Jagat

adyaiva mūrkha cala sarvam ida ṁ vihāya v ṛ ndāvanāya sakalārtha-sura-drumāya | śrī-rādhikā-surata-nātha-viśuddha-bhāva- satrāya maiva kuru k ṛ tya-samāpty-apek ṣ ām|| You fool, get moving now, on this very day! Give up all of this and go to Vrindavan, the desire tree that can grant all your wishes, this Vrindavan that is the sacrificial altar for the pure prem of Radha’s lord of love.   Go, without thinking any other duties still need to be carried out. (1.71) Commentary Prabodhananda continues exhorting to his mind to give everything up and resort to Vrindavan. Here the sense of urgency seems to be increasing. Indeed, it would seem that the last series of verses were written in one surge of creativity. His language is strong,  again and again calling his mind a fool. It is not that such strong language is absent from other texts like the Gītā and Bhāgavatam. Krishna in the Seventh Chapter also calls those who do not surrender ...

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 ...