Jagat

Rishikesh is dressed up for Diwali. All the shops in the downtown area have brightly colored awnings and tables of goods spread out in front. Especially popular are firecrackers, which every other shop is selling. Puja paraphernalia, muri and pera, and of course sweets are piled on high like harbingers of the Anna-kuta festival, which follows on the next day. Some of the side streets are cordoned off to car traffic, though a few scooters and motorcycles are still aggressively honking their way through the crowds. The mood is festive and Indian Christmassy. Colored and twinkling light garlands are draped on many houses, very elaborately in some cases. Unexpectedly quiet, too, with the exception of firecrackers. I would barely have registered that it was Diwali if I hadn't had to go to Madhuban on Sunday. And it turns out I did not really have to. Rupa Goswami Das text messaged to say that the devotees would all be busy preparing Govardhan Puja so the class was cancelled. I did...

I am skipping around the RRSN typing out the commentaries to the most popular or famous verses. No real sequence. I am simultaneously listening to Gopi Gita lectures by Kirit Bhaiji, a young speaker from the Vallabhi sampradaya. He is pretty good--a professional Bhagavata speaker. What do some people hate professional Bhagavata speakers so much? I am feeling the rasa. Though at the beginning he sings songs to Ganesh, etc., as part of the introduction, on the whole he is pretty good, with lots of Vallabhi siddhanta. quoting also Sridhar Swami, Rupa Goswami, Madhusudan Saraswati, and using modern examples. Anyway, I have great admiration for these Bhagavata saptaha people. They have a pretty gruelling schedule--reciting the verses all morning along with various rituals, and then usually a four-hour or even longer discourse in the afternoon. I saw one such performance at the Vrindavan Ashram a few months ago. A few busloads of devotees had been bussed in from Madhya Pradesh somewhere ...

Yesterday, Swami Veda gave a rather animated lecture about atheism. He likes to tell the story of how he wrote a book called simply "God" which he proudly showed to his guru, Swami Rama. Swami Rama apparently countered a few months later with his own book, based on the Mandukya Upanishad, called "Enlightenment without God." In this lecture, though, Swami was talking about imbuing life with the sacred. How the lack of awareness of the sacred element in life makess it dry and empty. He used the words astika and nastika several times in order to make his point. Since I have been working on Bhagavat-sandarbha , following a discussion on several verses from the Bhagavatam where the words neti neti are discussed, I wanted to ask what the relation between negation and assertion of Divine Truth were, in his vision. Of course, I think I know what he will say--pretty much the same thing that Osho says--"Being empty [of illusion] is the same as being full [of the divin...

Let's look at it a bit differently. I was reading a book A Spiritual Approach to Male/Female Relations  recently in which the following sentence popped out at me: "...life can become more meaningful by recognizing that this very personal attraction comes from an impersonal energy in the universe, which we sometimes glibly term 'love'. Aligning ourselves with this love, with its impersonal and palpable reality, can be a first step towards improving all our human relations." This is an interesting statement that has a certain intuitive cogency. The word anaṅga , which is a name for Kamadeva, means "bodiless." In one sense, love is shapeless. When people say, "God is love," they can mean various things. One is "Love is God," in the sense that this amorphous, all-pervading, underlying substratum of love can be tapped into and experienced. There are various ways to experience the underlying unity of all existence--one is simply by bein...

