Jagat

It was on this day in 2015 that Swami Veda Bharati left his body in Rishikesh. I was in Vrindavan at the time but left the same day to be there for the jala-samādhi and I stayed for several weeks until the mourning period was over. Someone also sent me a photo of the Nitai Pada Kamala, which evoked memories from 1976 or thereabouts. This date was also Guru Purnima in 2011, and my remarks inspired a long thread with plenty of comments. Facebook memories.  July 14 2020 Chapter 28 of Another Side of Bhaktivinoda Thakur by Gadadhar Pran Das is now available. There is only one more chapter, which will be appearing soon. Then what happens? Probably a final edit and then publication. How that will be organized I do not know, but it seems that GP Prabhu has finally got a few disciples who are faithful and will help get it done. Which I think is at least in part due to the publication on line on my blog. I was checking yesterday. Some chapters have had only a couple of hundred ...

I am racing along trying to do a quick first edit of the translation and commentary to Kṛṣṇa-sandarbha . My thought for the day: I would say that by any objective measure, the six Sandarbhas are a chef d'oeuvre. It is said dhanaṁjaye hāṭaka-samparīkṣā mahāraṇe śastrabhṛtāṁ parīkṣā| vipatti-kāle gṛhiṇī-parīkṣā vidyāvatāṁ bhāgavate parīkṣā|| One tests gold in the fire, the wielder of weapons in battle, the wife in times of difficulty, but the test of the learned is in their mastery of the Bhagavatam. What a book the Bhāgavatam is, and what mastery to make sense of it all! First he argues, boldly, that this is the ultimate authority. Then he says, Now this is what the Bhagavatam says. There are many, many things in the Bhagavatam, but what is the consistent and fundamental teaching, and how do we deal with apparent contradictions? And how can you defend your position? When you chop up the Bhāgavatam in this way, distilling the important elements, rejecting those port...

Slogging away on the Bhagavat-sandarbha . So many distractions it is hard to give the attention to this book that I am supposed to be giving it. I am currently working on the final leg of the journey through some of the most difficult passages of all. That is, the Shruti-stuti in chapter 87 of the Tenth Canto. In section 87 of the Bhagavat-sandarbha (according to our new number system, Heaven forgive us), Sri Jiva takes us through a number of the verses that are in this Stuti, which without a doubt is one of the most important in the entire Bhagavatam. Why? Well, the Bhagavatam indicates in the very first verses and claims in several others to be the essence of the Vedānta or the Upanishads. The Shruti-stuti is one place where many of the most important texts of the Upanishads are referred to, sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely, and so give a fairly good idea of the Bhagavata author's interpretation of the Vedānta. The verses themselves are mostly not very easy to unde...

When the breeze carrying the aroma of tulasī leaves from the toes of the lotus feet of the lotus-eyed Lord entered the nostrils of those sages, their bodies and minds were disturbed, even though they were fixed in the imperishable Brahman. tasyāravinda nayanasya padāravinda kiñjalka miśra tulasī makaranda vāyuḥ antar gataḥ sva vivareṇa cakāra teṣāṁ saṅkṣobham akṣara juṣām api citta tanvoḥ When the breeze carrying the aroma of tulasī leaves from the toes of the lotus feet of the lotus-eyed Lord entered the nostrils of those sages, their bodies and minds were disturbed, even though they were fixed in the imperishable Brahman. (SB 3.15.43). About the phrase antar-gataḥ sva-vivareṇa . Translated literally and without any decoration, it means "went inside by own holes." The translation in the BBT edition reads: When the breeze carrying the aroma of tulasi leaves from the toes of the lotus feet of the lotus-eyed Lord entered the nostrils of those sages, their bodies and minds...

Going through the Bhagavat-sandarbha, some verses are rather difficult to deal with. The basic problem is this: Jiva Goswami is quoting the verse for a particular purpose. The immediate sense of the verse may not be obvious. Sridhar Swami's interpretation may not support Jiva's purpose. Now when presenting the verse in translation, we have to remember that Sri Jiva has no filters: i.e., as someone who is living and breathing Sanskrit, he is naturally imbibing the verse on numerous levels, probably seeing several meanings at once. Nevertheless, even when several meanings are present, one of those will be primary to him, as it is with anyone speaking his mother tongue or another well assimilated language. At the same time, Sri Jiva sometimes has to consult Sridhara or other previous commentaries in order to get through passages that might be difficult even to him. Sridhar Swami wrote a commentary primarily because the Bhagavatam is a difficult book and some words are obs...

