Jagat

I have been talking about the relation of man to woman and their appropriateness for bhakti-sādhana . In my last article on this subject, I concluded that the encounter of the sādhaka or sādhikā is a manifestation of Guru Tattva which, I have attempted to explain, is the incursion of the divine Other on the closed or solipsistic consciousness. Something of what has been said in the previous sections can be further elucidated by a reference to Martin Buber’s concept of “I-Thou” (sometimes called "dialogical") mysticism, which was very influential in liberal Protestant circles, especially in the America of the 50's and 60's. Like many of the Western thinkers to whom I refer, he is somewhat out of date, at least he is no longer the fad he once was. Nevertheless, I am unapologetic about referring to his extremely perceptive summary of human consciousness, which I feel gives insight into the bhakti path and is helpful in understanding its implications. Buber's ba...

na dīkṣāsyāḥ śikṣā-śravaṇa-paṭhane vā guru-mukhāt tathāpīyaṁ rādhā tri-jagad-abalā-vismaya-bhuvām | kalāmbhodheḥ śaurer api parama-santoṣaṇa-kṛtāṁ kalānām ācāryā vraja-mṛga-dṛśām apy ajani sā || Our Radhika was never initiated, nor did she take any lessons from a shiksha guru. Even so, she has become the acharya from whom the doe-eyed Vraja sundaris learn all the arts of satisfying the heroic artist himself, Krishna, arts that are the source of amazement to every other attractive damsel in the three worlds. (GLA 11.124)

Recently I was set thinking by a comment someone made about my earlier post in which I stated that I was the "worst of teachers." That person intimated that I was just feeling sorry for myself and being self-indulgent, etc. In the blogging universe the line between public and private is often blurred. Even so, it is not my intention to make this blog a place for this kind of self-indulgence. That being said, however, there is a very real connection between our lives and our ideas. Srila Prabhupada condemned the "armchair philosophers" who led dissipated lives while pontificating on lofty matters of meaning and morality. Hypocrisy is not just the domain of these philosophers, however. There are many gurus and spiritual leaders who take shelter in hagiography, and would impose their own sanitized life stories on their disciples, in which the miracle of their own spiritual genius is the result of an epiphany that takes place in a rush of glory, or that they are a ...

In a previous posting , I used the expression “The Other came to me as Woman” twice. I think it is important to discuss what I meant here in connection with the question of strī-saṅga . Generally speaking, it would not be an understatement that, for the sādhaka , the world is a fearful thing. As for the Buddha, whose four noble truths begin with the word “misery,” the perception is that birth, old age, disease and death haunt us and incessantly reduce all our efforts in this world to mere vanity. Thus, nearly every religion starts with some kind of movement away from the world and harbors persistent monastic movements where other-worldly values are given preeminence. Rather than calling this a movement away , it may be more correct to call it a movement within. Nevertheless, though on this stage preoccupation with the perishable is seen as a waste of time, with a change in spiritual perceptions, the position of the external world is eventually raised again. Mystics who find uni...

At Govinda Kund in 2005. I left Iskcon in 1979 and spent the following six years participating in the traditional Gaudiya Vaishnava world as a celibate monk or babaji. Towards the end of this period, my life started to slowly disintegrate. My godbrother, Madhusudan Dasji, had been expelled from India and so I was bereft of my best friend. Gadadhar Pranji was going through his own troubles and I did not have as close a relationship with him as I had with Madhusudan. As to the rest of the Vaishnava community, there were many friends, few confidantes. I started smoking pot. This led to a number of highly charged experiences, but isolated me even further from the Vaishnava community at large. Then one day, while I was doing my regular bhajan, a woman burst into my kutir and told me I was a fool, that I did not understand the first thing about Radha and Krishna, etc. This woman’s name was Gita. She was from a lower caste and uneducated; she was brash and loud. To the objective observer...

