Jagat

A lot of the recent posts, along with their responses, having been dealing with the questions related to the place of Krishna consciousness in the modern world. Subal, Anuradha and Krishnadas, amongst others, have all said something in relation to this matter. Since this is an ongoing and open-ended dialogue, I am not going to try to answer everything all at once. And, unfortunately, since much of my livelihood comes from contract work, I am suddenly constrained by the arrival of a fairly hefty contract with a short deadline. I really wanted to respond to Anuradha's last comment, most of which I could agree with. As far as the question of initial conversion to GV, this is one of the things that I have been tossing around, as you may have noticed. I have placed a question mark on whether my own path of getting to where I am is "the only way" of getting here (as if that were a worthwhile goal!). But, obviously, I would not really know anything about this until I myself ...

I spent a week in New York in August in order to do some fundraising. It was nice to encounter devotees in the Sanctuary, where a small group of brahmacharis enthusiastically follow the morning program. I say a small group, but in fact, their number is quite large by current standards--more than 10. I attended japa sessions, mangala arati, Bhagavata class, etc., several times and was enlivened. The temple room is small, but clean and nicely decorated. The Deities are effulgent and mesmerizingly beautiful. Adipurusha Das I was staying at Adipurusha's guesthouse on 3rd Street. Adipurusha is a New Yorker through and through. He has spent most of his devotional life as a sankirtan devotee and his facility is used regularly by many devotees who still come to New York to sell hats and whatnot to make money for various programs. This collection can be quite lucrative for those who have mastered the techniques, even though it remains controversial. Adipurusha was the manager of the S...

From a discussion on the Religion in South India list of the AAR: Steve Rosen: Perusing Graham Schweig's new Gita translation (Harper San Francisco, 2007), I noticed a reading of 2.72 that is quite unique, one that should give those with a Vaisnava leaning -- and particularly a Gaudiya Vaisnava leaning --reason to rejoice. The verse is familiar. It begins esa brahmi sthitih partha . . . Most people translate the first portion as meaning "this fixed state of Brahman," as Zaehner would have it, or some, perhaps, leave it untranslated, saying it refers to a cryptic state known as Brahmi-sthitih, which, of course, doesn't tell us much. Graham, however, notes the powerfully feminine presence in the verse, so much so that he translates this section as saying, "this state of the feminine energy of Brahman." It is a powerful reading, one that acknowledges the "Feminine Brahman" emerging in this verse. Gaudiya Vaisnavas will see a suggestion of Radha ...