Jagat

We appear to still be on the Gurukula issue here in 2016. I am rather pleased with that reflection. Weather snippets -- exhaustion from the hot season. A discussion on the connection of yoga to the bhakti-yoga path: pravartaka - sādhaka - siddha , a major subject of discussion in the early period of this blog and very important matter indeed for my way of understanding the spiritual path. A lot of articles. FB Memories May 24.

I have been sitting on the following diagram for several weeks now, but got caught up in various distractions, but lately some additional insights have come and so I now come back to it and share it, for the pleasure of the devotees. I have been working on this concept for some time before becoming aware of the popular Christian use of the triangle image in a similar way. It seems that variations on the concept are quite widespread and you can see both Christian and secular versions of it on Google images . Since the image and symbolic potential of a triangle or pyramid is a simple one, it is not particularly surprising that it has been used so frequently. After all, what is the Star of David but two triangles? The triangle represents synthesis, and there is no spiritual achievement that is not represented by synthesis. It can furthermore blossom into countless other dialectical configurations, as is represented by the Shri Chakra. In the discussion that follows, however, I have ...

Truth Dig published an interesting excerpt from a book by Robert Jensen called “The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men, " [ dead link ]  which begins with the question of sexual equality and prostitution. "How can a society achieve a meaningful level of justice if people from one sex/gender class could be routinely bought and sold for sexual services by people from another sex/gender class?" This of course leads to questions about the meaning of sexuality itself, and these significant questions are at the basis of the theory and practice of Sahaja. The excerpted piece ends with the following reflection, More than two decades ago, when I first started thinking about this question, I kept coming back to the phrase to describe an argument that is intense but which doesn’t really advance our understanding — we say that such a debate ‘produced more heat than light’. Much of the talk about sexuality in contemporary culture is in terms of heat: Is the sex you are ha...

I started publicly professing to be a Sahajiya when I saw various individuals promoting an agenda that I was not in tune with. I do not believe that sexuality is meant to be "free," or to be indulged in wantonly. The Prema we talk about is pure . That is the axiomatic basis. Just because sexuality is involved does not mean that it is necessarily kāma , any more than any other activity transformed by relation ("dovetailing") to Krishna is kāma . It is part of the process of converting the innate desire that is expressed towards matter ( kāma ) into prema , i.e., that same desire directed towards God. There is only one energy in the soul, that is desire for union. Everything else is subordinate to that, and everything else is a servant of that. sarve vidhi-niṣedhāḥ syur etayor eva kiṅkarāḥ . I fully expect Sahajiyaism and the other paths related to Gaudiya Vaishnavism -- good, bad and ugly -- to manifest in the course of time, just as happened in Bengal. There is ...

I was recently asked how I can see a value for love when all the scriptures teach detachment. But love, especially romantic love, even as described in Radha and Krishna's lila, is full of intense attachment. And if attachment is desired, then what is the difference between such a sadhana and any ordinary love relationship? The Gita teaches that we have to be detached from material objects and become attached to spiritual objects. When we are in a lower stage of development, these spiritual objects are usually "rocks", i.e., inanimate objects that have been endowed with sacred meaning. And as we develop in the preliminary stages of bhakti, we progressively project more consciousness to those objects. In other words, I am projecting onto the Holy Name or the Deities a dimension of my own consciousness that I identify with the Paramatma. Even thought the shastras take great pains to say that this is not a false or imaginary projection, i.e., the image of God in the templ...

I linked three articles from the blog to Facebook recently and received numerous responses, comments and questions. The blog set records for pages read over the past few days, so clearly the subject elicits interest from a substantial section of the spiritually inclined, as it should. So I am elaborating on some of the answers I gave in the Facebook comments and posting them here. Will not associating sexuality with spirituality lead to promiscuity? I am ambivalent about the sahaja sadhana you advocate, maybe it will be possible for the very advanced, but not everyone. The possibility of deviation from any prescribed path is always present. Sadhana is about attaining a high level of spiritual purity and it is easy to be misled by thinking you have become very advanced. This then inevitably leads to trouble. But try to understand. What I am proposing is not merely about physical sex. That is why I think I will stop using the term "sex desire" and call it "love des...

