Jagat

Sorry, friends, for not posting much of late. As usual, there are many beginnings, but most don't pass the editor's desk. This post was begun on the 16th. I am posting on the 21st, so there are mixed time references. ================= Interesting day, yesterday. First a lengthy class and discussion with Satyanarayana Dasa, and then a visit to Haridas Shastri. I spent the earlier part of the day indulging in my greatest distraction and perhaps the bane of my existence, typing a book, the Sarva-siddhānta-saṅgraha , attributed to Shankaracharya, but clearly not. Even here, in the section on Nyaya, the following verse is found— varaṁ vṛndāvane ramye śṛgālatvaṁ vṛṇomy aham vaiśeṣikokta-mokṣāt tu sukha-leśa-vivarjitāt 40 yo veda-vihitair yajṣair īśvarasya prasādataḥ mūrcchām icchati yatnena pāṣāṇavad avasthitim 41 I prefer to be a jackal in the beautiful land of Vrindavan rather than accept the liberation of the Vaiseshikas, which is without even a drop of happiness. By...

It is commonplace, I think, for bloggers (or perhaps all writers) to see the world as grist for their blog. And then, as with anything in life, you make your choice and you run with it. I guess the blogger has the great advantage of not having to pick anything; it's the freedom to be mediocre. I was down on the floor making a shipment and, out of the blue, Philippe asked me whether you had to be a believer in order to be a scholar of religion, which started a bit of a discussion. The place I went to was, however, more influenced by Garrison Keeler than by Rupa Goswami... Garrison Keeler is the raconteur par excellence who has a weekly show on American Public Radio called "Lake Wobegon Days." It's folksy, homespun and all that. I hadn't heard him in a long time when I accidentally caught the program on the radio Sunday afternoon, and quickly got caught up in his mastery of the art. Every story must have a moral, which rides on the back of the rasa, the emotional pa...