood in song and story, and to suddenly have the GC come and say otherwise was confusing. Ramachandra refers to the GC in words taken directly from CC, making it perfectl...

I have been working on an article about Jiva Goswami for the Journal of Vaishnava Studies . Basically it is just a chapter from my thesis, which I published on line without footnotes ( Jiva Goswami: Biographical information and Jiva Goswami: An Overview of his writings ). One matter that I did not get into in that article was Jiva Goswami’s controverted relation to the Caitanya-caritāmṛta , which is described in Prema-vilāsa and Vilāsa-vivarta . This is primarily because I accepted the 1615 date for the CC; and since Jiva’s disappearance took place in 1608, the question of Jiva's throwing the CC into the Yamuna, being envious of KK, etc. (as found in VV), did not arise. Nevertheless, I confess that I had never gone through the Prema-vilāsa thoroughly, so I decided to revisit the question after procuring the reprint of Jashodalal Talukdar's complete 1913 edition of Prema-vilāsa , which came out in 1999. The complete version contains "24 1/2" chapters, but this...

Worked out quite nicely. I'll get more feedback on it in on Tuesday.

I published this and then started revising it, but unfortunately, my connection was broken and so this is the unedited version. I am busy, so it will be a few days before I can come back and make the necessary repairs.

On the agenda today--I am taking my students to the Iskcon temple, where Bhaktimarga Maharaja will be present. I emailed the following to Maharaj the other day: Dandavats Maharaj. Thank you for responding so promptly. And double thanks for showing such enthusiasm to help me out. The students have been told to come to the temple at six o'clock. The plan was to hear, chant and take prasad. I don't think they have any specific questions, or at least none that I know of. What I really want is for them to have an experience of Gaudiya Vaishnavism as a living tradition. In other words, they have been reading texts about the life of Chaitanya and the developments in Gaudiya Vaishnava theology, etc. But they haven't experienced it as a living thing, powered by faith and practice. I'd like to be able to get them to chant, to hear a basic lecture on the elements that really are at the center of Iskcon devotees' faith. As I said in my previous letter also, I know that y...

As I have been trying to say, I am approaching the question of Krishna consciousness and sexuality from my own life experience. I should therefore confess that my sexual drive has been (I believe) comparatively low in comparison to the majority of the population, particularly in the West. I did not have an especially great struggle as a brahmachari and my motivations in becoming a householder in Iskcon may sound rather strange to most: I saw it as a psychologically purificatory experience. I slipped out of that experience rather easily in the late seventies and did not find it a great jump to taking sannyas in 1979. The straw that broke the camel’s back of my stay in Iskcon was, in fact, the experience of listening to a brahmachari masturbate in the toilet cubicle next to mine in the Hyderabad temple. It was my feeling then that the Iskcon environment was too sensual to assure self-control. The lifestyle of Bhavananda Maharaj seemed to caricature the true renunciate lifestyle, which is...

(I was rummaging around in Gaudiya Discussions and came across this, which I though was worth preserving here. I was surprised a little to see myself using vocabulary and themes that I am still hammering away at. Some of the points might require a little bit of revision.) Rāgānugā bhakti means imagining yourself as a part of Radha and Krishna's world, and doing all sadhana in that consciousness. Vidhi bhakti is primarily conducted only in the sadhaka deha--hearing, chanting, etc., are all there, but the goal of being with God (in whatever form) is left in his hands. "Give me whatever service YOU want." Rāgānugā bhakti  begins with the prayer, "I want specifically THIS in Radha Krishna's world." The  rāgānugā bhakta  's sadhana is mystical participation in the divine realm. Through  rāgānugā bhakti , one quickly ceases all prayers for liberation because one practically loses all consciousness of being a sadhaka. This colors his perception of and pa...