Jagat

FB Memories June28

satya-vrataṁ satya-paraṁ tri-satyaṁ satyasya yoniṁ nihitaṁ ca satye satyasya satyam ṛta-satya-netraṁ satyātmakaṁ tvāṁ śaraṇaṁ prapannāḥ We take shelter of You, whose very essence is truth: You, who are true to your vow, who value the truth above all, who are the unchanging truth that pervades past, present and future. You are the womb of truth; You are hidden in all truth; You are the very Truth that makes all truth true. You are the eye of truth in the cosmic law. (BhP 10.2.26) First I would like to thank the organizers of the conference, in particular Jodh Singh and Paramvir Singh, and Jaspreet Kaur Sandhu, but everyone else also. It has been a most enjoyable and gratifying experience to be so warmly received as a guest here at Punjabi University, Patiala. Furthermore, I would like to thank all the speakers who shared their thoughts on this important topic. I will not be able to list them all for fear of putting some first and some later. Suffice it to say that I have bee...

A number of different things coming together here, so I will try to pull them together as best I can. (1) Just finished reading Lajja by Taslima Nasreen, in the Hindi translation. The story here is really that of Muslim violence on Hindus in Bangla Desh, in all its historical manifestations from Partition in 1947 to 1992, when the Babri Masjid incident set off a series of communal clashes in India. This also gave Bangladeshi Muslims yet another opportunity to engage in a round of ethnic cleansing in their country. The book is about a Hindu family that both loves their country and considers themselves non-religious, even atheistic. Despite their identification as Bengalis first and nothing else, they are forced into a communal identity by circumstances. In the end, despite a long-held determination to stick it out, in the faith that this was their country, they make the decision to leave. There is no longer any place for them in their own country. That is their "shame" ( lajj...

When I see a discussion starting that deals with questions I was deeply involved in 10 or 20 years ago, or even more recently, I do not feel tempted to get involved again. One moves on, I guess. Rocana Prabhu has recently published an editorial on the Sampradaya Sun wherein he struggles to make sense of Bhaktivinoda Thakur's avowal that he engaged in meat eating. In the context of this article, he makes a few disparaging comments about my diksha guru, Sri Lalita Prasad Thakur. It is unfortunate that there is no one but me to currently come to the defense of my guru, and for me to do so means exposing myself to involvement in disagreeable disputes, which is certainly not appealing to me. Nevertheless, it seems to me that I am under some obligation to say at least a few words. Poor Rocana seems to have just discovered that Bhaktivinoda Thakur admitted eating meat and fish in his memoirs. He worries about "the potential this has to disturb the minds of many readers," w...

The other day I heard Andrew Keen talking about his book The Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is killing our culture. His idea is that by democratizing the internet, the distinction between uninformed voices, or amateurs, and experts, or professionals, is blurred. With the ascendancy of "free" information on the Internet, true professionals are gradually being marginalized and unable to make a living at providing expert knowledge or authoritative interpretations of the world around us. According to Keen, this is a loss for everyone who seeks to make an informed decision about anything, from politics to religion. His definition of "amateur" was rather wide: It means anyone who cannot make a living through his area of expertise. As such, I qualify, to my shame. I pontificate here on the internet, and yet I am unable to establish myself as a genuine authority in devotional service, as a "religious professional" as I like to put it. I may be a particu...

A very nice interview with Martha Nussbaum: The Clash within - Islam and Hinduism in India , on Australian national radio. Martha Nussbaum : Yes, I think Gandhi was a tremendous genius of human perception. He understood that often when violence breaks out it's all about men, in particular, being eager to show their manliness by showing that they can bash others, and what he tried to convey--and did successfully convey as long as he lived--to his followers, was that being a real man doesn't mean learning how to bash others, it means learning to stand up with nothing but your naked human dignity around you and endure, if you have to, the blows of others. Stephen Crittenden : The British novelist Martin Amis has described contemporary Islam as "quivering with male sexual insecurity." You in a way, show that exactly the same process has been operating in Hindu India. Martha Nussbaum : Yes, and I think it was compounded in this case by the fact that the British really desp...

My friend Shalagram Prabhu, who is about the most yogic of all the bhaktas I know, once told me that there is some debate amongst the yogis about which chakra is the most important, with some claiming precedence for the heart chakra over the more familiarly lauded sahasrara. I have a strong tendency to associate mental speculation with spirituality. So, I tried to counteract that tendency today by meditating on the heart chakra while chanting japa. I was just trying to concentrate on the feeling of love and spreading it outward. Seeing my heart as the heart of a gopi. {Oh my God! I’ve gone New Age! I feel a gag reaction setting in... Such things are best kept private...} ...but this really is what I have been intellectually moving toward. I repent that I never became a kirtaniya. Like a crab with an overdeveloped claw, I was obliged by my nature to cultivate a single part of my faculties, and have thus been deprived of wholeness due to that distortion. And this is why I say tha...