Jagat

Thank goodness today's post has something more edifying in it. The negative Vrindavan Today memories have been coming back from 2018 and they are here too. I would rather not remember that whole episode, but I am keeping to the discipline of cross-posting the memories being sent daily by Facebook. At the very least, I am finding it interesting to observe.  There is always something redeeming, however, and the post from last year is one such. I keep talking about Prīti Sandarbha, and the progress is slower than it should be. I am doing practically nothing else for the time being. I was rather surprised to see it had not been posted here before. And I added some material about Bhagavata Niwas, since there are more memories related to this place, which is just around the corner from Jiva and with which Babaji has been long connected due to his guru's having been intimately involved with the history of that locale. It has a powerful aura. (Memories from May 20.)

The inner path is the way of the singular. The external is that of the plural. Their meeting place is in the dual. Like the lamp on the doorstep that sheds light both inside and out, it reveals both the one and the many. Know this and you know the path of Sahaja.  (See  Lessons from Sanskrit: Singular, dual and plural . (April 06, 2011)  

proktena bhakti-yogena bhajato māsakṛn muneḥ | kāmā hṛdayyā naśyanti sarve mayi hṛdi sthite || All material desires in the heart of the wise person who constantly worships me through the process of bhakti-yoga as it has been described [here] are destroyed, for I am situated there in his heart. (11.20.29) Comment by Madhusudan Saraswati in Bhakti-rasāyana, 1.1: By following statements like this by the Lord and having firm faith in the practices by which one attains bhakti, one sends the entirety of the love one has for his objects [of love] and [thus] his mind becomes indifferent to the sense objects. The mental modifications ( mano-vṛtti ) of such a greatly fortunate person, whoever he is, are imbued with the form of the Lord upon being melted by hearing works of literature that gather together the profound glories of the Lord, and this taking of the Lord’s shape is the goal of all sādhana [whether bhakti or yoga, etc.].  This taking on of the Lord’s shape is known ...

Love is the sthāyi-bhāva . Prema is its rasāvasthā . According to Madhusudana Saraswati, God himself is the  sthāyi-bhāva  of love. When certain emotional upsurges heat the heart and allow him to be imprinted there. He is both the vibhāva and the sthāyi -bhāva . The first of these being the bimba , the latter the pratibimba , or reflection, related in exactly the same way as īśvara to the jīva . The same idea expressed in Vaishnava terms would be that it is the reflection of the  svarūpa-śakti. Only God is capable of melting the heart fully. Since He is all things, even the mundane nāyaka and nāyikā are nothing but He, but incapable of fully melting the heart, since they are He covered by Maya. Maya is God's own potency for self-covering. ============= Here is Rupa Goswami's definition of prema : samyaṅ-masṛṇita-svānto mamatvātiśayāṅkitaḥ | bhāvaḥ sa eva sāndrātmā budhaiḥ premā nigadyate || When that very same  bhāva  described in BRS 1....

I have been reading a book by Swami Karpatriji, Rādhā-sudhā  (Vṛndāvana: Rādhākṛṣṇa Dhānukā Prakāśana Saṁsthāna, 2004), which I picked up last time I was in Vrindavan. I have to admit that I am more than a little impressed by Karpatriji's erudition, as well as by Madhusudana Saraswati, with whom he seems to have had a spiritual connection. Madhusudan Saraswati is known mainly for a book called Advaita-siddhi , in which he counters the arguments of Vyasa Tirtha of the Madhva school, a part of the longstanding debate between the two views of the theistic and the monistic traditions of Indian religious thought. But as shown in the previous post, both in legends about him and in his own words, a distinct devotional streak can be observed in Madhusudan. His commentary on the Bhagavad-gita and another on the Bhagavatam are not the only books he wrote that have some interest for the devotionally minded. According to Anant Shastri Phadke, he wrote the following works: Bhakti-bhāṣya-nirū...