This could be a huge topic, but I am not going to get into it in detail. This is a followup to yesterday's post, Harilal Vyasa, a few observations . HLV (Harilal Vyasa) quotes the following verse from VMA ( Vṛndāvana-mahimāmṛtam ), and there are many similar verses. I will probably add to this post in the course of time, and anyone who has noticed verses of the same genre can add a comment pointing me in that direction. Anyway, the comment about Radha-vallabha and Sphuṭa-vāṇī made in the previous post shows that PS (Prabodhananda Saraswati)/HHV (Hita Harivamsa), i.e., the author of Rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhi (RRSN), makes a distinction between Radha worship and worship of Krishna, Radha's lover. This point is made in VM as follows: dhanyo loke mumukṣur hari-bhajana-paro dhanya-dhanyas tato’sau dhanyo yaḥ kṛṣṇa-pādāmbuja-rati-paramo rukmiṇīśa-priyo’taḥ | yāśodeya-priyo’taḥ subala-suhṛd ato gopa-kāntā-priyo’taḥ śrīmad-vṛndāvaneśvary-atirasa-vivaśā- rādhakaḥ sarva-mūr...

The Rasa-kulyā commentary on RRSN is pretty interesting, which will gradually come out. As you may already know, there are several points of connection between Gaudiyas and Radha-vallabhis, not the least of which is Prabodhananda Saraswati's role in developing the theology of the school--even if we don't accept that he is the author of RRSN. Of course, since Prabodhananda was an independent spirit and became more of a Radha-vallabhi than a Gaudiya, there is no point in trying to interpret RRSN as a text following pure Gaudiya siddhanta. (One of the arguments by today's defenders of Harivamsa's authorship are based on the premise that if Prabodhananda wrote RRSN, why does it not follow Gaudiya siddhanta?) Nevertheless, it is clear that Harilal Vyas had a very thorough knowledge of Gaudiya literature. The reason I am writing this now is because I came across a reference to the Gopa Kumar story from Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta (to verse 96). So far I have come across numerou...

Autumn moon. Beautiful sharada chandra ; it seems to fill the whole sky, deep amber color, a few wispy clouds, lighting up the mountains. There was no one at Rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhi class today, so since Harilal Vyasa concludes his tika to verse 2 with it, I just read a commentary on a Bhagavata verse from the Bhramara-gita, api ca kripana-pakshe uttama-shloka-shabdah . "No woman alive anywhere in the three worlds can resist your charms--even Lakshmi Devi herself worships the dust of your feet, so who are we [to hope for your mercy]? And yet, you are glorified as being merciful to the least of creatures, so live up to the meaning of your name." It is really has the same basic idea as another verse that I tried to quote the other day and could not remember. That night, when I opened Ananta Das's RRSN, it fell open on a page with that very verse on it. Actually I had posted it on my blog some time ago. na premā śravaṇādi-bhaktir api vā yogo’thavā vaiṣṇavo jnānaṁ vā ś...

The second verse of Rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhi , with the commentary of Harilal Vyasa. Intro: tadevaṁ sarvārādhyārādhanīyatoktavaty antar-durlabhatve  śaraṇāgatānām ādhunikānāṁ tat-pada-prāptau kim ālambanaṁ tatraiśvaryato'pi kṛpātirekeṇa mahimānaṁ namati-- After having thus established in the first verse that Radha is the supreme object of worship, as well as the extreme difficulty in attaining her, surrendered individuals today may wonder what is the means by which they can do so. In order to do so, the author bows down to her glories in which the power of mercy exceeds that of divine opulence--

There has been a lot of talk about symbolism of late. Seriously, though, despite the symbolism, which is important no doubt, the real rasa is where it always was—in the Transcendent Divine Couple. The symbolism points both ways: Life in this world is itself merely a symbol for the Divine Transcendent Truth. Whether the Goswamis and Prabodhananda Saraswati and the other rasika gurus of Vrindavan in the 16th century were aware of all the psychological subtleties that we are today is not a reasonable question to ask. I think that they were intuitively more aware than the moderns would give them credit for, but ultimately that does not really matter. My personal attitude is that I have faith in the way the Divine appeared to them. That is revelation, and revelation is a gift that keeps on giving. Its profundity is related to underlying eternal truths that by definition do not change. This is why we should be careful not to say that the Goswamis did not really understand what they were...

