Jagat

Becoming a bhūrido janaḥ

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 16:13:00 +0000

Over the last few days I have gone through a few anxious moments. There is no moment in life where a conflict does not lurk. In Gaudiya Vaishnavism, there is a big conflict between the so-called bhajanānandī and the goṣṭhyānandī, introverts and extroverts.

I have been living in Vrindavan, the ultimate destination of all Vaishnavas, at least according to Rupa Goswami, who lived in a different time, a different world from the one today. I love Vrindavan and I wish to cultivate love for Radha and Krishna in the way I do best, by doing bhajan and writing. Indeed, I have a strong introverted tendency. For me it has been characterized by a sense of unworthiness, that I am never good enough or accomplished enough to make a worthwhile contribution.

On the other hand, in my youth I underwent a period of intense indoctrination in ISKCON to the idea of preaching. And that is characterized, as we often see, by an overinflated and borrowed sense of confidence. Neither of these character extremes can be considered ideal.

But who will not remember Krishnadas Kaviraja's inspired paraphrasing of the gardener Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's wish to share the fruits of love with the world?

ekalā mālākāra āmi kāhāṅ kāhāṅ jāba
ekalā vā kata phala pāṛiyā bilāba
ekalā uṭhāñā dite haya pariśrama
keha pāya keha nā pāya rahe mane bhrama
ataeva āmi ājñā diluṅ sabākāre
jāhāṅ tāhāṅ prema phala deha jāre tāre

As I am the only gardener, to how many different places can I go? And since I am all alone, how many fruits can I pick and give away? It is extremely tiring to gather up the fruits and distribute them by myself; it disturbs me to know that some people will receive my fruit and others will not. Therefore I order everyone to and distribute these fruits of love to everyone they see wherever they go. (CC 1.9.34-6)

ātma icchāmṛte vṛkṣa siñci nirantara
tāhāte asaṅkhya phala vṛkṣera upara
ataeva saba phala deha jāre tāre
khāiyā hauk loka ajara amare

I constantly water my tree with the nectar of my personal desire. As a result, there are countless fruits of love upon it. Therefore, everyone, distribute these fruits to absolutely everyone so that by eating them, they can all become free from old age and death. (CC 1.9.38-9)

So even when I was a babaji in Nabadwip from 1980 to 1985, I spent a great deal of time traveling to towns and villages in Bengal to speak on the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, trying to perfect my presentation in Bengali and trying to share my realizations. It wasn't always easy because my approach started changing. It gradually stopped being the vaidhi bhakti approach of "make your human life successful, become a devotee." That is good, but I wanted to share something more, try something a little different. It was not easy, because to share higher realizations requires different techniques and tactics.

But in Rishikesh also, I spoke on the Bhagavad-gītā to good audiences, intelligent people, yogis. Not devotees so much, but still I got to hone my skills somewhat.

Since coming to the rāgānugā way of thinking, however, I have kept my eyes on Srimati Radharani and her seva, and I have always thought that the crowning jewel of my life would be to glorify her, to have the capacity to chant her glories in the company of devotees. I often remember Narottam Das's verse from Prema-bhakti-candrikrā as a strong expression of that sentiment:

āna kathā āna vyathā, nāhi yeno yāi tathā,
tomāra caraṇa smṛti sāje |
avirata avirala, tuyā guṇa kala kala,
gāi yeno satera samāje |

Other topics are just another source of suffering, may I never go into them. All that suits me is the thought of your lotus feet. May I constantly and copiously sing your divine glories in the company of your devotees. (PBC 40)

It is my feeling that the dual relationship, which lies between the introverted singular and the extroverted plural relation states, is the necessary key to making the other two work. But for one who has developed an unhealthy unbalance to the singular, to the point, you could say, of narcissism, the challenges are not small.

I wrote on Facebook:

Anybody who talks about love is a dreamer, an idealist. Sooner or later, such people have to confront reality and see if love stands.

A number of thoughts followed and I will not go into that out of some embarrassment. This morning, though, I gave my Bhagavad-gītā/Sanskrit class to my audience of two and felt decidedly upbeat afterwards. Then I discovered the following [below the break] on my hard disk, more or less by accident, and I thought, yeah, to become a bhūrido janaḥ is a good ambition, and still not outside the realm of the doable. Someone wrote on the thread following that comment that biography is the best way to judge, in other words your life itself is proof of your commitment to your ideals and beliefs, and the extent to which you have been able to realize them in reality. So I approve that sentiment and realize that there is still quite a bit of work to do where the old prema is concerned. Challenge indeed.

Anyway, all this ended up with the following comments on my part, offering homage to both my introvert and extrovert tendencies:

yasya sphūrti-lavāṅkureṇa laghunāpy antar munīnāṁ manaḥ
spṛṣṭaṁ mokṣa-sukhād virajyati jhaṭity āsvādyamānād api
premṇas tasya mukunda sāhasitayā śaknotu kaḥ prārthane
bhūyāj janmani janmani pracayinī kintu spṛhāpy atra me

O Mukunda, giver of liberation!
Who in the world is there with the courage
to pray for the gift of sacred love,
of which even the slightest manifestation,
brushing slightly against the minds of the great sages,
makes them forget the happiness of liberation,
even as they are tasting it?

My prayer therefore to you is this:
that I should simply desire for such prema,
and that this desire should increase forever,
in this world, birth after birth.

(Rūpa Gosvāmī, Aṣṭādaśa-cchanda, Vastra-haraṇa, 2)

And I will say this: I will preach Prema Bhakti as I have been, whether I do so sitting here in Vrindavan or traveling, whether I get one ounce of support or not, and Prema Bhakti will be victorious.

I am just posting this pretty much as is. Normally, I would work at it more, but I will just post what is there without doing too much further research.

||10.31.9||

Introduction : In the previous verse, the gopis glorified Krishna’s sweet words. Now they ask who is capable of glorifying such sweetness. In answer to their own question, in this verse they will now say that even when spoken by someone else [in other words simply by hearing from another person], any discussions related to Krishna are better than both kinds of ambrosia [either that relished by the gods or the ambrosia of liberation].

tava kathāmṛtaṁ tapta-jīvanaṁ
kavibhir īḍitaṁ kalmaṣāpaham |
śravaṇa-maṅgalaṁ śrīmad-ātataṁ
bhuvi grṇanti te bhuridā janāḥ ||

The ambrosia of talks related to you is like water to those whose lives burn with suffering; because they destroy all sins, they are sung by the poet-philosophers. They bring auspiciousness to the ears, for they are permeated with good fortune. Those who sing these topics on this earth are the most generous givers.

What makes topics related to you ambrosial? In what way are they similar to these other kinds of nectar? They bring to life all those who have been made to suffer by the great disease of material life and repeated birth and death. At the same time, they bring relief to those who are suffering from the pain of your separation. As such it is greater than the ambrosia of the heavenly planets, as well as that of liberation.

