Jagat

It has been a couple of months since I posted on the blog. I was not inactive. In Karttik I was making a big effort to enhance the Vrindavan Today website, concentrating on writing articles related to understanding the Dham as a "final step" in rāgānugā sādhana . I was conducting a daily meditation on the Vrindavan Mahimamrita (VMA) of Prabodhananda Saraswati. This work is no doubt the result of living in Vrindavan and experiencing its spiritual power. In particular, after returning from Bengal, the first time I had been away from Braj in two years, I could feel the effects of the Dham very intensely. I think that perhaps I will cross post the VMA articles series, either here or on an independent site, but we will see. At any rate, for the time being, people can read those articles on the VT website. A reader of this site recently wrote to me and asked the following: Namaskar. Throughout your writings you teach reality over hagiography. Recently, you have written tha...

Now are the myths of Radha and Krishna to be qualified as "mental idolatry where, removed from the direct experience of the guiding force of unconditionality, theoretical frameworks and vestigial linguistics conjure up a surface mirage in terms of which the experience is interpreted, under which the experience is subjugated"? Well, in the sense that all words do that to some extent until their real meaning is discovered. But the nature, I think, of words is their capacity to create realities within which we have our direct experience. This is how, it seems to me, rasa works. For instance, at the age of 64, as a result of my life's culture of Krishna bhakti, I have chosen a particular way of perceiving the world (to a great extent against the received dominant culture to which I was born), through the framework of Radha-Krishna bhakti and its myriad forms and expressions, including a lot of peripherals -- including India itself as it is in the present day, non-Vaishnav...

This letter is dated Sept. 4, 1997. I am posting these old letters with a bit of editing, and not really following the chronological order, which is a bit problematic. I will try to fix it later by putting them in logical sequence. But, Prabhu, just WHOSE myths are you going to believe? The whole world is replete with myths! Tolkien said that myths are not lies, but they reflect truth and god. What seems myth may not necessary be a lie. We are not the only ones with difficult things to understand! I am very glad that you have brought up the question of myths and myth interpretation. As I indicated in one of my previous letters, allegorical interpretation is something that seems historically to be an important step in the development of scriptural interpretation in all religious traditions. When a Tolkien or a Jung says that myths are not lies, but that they reflect truth and god, this is to correct a common misuse of the word; it does not mean that these are truths in the same ...

This article was first sent on the short-lived Garuda  list serve run by Rocana Dasa, most probably in 1997. It was available on line on the Wise Wisdoms site for a while, but was taken down. On rereading, I find it still relevant. Reason and scriptural interpretation We are human beings endowed with reason, with which we try to make sense of our experiences in life and learn from them. In Krishna consciousness we have been indoctrinated to mistrust reason and even our direct experience to the benefit of authority-based learning. The argument is, of course, cogent: You cannot invent your own language, and there is no point in reinventing the wheel, and if we wish to see far, it is advisable to stand on the shoulders of giants. But even when standing on the shoulder of a giant, it is with our own eyes that we see and with our own brains that we process the sensory or extrasensory information our eyes give us. Thus, where scripture is concerned, we state the following: C...

A look back on the Rishikesh classes As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been in Rishikesh the past two weeks, teaching a dwindling number of students an impromptu course that I spontaneously entitled, "Bhakti, rasa and psychology." There are three subjects in one which, when taken together, form the basis of my philosophy, but it was a pretty big chunk to get across in ten classes, especially to an audience that for the most part was not conversant with any of them. It is said that a good teacher is one who can explain a complex subject matter simply, and I am working towards that goal. As always, my primary objective was to try to integrate the three subjects as best I could, in short, to come to a better understanding of the subject matter and put it into words; and, if it could be communicated to others, so much the better. Some parts of the course naturally worked better than others. Many of these subjects are well represented on this blog, though not in a ...

