Jagat

śaṁ sarveṣām aprayāsena dātrī dvitraikānti-prema-mātraika-pātrī | ānandātmāśeṣa-sattvā nidhātrī śrī-vṛndāṭavy astu me’ndhasya dhātrī | The Vrindavan forest easily gives joy to everyone she is the sole object of love for just a few exclusive devotees; she is the soul of joy and the resting place for all living beings. May she be like a nourishing mother to me, a blind child. (1.26) Commentary One of the themes that is recurring in the VMA is Prabodhananda’s insistence that the joys of devotion to the Divine Couple are easily obtained in Vrindavan, even effortlessly. Rupa Goswami in Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu (1.2.60-64) clearly states that every human being is eligible ( adhikārin ) for bhakti. This is doubly true in Vrindavan, for there is spiritual benefit for every living being there, even without making any supplementary effort. Bhakti enters by osmosis, as it were. And yet, at the same the Dham, like bhakti itself, is very demanding, for only by exclusive devotio...

Muralisvara writes in comments on Understanding aropa through vatsalya . This article was the first thing I wrote on the subject and I will no doubt have to follow up others related to it that synthesize everything I have said about it.  Your idea of āropa or IMAGINING ourselves (human couple, I mean) to be the Divine Couple is beyond my understanding. It is just imagination and it will remain such forever. Because imagination is the product of material mind. What does it have to do with spiritual soul, what to speak about Supersoul, what to speak about Supersoul in Its highest manifestation ( nara-līlā of Sri Krishna)? I am not quite sure where I ever said that the human couple is to imagine themselves to be the Divine Couple, at least not in a real sense. In the links below you will see the effort I have made to distinguish my sādhanas from ahaṅgrahopāsanā. Jiva Goswami himself makes this distinction in the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu verse about the sambandhānuga division of rā...

The guru-disciple relation is one of vātsalya . Vātsalya has a range of moods. Anyone situated in an advantageous position who wants to help another in a less advantageous position is experiencing vātsalya . This is a kind of love and of course has its levels, but its basis is compassion. The definition of vātsalya comes from Rupa Goswami. Vātsalya means the love of a superior for an inferior, in whatever specific form. It takes the form of nourishment and protection. In this world, the highest vātsalya is that of the guru who gives his grace. The number of rasas is limited to eight, or twelve, depending on the system you are following. Now where in this scheme does the sentiment of a guru to his disciple fit? And can one be a guru without vātsalya ? It's like asking can you be a parent without vātsalya ? Of course you can, but that parenthood without love would be rasābhāsa . Vātsalya means that one in a position of superiority, out of love, helps one in a position of n...

A Vaishnava guru is characterized by compassion: nigrahānugrahe śakto homa-mantra-parāyaṇaḥ | ūhāpoha-prakāra-jñaḥ śuddhātmā yaḥ kṛpālayaḥ | ity-ādi-lakṣaṇair yukto guruḥ syād garimā-nidhiḥ || The guru, the treasure-house of depth, has the following qualities: he is capable of both showing mercy and chastising, i.e., recognizing both the qualities and defaults of the disciple and either rewarding or punishing him; he is dedicated to ritual activity and mantra-japa; he knows the process of argumentation and establishing rightful conclusions. He is moreover a pure soul and the abode of compassion.(HBV 1.41) I suppose that depending on your world view, you will have a different concept of compassion. It starts with God or the state of perfection. In Vedanta, the state of perfection is bliss without any touch of illusion. Illusion means suffering. Therefore suffering is existentially not real. It is only subjective, due to ignorance, like the person who sees a rope and takes it for a s...

I am at Swami Rama Sadhaka Gram in Rishikesh for a few days, lecturing and tending to some personal business. The other day a visiting sannyasi from the Shringeri Math tradition came to perform a Shri Chakra puja at the newly inaugurated "Mother Goddess" shrine on the campus. Swami Veda personally supervised the Jaipur sculptors in the forming of the white marble image, which he calls "White Tara" based on the Tibetan form of the Mother Goddess. In particular, he told me, he wanted the image to have soft contours and a divine motherly feel, without the hard edges that are sometimes seen in Tara deities. Though the puja was supposedly an abbreviated one, it lasted a full five hours. The pujari, who prefered not to have his name publicized,  conducted the entire ritual in complete silence, though he was mentally chanting the complex mantras as ordained in the paddhatis. His knowledge of all the mudras and gestures was clearly apparent, and he maintained a relax...

Some make the unequivocal statement that it is never correct for a guru to sleep with his disciples. I would like to state that in reverse. I say: A woman should only sleep with her guru, and a man should only sleep with his guru. All sexual relationships should be mutual guru-disciple relationships. The guru-disciple relationship is the vātsalya relationship par excellence, in that it selflessly seeks the welfare of the other. Vātsalya , like friendship, service, and admiration, is included in madhura . But in the latter, vātsalya  must be mutual, i.e., felt by both parties. Without mutuality, if vātsalya or, worse, vātsalya-ābhāsa (the mere outward appearance of guru sentiment) is predominant, then sexual relations would be inimical to love, or  rasa-virodha , to use the Sanskrit terminology. Rasa-virodha means "distasteful", which is a rather understated translation. That is why we recoil at these guru-disciple sexual relations and why we intuitively ...

As I have been trying to say, I am approaching the question of Krishna consciousness and sexuality from my own life experience. I should therefore confess that my sexual drive has been (I believe) comparatively low in comparison to the majority of the population, particularly in the West. I did not have an especially great struggle as a brahmachari and my motivations in becoming a householder in Iskcon may sound rather strange to most: I saw it as a psychologically purificatory experience. I slipped out of that experience rather easily in the late seventies and did not find it a great jump to taking sannyas in 1979. The straw that broke the camel’s back of my stay in Iskcon was, in fact, the experience of listening to a brahmachari masturbate in the toilet cubicle next to mine in the Hyderabad temple. It was my feeling then that the Iskcon environment was too sensual to assure self-control. The lifestyle of Bhavananda Maharaj seemed to caricature the true renunciate lifestyle, which is...