There are a lot of Sanskrit verses in the SKK, but they are mostly just rather ordinary anushtup shlokas meant to bridge between songs and introduce the speaker and give a little narrative... very little to tell the truth. Since Chandi Das's language is so simple and unpretentious, it is rather easy to get fooled into thinking that he is just an ordinary country guy. But it seems to me that his knowledge of the puranas, though understated, is fairly extensive. And occasionally he comes up with a pretty good verse in Sanskrit, too. बिलेशयविषद्विषद्विषमरागरागावली- शिखिज्वलितमानसो निसरसो वशगोऽस्मि ते । ततो वितर राधिकेऽधरसुधां मयि द्रुतं भृत-सुखे सुखं मम सुखेतरवधैषिणि ॥ bileshaya-viSa-dviSad-viSama-rAga-rAgAvalI shikhi-jvalita-mAnaso nisaraso vashago’smi te tato vitara rAdhike’dhara-sudhAM mayi drutaM bhrita-sukhe sukhaM mama sukhetara-vadhaiSiNi The fire of love that is burning me up, Radhe, is more terrible that the most terrible hole-dwelling snake's poison. I am drying up and h...

Some observations: I remember the first time I read Śrī-kṛṣṇa-kīrtana , I immediately sensed the discomfort that Gaudiya Vaishnavas post-Rupa Goswami would have felt with some aspects of the story. But I also recognized what they would have liked, and that is really what this whole reading of the book is about. Here are some preliminary observations: First of all, Rupa Goswami states in Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi that the pūrva-rāga of the nāyikā is usually described first. Here it is Krishna who is overcome with desire and Radha who resists. In Vidagdha-mādhava , for instance, it is Radha who is affected and she sends sakhīs to Krishna, who refuses her. This gives an opportunity to describe Radha's disillusionment and distress... the intensity of her love. In the second chapter we will learn that Radha is only 11 years old. We don't know how old Krishna is, but he sounds like a real brat, with very little redeeming about his character. He is full of lust and when he gets turned ...

athāpi te deva padāmbuja-dvaya- prasāda-leshānugṛhīta eva hi jānāti tattvaṁ bhagavan-mahimno nānya eko'pi ciraṁ vicinvan Brahma says: "O Lord, so only one who has received even a drop of the grace coming from your lotus feet can know the glories of your bhagavan feature. No one else, not even after making prolonged efforts." So those of us, like myself, who are condemned by nature to go on trying have to think that the only reward for so doing is the effort itself. śreyaḥ-sṛtiṁ bhaktim udasya te vibho kliśyanti te kevala-bodha-labdhaye teṣām asau kleśala eva śiṣyate nānyat yathā sthūla-tuṣāvaghātinām The situation is a bit different for a devotee, however. Even in the deepest entanglement of trying to understand, there is so much sweetness, because bhakti is not abandoned. It is not "kevala" bodha-labdhaye , but something far more subtle than that. In ascertaining specifically what the Lord's svarupa is for me, individually -- i.e., what is the...

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...

Since the Bhagavatam is all transcendental and Krishna himself in book form, it is no doubt offensive to discuss which chapters are best. Nevertheless, one tends to pick favorites. And there are certainly verses that are used more often than others by the acharyas as illustrative of specific points The Bhagavatam has 336 chapters, I believe, so there is lots of competition for the best. However some clearly stand out. So for those to whom the numbers are bewildering or meaningless, here is a quick reminder of what's what: (Note, when I say that there are quotable verses, I am making a quick estimate based on what has been underlined in my handy Gita Press Bhagavata, which I have carried around with me for more than 30 years.) 1.2 is the great second chapter of the Bhagavatam. It starts with a couple of mangalacharana verses to Sukadeva Goswami ( tam pravrajantam , etc.) that many people use at the beginning of Bhagavata recitals. But almost all the rest of the chapter is substant...