VMA 1.22 : The Upanishads do not reveal Vrindavan

Radha & Krishna dancing in the moonlight.
(A painting on the wall in New Vraja Dhama ISKCON Hungary.)


cirād upaniṣad-girām ativicārya tātparyakaṁ
na labdhum iha śakyate yad anu mādhurīm apy aho |
tam apy anubhaven mahā-rasa-nidhiṁ yad-āvāsatas
tad eva paramaṁ mama sphuratu dhāma vṛndāvanam||
May this supreme abode of Vrindavan
always manifest in my mind.
Though its sweet perfection cannot be conceived
even after studying the teachings
of the Upanishads for a long, long time,
one can intuit it as a great ocean of rasa
just by living here. (1.22)
Commentary

The relation of madhura-rasa-bhakti to the Upanishadic and Vedantic tradition is one that is discussed often among the followers of the Bhāgavata. The Taittiriya Upanishad says raso vai saḥ, yaṁ hy evāyaṁ labdhvānandī bhavati: “Rasa is verily That Supreme Truth. One who attains it becomes joyful.” Though there are many important philosophical statements in the Upanishads, some of which are taken to be mahā-vākyas, great dicta or statements that rule over all the others. But for the Vaishnavas, this is the Upanishadic statement that is most indicative of the nature of the Absolute. And yet, there is some insufficiency in the rasa found Upanishads themselves. So Chaitanya Mahaprabhu exclaims,

śrutam apy aupaniṣadaṁ dūre hari-kathāmṛtāt|
yan na santi dravac-citta-kampāśru-pulakādayaḥ||
I have heard the topics of the Upanishads –
How far they are from the ambrosia of Hari katha!
In them, there is no melting of the heart,
no trembling, no tears and no hair standing on end.
[This verse is credited to Vyasa by Rupa in Padyāvali (39), but quoted in Bhakti-sandarbha (69) where it is attributed to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (kaliyuga-pāvanāvatāreṇa śrī-bhagavatā) .]

And when Lord Brahma prays to get the dust of the residents of the feet of the Brajavasis, he says that the Upanishads are looking for that dust but haven’t found it. The meaning is that the Upanishads are seeking the highest truth, the Absolute, but being absorbed in philosophical research and negating different impossibilities, they have not even been able to conceive of something as illogical as that the Supreme Truth is to be found in the dust of the feet of Krishna’s eternal associates in Vraja.

tad bhūri-bhāgyam iha janma kim apy aṭavyāṁ
yad gokule’pi katamāṅghri-rajo’bhiṣekam|
yaj jīvitaṁ tu nikhilaṁ bhagavān mukundas
tv adyāpi yat-pada-rajaḥ śruti-mṛgyam eva ||
I would deem it to be my great fortune if I could take even a lowly birth here in some forest of Gokula so that I could have the chance of being showered by the dust of the feet of any of the residents of Vraja, whose life and everything else is Lord Krishna, the giver of liberation, the dust of whose feet is sought by the Shrutis even to this day. (10.14.34)
Uddhava also, when praying for the dust of the gopi’s lotus feet, says that their attainment was never reached by the Upanishads.

āsām aho caraṇa-reṇu-juṣām ahaṁ syām
vṛndāvane kim api gulma-latauṣadhīnām
yā dustyajaṁ svajanam ārya-pathaṁ ca hitvā
bhejur mukunda-padavīṁ śrutibhir vimṛgyām
Ah, would that I could become a blade of grass or a plant in Vrindavan, for they are regularly sprinkled by the dust of the gopis’ feet, for the gopis gave up both their families and their religious principles, both of which are extremely difficult to abandon, in order to worship Mukunda, the ultimate objective of all the Shrutis. (10.47.61)
People often think that because the Upanishads and the Vedas are the ultimate authority for spiritual knowledge in India, that the absence of things like Radha’s name are an indication of the inauthenticity of the Vaishnava revelation. But often it is the seeds that can be found in the Upanishads and from these seeds, like the seed mantras, the different concepts have developed into the many branches of spiritual endeavor that are found in Hinduism today.

The seed concept of rasa as identical with the Absolute developed over the centuries and attained its flowering in the rasika-sampradāyas of Vrindavan in the 16th century. It probably still has not been fully understood. Here Prabodhananda is simply praying to Vrindavan to reveal the rasa that is hidden in this land. Vrindavan is the milieu without which rasa cannot manifest.


 Ten Previous posts

VMA 1.21 : Vrindavan enchants everyone
VMA 1.20 : The gold and black jewel light
VMA 1.19 : Who's mind will not be stolen?
VMA 1.18 : How to meditate on Vrindavan
VMA 1.17 : Grant me residence here until the end of life
VMA 1.16 : A prayer for the siddha Vrindavan to manifest
VMA 1.15 : Rolling in the dust of Vrindavan
VMA 1.13 : Offenses to the residents of the Dham break my heart
VMA 1.12 : The Upanishads take birth as cows in Braj


Comments

Prem Prakash said…
This is an important issue for those of us who live in the Western world. Virtually all of academia, and the overwhelming majority of Indian acharyas who have come to the West, teach the traditional sad darshan paradigm.
Wednesday, 31 October, 2018
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