Jiva Goswami's Final Word: Sankalpa-kalpa-druma
I have been reading from Jiva Goswami's Gopāla-campū (GC) at the Jiva Institute. Classes are held Monday to Friday from 5-6 in the evening. As I prepared my course, I began going over Saṅkalpa-kalpa-druma (SKD), which gives further clues into Sri Jiva's purpose in writing GC. Saṅkalpa-kalpa-druma (SKD) is the last book Jiva Goswami wrote, which came at the end of his life. In the beginning of the book, which has over 700 verses, Jiva tells his mind that since he is growing old, it should be fixed on Krishna's eternal pastimes. SKD was written after GC, and in some ways it is a recapitulation or summary explanation of the basis or theory of GC. What was Jiva trying to do in his magnum opus? One of the verses given by Vishwanath and his senior contemporary Radha Krishna Das Goswami to support their idea that Jiva Goswami was actually dissimulating when he wrote in various places his defense of svakīyā-vāda is the one which concludes the commentary to 1.21, after his...