Jagat

I was trying to find an old article I wrote and it wasn't on the blog. I will need to rewrite and comment on Jiva Goswami's vicāra-mārga and ruci-mārga , an important discussion that I often find myself refering to and need to have a link to send people to. So, looking for that I found this, which probably was on some on-line forum 15-20 years ago and never put on this blog. So, for the record. It is relevant to my earlier post about Jordan Peterson and meaning . Someone wrote: The Vaishnavas also say they believe in the oneness of God. That it is a fundamental doctrine of the Vaishnava creed. But really guys, come on, you have so many "deities" floating around. Are the Muslims right when they accuse you of "idol worship" and "dividing the ONENESS?" I have heard Vaishnavas say "we are not "idol worshippers" like the Hindus or Pagans. But it looks the same. What is the difference? The word "pagan" evokes all kin...

I was thinking this morning in meditation about Marx's famous statement, "Religion is the opium of the people." His meaning was that religion is one of the tools elites use to distract the powerless from revolution. Promises of heaven and threats of hell are part of the system to preserve the status quo in the world. Making tolerance and other passive virtues into cultural values -- for the ruled, not the rulers -- is another element of that exercise in social control. Like Napoleon Bonaparte observed, "Religion [alone] is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." In so many ways, religion is just a kind of entertainment, an element in the "circuses" part of "bread and circuses." Interestingly, Bharata Muni in the first chapter of  Nāṭya-śāstra makes it clear that entertainment was originally conceived of as religious propaganda. The dramatic arts, which in Bharata include poetics as well as music and dance, are meant to communicate ...

Over the past couple of days I have written a couple of articles debating with myself the value of living in Rishikesh. The upshot, basically, was that life here was generally conducive to the culture of bhakti. As you can see from recent posts, also, I am becoming quite carried away by Radha-rasa-sudha-nidhi . My two regular shrotas, both wearing Ramanuja tilak and from Chitrakut in Madhya Pradesh--Ram bhaktas in other words--have also become carried away. Today Ananda Kumar said that listening to RRSN, he had come to realize that this was the highest state. He said he had been searching everywhere, but hearing Radha's glories described in such rich language had convinced him that there was no higher accomplishment than Radha-dasya . One of the things I thought about today was the language itself. I wish I could channel this language. This is literature, and it is as if these Indian languages were created to describe these lilas, these bhavas . It is very difficult to transl...

One of the psychological features of devotees that atheists like to complain about is that we always want to be saved. Whenever we get a little bit weak we start hollering for God to come and save us. I haven't had that mood for a long time. But still, from time to time, I start doing it. Reading in Vivekananda's biography, it says that in his Brahma Samaj days, he could not stand "devotees who would cry emotionally, pray for God's mercy in every sentence they spoke, or repeatedly condemn themselves as lower than worms or insects. He thought that a man should hold his head up high like a man and worship God with steadfastness and unbroken resolve." (Satyendranath Majumdar, Hindi edition, p.58) [विशेषतः भक्तों का भावावेश में रोना, बात बात में दयामय भगवान् की कृपा के लिये प्रार्थना करना, अपने को कीटानुकीट के समान हेय मानकर आत्मनिन्दा करना अदि बातों की नरेन्द्र कठोर आलोचना करते थे । वे तो यही उचित समझते थे कि पुरुष पुरुष की ही तरह मस्तक ऊंचा करके दृढ़ उद्यम और अ...

I have been a bit negligent in resuming the results of my teaching experience. I was rather hoping to start developing a text book that could be used in teaching such a course, using my interaction with the students as a source of inspiration. But I am a free molecule, being batted around in the atmosphere, and it seems that no one's will power is more at the mercy of events than mine. So Jiva Goswami and the Prema Vilasa bounced all these good intentions onto the back burner. A back burner that is so full of worthwhile endeavors that it seems the world will starve without them... At least Krishna on the altar will starve for lack of finished offerings. Today is the last course. My students will be taking a short vocabulary quiz. Then we will have to go over the post 16th century material in half the normal course time. Totally impossible. I will try to post the readings for the last three courses on line in a couple of days and add a few comments to illustrate the directions the d...

I have fallen behind in my attempt to write something about each course as it is given, or at least before the next one. Naturally, being who and what I am, I am easily distracted. In particular, I have been thinking about religion and narrative in general. This is, as I have been feeling, is intimately connected to the idea of rasa, and I have been finding the insights in Religion as Story (J.B. Wiggins (ed), New York: Harper and Row. 1975) particularly fascinating. Last week's course was about some basic theology, mostly about the concept of God. I have already mentioned Neal Delmonico's article. I also had the students read Hridayananda's article about Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. I also gave a chapter from Sanatana-siksha, the one that includes sarvottama nara-lila . On the whole, though, I would have really liked to cover more of the theological material, but I would have had to go over the readings limit. This week was about Radha, and next class falls within the re...