Jagat

I just want to say that as I slowly start to get deeper into Bhakti Sandarbha (I reached Anuccheda 10 today), I am gaining even more appreciation for Satya Narayan Dasji, not only of his understanding of the Sanskrit text, but his commentaries. These, I feel, are getting better as we go through the Sandarbhas , and I am sure that the Priti Sandarbha will truly be the crown jewel, the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. In the meantime, we follow Jiva Goswami's path through these six books, where we have just now arrived at the abhidheya , bhakti . In a sense you could say that the other four books were just preparations for this. The actual journey really starts with Bhakti Sandarbha . Jiva stated in the very beginning that you should know what to do now that you have gone through the first four books (and in fact, just by going through them, you already have), but now you are going to stop looking so much at the external tattvas and start to consider what is going on ins...

So in the previous post I left things open a bit in order to follow up on the context, to see whether the asti nāsti was specifically refering to any particular debate. The chapter does begin with an inquiry into differences of opinion about the number of tattvas according to different analyses of the Sankhya categories. Krishna said they are all okay depending on the particular point of view. After explaining what the different enumerations of the tattvas intend and how these differing views can be reconciled, he stops at verse 11.22.25. Uddhava then asks further about the Sankhya philosophy, in particular about its dualism of Consciousness and Matter, prakṛti and puruṣa . prakṛtiḥ puruṣaś cobhau yady apy ātma-vilakṣaṇau | anyonyāpāśrayāt kṛṣṇa dṛśyate na bhidā tayoḥ | prakṛtau lakṣyate hy ātmā prakṛtiś ca tathātmani || Consciousness and Matter, though differing in essence, appear to not be different because of their interdependence. Thus the ātmā is observed in Nature and...

As anyone following me will know, I am working as part of a team with Satya Narayana Das Babaji of the Jiva Institute in his great project of making an authoritative and comprehensive translations of the Bhāgavata Sandarbha or "Six Sandarbhas," Jiva Goswami's principal contribution to the world of Indian philosophy and theology. The first three volumes have been published and my work on the Krishna Sandarbha has been completed, and so I am now turning my attention to the fifth book, Bhakti Sandarbha . The first four deal with sambandha , the fifth with abhidheya and the sixth with prayojana . The first anuccheda , or section, (of which there are 382) is introductory in nature and serves to act as a bridge between what has gone before and the subject of this book, which is the abhidheya . The word abhidheya is an interesting one in itself and seems to have acquired its technical meaning in the context of the anubandha-catuṣṭaya , or four things that an author sets ...

I was reflecting again on the idea of abbreviated works, like the four-verse Gita or Bhagavatam. We have also found a four-verse Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu and a five-verse essential G ī ta-govinda . Now here we present the essential four verses of the Sandarbhas. As we would expect, since the Sandarbhas deal with the subjects of sambandha, abhidheya and prayojana , Jiva Goswami summarizes each of the divisions of the  Sandarbhas with a verse at the conclusion of each. So the  Kṛṣṇa-sandarbha , which concludes the section on sambandha has one verse that tells us what Jiva's final word in sambandha-tattva . Similarly, Bhakti-sandarbha concludes with a verse that similarly summarizes the abhidheya and Prīti-sandarbha the prayojana . The first verse, however, comes at the very beginning of Tattva-sandarbha and though it mentions prema , and bhakti, its main emphasis is again on sambandha-tattva . So the summary looks like this: Tattva-sandarbha ( sambandha-tattva ...

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;...