Jagat

Admittedly nine hours in siddhāsana is a bit hard on the back; today my back hurts a little and is tired. I skipped meditation this morning and took extra rest. The lower back has to work hard. Nevertheless, it is the strengthening of the lower back and the progressive straightening of the upper, where I have had a pronounced curvature since childhood, that has made sitting a long time possible. Needless to say, some proficiency in breath control is also required. The lower back is part of the maṇipūra-cakra zone; where it meets the spine is the seat of the kanda or bulb, which is the central clearing house for all the nadis. Early hatha yoga texts talk about this kanda as also being a seat of the kundalini as much as the yoni-sthāna, which lies between the muladhara and svadhishthana. This may be a source of confusion to some, but if one thinks of the kundalini rising as a two stage affair, beginning in the yoni and then getting a boost from the kanda , one will understand the...

As often happens, there was a Facebook discussion where the issue of pure Vaishnava association came up. Though I have been known to disagree vehemently with “first deserve then desire” motto that circulates in the Gaudiya Math, I found myself saying, “The purer you chant, the more likely you are to find pure association. Remember, first deserve then desire.” The point, of course, is that you cannot expect to even recognize or appreciate good association if your mind has not been purified and prepared for it by bhajan. Rupa Goswami says desirable association is bhajana-vijña :: a person who is fully knowledgeable about and experienced in the path of bhajan ananya :: is entirely committed to the Divine Couple, i.e, exclusive anya-nindādi śūnya-hṛdam :: has a heart that is entirely free of the tendency to criticize others. If you cannot find someone who fits the bill exactly, try to get as close to this ideal as possible. And of course, one starts by trying to emulate the ...

Yesterday was Mauni Amavashya, or Silence Day. The ashram arranged a special program of meditation and related activities which included all the paid staff, including gardeners, cleaners and office workers. Since I am have gotten back on my daily schedule of about 4-5 hours of meditation, split up into four sessions, I thought this provided me with a good opportunity to go for "asana siddhi" which according to Swami Veda Bharati means being able to sit in one's meditative posture for 9 dandas or 216 minutes without moving. I almost made it and it looks within grasp. All in all, I sat for nine hours, which I don't think I have ever done before. My lower back has become quite strong over the years, but today it was groaning. My knees are surprisingly unaffected. I usually take a nap after lunch, and although it is customary to wake up after a midday nap, especially in winter, with a bit of a drag in the consciousness, I was for other reasons feeling a little down an...

I am too split in various directions still. At my age, it is disconcerting to see me entering into the last phase of life with so many things unfinished. I have perhaps been too ambitious and now find myself in the unfortunate position of having bitten off so much more than I can chew that much of what I have done is inevitably going to remain incomplete. (1) Swami Veda Bharati's Yoga Sutra  Currently I am in Rishikesh working on the Yoga Sutra for Swami Veda Bharati. Comment: Swamiji is 82 and in poor health, going through period crises related to his heart condition. Yesterday after evening meditation he called me into his room and told me that he was not certain that he would be able to live to complete the Yoga Sutra project. In many ways I am indebted to Swamiji personally and I have given him my word that I will help him to finish his magnum opus, the four volume series of Yoga Sutra with reference to 22 commentaries and his own experience of the oral traditions...

I just came back from an interesting group meditation session in the wake of this conversation, in which naturally sent the most interesting and joyful waves riding through my consciousness, and I have all of you to thank for it. I don't think it would really be possible to share all of the reflections that went through my mind, but I especially would like to thank Prishni for reminding me of exactly what my entire Sahajiya philosophy was about and what I have been writing about ad nauseam on my blog for the last ten years. Even today, I was teaching Sanskrit to my little group of Gurukula students, which consists of one young Indian male and two North American women over 60. Mostly I am teaching the alphabet and basic Hindu dharma vocabulary. Since we have been learning about gender in Sanskrit, the implications of grammatical gender is a subject that we have already encountered. Today again, in the course of talking about the purusharthas, we were led to a discussion of dharma...