So it has been glorified by great philosophers like Dhruva and Prahlad. For instance, Dhruva states in the verse beginning yā nirvṛtis tanu-bhṛtāṁ (4.9.10) that the two other kinds of ambrosia give him no pleasure:

yā nirvṛtis tanu-bhṛtāṁ tava pāda-padma-
dhyānād bhavaj-jana-kathā-śravaṇena vā syāt
sā brahmaṇi sva-mahimany api nātha mābhūt
kiṁ tv antakāsi-lulitāt patatāṁ vimānāt

O Lord, the bliss felt by embodied beings through meditating on Your lotus feet or from hearing about You from pure devotees cannot be had in the experience of Your Brahman effulgence, what to speak of the temporary pleasures found in the heavenly planets, which is ended by the separating sword of time. (4.9.10)

Furthermore, this ambrosia destroys all sins, including prārabdha-karma, which the ambrosia of the heavenly planets cannot. Indeed the pleasures of heaven simply increase desires and even create new ones. Neither does the nectar of liberation destroy prārabdha. Neither of these kinds of ambrosia are auspicious (maṅgala) like these topics, which simply through hearing are not only relishable, but also bring about the fulfilment of one’s innermost desires.

This ambrosia is śrīmat, because it brings the greatest good fortune or riches, the treasure of divine love. Furthermore, it is ātataṁ, expanded further and further at every moment by those who recite them, which cannot be said for the two other kinds of nectar. Thus those who sing these topics are the greatest givers, they are the most charitable, for they give so much that no one could ever be able to repay them for their gifts.

An alternative interpretation of the verse is given as follows. In the previous verse, it was said just how sweet Krishna’s voice is, but for the gopis, Krishna’s voice alone, without his direct personal association, is unwelcome and a source of great distress. In other words tava kathā mṛtam – “Talk of you is death for us.”

How is that? taptaṁ jīvanaṁ. It causes our lives torment. The implication is that your kathā is like water sprinkled on boiling oil (rather than bringing peace or pleasure, it causes an explosion). [translating taptaṁ jīvanaṁ as “heated water”]

If that is the case, you may ask why the Puranas have so glorified these topics. In answer, we say that it is in the nature of poets like Vyasadeva and others to simply describe things, which is what they have done here too. But these are simply [empty] words.

The words kalmaṣāpaham imply that yes indeed such topics destroy past sins, but it is through the suffering they cause, as suffering is the way that past sins are expiated. Those people who listen to these stories find that their well-being is destroyed [I am not quite sure how he gets this meaning of maṅgala], so if intelligent people consider that by hearing them unhappiness will result, then they won’t listen to them and your topics will die out.

Those who are puffed up with their own good fortune and wealth (or seeking to make a fortune and good name for themselves, but secretly harboring) the hope that everyone will be killed off, travel from country to country, village to village, to preach the words of the Puranas and establish their authority. Therefore this verse says, “Those who glorify these topis are bhūrida”, only here this should be interpreted as meaning those who destroy or tear apart (dyanti from the verb root dya, which means to break asunder and destroy) many, many listeners (bhūri). Those who preach your topics are worse than the wolf that enters in sheep’s clothing (lit. the enemy hunter who acts so nice and kind), and are to be avoided at all costs by anyone who has any brains.

It will later be said [in the Bhramara-gita], in a similar vein –

yad-anucarita-līlā-karṇa-pīyūṣa-vipruṭ-
sakṛd-adana-vidhūta-dvandva-dharmā vinaṣṭāḥ |
sapadi gṛha-kuṭumbaṁ dīnam utsṛjya dīnā
bahava iha vihaṅgā bhikṣu-caryāṁ caranti ||

As soon as the nectar of your pastimes enters the ears of a person, it immediately cause all dualities to cease. The unfortunate person to whom this happens at once leaves his home and family and as a result there are many of them wandering around like birds, begging in the streets. [10.47.18]

In fact, this verse is a vyāja-stuti, praising the greatness of the topics of the Lord and those who speak them, but doing so by pretending to condemn them.

Here is a little bit from one of Sanatan Goswami's commentaries, with some similarity to that given above.:

His second interpretation: When we get these special flashes of your topics (tvat-kathā-sphūrti-viśeṣeṇa) while in separation from you, they kill us. Therefore they are death itself; (tapta-jīvanam) they cause one’s life to become so overcome with suffering, for it is the nature of love to so burn one up in its fires that it immediately brings one to the point of death. Even so the poets glorify these topics because they destroy sin [no further explanation here]. And furthermore, they are pleasing to the ear. Those who are puffed up with their great good fortune, like Brahma and others have spread these topics all over the world (śrīmadātatam). In fact these two descriptions, i.e. of being pleasing to the ear and being spread by those who are obsessed with their own wealth and fame, are criticisms, not praise. Thus those who spread these topics in the world are the causers of great destruction (bhūrida).

All shastras lead to Braja-nagara

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 07:34:00 +0000

The hot season is here. Satya Narayan Dasji sets off to his summer tour of Europe and America. We spent the last few weeks cramming in the last twenty or so anucchedas of Paramātma-sandarbha, and I must say it was invigorating. I will probably have occasion to talk a little more about Paramātma-sandarbha before I finish editing the translation.

I was thinking of my good fortune to be here in Vrindavan and my day job is having to study and understand Jiva Goswami's Paramātma-sandarbha! I just hope that Sri Jiva Prabhu lets me help work on the last two. In the meantime, the hot season is here, and Vrindavan is beginning to bake. But I notice that last year I had one of the most productive months where this blog is concerned. I think I did a bit of a housecleaning, like I am trying to do now also. Still trying to come up with a magnum opus out of all this.

The last two days, I took a bit of a brain vacation, adjusting to the change of season, remembering a bit how much I enjoyed the heat last year. But that was June. It is still April and the temperatures only get to 40, not 47, which is indeed substantially hotter. I only did three blogs in June 2012.

The last few days I have been spending most of my time listening to recordings of Gīta-govinda by various artists, especially prabandha 24, which is Radha as svādhīna-bhartṛkā, and now 19, which is Krishna trying to pacify Radha's māna and the famous line where Krishna asks Radha to place her foot on his head. In my discussion of Chandi Das, I mentioned this song, a translation of which is found in Vrindavan Khanda of Sri Krishna Kirtan. One of the things I tried to point out in that series was about the kind of audience Chandi Das would have had, especially here: Sadharani-karana revisited. In that article I cross compare with Rupa Goswami's intended audience in the Dana-keli-kaumudi. But I have not so much discussed who would have been the audience for the Gita-govinda.

From a North Indian illustrated edition.

