Jagat

A question I often get asked is, "Do you still believe in Srila Prabhupada?" Or some variation of this question. This was most recently asked by someone who had just read the article About Jagat , where I have tried to summarize the major events in my life. This question often puts me off my guard a little, as I suspect that the questioner has a very naive understanding of guru-tattva or is out to entrap me by getting me to submit to a kind of loyalty test. To make a succinct statement, I will just paraphrase what I wrote yesterday in my article Anti-intellectualism and Anti-Semitism join forces in the Krishna consciousness movement : I have been out of ISKCON for more than 30 years and have developed a way of thinking that I see as being at least three steps removed from it as a result of my contacts with (1) traditional orthodox Gaudiya and rasika Vrindavan Vaishnavism; (2) with Sahajiya Vaishnavism; and (3) with the Western academic study of religion, all three of w...

Somehow, while surfing the Internet, I came across an article, ISKZION , which caused me some concern. The author asks questions about the preponderence of Jews in ISKCON leadership positions and speculates about the Vaishnava society and Jew-related conspiracy theories. The author even cites the  Protocols of the Elders of Zion , a book that has passed into the annals of racist defamation as one of the most pernicious [and successful] examples of its kind; this is certainly the red flag of anti-Semitism par excellence. Now, even though I myself am not of Jewish extraction, I would personally argue that since Jews are disproportionately represented in almost every field of merit... music, science, the arts and cinema, political commentary, finance, philosophy, etc... it would perhaps be more of a problem if Jews were underrepresented in ISKCON and Krishna consciousness. Since Jews seems to know a good thing when they see it, that would almost prove that they have no me...

There are many examples of the kind of Prabhupadanuga closed-mindedness and fanaticism that make me despair for the future of the Krishna consciousness movement. One especially good and consistent source of examples is provided by the Sampradaya Sun website, which never fails to find an opportunity to make a great display of its devotion to Srila Prabhupada at the cost of sensible rational thought. They can spend endless hours and spill countless gallons of ink discussing the flaws of the ISKCON gurus and the doctrine of the "Sampradaya acharya," but the territory no one dares to enter is that where Srila Prabhupada and his teachings are called into question. In this respect I have two particular examples I would like to bring up; one is recent, the other two years old. I will discuss the recent on first, the second one afterwards, even though in terms of writing, the latter issue came to my attention first and was in the process of inspiring comment when the more recent in...

(Crossposted from the discusson on Facebook ) There has been movement both ways: Just as there were Goswamis and Babajis who went to the Gaudiya Math, they have come to Iskcon also. At the same time, there have been people going from Iskcon to various GMs, and from both to other Vaishnava groups. svajātīyāśaye snigdhe sādhau saṅge svato vare . You have to feel that you are getting saintly association with whom you share the same spiritual goals, where you find affection and which is preferably conducive to advancement. In other words, on a higher level than yourself. I left Iskcon primarily for both the first and third reasons... not because I was too proud of myself, as some people thought, but because I felt that no one there in 1979 had anything particularly useful to teach me about bhakti and this tradition. I was just remembering yesterday, when I went to the Iskcon temple to celebrate Rasa and the beginning of Urja-vrata, how on two occasions, shortly before leaving Iskcon,...

One thing I have noticed about the Western Krishna conscious movement is that most devotees (older ones at least) are progressive politically, due to their radical stance as youthful hippies against the "establishment culture." This is unusual, on one sense, because Srila Prabhupada was VERY conservative, politically as well as socially. At one time or another, he said things that showed racist, fascist, anti-feminist, libertarian, anti-taxation and corporatist leanings. His preaching in India was geared towards business elites. How hippies came to adopt leadership from this quarter is a curious matter in itself and worthy of investigation. Let us say that they were in search of a radical alternative to the established dominant culture in Western society, and the hedonistic and libertine counterculture of the time had proved an abject failure experimentally. Prabhupada also fed conspiracist and apocalyptic tendencies amongst devotees--the coming of WWIII, the moon landi...

I was reflecting this morning on the little "interfaith seminar" I attended yesterday in Guelph. There were nine people altogether of various backgrounds--the two mature Indian men from the temple with whom I came, myself, a Lutheran couple, a Roman Catholic woman, a Unitarian Universalist woman, and a Buddhist couple of Jewish background. All the Christians, though, were to a greater or lesser extent influenced by New Age ideas. All looking for "spirituality." So there were no representatives of a "hard" tradition--no Baptist evangelicals or Sunni imams. I was very calm and detached throughout the whole meeting, which was centered on the subject of death. I was the second last person to speak, so I had the opportunity to hear everyone before saying anything. Most of it was heartfelt personal stories about experiences with other people dying, their own near-death experiences, etc. Everyone seemed to agree, more or less, that they were not afraid of death, ...