"Some very experienced people seem to still confuse serving the dhama with serving the drama." Drama and rasa are one. Love is simple, but it is always dramatic. Mostly because we resist it, but primarily because love must include pain to serve its full purpose. That is the meaning of the Rasa Lila. Serving the Dham is an act of love. Embrace Love. Drama and rasa are one. This is why the gopis lie down on the path when Krishna leaves for Mathura, wailing and lamenting. What a bunch of drama queens! That IS what the Dham is all about. And that is also why Vrindavan should not be merged with Mathura. Fortunate are those who serve the Dham in the mood of the gopis. The gopis fell in love. "Falling in love" is something that cannot be legislated or commanded. And the call of the flute is the primary symbol of the force of attraction that breaks down all barriers and creates the flow of love. Until we realize that it is Krishna, the Navina Madan, who is beh...

This was originally posted on Vrindavan Today as part of a commentary on  Vṛndāvana-mahimāmṛta 1.79, just as I was running out of steam on my daily postings. Looking back on it (I am backdating this cross-posting from 31-08-2018), the commentaries leading up to this one are some of the best that I wrote, in my opinion. But this reflection on "East is East and West is West and ne'er the twain shall meet" is something that I return to frequently in reflecting on my own presence in Vrindavan, as an "immigrant." See  I have been in the West for four months on a "fact-finding expedition" (!) out in the field, this time the field being the country of Canada, which for all intents and purposes has now become more of a foreign country to me than one that I can identify as my own. My fact-finding mission mostly took place in a basement TV room, where I steadfastly observed popular entertainments as administered by the One-eyed God who stares unblinking...

Viktor Frankl meaning article . Human beings make the mistake, you could call it the “romantic fallacy,” that there is something called love, which when one falls into, everything will be complete and one is spiritually fulfilled. That is precisely why it is called a puruṣārtha of kāma , because it carries with it this illusion of completion. In a film, one sees the lovers kiss in the train station, all obstacles have been removed, and they live happily ever after. That is clearly a fallacy. A similar fallacy exists in spiritual life: it is the liberation fallacy, it is the idea of any kind of perfection in stasis, whether called nirvana or mukti or prema. It doesn't matter what we call it, if we identify it as the absolute cessation of suffering, a stasis, then it is fundamentally a fallacy. It is not bhakti, it is not reality. That is why bhakti theologians object to it. Both kāma or mukti are dreams of a state of being that is complete plenitude. Similarly, the other pu...

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...

Recently I was sent a link to a video of a lecture by Swami B.A. Paramadwaiti given in Vrindavan. In the video he speaks of many different things, obviously outlining the directions he wants his own devotional organization, Vrinda, to take in the future. One of the things he spoke of in particular was the issue of milk products: "You could say, milk from the market is coming from the cow concentration camp. [---] Then comes the next thing, that this milk industry, producing this concentration-camp milk, butter, cheese, yoghurt – that industry puts chemicals into the cows and produces a milk that is not healthy. In other words, all these milk products, they're the reason why you have this disease and that disease and that disease, and why the hospitals are filled. This is not healthy food. [---] We want the Vrinda family to go in a vegan lifestyle. [---] We didn't want to make it like an absolute, but at least we wanted to give that example." The subsequent discussi...

There is a great deal of difference of flavors even within the madhura-rasa worship of Radha and Krishna. The idea that Radha is a symbol of the jiva and Krishna God, and that a direct erotic relationship with the Deity is being intended, is not a new one. That is in fact the symbolic situation that Mahaprabhu incarnates, but the one that Rupa Goswami stepped beyond. By seeing Mahaprabhu as the combination of Radha and Krishna, by placing Radha and Krishna on an equal footing and conceiving of God as a Dual, and then jiva as a servant of that Dual Supreme, Rupa Goswami was coming up with something original. When trying to understand a text according to the Vedantic hermeneutics, there are six things we take into account, one being apūrvatā , or the original something new. All the other relationships are there and are no doubt very nice and legitimate, but when we talk about Rupa Goswami and want to know what it is he is getting at, the anarpita-carī , then this certainly qualifie...

