Facebook Memories from April 27
I was thinking about Voltaire's statement: "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." Which I heard translated as "the IDEAL is the enemy of the good." The image of perfection, i.e., God, which is the essence of the spiritual life, of self-improvement, can at the same time destroy our attempt to make the best of what will always be flawed--our human existence. Forgiveness is the bridge between the two poles.
2017
There has been a lot about mānava-sevā = mādhava sevā, with the recent visit of Ammachi and the event at the Ramkrishna Mission hospital the other day and I have been thinking about it.
Jiva Goswami in the Sandarbhas, especially in Krishna Sandarbha, discusses various ways of looking at Krishna. Kaviraj does the same thing when talking about Mahaprabhu in the early going of CC.
They say, yes, however you see Krishna or Mahaprabhu is OK, because they are the root of all things, so everything is contained within them. According to your adhikāra you will see partially or wholly what this bhagavat-tattva is all about. So mānava-sevā is there as a fragmentary portion of prema, but prema is the real true situation.
And though prema is expressed in various ways, various kinds of service, the Bhagavata and the Goswamis analyzed love and assessed their strength, and is most interested in the strongest prema and its capacity for giving the ultimate happiness through the direct experience of God unadulterated by upādhis in the server.
In Gita, Krishna says, "I pervade the world, but I am not in it." That is the meaning: You perceive God as all-pervading by first recognizing him in his idealized (which in his case is real, though it appears delimited) aspect and experiencing love for him there.
2016
virājante yasya vraja-śiśu-kula-steya-vikala-
svayambhū-cūḍāgrair lulita-śikharāḥ pāda-nakharāḥ |
kṛṣṇaṁ yān ālokya prakaṭa-paramānanda-vivaśaḥ
sa devarṣir muktān api tanu-bhṛtaḥ śocati bhṛśam ||
2009
Nagar sankirtan! Chanting Radhe Radhe Govinda, Govinda Radhe/ Radhe Radhe Govinda, Govinda Radhe// all the way from Bairaj to SRSG with Ananda Kumarji and his wife.
2009: This was first posted on the blog in 2007 at this. titled Panchapadi.
Om ! Sriji ! Purushottam!
O Krishna ! Crusher of sin !
You pull me with this mantra
like a baby calf led by the nose,
like a deer enchanted by the hunter’s flute.
Here in the forest, black as your skin,
I come to you.
O Govinda !
You invade me with your mantra
you cling to me like a second skin
you weigh down my senses
with unbearable expectations.
You are in the Veda and in the cows,
You are in the world and in my senses.
You are in the mantra,
and still I must search for you.
O Gopijana ! O Radha ! O sakhis !
You flutter on every side of the mantra
like petals, effulgent and infinite.
You stand in the heart of the mantra
like pistils, golden guardians of the mead.
You are my gurus, I follow you,
I join you in your song, I sing this mantra.
It is you. It is yours.
O Vallabha! Beloved !
Beloved of the gopis,
Beloved of every soul ! Beloved of my soul!
You have come, O enchanter of Eros,
to tell me you have always been here,
present in the mantra.
Svaha!
I have reached the eighteenth syllable,
The charama shloka:
I throw my soul into the circle of flames,
the Rasa mandala of the mantra.
I have reached the fifth segment,
the final chapter, the brahma muhurta;
the dance is over and I must go home,
I must await again
the call of your flute.
A brief tika on the above: The idea came to me that the five segments of the Gopala mantra (as described in Gopala Tapani Upanishad, i.e. panchapadi, could be seen in correspondence to the Rasa Panchadhyaya. It actually works fairly well.
(1) Klim Krishnāya = first chapter. Krishna calls.
(2) Govindāya = Krishna leaves the gopis who then look for him. (vinda = search or find.) End chapter one, beginning of chapter 2.
(3) Gopī-jana = end of second and third chapters. The gopis meet Radha, their guru, under whose guidance they sing the song that will bring Krishna back to them. Like the Rasa Panchadhyaya, the gopis are central, i.e. in the middle. At the same time, they are the petals on the lotus of the yantra.
(4) Vallabhāya = Chapter 4.
tāsām āvirabhūt sauriḥ smayamāna-mukhāmbujaḥ
pītāmbara-dharaḥ sragvī sākṣān-manmatha-manmathaḥ
You have always been in the mantra: mayā parokṣaṁ bhajatā, etc.
(5) Svāhā = the pūrṇāhuti of the last chapter. The yantra of the mantra or the altar of the fire sacrifice is identified with the Rasa mandala. Full absorption in the Rasa.
In this last part, I have made a correspondence between the eighteen syllables of the mantra and other eighteens, like the eighteen chapters of the Gita, which ends with the charama shloka, sarva-dharmān parityajya, etc.
Most of the other glosses of the names given here are based on the Gopala Tapini Upanishad (1.4).
2017
There has been a lot about mānava-sevā = mādhava sevā, with the recent visit of Ammachi and the event at the Ramkrishna Mission hospital the other day and I have been thinking about it.
Jiva Goswami in the Sandarbhas, especially in Krishna Sandarbha, discusses various ways of looking at Krishna. Kaviraj does the same thing when talking about Mahaprabhu in the early going of CC.
