Jagat

Radha and Krishna playing Holi. India, Kangra, circa 1800. Opaque pigments and gold on paper śrī-śaṅkara-druhiṇa-mukhya-surendra-vṛnda-durjñeyaṁ rādhā-mānasa-divya-mīna-nilayaṁ tad-vaktra-candrocchritam| tat-kandarpa-sumandareṇa mathitaṁ sakhy-akṣi-pīyūṣadaṁ kañcic chyāma-rasāmbudhiṁ bhaja sakhe vṛndāṭavī-sīmani || Within the boundary of Vrindavan forest, O friend, there is a dark ocean of ambrosia, the abode of the divine fish of Radha's heart, unknowable to the gods headed by Shiva and Brahma. That ocean's tide surges with the rising of her moon face; Cupid is the churning stick, the beautiful Mandara Mountain, all to create amrita for the eyes of her sakhis. Worship that black ocean of rasa. The churning of the ocean is a theme that is loved by Sanskrit poets for its many metaphorical possibilities. The idea that by churning one thing, its essential elements are extracted, and that there are various roles in the process that can be assigned is...

Kaladhari Ashram, Vrindavan anādau saṁsāre kati naraka-bhogā na vihitāḥ kiyanto brahmendrādy-atula-sukha-bhogāś ca nyakkṛtāḥ | tadāsminn ekasmin vapuṣi sukha-duḥkhe na gaṇayan sadaiva śrī-vṛndāvanam akhila-sāraṁ bhaja sakhe || In this beginningless world of repeated birth and death, how often have you not been condemned to suffer hell? And how many times have you not relished pleasures that eclipse even those of Brahma, Indra and the other gods? So, my friend, for just this one lifetime, give up all consideration of happiness or distress, and forever worship Sri Vrindavan, the essence of all things. This verse echoes an earlier one, " Give up chewing the already chewed (2.14) ." In  the previous verse , we traced the concept of Nature as manifest in Vrindavan, i.e., Vrindavan as archetypal Nature, seen as existing in the service of God, and thereby itself partaking of the sacred. The essence of the Vaishnava view is that of the non-differe...

r ādh ā -kṛṣṇa-vilāsa-pūrṇa-sucamatkāraṁ mahā-mādhurī- sāra-sphāra-camatkṛtiṁ hari-rasotkarṣasya kāṣṭhāṁ parām| divyaṁ svādya-rasaika-ramya-subhagāśeṣaṁ na śeṣādibhiḥ seśair gamya-guṇaugha-pāram aniśaṁ saṁstaumi vṛndāvanam|| I constantly sing this hymn to Vrindavan wondrous with the fullness of Radha and Krishna's dalliances, ever astonishing due to the expanding essence of their supreme sweetness, the very highest limit of the various rasas Hari enjoys. The divine land of Vrindavan is unlimited in its good fortune, in that it is the only place where can be experienced all the relishable relationships of Love of God, the glories of which are incomprehensible to Shiva or Shesha or any of the other gods of this world. (1.4) Commentary Vrindavan's glory is that it is the Dham of Radha and Krishna, the scene of this vision of the Supreme Truth embodied as the Divine Couple, the idea of perfection of romantic love. The land is imbued with their presenc...

My friend, Paramadwaiti Maharaj’s young sannyasi disciple from Argentina, Padmanabha Swami, recently wrote me a note thanking me for introducing him to Jordan Peterson after I posted a few links on my Facebook page. He then wrote an article , extracting a few points from Peterson’s latest book, Twelve Rules for Life An Antidote to Chaos , that he felt were compatible with Vaishnava teachings. At any rate, Peterson’s full-throated defense of religious belief and his debates with neo-atheists like Sam Harris have attracted the attention of Christian pastors like Paul VanderKlay who use his insights in their own understanding and explanations of religion. I have not written directly about Peterson very much on this blog, as my own journey is taking me away from the kind of academic explanations of religion that were a concern earlier on in this blog, after I had gone through religious studies at McGill University. Nevertheless, that is what first attracted me to Peterson was his...

As I went through the revision of Sva-likhita-jīvanī , I spent a lot of time putting in footnotes, since I recognized that many of the names would be unfamiliar to readers, especially his Bengali contemporaries. Of course, these notes are brief and in some cases entirely inadequate. Here is one, for instance, that simply could not have been included in full, so I thought I would put it here. When Bhaktivinoda Thakur's first wife died in 1861, he writes that this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow helped him. "I endured this grief like a warrior according to the 'Psalm of Life'." No doubt it was Rev. Dall (also a New Englander) who introduced BVT to Longfellow). Somewhat ironically, it seems that it was the New England Unitarians and Transcendentalists who appealed the most to Bhaktivinoda rather than their British equivalents like Wordsworth. I think that Longfellow's lyrical style appealed to him more. I think that anyone reading this and knowing t...

These thoughts are based on conversations I had in 2017, after I had posted on my response to Srila Narayan Maharaj's statements related to Bhaktivinoda Thakur's  Sva-likhita-jivani (SLJ), which it would be advisable to read before going on here. I am currently doing a bit of work on SLJ and the Thakur's frank description of his conversion to Chaitanya Vaishnavism is particularly important to us, who are also converts. I have heard that Swami Tripurari Maharaj coined the sobriquet "the first European convert to Vaishnavism" since the Thakur passed through a thorough indoctrination into Western thinking before being exposed to the Chaitanya Charitamrita and Bhagavata Purana when already in his 30's. His English-medium education, which a strong element of Unitarian Universalism through the association of Reverend Charles Dall , was not monolithic. In fact, it reflected the contemporary debates in Europe and America about scriptural literalism and the natur...

Sadhus are also called sat , which is best translated as "the good or holy." Sat-sanga means "association with the good, the holy." But the derivation of sat  is that it is the present participle of the verb "to be" ( as ), so it s fundamental meaning is "being, existing." This then has several derived meanings, primary of which is truth, the sacred, or reality. In other words, what exists is real and true, what does not ( asat ) is not true. That which is true is good, that which is not is not. As Vaishnavas we are meant to discriminate between sat and asat , but basically asat is an illusion, because untruth, by definition, is that which does not exist. The asat person is one who is living in the mistaken belief that asat is sat . One who finds fault, therefore, is seeing asat and meditating on asat . As much as we meditate on asat , that much are we ourselves asat . Coming into contact with asat is called asat-sanga . Coming ...

My problems in Krishna consciousness arose out of the mostly literal interpretations given to the shastras by the devotees. There is a huge caveat in the Bhagavatam about everything that is said in that text: Krishna favors indirect speech.

I would find it quite normal if someone who read the last post were puzzled by what seems like a tremendous change in my direction. After all, the famous Sahajiya and “mundane scholar,” Jagadananda Das could hardly at this point represent the great Bhaktivinoda Thakur, nor his son Lalita Prasad Thakur, and yet that is precisely what I am setting out to do. Well, not exactly, let us say that I intend to serve them. After all these years, all these changes, to return to a situation from what is now a quite distant past, and one that would look quite unpromising to most people, strikes even me as a bit strange. The decision to commit to Lalita Prasad Thakur’s bhajan sthali itself caught me a bit by surprise. Maybe not quite as great as it seems at first glance, but nevertheless I think it requires some explanation. This is probably going to take more than one post. Part of my decision comes as a result of my slowly maturing understanding of Guru-tattva, which is indeed a grand and f...