I don't think that I am really in a position to do justice to the subject, but let me give something of an outline. Jayadeva was a court poet in one of India's most famous cultural royal courts, that of King Lakshman Sen. As Jayadeva makes pretty clear, it was a competitive environment (GG 1.4), but he seems to have been the crown jewel of the jewel studded cast of poets at the court. At least he had no hesitation in declaring it himself.

Now the culture of the court is not the same as that of the common man. It is the "high culture" of the time. And indeed, if there is any sign that court patronage had an effect on national culture, it is here. The Gita-govinda had a profound influence on the culture of both Bengal and Orissa, where the poem is the exclusive entertainment of the greatest king, who gets to watch his own pastimes before he goes to bed each night.

So who is Jayadeva's audience? It is the urban sophisticate of the time, the educated courtier or nāgara. The nāgara was not specifically a religious person. He is the person for whom the kāma-śāstra was written. It is a typically courtly culture, and as is usually the case, the hero of their literature is also a nāgara. Little wonder that Chandi Das gets a bit of a laugh out of it. His Krishna is no nāgara.

But in our analysis of Rupa Goswami, we have been getting at the point that he sanskritized many of the themes and tropes of the vernacular culture typified by Chandi Das, sat it on top of the weighty foundation of the Bhagavata theological, and synthesized it with the character of Krishna as the Vraja-nāgara.

In the Sarva-saṁvādinī to Bhagavat-sandarbha 107, Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī elaborates on the extensive list of quotations showing that Krishna or Bhagavan is the ultimate goal of all the scriptures, directly or indirectly. Verses such as,

sarvaiś ca vedaiḥ paramo hi devo
jijñāsyo nānyo vedaiḥ prasidhyet |

Only the Supreme Lord is to be searched out from all the Vedas. They do not popularize anyone else. Therefore, after studying and deliberating over all the Vedas, a person yearning for liberation should desire to know only Him. (Atharva-śikhā)

In that list, he goes through all the branches of knowledge to explain how each one of them serves a purpose leading to the ultimate purpose, Bhagavan. There is no point in going through the whole list here, suffice it to say that the field of knowledge that would have been the courtier's staple are given pride of place at the end of it, grouped together :

atha vedānugāny aparāṇy api śāstrāṇi vakṣyamāṇa-hetoḥ samanvayante....
kāvyālaṅkāra-kāma-tantra-gāndharva-kalās tu
tasya tat-tac-carita-mādhuryānubhava-vaiduṣya-siddheḥ |

Other scriptures which follow the Veda can be synthesized to that purpose for the following reasons.... The poetic arts [including theater], the kāma-śāstras, and music all help to achieve the perfection in the expertise at experiencing the sweetness of the Lord's relevant activities.

Now these are the very staples of the bhakti movement. And for all the dry preliminary achievements offered by the various doctrines and teachings other sciences offer, here one is being offered expertise in relishing the Lord's sweetness. Is there any higher achievement to be aspired to?

The bhakti movement is most associated with the vernacular languages. But as I have been saying, Rupa Goswami was probably doing something similar to what Jayadeva did, namely merging folks motifs and, in Jayadeva's case. particular rhythms into the Sanskritic tradition. Rupa of course had already inherited Jayadeva and his followers as his forerunners and was building on him. Jayadeva is the single greatest influence on rasika Vaishnavism, though all the sources besides the Bhāgavata that Mahaprabhu relished, Kṛṣṇa-karṇāmṛta, Jagannātha-vallabha-nāṭaka, Chandidas and Vidyapati are strands of the rasika tradition that are at the basis of the great explosion of Radha-Krishna culture in the wake of his appearance.

I was just looking at Shashibhushan Dasgupta's Rādhāra krama vikāśa, and he also says (p. 120) that the real vehicle for the development of the Radha cult or culture was in the literary tradition. And it is fairly obvious that the reason was rasa. And that is the particularly ball that Rupa Goswami took and ran with.

There is much to say about how a bhakti tradition, which is essentially democratic and meant for everyone, should be Sanskritized. After all, Sanskritization indicates an elite who not only know the Sanskrit language, but are refined and educated in other ways also. (Again, read this.) Chanting Harinama is fully democratic, but the culture of relishing rasa is something that requires, at least in this tradition, a high degree of accomplishment. To think that the former fulfills all the conditions of the latter without the requisite culture is simply foolish.

Jayadeva was clearly in an environment and tradition that already had developed the rasika side of Radha-Krishna madhura-rasa, while the theological side was still underdeveloped and awaiting the coming of Rupa Goswami. But in his case, perhaps more than anyone prior to him, was to identify the nameless "universal" nāgara, the connoisseur of the Sanskrit poetic tradition with Krishna. As we would expect: the God of the courts would be their "ideal man."

For Rupa Goswami, Krishna may be a cowherd, and the gopis make fun of him for his lack of sophistication, but in fact he will always be the vidagdha-śiromaṇi. More can obviously be said, but to do that you practically have to read everything Rupa wrote. Let's leave that for the time being.

We have an edition of Gīta-govinda with Prabodhananda's commentary on the Grantha Mandir. I am going through that as I listen. I am not entirely convinced that this is Prabodhananda's work for various reasons. Nevertheless, it is a damned good commentary, which ties in all the various strands named in Jiva Goswami's list, as well as illustrating many of the points from the Bhagavatam. Though these are some similarities with other commentaries, according to Haridas Das, but I have not been able to compare. But if it proves to be as original as it looks, it is likely worth translating. I wrote something about all that here. [I would wait for the revised edition before downloading, though.]

The Gīta-govinda has been translated and commented on so many times that I likely have little to offer in that respect. Some can be found on the internet. But keeping one eye on Prabodhananda, let us just look at that one song refered to above. This is not an official translation. I just want to highlight a few points.

The first point is that Radha is already somewhat pacified when Krishna sings this song. He knows that he has to be both serious and funny at the same time. If he can make her laugh and at the same time believe in his sincerity, then he will be assured of success.

In the final verse of the song, this is confirmed where Krishna's words are described as caṭula-cāṭu-paṭu-cāru, "sweet, entreating, clever and charming." This is really what the vidagdha-nāgara aspires to.

The first verse is sung as something of an invocation.

vadasi yadi kiñcid api danta-ruci-kaumudī
harati dara-timiram atighoram |
sphurad-adhara-sīdhave tava vadana-candramā
rocayatu locana-cakoraṁ ||2||

If you say anything at all, then the rays of light from your teeth
will efface the terrible darkness in which I flounder.
May your moon face give delight to the chakora of my eyes
by distributing the nectar of your smile.

priye ! cāru-śīle ! muñca mayi mānam anidānaṁ |
sapadi madanānalo dahati mama mānasam
dehi mukha-kamala-madhu-pānaṁ ||dhruva-padaṁ ||

Dear one! Kind-hearted one !
Give up this jealous anger. It has no basis.
The fire of loving desire is constantly burning my mind,
so quench my thirst with the honey of your lotus lips.

