Jagat

I had a break yesterday and plunged back into Chandidas. I was reading Biman Bihari Majumdar's edition, which has much to say for it, as he has gone deeply into the Chandidas mystery, sorting out which Chandidas is which. There are so many Chandidasas -- minimum four, probably five or more. Majumdar divides his book into four sections: definitely Chandidas, not so sure, definitely Baru Chandidas and Dina Chandidas, and ones that though ascribed or attributed are definitely not the original Chandidas. Many of the latter are signed Dvija Chandidas, who is definitely post-Chaitanya, though he shows no direct knowledge of or devotion to Chaitanya. The  rāgātmikā-padas  of the Sahajiya Chandidas are left out entirely, since everyone seems to agree that they are post-Chaitanya. Majumdar also thinks Baru Chandidas is at least contemporary with Chaitanya, which I don't agree with. Basically all the students of early Bengali literature pick over each  pada  and...

If there were no love in this world, there would be none in the next either. But nobody would be able to doubt the existence of love in this world if they were not busy trying to find love apart from God. Krishna says, "I am the source of all. All things begin with me. Those enlightened persons who know this, worship me with love." (Gita 10.8) The very fact that we can conceive of an "ideal" is the beginning of the ontological argument. In this sense, it is connected to other arguments for the existence of God, like those of first origins or of teleology, i.e., the purposefulness of existence, both of which point to God. So, God as Person is the truest result of understanding, as it is Personhood, capable of the highest love, that stands at the pinnacle of creation. But when I say that love is the result of the discovery of God as a Person, it is because of the connection of the two, i.e., the personhood we encounter in this world, which is given value and sacr...