Jagat

Gadadhar Pran Das has sent me a couple more chapters of Another Side of Bhaktivinoda Thakur  to share with you all. Jai Radhe! Jai Gaura!  We have found that some devotees don’t believe in this  sādhana , and take it to be mental concoction. So before beginning this chapter’s story, let us examine Rupa Goswami’s guidelines for those who hanker to take up  rāga-mārga bhajana . Another Side of Bhaktivinoda Thakur 28 :  Sri Gopinath’s Sevā Pālā As we were reading in Chapters 26 and 27 about Gaura and Gadadhar’s madhura lilas that unfold in Their bhāvāḍhya and rasātmikā moods, now in the next two chapters (28 and 29) it will be similarly rewarding to investigate how the bhaktas’ sevā unfolds in two ways also: in the ānugatyamayī and in the pratyakṣa moods. The first step is the ānugatyamayī sevā , when one serves the Lord following after their guru, guru-varga and Mahaprabhu’s nitya-siddha bhaktas . In the next stage, however, which...

III. The moods of Nityananda In this article it is not possible to give a thorough discussion of Nityananda’s personality, for that would lead us away from our subject—Gadadhar Pandit. Nevertheless, in order to understand the idea of “shakti” as it operates in personal form in Gauranga līlā, it is necessary to examine Nityananda and some of the developments that took place historically in the way his followers looked at him. Nityananda is a character of the greatest significance in Mahaprabhu’s līlā. He was chief among the preachers of the Lord’s message in Bengal and was responsible for the conversion of many businessmen and people from lower castes to Vaishnavism. Without exception he is identified as Balaram, Krishna’s older brother, the ancient deity known as his first expansion ( ādi-vyūha ), Sankarshan. Kavi Karnapur states that Nitai and his followers were  gopālā gopa-veśinaḥ , "cowherd boys in spirit, who dressed that way also." (GGD 14) In numerous songs...

The first part of this article can be found HERE . Part II. Comparing the Four Synoptic Accounts a. Vastra-haraṇa-līlā One of the questions raised in the previous section is that of the extent to which Mahaprabhu and his companions actually reenacted some of the pastimes that Krishna performed and became enshrined in the Gaura-candrikā songs. Acting out the lives and līlās of the different incarnations has always been part of the Hindu devotional scene, particularly for Vaishnavas. In the Hari-bhakti-vilāsa , it is mentioned as a duty for one initiated in Krishna-mantra (HBV 2.159). If the purpose of devotional rules and regulations is to come to the point of remembering God, then such plays can certainly help. That Nimai and his devotee followers performed plays is clear from all his biographies. The most famous such occasion took place at the house of Nimai’s maternal uncle, Chandrashekhara Acharya or Acharya Ratna, which we will examine further down. There were sev...