Jagat

Today's memories are dominated by 2016 when I was more engaged in Vrindavan Today research and writing. It is too bad that the VT archives were lost and a ton of good stuff is no longer available, except perhaps on the internet archive. So in 2016 Satyanarayana Dasji took everyone from Jiva to Umrao, which is the village associated with the original Lokanath Goswami and his discovery of the Radha Kanta deities. It is just near Chhata on the way to Barsana. Ranbari, the site of Siddha Krishnadas, whose story is very famous, is just nearby. Most of these photos are available in my Facebook albums. At the same time, Hargovinda Sharma, one of the leading rasacharyas of the 20th century, who along with Hari Baba and Purushottam Goswami and others promoted Gaura Lila musical plays along with Radha Krishna lila, which I think was a very important development, but is a tradition that appears to be getting lost also. (FB Memories July 27)

Radha & Krishna dancing in the moonlight. (A painting on the wall in New Vraja Dhama ISKCON Hungary.) cirād upaniṣad-girām ativicārya tātparyakaṁ na labdhum iha śakyate yad anu mādhurīm apy aho | tam apy anubhaven mahā-rasa-nidhiṁ yad-āvāsatas tad eva paramaṁ mama sphuratu dhāma vṛndāvanam|| May this supreme abode of Vrindavan always manifest in my mind. Though its sweet perfection cannot be conceived even after studying the teachings of the Upanishads for a long, long time, one can intuit it as a great ocean of rasa just by living here. (1.22) Commentary The relation of madhura-rasa-bhakti to the Upanishadic and Vedantic tradition is one that is discussed often among the followers of the Bhāgavata. The Taittiriya Upanishad says raso vai saḥ, yaṁ hy evāyaṁ labdhvānandī bhavati : “Rasa is verily That Supreme Truth. One who attains it becomes joyful.” Though there are many important philosophical statements in the Upanishads, some of which are taken to be mahā-vākyas ,...

Prema Mandir, now the number one attraction in Vrindavan. I wrote the following article at the request of Steve Rosen , the editor of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies , for an issue about tirthas, so I tried to distinguish Braj from other tirthas in India. I have written a lot about Vrindavan over the past decade and it was something of a task to extract the essence of my experience of Vrindavan and express it in the present moment. I will publish the article on this blog in three parts. Part I of this three part series. [Introduction, Places of Pilgrimage: Tirtha, Kshetra and Dham, Vaishnava criticisms of tīrtha-yātrā, Braj/Vrindavan is a dhāma] Part II of this three part series. [How a Gaudiya Vaishnava performs pilgrimage to the Dham, The eternal glory of residence in the Dham] Part III : Sattva-guṇa and Nirguṇa, Globalization and the Dham, Can a culture truly be translated? Introduction The town of Vrindavan, now a part of the municipality of Mathura-Vrindavan , ...

Satyaraj Prabhu asked me to write about Vrindavan as a tirtha for the upcoming edition of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies. I have written so much over the years, you would think that I had some kind of clear idea of what I want to say. I have been spending my time looking over the old material and trying to reduce it all to around 5000 words and to make a coherent presentation. The problem is, as always, what do I want to say? What is my “big” realization of the moment? Or the inspiration that guides my understanding of the Dham? Well, first of all I think it is necessary to distinguish the tirtha from Dham. Tirtha is a place you visit, the Dham is a place you stay. I think that needs to be narrowed down a bit more. Dham includes tirtha, but tirtha does not include Dham. A tirtha is usually primarily about expiating sins, one's own or those of one's forefathers. Its primary goal is mukti, whereas the Dham is about bhakti and enhancing one's devotion to Krishna. Resid...

Prabodhananda Saraswati is the ācārya for Braja-vāsa-sādhana , i.e., the devotional practice of living in the Dham. Sometimes people find it difficult to understand his niṣṭhā and his vision of the Dham, which sometimes seems at odds with logic. Indeed, the "city of love" ( Prema-pattanam ) is full of contradictions. For those who believe that Vrindavan is everywhere and there is no need to think that a particular geographical location has any special characteristic, Prabodhananda says: वृन्दारण्ये वरं स्यां कृमिरपि परतो नो चिदानन्ददेहो रङ्कोऽपि स्यामतुल्यः परमिह न परत्राद्भुतानन्तभूतिः । शून्योऽपि स्यामिह श्रीहरिभजन-लवेनातितुच्छार्थमात्रे लुब्धो नान्यत्र गोपीजनरमण-पदाम्भोज-दीक्षासुखेऽपि ॥२.१॥ vṛndāraṇye varaṁ syāṁ kṛmir api parato no cid-ānanda-deho raṅko'pi syām atulyaḥ param iha na paratrādbhutānanta-bhūtiḥ | śūnyo'pi syām iha śrī-hari-bhajana-lavenātitucchārtha-mātre lubdho nānyatra gopī-jana-ramaṇa-padāmbhoja-dīkṣā-sukhe'pi ||2.1|| I would ra...