Jayadeva makes no real distinction between "lust" and "love." The fire of lust (madanānala). For the nāgara, as for Rupa Goswami's samarthā-rati, there is no real distinction. They are united in a love that is both.

----------
satyam evāsi yadi sudati mayi kopinī
dehi khara-nakhara-śara-ghātam |
ghaṭaya bhuja-bandhanaṁ janaya rada-khaṇḍanaṁ
yena vā bhavati sukha-jātaṁ ||3||

O Radhe, if you are really angry with me
then torture me with the sharp tips of your fingernails;
imprison me in your arms and bite my lips
as much as it takes to bring you pleasure.

"I have committed an offense and I should be punished. So scratch me, embrace me, kiss me. It will make you happy..."

----------
tvam asi mama bhūṣaṇaṁ tvam asi mama jīvanaṁ
tvam asi mama bhava-jaladhi-ratnam |
bhavatu bhavatīha mayi satatam anurodhinī
tatra mama hṛdayam atiyatnaṁ ||4||

You are my ornament, you are my life,
you are the pearl in my ocean of existence!
May you always be favorable to me,
My heart will take great care that this is so.

This is for me one of the most powerful verses for its simplicity and straightforwardness. There is no attempt at humor here, only a sincere statement of love and commitment.

----------
nīla-nalinābham api tanvi tava locanaṁ
dhārayati kokanada-rūpaṁ |
kusuma-śara-bāṇa-bhāvena yadi rañjayasi
kṛṣṇam idam etad-anurūpam ||5||

Slender one! Your eyes are as dark as the blue lotus
but they have taken on a ruby red color [from anger and tears].
If you use them as Cupid's arrows and redden me,
you will make this black Krishna the same as them.

A bit of a tough one to translate. The idea is that when you shoot someone, they are covered in blood, so they become red. But becoming red is the same as becoming attached or loving. So the etymological connection between rāga, anurāga, rakta, etc. from the verb rañj. The word appears several times in the song.

----------
sphuratu kuca-kumbhayor upari maṇi-mañjarī
rañjayatu tava hṛdaya-deśam |
rasatu raśanāpi tava ghana-jaghana-maṇḍale
ghoṣayatu manmatha-nideśam ||6||

May the jeweled necklace dance on your breast pitchers,
may they give color to your heart;
may the belled girdle around your hips ring
and announce the order of the mind-churning God of Love.

The Sanskrit is easy. The English rendition is tough. Anyway, the metaphorical allusion is to the sacrificial ritual, with the establishment of the auspicious waterpots and the musical sounds. But the intent is "let's make love." Here, the poeticians definition of māna as deprivation of the desired embraces, etc., even when there is no external impediment. In other words, Radha wants Krishna and he knows it. So how long is she going to be able to keep it up?

----------
sthala-kamala-gañjanaṁ mama hṛdaya-rañjanaṁ
janita-rati-raṅga-parabhāgam |
bhaṇa masṛṇa-vāṇi karavāṇi caraṇa-dvayaṁ
sarasa-lasad-alaktaka-rāgam ||7||

Your feet are beautiful than the land lotus, the ornament of my bosom,
the enhancer of the highest feelings of love,
O sweet-voiced darling, please order me, and I will
decorate them with the red alaktaka paint.

Krishna here glorifies Radha's feet in preparation for the next verse. Like the gopis want to hold Krishna's feet to their breast, Krishna also wants to hold Radha's feet. Prabodhananda also says this is a sexual position, krauñca-mudrā.

--------------
smara-garala-khaṇḍanaṁ mama śirasi maṇḍanaṁ
dehi pada-pallavam udāram |
jvalati mayi dāruṇo madana-kadanāruṇo
haratu tad-upāhita-vikāram ||8||

Your generous feet are the cure for the poison of desire,
they are the decoration to adorn my head, so please place them there.
The intolerably fierce flames of desire are roasting me,
but your feet will remove all its effects.

So that is the famous verse.

---------
iti caṭula-cāṭu-paṭu-cāru mura-vairiṇo
rādhikām adhi vacana-jātam |
jayatu jayadeva-kavi-bhāratī-bhūṣitaṁ
māninī-jana-janita-śātam ||9||

Thus spoke the enemy of Mura to Radhika,
words that were sweet, entreating, clever and charming.
May these words, put in poetic language by Jayadeva
bring joy to all women who are afflicted with jealous rage.

Well, I rushed through that a bit. My point is that this poem is meant to appeal to the Sanskrit-knowing sophisticate of the courts and reflects the lifestyle of the courtier as depicted in various first millennium Sanskrit literary works. The synthesis of the religious and the secular views of love, especially the particular viewpoint of the nāgara, is something that Rupa Goswami is, I think, particularly concerned with and is worthy of exploration.

B.G. Narasingha Maharaj speaks of this in this post Secret of Prema - Rasika or Sahajiya?, where he repeats Bhakti Promode Puri Maharaj's warning: "There is a wave of sahajiyaism coming to the Western world and you must preach against this misconception." We are, of course, doing our best to make sure this wave is a tsunami, but we want it to be done right. Here is another article on translating Gita Govinda that illustrates some of the inherent problems.

The Gopis vs. The Wives of the Brahmins

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:48:00 +0000

Today someone, after reading the following article, Raganuga bhakti and sahaja sadhana (Part I), presented the familiar argument on FB, "Don't you have to be at the stage of anartha-nivritti to begin the raganuga path?"

I answered, "How many lifetimes of anartha-nivritti do you think it takes to get to where you just like hearing about Radha and Krishna? So, if you like it, you are ready. And you are really ready if someone like your guru says 'don't,' and you do it anyway. Or if someone tells you that you must wait, you say, 'can't'. Then you are ready, nothing else counts. And if you fail (i.e., lose interest), what was the loss?"

This was responded to with the customary protestations: how can one possibly ignore the orders of the spiritual master? There are of course numerous examples of individuals such as Bali who rejected their guru's orders when it went against a higher principle. So in the same spirit as in another recent article, On Fences Around the Devotional Creeper, I would like to draw attention to the glories of the gopis in achieving the highest glories of devotional achievement by abandoning the obstacles arising from their own gurus and even those coming from Krishna himself.

In particular, I think it is interesting to compare two sections of the BhP, namely the chapters dealing with the Yajñapatnīs and the first chapter of the Rāsa-līlā The following is just some notes that were on my computer. The research here is preliminary rather than thorough. I don't know if I ever published this on line before. These date from around 2005.

From Vaishnav songs website.

There are numerous parallels between 10.23 and 10.29, far too numerous to be accidental. The author of BhP appears to be deliberately contrasting the two situations and clearly using the contrast to illustrate the superiority of the gopis to the Yajñapatnīs. After all, there are no verses by Uddhava in glorification of the latter. The gopis indeed sacrificed everything; the Yajñapatnīs were glorious, but like Lakshmi, did not get to join the Rasa-lila. Just as the wives are being contrasted with their husbands, they themselves are being contrasted with the gopis.

