Jagat

Kanwaris on road from Haridwar Yesterday, there was a tempo rikshaw strike in Rishikesh. The month of Shravan is a big month here, as there are literally thousands of pilgrims or Kanwarias, mostly young men dressed in bright orange shorts and t-shirts stamped with OM or a picture of Shiva and om namah shivaya . They are going to do the walk to Neelkanth, 25 kilometers away. It is a different kind of group from the one I described doing the same thing around Shiva-ratri time. They are mostly from the cities, Delhi, Chandigarh, etc. (See Kanwarias flock highways to get an idea of the madness.) Anyway, something happened, I never really figured it out or cared much, but it did stop me from going to Madhuban for my Sunday class. It was a little too bad, really, because the subject was the yā niśā verse from Gita (2.69) and I was a little inspired to talk on Hari-kathā itself. I have been appreciating the words kṛṣṇa-bhāvanāmṛta , which are used to translate "Krishna conscious...

In his letter posted to this blog , Christiaan asked a question about spiritual life and practice in general. In the second, he is more specific. At the end of his first paragraph, he spoke about cultural conditioning and objects of worship. He develops on this in the second paragraph: Then there is Jung. Although considered a little outdated in the more modern cognitive field, it seems that the projection of love on a divine couple is a nice example of a Jungian archetype. Jung spent much time in India, even in Bengal. What would you say to a person like me to convince me to become a practitioner. I am neither a psychologist (as you might have guessed) nor a devotee or worshiper of Krishna. I am interested though in both. As far as Jung is concerned, to say that he is not thought highly of by today's pundits just shows the bias of the particular schools of psychology with which you are familiar. Archetypal psychology is simply saying that our brains are predisposed to formulat...

Christiaan sent a question on the Karpatriji thread , which rather than continuing there, I decided to answer in a separate post. Actually, I will divide my answer in two, as there are really two questions. Is modern psychology compatible with the RK-Lila concept? I recently heard that someone who suffered from a severe obsessive compulsive disorder got treated rather succesfully, but in his therapy chanting was considered a symptom of his disorder rather then a solution to it. He gave up on it (the chanting). Rituals seem to dovetail OCD's. In a way most rituals have much in common with OCD's. Then the phenomenon of chaotic/catatonic schizophrenia. Most of the symptoms correspond with what are called symptoms of ecstatic trance in India, or possession. In Italy they hallucinate about Mary, in Turkey about Fatima and in India about... With regard to your question about whether Radha and Krishna is compatible with modern psychology. The short answer is "which psychology?...

Yesterday we were reading in the Philosophy of Hatha Yoga class the section from the Yoga-sūtras dealing with asana, i.e. 2.46-48. There is a long discussion at 2.47. Anyway, the basics are: āsanas are to be steady and comfortable (46). They can be perfected by relaxing the effort and by meditation on the infinite (47). When one perfects the āsanas , one becomes indifferent to the dualities (48). The discussion about "meditation on the infinite" (actually, Swamiji translates samāpatti by "coalescence" with the infinite, but that is a little harder to follow) was pretty interesting. I have to say that I got a glimpse of that in meditation today in relation to my sahaja-sādhanā and my siddha-svarupa . There was a moment when I was literally dancing in my Jaya Manjari form, my blue dress covered with silver sequins literally swirling in the sky and merging into the milky way. Anyway, in his discussion there, Swamiji gives two interpretations of the phrasa an...

I wanted to write a blog about the classes and lectures I listened to in Vrindavan, but I never got around to it. I did mention Prema Das's very enjoyable Chaitanya Charitamrita lectures at Radha Raman Nivas, but did not give a summary of the morning Bhagavata classes that I attended at the Krishna Balaram temple. I thought I would check the general temperature of Hari Katha at that noble institution and probably went to about eight or ten classes altogether, nearly every day someone different. I heard Radha Raman Swami twice, as he spoke in English one day and Hindi the next. About those Iskcon lectures, I will only make one comment, and that is that I cannot recall having heard the name of Radha a single time, nor Vrindavan, nor the word prema. The only exception to this dearth of rasa was perhaps one young brahmachari who read a couple of songs by Jnana Das about Krishna's rupa. It must be said, though, that as someone who likes to speak Harikatha, I cannot help salivat...