Jiva Goswami spends several sections of the Bhakti Sandarbha (152-159) explaining that bhakti is free of the material qualities. In this discussion, he also mentions the Holy Dham and so I wish to discuss the nirguṇa nature of the Dham here. When I started Vrindavan Today , I was imbued with a nostalgia for the Braj-Vrindavan of yore, which looked lost under the influence of India’s economic development. At the same time, we have an apparently insurmountable dogma: The Holy Dham is not within the material qualities of nature. So we have to understand what that means. What does it mean that bhakti is not within the guṇas  when everything in this world, according to the Gita and Sankhya philosophy, is just the interplay of these qualities? How can something, like Vrindavan, which is clearly being influenced by the Maya saṁskāras that surround it, the saṁskāras of saṁsāra , be considered transcendental to the guṇas ? The relevant verse here is the following from the El...

One of the reasons I wanted to be in Vrindavan in March was to attend the 40th anniversary of the opening of Krishna Balaram on Ram Naumi. As it happens, I attended none of it, though I did enter the Iskcon property a couple of times. I was there in 1975. It was my first visit to India. The hosts of foreign devotees came there after the Mayapur festival, which is why the opening took place on Ram Naumi rather than some other auspicious day. Prabhupada knew how to make a statement with his " dancing white elephants ." We stayed in Fogla Ashram. The whole Raman Reti area was mesmerizing, with its dust and trees, monkeys and peacocks. And we were all so proud of the achievement, which in the end was truly a marvelous accomplishment for the young, inexperienced Americans and Europeans who managed the project in what would have been trying circumstances. Forty years later, here I was, back in Vrindavan, living in Vrindavan, serving in Vrindavan, immersed in Vrindavan, glori...

Yesterday I went to the FRRO in Mathura for my visa extension appointment. Bipin Sharma, the officer, rather gleefully refused my extension, telling me that the letters from Jiva Institute no longer had any standing with the Foreign Registrations Office because they were not an accredited officially sanctioned bonafide degree-bestowing honest-to-goodness educational institution. I had been half expecting it ever since the department chief popped into Jiva one day while I was reading Paramatma-sandarbha with Satya Narayan Dasji and were told there would be a crackdown. I was rather surprised this time when the people at Jiva seemed to think there was no problem. But Bipin told me the hammer just came down four or five days ago. Had I made my appointment just a little earlier I may have been able to squeeze in, like Kamala. But, there you go, the I Ching kept talking about me heading over "across the great water" so it seems I could not escape that destiny. Nevertheless, I...

The last couple of days there has been a little bit of intensity over on a thread that I started about yet another Western woman writing of her experiences of sexual harassment in India. See discussion here . I have been hanging out on the internet quite a bit since I got to Vrindavan. There are probably various reasons for it. The time I spent in Rishikesh was very structured and intense, not really what I am used to. Coming back here, I remained in my room, reclusively, but as soon as I got me some internet, I just dove right into. Mostly American leftist news and political sites, believe it or not. And interactions with, again mostly Americans, on Facebook. Something of a disconnect: physically in Vrindavan during Hariyali Teej and Jhulan, but mentally in a kind of no-man's-land. Part of the reason is that I am having a horrendous case of writer's block... again. It seems I can write and write, pontificate on unimportant matters left and right, show off my knowledge an...

Since getting back to Vrindavan, I seem to have been going through some kind of adjustment  experience . Rishikesh and Vrindavan really are two different worlds.  Right now it is the Jhulan and Janmastami season warming up in Vrindavan. So there is a lot of  action , a lot of satsanga, Bhagavata, kirtan, etc. going on everywhere. Hundreds of  people  on the Parikrama Marg every day, it seems. I am mostly sleeping in my room... Like Harivams says, that is the bhakti path, just stretch out your legs and go to sleep... in Vrindavan. I have arrived! I picked up a book yesterday about Udiya Baba by his disciple  Akhandananda Saraswatiji Maharaj . These were two of the most significant Brahmavadis to move to Vrindavan in the last century. Akhandananda founded one of the largest ashrams in Vrindavan, in Moti Jheel, and Udiya Baba's ashram is right nearby.  Akhandananda tells the story that when Udiya Baba (Purnananda Tirtha) was still engaged in...