They say, yes, however you see Krishna or Mahaprabhu is OK, because they are the root of all things, so everything is contained within them. According to your adhikāra you will see partially or wholly what this bhagavat-tattva is all about. So mānava-sevā is there as a fragmentary portion of prema, but prema is the real true situation.
And though prema is expressed in various ways, various kinds of service, the Bhagavata and the Goswamis analyzed love and assessed their strength, and is most interested in the strongest prema and its capacity for giving the ultimate happiness through the direct experience of God unadulterated by upādhis in the server.
In Gita, Krishna says, "I pervade the world, but I am not in it." That is the meaning: You perceive God as all-pervading by first recognizing him in his idealized (which in his case is real, though it appears delimited) aspect and experiencing love for him there.
2016
svayambhū-cūḍāgrair lulita-śikharāḥ pāda-nakharāḥ |
kṛṣṇaṁ yān ālokya prakaṭa-paramānanda-vivaśaḥ
sa devarṣir muktān api tanu-bhṛtaḥ śocati bhṛśam ||
Lord Brahma himself fell before
the tips of Hari's toes,
covering them with the upper part of his crowns
when he was plagued with guilt
over the act of purloining
the children and calves of Braj.
The sage of the gods
upon beholding them,
is helpless with the supreme joy
that manifests in him
and he laments sincerely
for the poor souls who, though liberated,
have been deprived of this great ecstasy.
Hamsaduta 54
the tips of Hari's toes,
covering them with the upper part of his crowns
when he was plagued with guilt
over the act of purloining
the children and calves of Braj.
The sage of the gods
upon beholding them,
is helpless with the supreme joy
that manifests in him
and he laments sincerely
for the poor souls who, though liberated,
have been deprived of this great ecstasy.
Hamsaduta 54
2009
Nagar sankirtan! Chanting Radhe Radhe Govinda, Govinda Radhe/ Radhe Radhe Govinda, Govinda Radhe// all the way from Bairaj to SRSG with Ananda Kumarji and his wife.
2009: This was first posted on the blog in 2007 at this. titled Panchapadi.
Om ! Sriji ! Purushottam!
O Krishna ! Crusher of sin !
You pull me with this mantra
like a baby calf led by the nose,
like a deer enchanted by the hunter’s flute.
Here in the forest, black as your skin,
I come to you.
O Govinda !
You invade me with your mantra
you cling to me like a second skin
you weigh down my senses
with unbearable expectations.
You are in the Veda and in the cows,
You are in the world and in my senses.
You are in the mantra,
and still I must search for you.
O Gopijana ! O Radha ! O sakhis !
You flutter on every side of the mantra
like petals, effulgent and infinite.
You stand in the heart of the mantra
like pistils, golden guardians of the mead.
You are my gurus, I follow you,
I join you in your song, I sing this mantra.
It is you. It is yours.
O Vallabha! Beloved !
Beloved of the gopis,
Beloved of every soul ! Beloved of my soul!
You have come, O enchanter of Eros,
to tell me you have always been here,
present in the mantra.
Svaha!
I have reached the eighteenth syllable,
The charama shloka:
I throw my soul into the circle of flames,
the Rasa mandala of the mantra.
I have reached the fifth segment,
the final chapter, the brahma muhurta;
the dance is over and I must go home,
I must await again
the call of your flute.
A brief tika on the above: The idea came to me that the five segments of the Gopala mantra (as described in Gopala Tapani Upanishad, i.e. panchapadi, could be seen in correspondence to the Rasa Panchadhyaya. It actually works fairly well.
(1) Klim Krishnāya = first chapter. Krishna calls.
(2) Govindāya = Krishna leaves the gopis who then look for him. (vinda = search or find.) End chapter one, beginning of chapter 2.
(3) Gopī-jana = end of second and third chapters. The gopis meet Radha, their guru, under whose guidance they sing the song that will bring Krishna back to them. Like the Rasa Panchadhyaya, the gopis are central, i.e. in the middle. At the same time, they are the petals on the lotus of the yantra.
(4) Vallabhāya = Chapter 4.
tāsām āvirabhūt sauriḥ smayamāna-mukhāmbujaḥ
pītāmbara-dharaḥ sragvī sākṣān-manmatha-manmathaḥ
You have always been in the mantra: mayā parokṣaṁ bhajatā, etc.
(5) Svāhā = the pūrṇāhuti of the last chapter. The yantra of the mantra or the altar of the fire sacrifice is identified with the Rasa mandala. Full absorption in the Rasa.
In this last part, I have made a correspondence between the eighteen syllables of the mantra and other eighteens, like the eighteen chapters of the Gita, which ends with the charama shloka, sarva-dharmān parityajya, etc.
Most of the other glosses of the names given here are based on the Gopala Tapini Upanishad (1.4).
 |
| 2010 at SRSG (Joice van Dulken |
Comments
But one must work back from old French (and its Old English translation) to proto-Indo European to find the like-for-like truth of it.