Unfortunately the commentaries do not work this point through in any great detail. Here are a few points of similarity and contrast. Most of the similarity is in the language itself, so may not be so clear to the non-Sanskritist.

(1) The formality of the request. Krishna sends cowherd boys as intermediary to request a gift of food. (That is the extent of his request.) This contrasts with the spontaneity and immediacy of the flute in 10.29.

(2) The Yajñapatnīs nevertheless do have a spirit of madhura-bhava. They are described as going on abhisāra and the same example of rivers going to [their husband] the ocean is not given as descriptive of the gopis, but the trope is one that is found frequently, for instance in Gopāla-campu, it is extensively elaborated on. (Verse 10.23.19, abhisasruḥ priyaṁ sarvāḥ samudram iva nimnagāḥ).

(3) They are stopped by their husbands, brothers, and sons. (10.23.20, parallel 10.29.8)

(4) Seeing Krishna 10.23.21-23. Krishna is not alone, but with friends. Nevertheless, some similarities in language. 10.32.8-9 = 10.23.23. “Brought Krishna into their hearts with their eyes and embraced him there, ridding their hearts of all the pain of separation.”

(5) 10.23.24. Krishna smiles and greets them who are tyakta-sarvāśāḥ. (10.29.17)

(6) 10.23.25 Language almost exactly = 10.29.18 svāgataṁ vo mahābhāgā. karavāma kiṁ. "Welcome fortunate women! What can I do for you?" He does not have the dangers of wild animals and other things about a forest in the middle of the night to joke about, but simply says, “You have come out of a desire to see me, so that is well and good.”

(7) 10.23.26-27 has many overtones of the gopis’ speech in 10.29. E.g. 10.23.26 (kurvanti kuśalāḥ svārtha-darśanāḥ… ātma-priye) = 10.29.33 (kurvanti hi tvayi ratiṁ kuśalā sva ātman nitya-priye). The use of ahaitukī and avyavahitā to describe their bhakti is reminiscent of earlier passages in the Bhagavatam 1.2.6, 1.7.10 and 3.29.12, which is a base definition of bhakti. If the Yajñapatnīs exemplify such devotion, why can he not accept them?

According to some commentaries (Srinath Chakravarti, Brihat-krama-sandarbha) Krishna here is already saying, "I cannot reciprocate with you. You will have to be satisfied with your mental embraces." He does not give a specific reason.

(8) Verse 27. The argument we have already encountered several times— "Because of my presence in them, your husbands, your possessions and even your very selves are dear to you. Therefore it is natural that you should hold me dear." This is the gopis' argument to Krishna in 10.29.32.

(9) Verse 28. Krishna sends them back – tad yāta = 10.29.22. Here the duty he describes for the wives is that they need to help their husbands perform their sacrifices.

(10) Verse 29. The first half of the verse is exactly the same as 10.29.31, the first line spoken by the gopis in response to Krishna. tava pāda-mūlam appears in both verses. Both verses include claims to have given up everything to come to Krishna. atilaṅghya samasta-bandhūn = santyajya sarva-viṣayān.

Here are the two verses side by side.

maivaṁ vibho’rhati gadituṁ nṛśaṁsam
santyajya sarva-viṣayaṁ tava pāda-mūlam |
prāptā vayaṁ tulasi-dāma padāvasṛṣṭaṁ
keśair nivoḍhum atilaṅghya samasta-bandhūn ||

O Lord, you cannot speak to us with such cruelty, for we have come to take shelter of you after abandoning everything we possess, ignoring all our family relations. Now that we are her, let us carry the garlands of tulasī leaves touched by your feet in our hair. [bhā.pu. 10.23.29]

maivaṁ vibho’rhati bhavān gadituṁ nṛśaṁsam
santyajya sarva-viṣayāṁs tava pāda-mūlam |
bhaktā bhajasva duravagraha mā tyajāsmān
devo yathādi-puruṣo bhajate mumukṣūn ||

O Lord, you cannot speak to us with such cruelty, for we have come to take shelter of you after abandoning everything we possess. You are so hard to capture, O Lord, but we are devoted to you, so take care of us [as you promise], just like Narayan takes care of the seekers of liberation. [bhā.pu. 10.29.31]

(11) Verse 30. Here the Yajñapatnīs change their tone a little. They say, “Our husbands and families will not take us back. We have fallen down at your feet and have nowhere else to go. So please give us refuge.” By contrast, the gopis were not worried about whether they would be taken back. Here are the verses for comparison.

gṛhṇanti no na patayaḥ pitarau sutā vā
na bhrātṛ-bandhu-suhṛdaḥ kuta eva cānye |
tasmād bhavat-prapadayoḥ patitātmanāṁ no
nānyā bhaved gatir arindama tad vidhehi ||

Our husbands will not take us back, nor our parents, nor our sons. Nor will our brothers, friends or relatives, what to speak of others. Therefore since we fallen in surrender at your feet, please, O destroyer of enemies, make it so that we never have to leave you.[bhā.pu. 10.23.30]

yat paty-apatya-suhṛdām anuvṛttir aṅga
strīṇāṁ svadharma iti dharma-vidā tvayoktam |
astv evam etad upadeśa-pade tvayīśe
preṣṭho bhavāṁs tanu-bhṛtāṁ kila bandhuḥ ||

You, being the knower of dharma, have told us about our womanly duties in serving our husbands, children and family members. All this is true, but in fact applies to you, the ultimate object of all such instructions, the Supreme Lord, the most dear of all, the closest relative of all embodied beings is you. [bhā.pu. 10.29.32]

(12) Verse 31. Krishna assures the Yajñapatnīs that their husbands will not be angry. The same word is used (abhyasūyā) as in 10.33.39 at the end of the Rāsa-līlā, where it is said that the gopis' husbands were bewildered by Krishna’s Maya and so did not envy Krishna.

(13) Verse 32. Krishna returns to a parallel with his initial speech to the gopis = 10.29.27, though perhaps this statement is even more explicit.

(14) Verse 33. They return where, once again, it is stated that their husbands and families did not find fault with them.

(15) Verse 34. One wife who had been held back left her body. = 10.29.11. Most of the commentaries, interestingly, are unclear on where she went. Vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī (Sanatan Goswami) = Goloka ("like Putana"!), Krama-sandarbha (Jiva Goswami) = aprakaṭa-līlā; Brihat-krama-sandarbha (Jiva Goswami) = a gopi body (!) (gopāṅganānāṁ madhye bhūtvāṅga-saṅginī babhūva.)

