Jagat

Another Side of Thakura Bhaktivinoda Pariśiṣṭa (An Additional Topic):  "What Changed the River’s Course?" By Gadadhar Pran Das  Email: gadadhar_das000@yahoo.co.in  After completing thirty chapters and assuming that our writing task was done, one reader put forward a good question: “Although the guru parampara of Thakur Bhaktivinoda that is described in your book appears to be genuine, why don’t more of his followers know about this?” Yes, we considered, he is right. Here is a matter that merits explanation. But before we attempt to uncover the Thakur's legacy, we should say a few words about what was going on in the beginning. Because from Gauranga Mahaprabhu’s time there was a traditional system in our Gaudiya Sampradaya that was much more in practice in Bhaktivinoda’s period than it is today: Vaishnavas were accustomed to take diksha from a Goswami parivara, a family line of Vaishnava Acharyas that descend from one of Gauranga’s eternal associates. Not only does Thakur ...

The roof at Parananda Sukhada Kunj. There is some painting work to be don. I am thinking to have some shlokas painted on the walls, either from VMA or RRSN or maybe Dhruvadas . yad rādhā-pada-kiṅkarī-kṛta-hṛdā samyag bhaved gocaraṁ dhyeyaṁ naiva kadāpi yad dhṛdi vinā tasyāḥ kṛpā-sparśataḥ | yat premāmṛta-sindhu-sāra-rasadaṁ pāpaika-bhājām api tad vṛndāvana-duṣpraveśa-mahimāścaryaṁ hṛdi sphūrjatu || May the wondrous glories of Vrindavan, the understanding of which is so difficult to reach, which are only completely accessible to the heart that has become absorbed in service to Radha's lotus feet, which can never be meditated upon without the touch of Radha's mercy, and which bestows the flavors of the essence of the ocean of nectar of Prema, be manifest even to those who are devoted to a sinful life, like me. (RRSN 266) Madness is best reserved for the silence of the night when one's alone, without reservations, and out of sight. I probably have n...

Anyway, the whole subject must be looked at in the context of the sociology of religion. Religions, like any other social phenomenon, go through periods of stagnation and reform. All reforms, which are usually carried out by charismatic individuals. In the wake of a charismatic founder or reformer's death, the followers are bewildered because nobody can equal the divine messenger. So other lines of legitimacy have to be established. The primary legitimacy usually is "the person who was closest to the divine messenger, his companion, the greatest recipient of his grace, etc." In the first generation of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, this legitimacy was extended to ALL of Mahaprabhu's associates. That is the purpose of texts like Gaura-gaṇoddeśa-dīpikā and the other Vaishnava vandanās and śākhā-nirṇaya type texts. gaurāṅgera saṅgi gaṇe nitya siddha kari māne . And this legitimacy was extended to all their descendants. But of course there is a caveat, and certainly BB...

Yesterday was a fairly uneventful day, yet to describe it would require volumes, a kind of Proustian effort to understand how entire lifetimes, entire worlds, universal histories are contained in each microsecond, that to fully describe any moment would require volumes equal to the universe itself. This insight rarely flashes before anyone's mind, since we are usually fixated on immediate goals and desires, and those absorb our mind and intelligence to the exclusion of nearly all the phenomena, internal and external, that clutter ever moment of our lives. And to write about it, well to write about it meaningfully, you have to make it into a story, and a story is an organization of those phenomena into recognizable and communicable patterns, which is why human beings are mythopoeic creatures, turning everything into story and myth. We have to simplify, but simplification means a kind of falsification. Trying to reduce everything into digestible truths usually means caricatures, c...

Another side of Thakur Bhaktivinoda This is an in-depth research study of Thakur Bhaktivinoda's authentic Guru-paramparā (with siddha-praṇāli and ekādaśa bhāva ) which descends from Sri Jahnava Ishvari, who is Ananga Manjari in Vraja Lila, and from Srimati Vishnupriya Devi in Sri Gaurasundara's madhura Nabadwip Lila. by the fallen sādhaka . Gadadhara Pran Das gadadhar_das000 {} yahoo.co.in It is surprising that although Thakur Bhaktivinoda had a large family of 13 children, only two of them became exemplary Vaishnavas. The first was Bimala Prasad, who later became famous as Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati. Born in 1874, he was Thakur Bhaktivinoda's sixth child. Then in 1880, the Thakur had another devoted son whom he named Lalita Prasad. As the bhakti in these two sons began to mature, their father encouraged them in two different ways: 1) to Bimala Prasad, Thakur Bhaktivinoda requested that he widely preach, make disciples, construct maths and mandirs and work...