Jagat

This is a cross post from Vrindavan Today , with a few revisions. One of the subjects I have been thinking a great deal about is identity and globalization. My identity in Vrindavan is that of a Vaishnava sādhaka living in the Dham. This identity has to fight against the demands of the ever-increasingly dominant modern, globalized culture. Now there are two kinds of people living in Braj. The first are true blood Brijbasis, some going back many generations. Though there are many of these, the religious elites, the Gosais, are at the top of the hierarchy. But the traditions hold that all these Brijbasis are namasya , because they are most directly serving the Vrindavan lila. Times are changing, but they have been learning the game known as "Braj" for many generations. And many of them are now in the process of learning how to "be Braj in the world." Collectively also, the battle is on for an identity for Vrindavan. Brijbasis are not immune to external influ...

This has been a very good year for the Jiva Tirtha Sanskrit course and things are progressing quite nicely, though in the usually bumbling way. This is the second year we have been doing this course at Jiva and it is still a work in progress. One student Stuart Trusty pushed to have the manual published in a small number after the first year was over. This year we have been able to build on that work and at the end of this year we should have a second edition. Even so, I think it will take one more year before it will finally be publishable, as what I have learned this year will need to be better assimilated to the overall method. By an interesting coincidence, one of my students this year is Vinode Vani Dasi. She was in Dallas in 1973, the first full year that the original ISKCON Gurukula was in operation. Like many things in ISKCON, the early days were the headiest, filled with the most enthusiasm. We had a rather good reminiscence about it in yesterday's class. The...

Cross posted from Vrindavan Today . While in Barsana recently, I was standing in the Ladli temple on the outside terrace portion and someone appeared to have fainted. An elderly Brijbasi Gosai, with a bushy white moustache, a colorful turban and yellow silk dhoti, a stick in his hand, was walking toward me. For some reason I was impelled to say something stupid and started to speak, but my Hindi tongue was tied and could not express, "We must all pass by that." At the Brajvasi's insistence I repeated myself again without success and ended up stuttering out the words andham tamah,  "the darkness of ignorance." Which I knew the instant they came out of my mouth that they did not fit at all what I really wanted to say, pointless as it was. The Gusai responded vehemently in a tone of chastisement, but even singing a Brijbhasha song, glorifying Braj Dham as sat-cit-ananda , and how nothing that happens here can ever be andham tamah . I stood there with my h...

I have been watching a lot of strange videos over the past few days. A rather abrupt and inexplicable detour from the few days of more intense bhajan in the association of Bengali Babajis in Barsana. While in Barsana, I was standing in the Ladli temple on the outside terrace portion and someone appeared to have fainted. An elderly Brijbasi Gosai, with a bushy white moustache, a colorful turban and yellow silk dhoti, a stick in his hand, was walking toward me. For some reason I was impelled to say something stupid and started to speak, but my Hindi tongue was tied and could not express, "We must all pass by that." At the Brajvasi's insistence I repeated myself again without success and ended up stuttering out the words andham tamah . Which I knew the instant they came out of my mouth that they did not fit at all what I really wanted to say, pointless as it was. The Gusai responded vehemently in a tone of chastisement, but even singing a Brijbhasha song, glorifying B...

Yesterday I wrote about a book that I just finished today, the Sanskrit translation of an Oriya novel, Yājñasenī . I read through the 450 pages from beginning to end pretty much without stopping, which was an exciting new experience for me. After all, I have been studying Sanskrit for a long time, and it was a joy to be able to become absorbed in a book almost as though the language had finally become completely natural to me. It seems, though, that a lot of what I do these days makes me reflect on the whole "Krishna West" debate. Yesterday, I spoke in favor of opening Sanskrit to foreign influences through translation. Though this may still be a good idea, it may be worth considering the view that perhaps keeping the Sanskritic tradition hermetically sealed in an India of the past may also be one. Now learning Sanskrit is something that I did quite spontaneously without really giving it a great deal of thought, and the paths to learning it were opened to me in the Ha...