Gopala Champu has: "If I were to accept you for my service, you who are the wives of brahmins, that would not be approved of by anyone. We must therefore await the propitious moment." [GC 1.22.34]

So there definitely appears to be an overtone of caste restriction that even Krishna is not willing to transgress, as with the Pulindas, at least in the minds of the commentators. But it appears to me that the real difference is the willingness of the brahmin women to be turned back, whereas the gopis refused to be turned away.

The Anthony Weiner saga: Love and Sex in the Political Arena

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:48:00 +0000

I heard today that Anthony Weiner, whose descent into unfathomable public stupidity two years ago left him hugely disgraced, now apparently wants to make a return and is testing the waters for a New York mayoralty run. This is relatively (totally, actually) irrelevant to me here in Vrindavan, except for the fact that Jill Filipovic wrote an acerbic article in the Guardian in which she makes some excellent points about the hypocrisy of American public life where sexuality is concerned. She inquires into the acquiescence of such men's wives with some well-placed stupefaction.

I was musing on these matters back then when it all first came out, but I never completed the blog, which was sitting in the drafts. I guess it sneezed. Now I have posted the rather unsatisfying article on Samarthā rati that was going on at approximately the same time as these speculative musings on Anthony Weiner, I will take it as a sign that I should finish this one. But it really should be considered preliminary notes to a continued and much deeper exploration of the subject.

It is necessary to state the relevance of this subject for my overall thesis and purpose. Yugala bhajan, I realize, is not going to be a panacaea for the world's ills, and it is unlikely to end these kinds of events, but surely intelligent people should start thinking about a better way of making use of our sexuality. It annoys me no end that the celibators in the "anti-party" accuse me of promoting sexual promiscuity when clearly that is just a symptom of the disease of material life for which we seek a solution.

Now that I think of it, this really has been one of my big questions ever since the doctorate on Gopāla-campū. What are parakīya and svakīya? And why is it important and what does it mean for us?

I have been busy trying to complete the series I started a long time ago on the three kinds of rati. The final article in the series, on samarthā rati is still in the works, being based primarily on a summary of the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi commentaries on the relevant section of the 14th chapter, accompanied by my own insights. As I said in the beginning, the purpose is to try to understand these matters by reference to the world of experience and to see where that takes us.

Sometimes, however, one comes across some article or event that helps to crystallize one's thinking. That happened recently with the latest political sex scandal in the United States, involving Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn South), who was sending photos of his private parts to several girls who were following him on Twitter.

I felt extremely disappointed in Weiner because as a politician, I had found him to be one of the more sympathetic defenders of progressive ideas--outspoken, fearless, funny, clever. Nevertheless, whether one is liberal or conservative, it is hard to escape the consensus that Weiner behaved like an idiot. Even from the practical point of view, for anyone to send photos of his penis to strangers on the internet is asking to be caught, almost as if one were saying, "I don't really want to be a public figure any more." But other than that I was more or less indifferent. Being in India without personal access to the internet, I have not been following such events very closely.

Then I came across an article on Daily Kos by an openly gay man using the alias wecandoit7. He made the familiar argument that sexuality is distinct from personality; sexuality is messy and often troublesome as people go through life dealing with their urges in various ways. But Weiner is a good man, a supporter of progressive causes, who should not be condemned for his foolishness in sexual behavior.

"Anthony Weiner's penis is attached to an amazing human being who does very important and positive things in the world," he writes.

But the rather more audacious (for most people) aspect of wecandoit7's article was his open defense of promiscuity as a human trait, which he said was a contribution to the maturing of the human race made by the homosexual community. As such arguments do not often enter public discourse, I found it thought provoking. {More recently, of course, I wrote about this issue on this blog in a review of Sex at Dawn.]

From my point of view, this argument could only have come from a man, homosexual or heterosexual. By suggesting that the gay ethos should be expanded to the heterosexual world, he is really saying that women should be promiscuous like men. No doubt there are women who welcome the suggestion, but most of the women I know are not like men. (Cf., Venus, Penis and Cars)

On the other hand, as wecandoit7 wrote, Weiner is supposed to be busy in public service, he has a really beautiful wife, and yet he still can't control himself and is sending pictures of his penis left and right. What is his problem?" He ruined his own credibility as a defender of any agenda whatsoever. You can forgive him for his peccadilloes, but one can hardly forgive him for damaging the progressive cause.

Love is only possible by seeing the transcendent in the other, which is only possible if you are a sakhi of Radha and Krishna. Human beings need context for meaning. Myth is a subtle context that is needed almost like language is needed to communicate. In Radha and Krishna we have found a context for sexuality that sacralizes it and turns it into love.

We believe that Radha and Krishna are the ultimate context for everything, by which we mean that love is the ultimate context for everything, whether it is a just society or saving the forests and rivers around the world. One that unless brought to the foreground will leave people absolutely clueless. But love without a role for sexuality and its proper channeling will always be a problem.

The reason so many people are scandalized by Weiner's behavior is because in the West there is an instinctive or socially transmitted meme of romantic "true love." Even though for most people the idea of marital fidelity is often a quite different reality, the two have become mixed up in a single "correct" ideal. So whenever a politician becomes involved in a sex scandal, it is taken as a sign that there is something wrong with him. And this is probably correct, though more likely to be an instinctive reaction rather than one that is deeply thought out.

In the case of Weiner, he externally attempts to present a vision of an ideal or just human society, but this lack of sexual self-control undermines his credibility. I would go further and say that his progressivism is external. Progressive liberal Christians who I admire, like Chris Hedges, believe that personal religious practice are a self-indulgence when there is so much work to do in creating a just world. We tend to side with those who say that first you have to know what you are doing in the microcosm of your own spiritual life, which we further say is pinpointed by your behavior in the most intimate field of love and sexuality. Political life can be karma-yoga, but karma-yoga is a process of self-purification. We cannot expect human perfection, to wander from perfection is the human condition.

The instinctive response to such behaviors is not just titillation.

Many people also try to undermine Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. by pointing to their ideas on sexuality and their sexual behavior. They talked love and non-violence, but their sexuality was problematic. People seem to intuit that the two are contradictory. I have said something similar on this blog on several occasions with regard to those who are spiritual leaders.

As humanity struggles forward in its attempts at evolution, it is important to deal honestly with sexuality and to determine how it can be used to move forward.

I am not particularly happy with this article. I cut the following section, but am putting it back in and will just throw it out there for the hell of it as assorted thoughts and notes.

There is a disagreement in the commentaries between Jiva and Vishwanath on the first verses of the discussion of samarthā etc. Each of the words is said to be self-explanatory. That is, sādhāraṇī means common, samañjasā means "compromising" (that is the translation I have been using but which, as shown below, is inadequate) and samarthā ("competent').