In other words, (यति yati) a striver, an ascetic, devotee, one who has restrained his passions and abandoned the world to (पीय् pīy) gladden “shine” united (the word good traces back to Proto-Indo European gʰedʰ “to unite”).
Don’t believe my person, do some original research yourself…
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page
See:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good
3. Must we then, like Voltaire, say that, philosophers or Christians, disciples of Epicurus or of Zeno, of Plato or of St. Paul, all those who have sought the supreme good have sought in vain for the philosopher's stone? Looking for the philosopher's stone, we discovered chemistry; in seeking the sovereign good, humanity has perfected itself. Every man who has sought the sovereign good, either with Plato, or with Epicurus (I mean the real Epicurus), or with Zeno, or with Christianity, has been, in varying degrees, on the road to perfecting the human nature. Any man who has not sought the sovereign good, in following either of these directions, has been in the way of the degradation of human nature. P. Leroux, Of Humanity, t. 1, 1840, p. 87.
4. One of the doctrines which have most and longest reigned over men's minds, touching the origin of the world and the origin of evil, is that which identifies these two origins. Diverse in its forms, it has sometimes resulted in the undisguised statement that evil is life itself, or, as it was rather said, matter, by including under this name the principle of individuation of existence and, at the substance, existence itself. (...) certainly the system of emanation leads to it. One represents to oneself there the good, with divine perfection, in the tranquillity of the eternal principle, in this still undivided unity within which is produced the descent of beings, the dream of life. Existence is therefore forfeiture., Crit Essays. gen., 3rd essay, 1864, p. 158.
Source (Click tab 3 in order to view English translation of notes 3 & 4):
https://www-cnrtl-fr.translate.goog/definition/bien?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Thank you as always MN for your continued support of this humble soul's attempts at self-expression. May you be blessed. Jaya Radhe!
MN replied: One must always strive to withdraw from both poles to the fulcrum at the centre of one’s own true being, when united at this fulcrum one remains perfectly at rest. The mind united (no mind), the breaths united (no breath), life united with death (being simultaneously alive and dead); when all is united, one becomes all and all becomes one united at this eternal fulcrum
With a little tenacious endurance, one will eventually trace the word “stone” via Proto-Indo European to the Sanskrit word स्थावर (sthāvará) “standing still, not moving, fixed, stationary, stable, immovable; firm, constant, permanent, invariable; the seventh creation of Brahmā.”
Notes
The philosophers “stone”
http://www.sanskrita.org/scans/visor.html?scan=1264.gif
↑
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A5%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%B0#Sanskrit
↑
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/steh%E2%82%82-
↑
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/steyh%E2%82%82-
↑
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stone
Notes
σα^φής – “clear, plain, distinct, of things heard, perceived, or known; of persons, especially of seers, oracles, prophets.”
Source:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=safh/s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5ze_e4R9QY
Bhagavad Gita, Ch. 15 (translated to English verse and read by Madanmohan Das):
https://youtu.be/jVyf5LUNEBo?t=548
Notes
मन्-मना भव मद्-भक्तो मद्-याजी मां नमस्कुरु ।
माम् एवैष्यसि सत्यं ते प्रतिजाने प्रियोऽसि मे ॥ ६५ ॥
man-manā bhava mad-bhakto mad-yājī māṃ namaskuru |
mām evaiṣyasi satyaṃ te pratijāne priyo'si me || 65 ||
mat-manāḥ–offer your mind to Me; bhava–become; mat-bhaktaḥ–My devotee (engage in hearing and chanting about My name, form, etc.); mat-yājī–My worshipper; mām–to Me; namaskuru–offer your obeisance’s; mām–Me; evaiṣyasi–you shall attain; satyam–truthfully; te–to you; pratijāne–I promise; priyaḥ–dear; asi–are; me–to Me.
Absorb your consciousness in Me; become My devotee by dedicating yourself to such practices as hearing about and glorifying My names, forms, qualities and pastimes; worship Me; and offer obeisance’s to Me. Thus, you will certainly attain Me. This truth I swear to you because you are most dear to Me.
सर्व-धर्मान् परित्यज्य माम् एकं शरणं व्रज ।
अहं त्वां सर्व-पापेभ्यो मोक्षयिष्यामि मा शुचः ॥ ६६ ॥
sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaṃ śaraṇaṃ vraja |
ahaṃ tvāṃ sarva-pāpebhyo mokṣayiṣyāmi mā śucaḥ || 66 ||
sarva-dharmān–all other prescribed duties such as varṇāśrama, the four social orders and four spiritual orders; parityajya–abandoning; mām–of Me; ekam–exclusive; śaraṇam–shelter; vraja–take; aham–I; tvām–you; sarva-pāpebhyaḥ–from all sinful reactions; mokṣayiṣyāmi–shall deliver; mā śucaḥ–do not grieve.
Completely abandoning all bodily and mental dharma, such as varṇa and āśrama, fully surrender to Me alone. I shall liberate you from all reactions to your sins. Do not grieve.
Chapter 18, Verses 65 & 66 of the śrīmadbhagavadgītā
Source:
https://www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/shrimad-bhagavad-gita/d/doc420356.html
&
https://www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/shrimad-bhagavad-gita/d/doc420357.html