There has been a niggling question about Krishna's different prakāśa forms, which was left over from debates a long time ago on Gaudiya Discussions. If Krishna is one, does each of his different forms have a separate sense of identity? Radha and Krishna are One. There are countless quotations that support this siddhanta. But how should we understand this? If Radha is just another form of Krishna, then how can they be considered different, having truly different identities, for the sake of lila? My instinctual argument all along was that the imperative of madhurya means that such fragmentation of God's personality is factual and necessary. This is an aspect of Krishna's acintya- ś akti . How many different ways can Krishna be simultaneously one and different from Himself? So, here is confirmation from Bhagavat-sandarbha 35: यत एवं सत्योरपि तत्तदाकारप्रकाशगतयोस्तदारम्भसमाप्त्योरेकत्रैव ते ते जन्मकर्मणोरंशा यावत् समाप्यन्ते न समाप्यन्ते वा तावदेवान्यत्राप्यारब्धा भव...

I started my Hindi blog today. It will be difficult to manage two blogs, but I figure if I am going to speak in Hindi, I may as well write in Hindi, too.

The meaning of seeing God in the direction of love means that the presence of love confirms the presence of God. What is interesting here is that physical love is not excluded, but is accepted as being at the very basis of love itself, since the expression of romantic love in Radha and Krishna is seen as the ultimate truth. Just as Ashley Montague discovered in the 60's how important the skin and the sense of touch were to the healthy psychological development of the infant, and to the further spiritual sense of well-being in the adult, the sense of touch is also an integral part of love and bhakti . Therefore it is said,  tviṣaḥ phalaṁ tvādṛśa-gātra-sparśaḥ, sudurlabho bhāgavato hi loke. "The fruit of the skin is to touch your body, for great devotees like you are so rare in this world." Radha and Krishna are Love; they are the core of love. Love is formless, anaṅga , but it takes form. The form it takes must be dual, because the very basis of love is interaction...

I mentioned Harivamsa in a post a day or two ago. The same idea is found in the following verse of  Vṛndāvana-mahimāmṛta -- जयति जयति राधा प्रेमसारैरगाधा जयति जयति कृष्णस्तद्रसापारतृष्णः। जयति जयति वृन्दं सत्सखीनां द्वयैक्यं जयति जयति वृन्दाकाननं तत्स्वधाम॥९।४५॥ jayati jayati rādhā prema-sārair agādhā jayati jayati kṛṣṇas tad-rasāpāra-tṛṣṇḥ jayati jayati vṛndaṁ sat-sakhīnāṁ dvayaikyaṁ jayati jayati vṛndā-kānanaṁ tat-sva-dhāma  9.45 Glories, all glories to Radha, fathomless with the essences of love; Glories, all glories to Krishna, unlimitedly thirsty to taste those flavors; Glories, all glories to the sakhis, who are one with that Divine Couple; Glories, all glories to Vrinda's forest, the personal abode of this one truth. About the Gauri-Shyama verse from Gopala Champu I quoted yesterday. The idea here is that we find Radha and Krishna in the direction of prema. This is the basic position. When we discover Radha and Krishna, they become the limitless foun...

The Gopāla-campū has a very nice verse, which appears at the beginning of the descriptions of madhura-rasa , when Snigdhakantha and Madhukantha start their recitations in the assembly of Radha and the gopis along with the select priya-narma-sakhas . This is actually part of the maṅgalācaraṇa , but as is often the case with Jiva Goswami, there is a big siddhānta involved. imau gaurī-śyāmau manasi viparītau bahir api sphurat tat-tad-vastrāv iti budha-janair niścitam idam sa ko’py accha-premā vilasad-ubhaya-sphūrtikatayā dadhan mūrti-bhāvaṁ pṛthag apṛthag apy āvirudabhūt Wise persons have determined that [though] these two are of a black and golden hue [respectively], in their minds they are of the opposite colors, so externally, also, are their clothes. This is some pure unblemished love that has become incarnate, taking on this form with a dual manifestation, which is both divided and a unity. Radha and Krishna are absorbed in thoughts of each other, so their minds ha...