Sadhaka's prayer: May God bless us with pure devotion and love for Him, friendship with the community of devotees with whom we can share that love without fear or inhibition, and the opportunity to serve the less fortunate. And may He keep us free from the evil -- within and without -- that makes us forget Him and creates obstacles in our service to Him, the devotees, and the world and humanity at large. Why is it important to pray? Why is it important to pray correctly ? Prayer is an expression of our innermost desire, either as description or as prescription. It is what we want, presented in purest self awareness to the Self.

I was astonished recently to find myself debating with many devotees over what seemed to me to be a resistance to mañjarī-bhāva . I felt obliged to ask why these devotees, most of whom were from Iskcon, felt it necessary to argue that it was not necessary to want to be Radha's dasi, but could be whatever they liked, why they did not try to figure out why that was the desired goal of all our acharyas with practically no exception? If you follow a guru, you partake of his mood. And if the guru has a different mood from the one you seek, then why are you with that guru? If you want to be a lawyer, you go to law school, not medical college, is it not? One expects the guru to be of the same mood ( svajātīyāśaya ), otherwise what is the point of a guru? And if you don't know what your guru's mood is, then what do you follow? The line of grace is in getting the special prize that is the heart of the guru. This is why I believe that paramparā is more than just śikṣā ....

In the debate between those who support a purely literal interpretation of scripture and those who prefer a symbolic or esoteric interpretation, I would say that the literal is literally not understood without the esoteric. Truth lies where symbol and life merge. There are always multiple levels of interpretation, none of which are incorrect and which are probably hierarchical, but all are nevertheless anchored in real experience in the world, usually taken in an idealistic form, or as some would have it as a projected wish-fulfillment fantasy. Though that may indeed be true, it is possible to understand the literal as something that is self created, as per the verse in the Bhāgavata : tvaṁ bhakti-yoga-paribhāvita-hṛt-saroja āsse śrutekṣita-patho nanu nātha puṁsām| yad-yad-dhiyā ta urugāya vibhāvayanti tat-tad-vapuḥ praṇayase sad-anugrahāya || O Master! You take your seat in the lotus heart that has been made worthy of you through love. Even so, the way to reach you can ...

pustaka-pratyayādhītaṁ nādhītaṁ guru-sannidhau | sabhā-madhye na śobhante jāra-garbhā iva striyaḥ || Learning taken from books according to one's own impressions, but not learned with a guru, is unfit for the public space, like a woman who is pregnant with an illegitimate child. (Chanakya) I think that actually having the association of rāgānugā sādhakas , my own diksha guru, Lalita Prasad Thakur, Ananta Das Babaji in Radha Kund and many others over the years, has made a bit of difference in the way that I approach the issue of rāgānugā-bhakti and mañjarī-bhāva . Like my guru wrote on the back of the siddha-praṇāli sheet he handed out to his disciples: "You can't just get it from books." This offends people who are convinced that everything can be found in books, because why were the books written if not to inform of them? Of course, that Bhaktivinoda Thakur's books talk about taking siddha-praṇāli from or through the medium of a guru somehow seems irr...

Oh mind! Absorb yourself in the glories of the Divine Couple in Vrindavan. If it wants to ride, let it ride the noble steed of Rupa, Raghunath and Prabodhananda's poetry through the fields of divya Vrindavan! Make a lifestyle choice! ābhīra-pallī-pati-putra-kāntā- dāsyābhilāṣātibalāśva-vāraḥ śrī-rūpa-cintāmala-sapti-saṁstho mat-svānta-durdānta-hayecchur āstām My uncontrollable mind seeks a powerful horse to ride, for it is a powerful cavalier possessing the desire for service to the beloved of the son of the cowherd king. So let it ride on the spotless steed of Rupa Goswami's thought! (Raghunath Das, Abhīṣṭa-sūcanā , 1) I have never quite happy with my translations of this verse. If it were mat-sv ā nto instead of mat-sv ā nta- it would be fine and the above translation would be without problem. I think that it was a metrical necessity, but the meaning still comes through that way. Raghunath Das is talking about a mind that is already imbued with rāgānugā sent...