Jagat

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 , ...

Prem Mahavidyalaya at Keshi Ghat, with exhortations to keep the Dham clean. Originally posted at Vrindavan Today . rājyaṁ niṣkaṇṭakam api parityajya divyāś ca rāmāḥ kāmān sarvān api ca vihitāṁs tikta-tiktān vidantaḥ | hitvā vidyā-kula-dhana-janādy-abhimānaṁ praviṣṭā ye śrī-vṛndā-vipinam apunar-nirgamāṁs tān namāmaḥ || To those who have entered Vrindavan never to leave,      after abandoning a kingdom free of foes,       along with beautiful women and all desires and duties,             thinking them to be most bitter, and who have renounced learning, noble birth, wealth, and fame to do so,             we offer our respectful obeisances. Commentary After placing the accent on life outside of Vrindavan, Prabodhananda returns with admiration to the person who has managed to achieve the goal of going to Vrindavan, and then remaining so committed to it that he never leaves. ...

Part I : Tirtha, Kshetra, Dhama Part II : Pilgrimage to Puri in the 19th Century Part III : Gaudiya Vaishnava Pilgrimage Pilgrimage in the 19th century With all these layers of spiritual significance, Puri has always been a great magnet to the people of India, who left their homes at great personal sacrifice, often spending their entire life’s savings just for the chance to see Lord Jagannath and bathe in the ocean tirtha. The Chaitanya Charitamrita describes the annual pilgrimages made by Mahaprabhu’s followers, who would walk the 500 kilometers from Bengal. Mahaprabhu’s dear associate Shivananda Sena would supervise the trip, taking care of travel arrangements, accommodations, border crossings, river crossings, and tolls for the several hundred pilgrims who would go to see Mahaprabhu every year during the Rathayatra. These times were often troubled and Shivananda had to make full use of his extensive diplomatic skills to negotiate through the various difficulties. W. W...

A couple of decades ago I worked for Raoul Ramdas Goff of Mandala Press translating. Ramdas is a disciple of Srila Bhakti Pramode Puri Maharaj , the founder of the Gopinath Gaudiya Math , which is now headed by Sripad Bhakti Bibudha Bodhayan Maharaj . My relationship with Mandala came to a sudden end when the company went through a period of financial difficulty and so many of the projects that I worked on never found their way to the printing presses. One of those projects, which was in an advanced state of completion, started out as a translation of Sri Kshetra by Sundarananda Vidyavinoda, but since Sundarananda's book was written near the end of the pre-Independence period (pre-1947) a lot of the information was out of date and required considerable supplementary research. We prepared maps and so on, but needed photography and I felt I needed to do some on the spot research. My relationship with Mandala was severed before that took place and the project was left in limbo. S...