Understanding the relationship of the pravartaka stage to the sādhaka stage. There is a gulf of difference between these stages, as the higher level is practically unrecognizable as part of the same path to one in the lower stage. As one progresses and gets closer to the subsequent stage, one inevitably thinks that he is coming close to either siddhi or to self-destruction. It is a confusing state until one has completed the transformation. That transformation is easy to misunderstand for numerous reasons, which is why it is often condemned in various ways, usually by using the sahajiyā label as a term of opprobrium. Such propaganda serves the purpose of creating a wall around the next stage. Like most steps prior to making a leap of progress, this can be characterized as the "wall of dharma" like the one the gopis had to cross to reach Krishna in the forest of Vrindavan on the night of the Rāsa-līlā. In the pravartaka stage, the practices of devotional service...

The last couple of weeks I have been plugging away at the Bhagavat-sandarbha and as a result I have been cutting back on almost everything else. I would really like to get it finished before going back to Canada, but the way I usually work, it does not look hopeful. It has taken this long to get 472 pages done and there are still approximately 180 to go. Can I do it in a month? The last 85 pages took about a month. The last few days have been difficult as I have been a bit sick--for the first time, I may mention, since coming here, if you don't count one or two brief encounters with the runs. I even missed my Sanskrit class on Saturday, as well as RRSN and Gita on Sunday at Madhuban. The last two days I have been working in my room rather than the office, basically just doing reformatting, spell-checking, etc., before getting down to the real work. It is starting to heat up pretty good here. It must be getting close to 40 degrees at noon nowadays. Yup, hot season definitely h...

This article was written in answer to some questions from a Swami Prema Ananda. I revised it subsequently to make it less like a letter, but it still tends to feel like one. The tripartite system of sādhaka s has been frequently referred to on these pages. I recently made a decision that I will no longer use the term kaniṣṭha , as this is generally considered by orthodox Vaishnavas to be somewhat insulting, and is frequently used to condemn someone as not being very advanced. Someone recently told me a nice story about Bhakti Promode Puri Maharaj, though, which should put that into perspective. It seems that Sridhar Maharaj was talking about different levels of adhikar (or qualification for spiritual life) and, following the Bhagavata’s description of the kaniṣṭha being primarily interested in the worship of God in the temple, cited Puri Maharaj as an example. Some of Puri Maharaj’s followers were there, and eager to find insult in Sridhar Maharaj’s words, went and told Puri. But...

3. "The Vaishnava Sahajiya Tradition within the Tantric Paradigm" by SS. SS was the youngest student of the three and the only undergraduate. She had also taken the fewest courses in religious studies and so was much less familiar with many of the basic heuristic concepts or comparative methodology. She was also, as I learned, a little overstretched with greater than average course load. As such, I expected less from her than I did from the others. Nevertheless, I was quite pleased with her paper. I am measuring these things on what I get from it. It seems to me that there is so much knowledge out there that anyone who is even reasonable perceptive and makes a modicum of effort should be able to find an original and interesting viewpoint to present. What I liked best about this paper was SS’s decision to follow S.C. Banerji’s schema of the eight characteristic features of Tantrism and to examine to what extent they were valid for Vaishnava Sahajiyaism. These eight are: (1) A...

As I have been trying to say, I am approaching the question of Krishna consciousness and sexuality from my own life experience. I should therefore confess that my sexual drive has been (I believe) comparatively low in comparison to the majority of the population, particularly in the West. I did not have an especially great struggle as a brahmachari and my motivations in becoming a householder in Iskcon may sound rather strange to most: I saw it as a psychologically purificatory experience. I slipped out of that experience rather easily in the late seventies and did not find it a great jump to taking sannyas in 1979. The straw that broke the camel’s back of my stay in Iskcon was, in fact, the experience of listening to a brahmachari masturbate in the toilet cubicle next to mine in the Hyderabad temple. It was my feeling then that the Iskcon environment was too sensual to assure self-control. The lifestyle of Bhavananda Maharaj seemed to caricature the true renunciate lifestyle, which is...

I was forced to reflect, once again, after some respondents on this blog made statements that indicate a prurient interest in the sexual aspects of the sadhana I am supporting. I have to admit that I have foreseen some of these questions and think that if one is solidly fixed in the Goswamis’ siddhanta, one will resist the temptation. Indeed, this is the reason why I have emphasized and will continue to emphasize the following three things: (1) The necessity of the pravartaka stage. (2) The necessity of understanding the parallelism between one’s sadhana partner and Guru Tattva. (3) The necessity of taking the female point of view or identity. ========================================== Due to time considerations, what I am going to post today is background information for what will follow. On January 12, 2006, I posted the following texts on Gaudiya Discussions: ========================================== viharati vane rādhā sādhāraṇa-praṇaye harau vigalita-nijotkarṣā...

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;...