My translation of samañjasā flies for Vishwanath Chakravarti's interpretation, but not for Jiva. That is because Jiva says that the gopis are samarthā, but that does not mean they are not samañjasā, which for him means something like "proper." In other words, Jiva is defending the higher svakīyā here. He wants to say that the gopis, Radha, are Krishna's eternal consorts and so there is no impropriety or incorrectness in their love. (Maybe "correct" would be a better translation for samañjasā.)

Vishwanath, on the other hand, takes each of the ratis to be mutually exclusive. I.e. common love is neither correct/compromising, nor is it competent. Similarly correct love is neither common nor competent, and competent love is neither common nor is it correct/compromising.

So, as I was saying before, the big problem we have is distinguishing sādhāraṇī from samarthā. This is because most people (including evidently Jiva) want to put "correct" love (married dharmic love) at the top of the pyramid. Since sādhāraṇī and samarthā are both "incorrect" as it were, they are indistinguishable for many.

Therefore it is said, premaiva gopa-rāmāṇāṁ kāma ity agamat prathām.

Sādhāraṇī, as in Kubja, appears closer to kāma, whereas samarthā is at the prema end of the spectrum. But to the unitiated they appear the same – adharmic or irreligious. Only samañjasā is nice and tidy and all happy.

But from both the "incorrect" points of view, samañjasā is really the big problem because it tries to bind love into a structured, institutionalized format. Regimented, rules and regulations. We love each other because we have to. That is why it falls into the category of vidhi bhakti and why Rupa Goswami makes the rather strong statement:

riraṁsāṁ suṣṭhu kurvan yo vidhi-mārgeṇa sevate |
kevalenaiva sa tadā mahiṣītvam iyāt pure ||
So those who promote promiscuity and those who promote the kind of "true romance" ideal that is behind samarthā rati are united in their opposition to the constraints on love that are found in samañjasā. (Constraining might be another translation for samañjasā.)

From the point of view of samarthā, the very essence of which is giving up everything (yā dustyajaṁ svajanam ārya-pathaṁ ca hitvā), that very structure itself is a sign of subtle kāma. The subtle kāma of having the security of being loved by obligation. "Love me because you have to love me." "You have to make the marriage work." Sounds a little tedious already, doesn't it?

Now Wecandoit7 is equating sādhāraṇī and samarthā and bringing them down to the level of sādhāraṇī. This is why the issue of marriage is not accepted by everyone in the gay community; for some, gayness and marriage are incompatible.

This guy whose article we are talking about is probably one of those who is feeling ambivalent about gay marriage. Why do you need it? You stay with someone or you screw around, what's the difference?" So in gay circles, the idea of "open marriage" seems to be more prevalent than it is among heterosexuals, though I suspect that in most hetero open marriages, the male is the promoter of the idea.

Gay people often place a strong sense of spirituality in the sex act itself, where super orgasm is equivalent to an experience of God.

One lesbian woman on Facebook expressed outrage with Weiner in a discussion there. I sent her the link of the Wecandoit7s' article and she completely condemned it. It seems that women gays are less likely to promote an openly promiscuous lifestyle, although I haven't any real knowledge.

A woman needs friendship in a relationship; a man primarily wants availability. A woman wants emotional and mental intimacy. A man wants physical and, if possible, intellectual intimacy. Coordinating the needs of the two sexes is the big challenge of samarthā. Love only becomes samarthā, "competent, potent," when that level is reached. Samarthā's power is in the fusion of two beings.

You see "needing" is the problem." Need or "thirst" (tanhā, trishnā) is the one constant throughout all. But what is needed?

Sādhāraṇī thinks it is sex. This guy/girl turn me on. Sex desire goes down, love goes down. Like with orgasm."

Samañjasā thinks "I need a husband." So the guy is a role. Not the person himself." Or vice versa of course."

Samarthā thinks it is the person. "I need to be one with this specific person." Actually, it is the need to be fused absolutely with that one specific person. Only samarthā says, "To hell with everything, I want this person no matter what."

But there is still a problem with the material plane, i.e., applying this to material world lovers. They have to be sadhakas. They have to contextualize everything with Radha-Krishna. otherwise nothing makes sense, and one ends up loving no one and nothing. If they cannot frame their love within the world of Radha-Krishna, they end up with sādhāraṇī or samañjasā. Because without them the world doesn't make any sense.

Samarthā rati

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:48:00 +0000

A couple of years ago, I started summarizing the three ratis from Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi I never completed the series, but the first two articles can still be found here: Samañjasā and Sādhāraṇī. I will now try to complete this project by working on samarthā rati. This may require more than one article, and I intend to tie it in with some other ideas.

I will start off this discussion by simply quoting verbatim my translation of Mañjarī-svarūpa-nirūpaṇa, completed in 1983.

========

The dominant mood of erotic sacred rapture is also given the name of samarthā rati (“competent affection”). Kṛṣṇa is the greatest lover in the supernatural affaires-de-coeur of the sacred land of Vrindavan and there, the supreme among his lady-loves are the cowherd girls. Here Viśvanātha Cakravartin makes some relevant comments about samarthā rati in his commentary on Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi:

This samarthā rati is extremely potent and exists eternally in the gopīs; it does not depend therefore on any other causes such as hearing Kṛṣṇa’s qualities, etc. It is present in them even prior to their attainment of adolescence, first in a general or indistinct (sāmānya) way. Even so, they loved Kṛṣṇa with all their hearts, and all the activities of their senses were for his satisfaction only. Afterwards, in the manifest līlā, when they came of age and sexual desire emerged, they developed a specific affection for him. In their minds arose the desire for physical association with Kṛṣṇa, which was similarly for his satisfaction exclusively. Therefore, no difference whatsoever exists between their personally craving erotic contact with him and their love for him; the two had merged into a single identity. Such a fusion of these two spirits is possible in the Vrindavan gopīs and cannot exist elsewhere. This is the sign of their competence and makes their love for Kṛṣṇa worthy of the name samarthā rati. From the time of their reaching maidenhood, they desired to serve the Lord through this gift of their own bodies—that was their vow; this love of theirs is thus known as madhurā rati.

Again, in the same book, commenting further on UN 14.51, Viśvanātha expands on the meaning of the term samarthā rati:

Because the gopīs’ desire for erotic love has fused with their selfless affection for Kṛṣṇa and has not the slightest hint of egocentricity to it, it is called competent affection. Competent in what respects? First of all, it is competent to tame their lover, the Supreme Lord, Śrī Kṛṣṇa, and bring him to complete submission. Secondly, it gives them the competence to fully relish his form, qualities, talents and sweetness in a way that no one else can. Third, it is competent to bewilder and astonish Śrī Kṛṣṇa, even as he himself bestows appreciation of himself on them. Fourth, it is so potent that it causes Kṛṣṇa’s already extraordinary qualities, forms and talents, etc., to take on newer and newer freshness and thus causes the increase of even their unlimited excellence. Therefore the name of “competent affection” or samarthā rati is exceedingly fitting.