I think that my entire day could go in Rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhi . I start the day with meditation, thinking about what I am going to say, preparing, preparing, preparing. Then the time for class comes and who knows what I am going to say? Probably not what I prepared. And then afterward, I want to write about it. Like now. And that would take a couple more hours. I am stretching myself to my limits really. My Hindi is not so adequate that I feel that I am expressing myself with the poetic force that I should be able to have at my command. I want to sing songs I don't yet know. Half verses come to my mind. I scratch the surface of lilas that I know are much deeper. I point vaguely to the significances for sadhana, for real life. But somehow or other I am muddling through. And today they put up a mike in the ashram so that my voice is joining in the sound pollution of an Indian holy town. There is already some patha-kirtana going on down the road. I guess the mike helps drown out t...

The RRSN class yesterday was wide-ranging, but one thing I spoke on was the following verse ( Govinda- līlāmṛta  10.16, CC 2.8.209) in glorification of Radha’s dasis. Here it is with Gadadhar Pran’s (orthodox) translation and commentary: sakhyaḥ śrī-rādhikāyā vraja-kumuda-vidhor hlādinī-nāma-śakteḥ sārāṁśa-prema-vallyāḥ kiśalaya-dala-puṣpādi-tulyāḥ sva-tulyāḥ siktāyāṁ kṛṣṇa-līlāmṛta-rasa-nicayair ullasantyām amuṣyāṁ jātollāsāḥ sva-sekāc chata-guṇam adhikaṁ santi yat tan na citram Nandimukhi goes on: “And look! As Radha and the sakhis’ pleasure is synonymous, the sakhis are one with Radha. Krishna is like the moon for the ‘lilies of Vraja’ (the gopis), and Srimati Radhika is the essence of his pleasure potency. She is likened to a desire creeper of prema ( prema-kalpa-lata ) and the sakhis are the leaves, flowers and new buds on this creeper, and as such are non-different from her. So it isn’t surprising that when the Radha creeper is nourished by the shower of Krish...

You see, my friends, at some point one has to make a decision in life. Does one want to push through with the gifts one has been given, or is one going to be hampered by doubts to the very end? saṁśayātmā vinaśyati . I figure if you are, like me, a vicāra-pradhāna personality, you can allow yourself until the age of say, 57, to come to some state of equilibrium with the intellect and reason. But when you get to the age of, say 57, then you have to surrender to the limitations of reason. These limitations are hard-wired into the nature of our world and existence. Like Krishna who is lying down and being fanned by Radha, forgetting everything other than the sweetness of her movements, that is a point where one simply surrenders to the mercies one has been given. Call it "a return to ruchi." People were asking me about my attitude to Bhaktivinoda Thakur, etc., after I published those articles. Like I said, most of those questions were answered in the followup articles, bu...

I was actually a little sick for most of the day and took a couple of naps. But I went to my Rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhi class after making the previous post and feel much the better for it. We are, as I said, discussing the first verse still, which is-- yasyāḥ kadāpi vasanāñcala-khelanottha dhanyātidhanya-pavanena kṛtārtha-mānī yogīndra-durgama-gatir madhusūdano'pi tasyā namo'stu vṛṣabhānu-bhuvo diśe'pi  I bow down to even the direction which leads to the daughter of Vrishabhanu. The breeze that sometimes arises from the play of the movement of her clothes is so exceedingly fortunate that even Madhusudana himself, who is the unattainable goal of the great yogis, considers himself perfected by being touched by it. (RRSN 2) The portion of the commentary we covered today was this, which I give in the Sanskrit for the afficionados, because I find it rather elegant-- अपीत्यसम्भावनाभासमुद्दीपयन् विशिनष्टि-योगीन्द्राणां शिवसनकनारदशुकादीनां दुर्गमा गतिर्यस्येति। उपायखि...