Jagat

Postscript to Bhaktivinoda Thakur's birthplace under threats from Land Mafias. I am thinking a little bit more about the idea that ISKCON might have a permanent presence in Birnagar. I will be quite frank, my gurudeva never wanted Dwadash Mandir to "fall into the hands" of the Gaudiya Math or ISKCON. He was not an ambitious man, my gurudeva, in the sense of wanting to become a great guru. He wanted a simple life that was reclusive in style. If he was a guru, he was a rural guru in the traditional Vaishnava manner. Totally Bengali Vaishnava, but with the stamp of Bhaktivinoda Thakur. He wanted to preserve Bhaktivinoda Thakur's tradition in the way that he himself did it, saw it, and wanted it. If this were to happen, the fear is that by running from the lion one will fall into the mouth of the tiger. If we run to ISKCON as our protector, will they turn into predators themselves, in their high-minded idea of appropriating some kind of monopoly on his legacy. I...

  I was greatly disturbed today to learn from my godbrother Hari Gopal Dasji Maharaj, the current president of the Bhaktivinode Gosthi, that the Birnagar birthplace of Bhaktivinoda Thakur is under attack. Some neighbors are claiming that they have ancestral rights over the land, even though the property was clearly given to our Gurudeva, Sril Sril Lalita Prasad Thakur, in the 1930’s and the ashram has the papers to prove it. It happens that the town of Birnagar has grown up around the Dwadash Mandir property, making it extremely valuable real estate. Dwadash Mandir for the most part is unchanged from 40 years ago before greed and development had become the de facto religion of this country. In the last few years, the population of the ashram has dwindled and made it vulnerable to this kind of attack. Land Mafias everywhere in India take advantage of such situations to their profit. When it became clear to the trustees of the Goshthi that the ashram was in danger, they...

As often happens on Facebook, I get strong reactions whenever the word sex is mentioned. It leads to discussions with various points of view being expressed, and the inevitable ensues. A senior woman devotee said the following on reading one such discussion: What do guys think about most of their lives as males? SEX, so I'm told, and that never wanes into old age. So when I see these same males trying to superimpose their lifelong addiction onto Radha Krishna pastimes, I want to puke. At about the same time, I had a personal conversation here in Vrindavan with a person who is an avid reader of my blog to whom I more or less summarized my point about why I, an old man of 67, is talking so much about this subject. In fact, I sometimes feel a bit like the old drunk guy in that Carson McCullers story , pegging the innocent kid and slobbering the wisdom earned from the school of hard knocks all over him. The failure who has got it all figured out, where he went wrong and why his...

From Vrindavan Today : Every Maghi Krishna Ekadasi is a special day at the Tatia Sthan, as the annual jāgaraṇa  is held in commemoration of Swami Lalit Mohini Das, the eighth acharya of the renounced order of the Haridasi sect. Though the scriptures enjoin that every Ekadasi one should follow very strict rules, which include keeping vigil, i.e., staying up all night, this is rarely practiced. As far as I know, the Haridasi sect does not follow Ekadasi particularly strictly, but at least on this one night, they do the jagran . And it has become an important event on the Tatia Sthan's yearly calendar, attended by all the ashram's sadhus and by many devotees from Vrindavan and beyond. The Tatia Sthan owes a lot to Swami Lalit Mohini Dev, and it is said that much of the strong tradition of the Haridasi sampradaya that exists there is the result of his work. Though like all the acharyas who followed Swami Haridas he wrote many songs, he was nowhere nearly as prolific as others lik...

Someone said, "I look forward to meeting your Shakti." My humors bubbled over. "It will be hard," I thought. My Shakti has turned to iron-clad indifference. The weightiness of her maan knows no bounds and she is teaching me the path of renunciation. Her body is untouchable, but she has taken up residence in the six chakras: In the womb, in the machine of desire, on the seed sound of desire, she placed the two jewels of the sampradaya, nivritti and pravritti, and intoned: May these two join in the central stream and become a fountain of nectar. In the bulbous root center, she joined me to the umbilical cord of prana, and in the filigree of the nadis she spread her love to every nook and cranny of this bag of elements, and made it holy. The ida and pingala of her breasts defibrillated my heart and gave it the will to a newer, subtler vibration of life. My throat's thirst was quenched by the nectar of immortality that flowed from her mo...

