Jagat

I am feeling a bit blissful today. I am going to escape to a holiday in Barsana, and if Radharani is merciful, I will spend it in the proximity of Binode Bihari Baba and his merry band of bairagi bhajananandis. Oh how I have looked forward to this day! There is a lot of preeti for me in Barsana. In my crazy life... what kind of crazy... I guess I have been talking a lot about my crazy in the past few weeks. But, today, I am diving deeply into a project that I have been meaning to do for a long time: I am finally getting into revising the current available English translation of Bhaktivinoda Thakur's Jivani. I cannot tell you all how much I feel guru-kripa raining down on me as I read this book with care. So let me take care to thank two Ukrainian devotees, Hanna Chaikovska (Anu Krishna Dasi) and Muraliswara Das, who have been continuously pressuring me into doing this task after exacting my promises, and without whose insistence and strong desire, I would probably s...

I got the sad news today that Joseph T. O'Connell, professor of South Asian Religions at St. Michael's College University of Toronto for more than 30 years, scholar of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, a long-time friend of mine, a well-wisher and supporter of the Hare Krishna movement since its arrival in Toronto, died last Friday in New York of a massive brain hemorrhage. Though I met Joe first in 1971 when a new Hare Krishna devotee, he became an especially good friend when I was doing my post-doc at UofT in 1992-1994. We were neighbors in the West Annex during that time, living just across the park from each other, and our families often broke bread together. He and his wife Kathy helped us make the transition to Toronto in many ways. Joseph was one of the earlier scholars to work on Chaitanya Vaishnavism at Harvard where he did his PhD in the 1950s on the social aspects of the Chaitanya movement. When Krishna consciousness came to Toronto in 1969, he was probably the only person in...

Hindu Encounter with Modernity As a result of thoughts expressed a few days ago on this blog, I decided to read through Shukavak's book again, from beginning to end this time, and review the points that he made there. I have mentioned this book many times and I would like to emphasize once again what an important contribution Shukavak has made to the future of the sampradaya by opening the door to this aspect of Bhaktivinoda's thought, which Bhaktivedanta, by inadvertance or by design, decided to omit from his own preaching. I wrote in Bhaktivinoda Thakur's meat eating and Lalita Prasad Thakur that Bhaktivinoda Thakur made two most significant contributions: the first is the opening of a door to a modern approach to Gaudiya Vaishnava doctrine and history, the other is the wholehearted acceptance of the raganuga sadhana practices that are generally rejected by all branches of the Gaudiya Math. Shukavak quotes several times a passage from the introduction to the Krish...

This is the old Ula Chandi temple at the Birnagar Dwadash Mandir. This building, along with another Durga temple and ten Shiva linga temples form the complex which became Lalita Prasad Thakur's bhajan ashram. His room was in the Durga temple, and Gaur Gadadhar are upstairs in the same building. The temple complex would have been the site of rather elaborate goat and buffalo sacrifices for the annual pujas, as described by Bhaktivinoda Thakur in his autobiography. The Chandi temple, built by the Mustauphis (Bhaktivinoda Thakur's mother's family) in probably the 18th century, fell out of use during the cholera epidemic that wasted the town of Ula in 1857 when Bhaktivinoda was 19 years old. The building has been used of late as a goshalla and a place for storing wood. The photo is taken from Shukavak N. Dasa's book Hindu Encounter with Modernity, p. 32.

I have been marking my students' papers. There were only three who made it to the end. I guess I was given a pretty easy ride for a university course. I think that the three were pleased with the course and since, on the whole, their papers were very good, I thought I would share a few excerpts here. Each of them cited passages, made comments, or had insights that were worth reflecting on. For privacy reasons I will only refer to them by their initials. This posting was begun more than a week ago on May 2, showing just how my time deficit is affecting my ability to write. This also will account for the lack of a discernable train of thought. ====================================== 1. "Reason, Belief, Essence, Faith, or how Bhaktivinoda Thakur 'rationalized' the Spirit" by E.M. EM has written an excellent paper, inspired primarily by readings from Shukavak's articles and his book on Bhaktivinoda Thakur. She had previously read other material on the effect...