Jagat

premā dvayo rasikayor ayi dīpa eva hṛd-veśma bhāsayati niścala eva bhāti | dvārād ayaṁ vadanatas tu bahiṣkṛtaś cet nirvāti śīghram athavā laghutāṁ upaiti The Prema of the Rasika pair is a wondrous lamp that floods the room of the heart with light and burns bright with a steady flame. Should the door of the mouth be opened and the lamp brought out into the wind, it quickly is extinguished, or its effulgence reduced. Prema-sampuṭikā 68 Secrecy is the essence of romantic love. Secrecy means being able to control your sexual desire. The problem is that no one today is trained in this. I was reading in Gopinath Kaviraj's explanation of "Tantric" society, by which he was giving a Tantrik explanation to the Vedic or Varnashram social system, he says that the first stage of life, the student life or  brahmacaryā , is all about controlling the bindu . The essence of education is to control the bindu . It was being able to control the bindu that made you eligible fo...

As I reflect on the Yājñasenī book, I have also been thinking to some extent about kṣatrīya-dharma , which is of course the principal theme of the book as a whole. The Mahābhārata is about polity. The largest section, the Bhīṣma-parva , is almost wholly concerned with guidance for rulers. And, after all,  kṣatrīyas  run the place, the politicians and so on, and they have a real influence on the way people live. Even Krishna, the avatar who has come especially to reestablish dharma, to vanquish the wicked and bring succor to the dispossessed and devoted, is a  kṣatrīya . So what is the  kṣatrīya  ethic? Once upon a time, a long long time ago, Srila Prabhupada took a walk with his disciples here in Vrindavan and suddenly said, "We must start a Varnashram college." And he began to explain his concept of varnashram dharma and the ideal way of forming community, in microcosmic settings, close to the land, simple living and high thinking. So, it was dec...

As I mentioned recently , I have been in contact with a new Facebook page that is attempting to reunite cyberspacially all of Srila Prabhupada's some 4500 initiated disciples. As of this writing, some 560 people have joined, for the most part the "less important" folk rather than the ones running ISKCON these days. It is turning out pretty much as I expected, a lot of nostalgia, reminders that we are coming closer to death and many of us have already left these bodies. There is also a bit of stirring up of old controversies. Today, one devotee posted the following Prabhupada letter: I am in due receipt of your letter dated September 3, 1975 with the enclosed statement about Van Maharaja. So I have now issued orders that all my disciples should avoid all of my godbrothers. They should not have any dealings with them nor even correspondence, nor should they give them any of my books or should they purchase any of their books, neither should you visit any of their temple...

India has recently passed a law that will allow mass retailers to enter the Indian market. This is ostensibly to make the retail sector more "efficient" in the way that Western retail markets are efficient. We should be wary of the effects such a move will have on the Indian economy. The opening of the Indian economy in the last 20 years has resulted in great increases of prosperity for a large number of people, but the limits of such prosperity are currently being experienced in the advanced economies. Walmart presence in North American towns has resulted in the gutting of the shopping districts of entire towns as its "efficiency" in exploiting economies of scale makes competition impossible. Walmart is famous for its reduction of labor costs by shifting the burden of health care and so on onto the taxpayer, paying the absolute minimum in salaries, avoiding hiring full time workers as far as possible. In many markets, because they have driven all competition int...

Very few languages in the world still have the dual number, like Sanskrit. This helps account for the large size of Sanskrit's conjugations and declensions, but it has a certain logic that has provoked a bit of thought in me about relationships. It seems that by insisting on a dual number, Sanskrit is giving a great deal of importance to the one-on-one relationship. It is true that one is usually different when by oneself, in the company of one other person, particularly one with whom one has an intimate relationship, or in a crowd. Prema, which is both the sādhana (means) and the sādhya (end) of spiritual life, is to be experienced on all these three levels of relationship. The singular Love of the personal God comes in the "singular." One might think that since there is a duality ( bheda ) between the individual and the Supreme Other, this is a "dual" relationship. This is philosophically true and is the main reason that we have proposed the singula...

Some notes that I jotted down in the bus after completing the last post. First, the schema of three cultures. the conative (i.e. the will) → karma → virtue the cognitive (i.e. the reason) → jnana → wisdom the affective (i.e. the emotions) → bhakti (piety) → love Just as adherence to duty does not necessarily result in virtue, the culture of knowledge does not necessarily result in wisdom, the culture of piety does not necessarily result in love. In Western society, a romantic version of human love has become the dominant ideal expression of the affects. The hippie philosophy of love was a colossal failure, precisely because, even as the chivalrous romantics knew, human love requires spiritual refinement. The love of those who are not virtuous is often a sick, sorrowful thing. Just as sex has manifestations in the three modes of nature, so too does love. Even so, the original romantic vision is that one is made virtuous by love. In the context of bhakti, this is also how the Vaishnavas ...

There are several questions left open here. When I was reading Kant and his critics, I could not help but be reminded of Walter Kaufmann's comments on the Gita, in which he objected to the overwhelming pre-eminence of duty for its own sake, excluding all other rewards, which he found a dry and empty approach to life. Kant also seems to think that if it doesn't hurt, if one doesn't find it a struggle to fight one's instincts in order to obey the categorical imperative of moral duty, then it is of no inherent value. Righteousness is its own reward. Kant does not hold out any transcendental joys, no heaven as compensation, but only a kind of sense of rational justification that comes to one who follows this impersonal categorical imperative. Neither does Kant think much of sentimental human motivation, i.e., love, as a rationale for moral action, for these things belong to the realm of the passions. Of course, the Upanishads, in the bhūma-vidyā section of Bṛhad-āra...