Madhavananda's second objection to Sahajiyaism is based in those numerous verses that I call misogynistic in character. Such verses tell us that there is nothing worse for a person's devotional life than the association of women. This is a question that needs to be explored in much depth and I will try to make a preliminary assessment of the subject. My daughter visited recently. Among the little bits of bitterness that she served up in relation to her Iskcon experience was a reference to the Gita's verse: māṁ hi pārtha vyapāśritya ye'pi syuḥ pāpa-yonayaḥ striyo vaiśyās tathā śūdrās te'pi yānti parāṁ gatim Those who take shelter of me fully, even those of sinful birth, women, merchants or common laborers, they too can attain the supreme destination. (9.32) My daughter uttered the words "even women" with portentous disdain--women are considered inferior beings in the bhakti world view. They have, according to different sources, two, four, six or eigh...

The worst kind of teacher is, of course, the one who speaks words of wisdom but does not follow through. That I am afraid is what I am. There are two problems with automythology: the first is having a clear story, the second is living it out. Because, of course, the big conflict is between myth and reality. Therefore the old adage: one percent inspiration, 99% perspiration. The individual myth is the large framework in which the incidents of our life pile up. In order for life to have meaning, there has to be coherence between the idea and life as it is lived. The myth has a number of elements: the predominant rasa and the admixture of minor rasas. There is the matter of vibhava--self-identity and object. These are the grand lines; there are incidents which are necessary to flesh them out. There are basically two rasas--the heroic and the erotic. The two are generally not separate, but intertwined. For a man, the heroic is usually the more important; love is tacked on as an aftert...

So we have seen the idea that one who has come into identity with Brahman can no longer be considered the bhoktā . How can anyone who is identical with the Other be its enjoyer? This is called being ātmārāma , or enjoying in the self, a consistent theme throughout Hindu scriptures, applying equally to God and to the jiva. God's talking pleasure in the jiva or his other energies is not something that goes against the principal of ātmārāma . Nor does the idea of the jiva, enjoying with God, "the soul of his soul," contradict the ātmārāma principle. From the devotional point of view, Krishna states to the gopis-- na mayy āveśita-dhiyāṁ kāmaḥ kāmāya kalpate bharjitāḥ kvathitā dhānā prāyo bījāya neśate The desires of those absorbed in thought of me are not to be considered material desire; just as barley once fried and boiled cannot later be used as seed. (10.22.26) BBT translation: "The desire of those who fix their minds on Me does not lead to material desire f...

Brahmacharya I went back and looked at Madhavananda's article on Sahajiyaism again and took note of his arguments, which are divided into two: the first is under the heading of "Brahmacharya", the second under that of "Imitating Radha and Krishna." Under the first of these headings, there are basically two distinct arguments: one is that sexuality is to be used only for procreation , the second that all association with women ( strī-saṅga ) is detrimental to spiritual life. I would like to discuss these issues in greater depth here. It is important to know that the concept of celibacy can be understood outside the confines of simple physical contact. As I wrote in my article "Obscenity" [ This article appears to be lost. (ed.) ]: The Sahajiyas have a different understanding of what is obscene: the spilling of semen in the sex act. That is the sign of the corruption of desire. Thus they also warn against the misuse of their doctrines as an excuse f...

Historically, is Sahajiyaism not more dependent on Orthodox Vaishnavism than the other way around? This is a good question and I don't know if I can properly answer it. I believe that universally, up until the present day, the major world religions have always had an extremely ambivalent attitude toward sexuality. There are good reasons for this, which need to be explored. In this, Hinduism is no exception. Despite the existence of a Tantrik subculture, the dominant Hindu ethos has been one geared towards either the K ā ma-ś ā stra of unadorned pleasure-seeking through sexuality, in which Woman is the principal instrument for achieving worldly happiness, or towards a misogynistic attitude in which Woman represents the principal danger to the achievement of spiritual beatitude or mokṣa . These are called, respectively, the pravṛtti and nivṛtti m ā rgas . Bhakti is, in my view, the middle course between these two paths. The Tantrik idea that sexuality can be accommodated to s...