Radha and Krishna are simultaneously Love and the symbol of love. Some people seem to think that I am saying that Radha and Krishna are some kind of "role model" for human lovers. That is not what I think. The question is complex and one has to have a real close understanding of the psychology of myth, symbol and archetype and their relation to spiritual experience. We start from the premise, based on our faith, experience, and reason, of the reality of God. God is represented psychologically in many ways as an archetypal reality. People think that you can reduce psychological realities, like myths and stories, to the realm of falsehood or fiction, but in fact they are  functioning realities and remain so even when repressed. For Jung, archetypes are equivalent to the instincts. The archetype of God, according to Jung, is simply the "Self", a realization that no doubt came to him from Indian thought. But Jung also recognized the Syzygy, or Divine Couple, ...

People only think they are free of myth. Myth is an integral part of psychology. Even the so-called "awakened life" is a myth. It is a helpful myth, but it is feeble, because it is without bhakti. That is what makes it a myth in the sense of illusion. There is no bhakti without myth, no love without bhakti. Human beings are myth-making creatures because there is no reality without myth. Where would your reality go if it had no myth to follow? Radha and Krishna are eternal archetypes. There is not much point in historical references except to see how the concept of the sacred nature of human love has developed. As our understanding of love as Truth develops, our giving sacred form to that Love symbolically becomes a necessity. Symbols encapsulate entire constellation of ideas. The words "Radhe Shyam" contain both the myth and the reality of Love. So sing the names of the Divine Couple. Radhe Shyam! Radhe Shyam! Radhe Shyam! Radhe Shyam! If our symbols are...

Whenever we say something like, “Krishna is rasarāja ; Radha is mahābhāva .” We are speaking symbolically. The word pratīka , usually translated as symbol, sign or representation, is discussed in VS 4.1.4. Baladeva Vidyabhushan says in his Govinda-bhāṣya that this is a reference to Vedānta statements that speak of the mind, etc. ( mana-ādi ) as symbols of God. Baladeva says pratīke īśvaro na bhavati . "God is not in the symbol," i.e., he is not limited by it. The sentence goes on, kintu tasyādhiṣṭhānam eveti "but is its ground or basis". He then quotes BhP 11.2.41: khaṁ vāyum agniṁ salilaṁ mahīṁ ca jyotīṁṣi sattvāni diśo drumādīn | sarit-samudrāṁś ca hareḥ śarīraṁ yat kiṁ ca bhūtaṁ praṇamed ananyaḥ || The unalloyed devotee bows down to all existent things – the ether, air, fire, water and earth, the heavenly bodies, living creatures, the directions, the trees, the rivers and oceans, seeing them all as the body of the Lord. (11.2.41) It seems to me t...

Art by Shyam Nadh You try to explain or retain the symbolism of Radha Krishna Lila by Jungian archetype theory which does not make any link between the material world and the transcendental world as BVT's theory does. I agree that it has some explanatory power. However, this view requires a different view of rasa theory from that of the Goswamis. First of all, as I already stated previously, there seems to be a little bit of confusion about the "dustbin of Maya" comment, which is indeed Mayavada. I do not hold that view myself. I am a Vaishnava and I believe strongly that the material world is real, though temporary. Maya means taking temporary phenomena as having ultimate value. They have only reflected value. I am in perfect accord with Bhaktivinoda Thakur here. Nevertheless, we do have a problem, and I don't see how it can be resolved by taking a purely literalist approach. That may be what Bhaktivinoda Thakur did; it is quite possible, but I do not find ...

In one of my last conversations with Swami Veda earlier this year, before we both left India, I said that the biggest problem with the bhakti-marga is that it is so anchored in cultural specifics. Mayavada relegates all such cultural specifics to a dustbin called Maya. And on one level, so do I. I came to the conclusion some time ago that the only irreducible element that a philosophically inclined devotee could come to was the ultimate distinction of the jivatma and Paramatma. God is a person and so is the jiva. This fundamental duality in the Oneness is the proverbial line in the sand for the Vaishnava. Now I don't think everyone understands me in terms of the evolution of both culture and the interpretation of symbols. I realize that some find it hard to separate the idea of Radha and Krishna from the culture in which it arose. Historically, I see this symbol as an anti-misogyny statement coming from deep within that culture itself, its collective unconscious if you will. By s...