I received news yesterday from Anuradha and then Prem Gopal Goswami that Prabhupada Madan Gopal Goswami has departed this world. Though in my two visits to Nabadwip in the last several years I had hoped to meet Madan Prabhu, he was in Agartala both times. I heard that he had been in poor health and so it seems that we were not to see each other one last time before he undertook his Maha Prayan. Madan Prabhu was my neighbor during the five years I spent in Nabadwip (1980-1985). The Judge Bari in Gokulananda Ghat was a privileged location, only a few minutes walk from the center of the town and the market, while at the same time being a large, quiet and green area with two tanks, in a rather unkept state, admittedly, but nevertheless protected from the throngs and traffic. The far wall on the southern side, across this empty space, was the boundary between this property and the home of Madan Prabhu. Of course, Pran Gopal Goswami, Madan Prabhu's grandfather, was and still is a legend ...

Love eternal Obviously, we could go into a great deal more detail on practically every level of this story, but we have to stop somewhere for the sake of drawing some conclusions from this tale. I wanted to start from the parallels were already made with the Bhagavatam. According to Sanatan Goswami, there were only some 30 years between Krishna’s departure from Vrindavan and the meeting in Kurukshetra. Even so, I guess that what I am saying is that this story has hit a few archetypal bells, themes that are the stuff of myth and legend—the love that does not die. So that is the angle that I see this memoir—a tragic love story in the great tradition. Radha and Krishna were also childhood lovers who were separated--forever, if we accept the Bhagavata version. On reading the book, I came to feel that this was an archetypal tragic love story with interesting parallels to the Bhagavata's account of Krishna and the gopis, and it seems worthwhile to try to make a bit of sense out of ...

Antar-gṛha-gatā Maitreyi recounts an interesting vignette towards the end of the third section of the book, in which she remembers a night when Mircea was playing the piano in his room, which was directly below hers. It was late, 2 o’clock at night, and she and her cousin are unable to sleep. Maitreyi says she will go downstairs and tell him to be quiet. I immediately thought, “Aha! She’s finally coming clean and is going to admit that she did go to his room in the middle of the night.” But of course the cousin says that can’t be done; a young girl just does not go to a single man’s room at 2 o’clock in the morning. Maitreyi makes it as far as the door before she is stopped. Krishna played the flute and Mircea played the piano. Some gopis made it, and some had to go to Krishna in meditation only. antar-gṛha-gatāḥ kāścid gopyo’labdha-vinirgamāḥ kṛṣṇam tad-bhāvanā-yuktā dadhyur mīlita-locanāḥ duḥsaha-preṣṭha-viraha-tīvra-tāpa-dhutāśubhāḥ dhyāna-prāptācyutāśleṣa-nirvṛtyā kṣīṇa-m...

The other day I had to go to Dehra Doon on Foreign Registration Office matters, and in the course of the visit there, I happened to pick up a copy of the novel Na Hanyate by Maitreyi Devi. I bought the book entirely without realizing what it was about. I had never read anything by Maitreyi before, even though she is a well-known writer in Bengal. Seeing how many of her books were available in Hindi translation made me aware of her pan-Indian reputation and so I became interested. The title caught my eye, since I also tend to like books that make some reference to Hindu shastras. It is interesting to get the insight that comes from modern novelists commenting in this way on such texts. And, indeed, I have not been disappointed. This blog was started on the date given below, and it has taken my more than a month (July 27, 2008) to assemble my thoughts and finally post it in two parts. The first thing that happened when I actually started reading the book was I felt a slight shock of...

I went to Omkarananda Ashram yesterday with Neelkanth and Chandramaniji to see if they had developed any resources for this kind of project. I was assuming that that Itranslator was the tip of an iceberg. It wasn't. That is all they have done and will likely intend to do. Nor did they have a host of typists behind rows of computers typing out Sanskrit texts 24 hours a day... or know of anyone. Their ashram is very impressive though. Interestingly, the place is run by the Swiss. The current acharya Vishweshwarananda and his right-hand man, Satchidananda, built the place practically from scratch starting in 1982 when they first came, and have turned it into a veritable empire, with guesthouses, yoga ashrams, and especially schools--more than 50 in the surrounding foothills region with a really big one (2000 students) in Rishikesh itself. There is also a college right next door. Their Swiss background shows in the aesthetics, cleanliness and efficiency of the ashram and the work the...