We got the news through  Vrajvihari Sharan  that Shriji Maharaj -- Radha Sarvesvara Sharana Devacharya Maharaj, the universally respected acharya for the entire Nimbarka Sampradaya -- had left his body in the morning of the 14th.

The Rutgers students who came for a three-week course during their Christmas break went with a few others from Jiva including myself. We went to Binode Bihari Babaji's ashram near Priya Kund and then went with him on Barsana parikrama. I first met Binode Bihari Das Babaji Maharaj in 1984 when his guru Tinkori Goswami came to Nabadwip. In those days, Tinkori Prabhu was the topmost bhajananandi in the Gaudiya Vaishnava world. It was a great surprise to everyone when, like Jagannath Das Babaji, he decided to spend the last part of his life in Gauda desh. So naturally there was a great attraction to go and visit him in Manipur Ghat, not far from the crematorium. I visited several times since in those days there was a general enthusiasm building for Mahaprabhu's 500th appearance day anniversary. Tinkori Prabhu had many disciples in Nabadwip, and I used to join them daily for early morning nagar sankirtan through the streets of Nabadwip, singing "Sri Krishna Chaitanya, ...

In the last three articles, Another look at Aropa and Vatsalya , Worshiping Krishna as the substratum in all beings and The natural loves and prema , I have been responding to Muralisvara Dasa's letter. In these posts we have established several things that beginner devotees find problematic. Indeed, it takes a bit of a paradigm shift to move from the beginning level of duality between God and man in aiśvarya to the eradication of this difference in mādhurya . This is the human dimension of love. To summarize: Without giving up the basic practice of arcanā , one has to cultivate the middle stage of devotion, which is, as we have all read in the Bhāgavatam: īśvare tad-adhīneṣu bāliśeṣu dviṣatsu ca | prema-maitrī-kṛpopekṣā ṁ yaḥ karoti sa madhyamaḥ || One who behaves with love towards God, friendship to those who depend on the Lord, with compassion to those who are innocent, and indifference to those who hate the Lord, is on the middle level of devotional achievement ...

It is true that to speak on dovetailing sexuality for bhakti to an orthodox devotional audience is inviting opprobrium. People have already (as I suspected they would) complained to other senior Vaishnavas about me. People hear the word "sex" and they immediately respond with their deepest saṁskāras . Sex is the desire for love manifest in the human body. Love is the desire for giving and receiving the pleasure of union. Union with the non-physical normally does not precede union on the physical plane. On the other hand, to think that experience of sexual union on the physical plane without spiritual maturity has ultimate benefit is a pipe dream. Union with God based on disgust with the material world is not love. It is mukti . The human organism has many levels. The foolish think they can reach the spirit and the soul without first purifying the gross anna-maya body, the prāṇa body, the mental body, the vijñāna body, and the ānanda-maya body. Similarly the ex...

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...

After a discussion on Facebook, I posted two articles I wrote on "Sex and Bhakti Yoga" ( Part I and Part II )  Prisni responded by saying "The biggest problem is not sex, but the identification of love with sex, and the inability to feel love except through sex. Men want sex, then its over, and they can go on doing whatever they really want. Fixing cars, fighting with swords, or playing football, or becoming a celebrated scientist." This led to the following response: You have correctly described the material situation for sex. This is why the appropriate practice is to retain the semen. Nobody in the world learns this technique and so all the anarthas related to sex arise. It is not that retaining the semen on its own solves the problem, but it is an important ingredient in the solution. When orgasm ceases to be the goal of sex, then one's mind is freed to enter into other dimensions of meditation and awareness. I hope you will understand that this is ...