I posted this verse a long time ago, but on my Sunday walk yesterday it was one of my meditative verses. na dīkṣāsyāḥ śikṣā-śravaṇa-paṭhane vā guru-mukhāt tathāpīyaṁ rādhā tri-jagad-abalā-vismaya-bhuvām | kalāmbhodheḥ śaurer api parama-santoṣaṇa-kṛtāṁ kalānām ācāryā vraja-mṛga-dṛśām apy ajani sā || Our Radhika was never initiated, nor did she ever take any lessons from a shiksha guru. Even so, she has become the acharya from whom the doe-eyed Vraja sundaris learn all the arts of satisfying the heroic artist himself, Krishna, arts that are the source of amazement to every other attractive damsel in the three worlds. (GLA 11.124) Well, that is Radha: the svarūpa-śakti , the eternal embodiment of the highest power known in existence: that of Love. I was reflecting on this, because I have a strong saṁskāra that makes me think it is important to acknowledge one's gurus. In fact, it is my feeling that acknowledging gurus is the whole point of parampara. I have written about this ...

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...

Kanwaris on road from Haridwar Yesterday, there was a tempo rikshaw strike in Rishikesh. The month of Shravan is a big month here, as there are literally thousands of pilgrims or Kanwarias, mostly young men dressed in bright orange shorts and t-shirts stamped with OM or a picture of Shiva and om namah shivaya . They are going to do the walk to Neelkanth, 25 kilometers away. It is a different kind of group from the one I described doing the same thing around Shiva-ratri time. They are mostly from the cities, Delhi, Chandigarh, etc. (See Kanwarias flock highways to get an idea of the madness.) Anyway, something happened, I never really figured it out or cared much, but it did stop me from going to Madhuban for my Sunday class. It was a little too bad, really, because the subject was the yā niśā verse from Gita (2.69) and I was a little inspired to talk on Hari-kathā itself. I have been appreciating the words kṛṣṇa-bhāvanāmṛta , which are used to translate "Krishna conscious...

I did a lot of stuff on the weekend--I read, I updated or finished six or seven files on the GGM, I helped U. finish her dissertation. But I did it all in a state of tamo-guna consciousness. I did most of it sitting in front of the TV, deadening myself to my self. U.'s thesis is about sankirtan. I was reminded of that Sridhar Maharaj quote someone once posted on GD--"The essence of love lives by distribution; not by absorbtion, but by distribution. That is love. Prema is that which exists by its tendency of distribution, and that is the highest." And that is what I am NOT doing. Even though I may flatter myself that I am not doing nothing, it is almost as if. I woke up this morning singing the verse-- vipadaḥ santu tāḥ śaśvat tatra tatra jagad-guro bhavato darśanaṁ yat syāt apunar bhava-darśanam It is one of the very first verses I ever learned. But it really summarizes, I guess, the Mahabharata's teachings. (Since the Bhagavata is a supplement or appendix ...

On the Guardian 's "Comment is Free" page today, there is a short article by Theo Hobson, We need a new sexual revolution , which echoes something that I have been thinking for a long time. It has been my feeling that sex is underdiscussed in Gaudiya Vaishnavism and that whatever discourse there is lacks subtlety. Thus, anyone who even mentions the possibility that sexuality has a more complex human function than procreation on the one hand or is of an unambiguous materialistic darkness on the other, is immediately accused of immorality, as indeed has happened to me. The discourse surrounding Sahajiyaism is thus so clouded by reactionary thinking that all rational discussion is clamped down on before anything really meaningful can be accomplished. Hobson's article does not say much, I admit, but at least he points out that the so-called "sexual revolution" has trivialized sexuality to a level of complete irresponsiblity, seemingly confounding sexual free...

As I have been reading and meditating a bit on Bhaktivinoda Thakur's modernist project, I found the following report on ABC, The Centenary of the Modernist Crisis , interesting in its review of the Catholic response to modernism, apparently a term invented by Pope Pius X and defined as "the synthesis of all heresies." When you read the transcript, you get the impression that Krishna consciousness had a similar reaction to the intellectual impetus that leads to modernism. ("It ushered in a period of repression, spies, secret vigilance committees, dismissals and excommunication that stifled open independent thought for half a century.") Although, thanks to the OCHS and its offshoot in New Rarha Desh, this seems to be increasingly less true with the passage of time. David Schultenover S.J. (Professor of History at Marquette University, U.S.A.) comments on the nature of the fear that led to this reaction: ...It largely reacted out of fear, very understandable...