Jagat

Love eternal Obviously, we could go into a great deal more detail on practically every level of this story, but we have to stop somewhere for the sake of drawing some conclusions from this tale. I wanted to start from the parallels were already made with the Bhagavatam. According to Sanatan Goswami, there were only some 30 years between Krishna’s departure from Vrindavan and the meeting in Kurukshetra. Even so, I guess that what I am saying is that this story has hit a few archetypal bells, themes that are the stuff of myth and legend—the love that does not die. So that is the angle that I see this memoir—a tragic love story in the great tradition. Radha and Krishna were also childhood lovers who were separated--forever, if we accept the Bhagavata version. On reading the book, I came to feel that this was an archetypal tragic love story with interesting parallels to the Bhagavata's account of Krishna and the gopis, and it seems worthwhile to try to make a bit of sense out of ...

Antar-gṛha-gatā Maitreyi recounts an interesting vignette towards the end of the third section of the book, in which she remembers a night when Mircea was playing the piano in his room, which was directly below hers. It was late, 2 o’clock at night, and she and her cousin are unable to sleep. Maitreyi says she will go downstairs and tell him to be quiet. I immediately thought, “Aha! She’s finally coming clean and is going to admit that she did go to his room in the middle of the night.” But of course the cousin says that can’t be done; a young girl just does not go to a single man’s room at 2 o’clock in the morning. Maitreyi makes it as far as the door before she is stopped. Krishna played the flute and Mircea played the piano. Some gopis made it, and some had to go to Krishna in meditation only. antar-gṛha-gatāḥ kāścid gopyo’labdha-vinirgamāḥ kṛṣṇam tad-bhāvanā-yuktā dadhyur mīlita-locanāḥ duḥsaha-preṣṭha-viraha-tīvra-tāpa-dhutāśubhāḥ dhyāna-prāptācyutāśleṣa-nirvṛtyā kṣīṇa-m...

The other day I had to go to Dehra Doon on Foreign Registration Office matters, and in the course of the visit there, I happened to pick up a copy of the novel Na Hanyate by Maitreyi Devi. I bought the book entirely without realizing what it was about. I had never read anything by Maitreyi before, even though she is a well-known writer in Bengal. Seeing how many of her books were available in Hindi translation made me aware of her pan-Indian reputation and so I became interested. The title caught my eye, since I also tend to like books that make some reference to Hindu shastras. It is interesting to get the insight that comes from modern novelists commenting in this way on such texts. And, indeed, I have not been disappointed. This blog was started on the date given below, and it has taken my more than a month (July 27, 2008) to assemble my thoughts and finally post it in two parts. The first thing that happened when I actually started reading the book was I felt a slight shock of...

These essays have become a bit scrambled and perhaps lost their direction somewhat. They should be seen as notes for something that will come out of it all at some time in the future. I would, however, like to make a couple of points here, by way of a résumé: In my understanding of this process there is no fundamental difference in the sambandha or prayojana for the Orthodox and Sahajiya schools, though there are some differences in the abhidheya . Ahaṅgrahopāsanā is, as we have shown, acceptable when interpreted according to the correct sambandha and prayojana , and only rejected when it disagrees with the metaphysics and ultimate goal of Vaishnava practice. When it agrees, it is called āropa . This āropa is similar to, but not exactly the same as the āropa in āropa-siddhā bhakti that has been discussed in a previous post. The goal of bhakti is bhāva and prema . The word bhakti does not make a clear and specific difference between external activities and internal moods;...

I just finished today's course on Vrindavan. The readings we used were all from the Journal of Vaishnava Studies : Gelberg, Steven J. “Vrindavan as a locus of Mystical Experience.” JVS 1.1, Winter 1992. 9-41; Kapoor, O.B.L. “Vrindavan, the Highest Paradise.” JVS 1.1, 42-60; Haberman, David L. “Shrines of the Mind.” JVS 1.3 Spring 1993. 18-35. I would like to say that I really enjoyed Gelberg's article. For those who are not familiar with Gelberg, he was known in Iskcon as Subhananda Das. He was in Harvard when he wrote this piece, and then went on into writing things about Iskcon as a religious movement, quite good stuff too. Somewhere along the line he decided to leave Iskcon and last I heard, he works as a photographer now. He is best known to devotees for an article he wrote called "On Leaving Iskcon" . Too bad, really. A very intelligent guy and a very nice article about Vrindavan with a lot of good references to a variety of modern authors that show a good deal o...

As I have been pointing out, Vaishnavism is about engaging the senses in the service of the Lord. In some cases, this sense activity seems to contradict the service principle. After all, the conception of Vrindavan is distinct from Svarga precisely on this point: that the latter is a place of elaborate sense enjoyment ( divi deva-bhogāḥ ), whereas the former is a universe predicated on pure love. Have we not ourselves mocked the Muslim heaven and the virgins the faithful will there deflower? So how does Madhumangal serve the Lord when he demonstrates the character of a glutton? We assume that he has a spiritual body and does not need to eat in order to maintain it even for the sake of service, as may be claimed by those who cite the need for prasad to keep body and soul together. Obviously, "service" has a wider semantic range than that which immediately springs to mind in the classical sense. How is Krishna pleased when we look on his image or even chant his name? If the ...