In the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, 10.47.61, Uddhava states that because they had reached the highest degree of attachment for Kṛṣṇa, the Vraja milk-maids were competent (or capable) to give up their relatives as well as the path of conventional morality despite the difficulties involved in such abnegation.

Adopting this path of extreme attraction, they found an unexcelled process for attaining Mukunda, the giver of liberation. This unexcelled process has been searched for by the śrutis, the more ancient portion of the scriptures, but they have not yet been able to discover it. In other words, such an intensity of passion is outside the regular standards of behavior found in the Vedas. Nevertheless, that which is the object of the search of the scriptures is certainly going to be the supremely ecstatic, eternal spiritual truth and not anything else.

The basic definition of samarthā rati as given by Rūpa Gosvāmin is as follows:

According to the school of æsthetics, the affection known as samarthā rati is characterized by a superiority to all other affections such as sādhāraṇī and samañjasā because of its spontaneous and self-manifesting character. It is competent to control Kṛṣṇa because of its intensity; it brings sensuality into tow and unites it with selfless love. It bursts into existence on the slightest contact, either with other mistresses of the Lord or the sound of his name, etc. Even the slightest fragrance of this samarthā rati causes one to leave aside the considerations of family, religion, composure or modesty, and to become oblivious to any obstacles to such renunciation. It is the most intense kind of love, to the extent that no other affection can coexist with it.

This love of the gopīs, as has been previously mentioned, is known by the name of kāma “desire,” or according to Rūpa Gosvāmin, by the longer term, kāma-rūpā rāgātmikā bhakti, “passionate devotion which takes the form of [sexual] desire.” This variety of devotion exists in the gopīs alone.

Jīva Gosvāmin adds in his commentary that the word kāma usually refers to the desire for one’s personal sense gratification. Although it usually implies gross bodily activity, sensual desire has a subtle or psychological aspect also. The mentality of the gopīs is, “May Kṛṣṇa get pleasure from me,” and due to the intensity of that inner feeling, their external activities of kissing and embracing, etc., are also translated into genuine selfless acts of affection or love. This is the competence that earns it the title of samarthā rati by which it has also become known.

The following is an example from Viśvanātha’s “The Nectar of thinking about Kṛṣṇa” (Kṛṣṇa-bhāvanāmṛta, 9.65). It is described that when when the Divine Couple first meet for their noontime dalliances, they embrace and begin to exchange kisses and caresses. These embraces and caresses begin to increase the beauty of their love just as the rays of the moon increase its loveliness without being something distinct from it. In other words, just as the moon and its cooling light are not different from one another, neither are Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa’s love for one another and their expression of it in erotic activity. The moon and its rays may be distinguished for the sake of analysis, but actually one is simply the expression or by-product of the other; so too is it with the Divine Couple’s love and its expression in embracing, kissing, etc.

The same applies equally to all the other girls of Vrindavan. By way of contrast, in mundane sexual affairs no such distinction between external expression and internal feeling can be made, for true selflessness in the carnal act is nowhere to be found.

In Rūpa Gosvāmin’s hymn containing Rādhā’s 108 names, he calls her Gokulendra-suta-prema-kāma-bhūpendra-pattanam: “the capital city of the king of lust-like love for the son of the king of Gokula.” When Rādhā feels lusty desire for Kṛṣṇa, that should be known as pure love or prema and nothing else.
Kṛṣṇa’s servants, friends and parents also feel passionate devotion for him (rāgātmikā bhakti). They also have an intense craving to unite their senses with his form, taste, touch, sound and smell. This they do in accordance with their own status and propensity. The distinct features of the gopīs’ erotic desire is that, due to it, they crave for the touching of hearts as well as the union of every limb of their body with his. “My heart cries out for the touch of his heart,” sings the gopī. It can thus be concluded that spontaneous craving or passionate devotion for Kṛṣṇa reaches its zenith in the mood of the gopīs. Thus we conclude that there is no difference between the kāma-rūpā bhakti of the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu and the samarthā-rati of Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi.

In the Prīti-sandarbha also (367), Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmin has described samarthā rati as being natural to the gopīs. “Though its external form is that of carnal desire, it is pure love or prema. The love that Rādhā feels for Kṛṣṇa is spontaneous to the extent that she does not have to hear his name, what to speak of seeing him, in order to sense him within and without at all times.”

Rādha’s love is self-manifesting (svataḥ siddhaḥ); it does not arise from any other source. Thus Rādhā and the gopīs have an unconstrained, unlimited craving to experience Kṛṣṇa’s bodily beauty and fragrance, the sound of his voice and flute, the taste of his lips and the feeling of his embrace—all for his enjoyment alone! Thus the meaning of samarthā rati and sambhogecchā-mayī kāma-rūpā bhakti is the intense desire for union of their every limb with his for his satisfaction.

=====================

The descriptions of samarthā rati are lengthier than for the other two, and somewhat more difficult to understand. For this reason, the commentaries are also lengthier. Here is the relevant section from the UN.

kaṁcid viśeṣam āyantyā sambhogecchā yayābhitaḥ |
ratyā tādātmyam āpannā sā samartheti bhaṇyate ||52||
sva-svarūpāt tadīyād vā jātā yat-kiṁcid-anvayāt |
samarthā sarva-vismāri-gandhā sāndratamā matā ||53||

Now for the explanation of samarthā rati: When love reaches a particular special quality in which it attains an identity with the desire for sexual union, then it is called samarthā, or "competent." Produced either from the nāyikā’s innate nature or from that of the nāyaka, with only a slight temporal disparity, even a whiff of this samarthā rati has the ability to make one forget everything. It is therefore considered to be the most intense [of the three kinds of rati].

Here Jiva Goswami makes the familiar distinction which we all know very well. He says there are two kinds of desire for sexual union, one that is self-directed, the other which is directed to the pleasure of the love object.

The first example is now given, Rupa Goswami's own verse:

prekṣyāśeṣe jagati madhurāṁ svāṁ vadhūṁ śaṅkayā te
tasyāḥ pārśve gurubhir abhitas tvat-prasaṅgo nyavāri |
śrutvā dūre tad api bhavataḥ sā tulā-koṭi-nādaṁ
hā kṛṣṇety aśruta-caram api vyāharanty unmadāsīt ||54||

[O Krishna!] When they saw the new bride possessed of a sweet beauty incomparable anywhere in the entire universe, her in-laws become worried that she would become attracted to you and so forbade anyone to talk of you in her presence. But even so, when she heard the sound of your ankle bells from a distance, she began to call out your name -- though she had never even heard it before! -- becoming completely intoxicated.

sarvādbhuta-vilāsormi-camatkāra-kara-śriyaḥ |
sambhogecchā-viśeṣo’syā rater jātu na bhidyate |
ity asyāṁ kṛṣṇa-saukhyārtham eva kevalam udyamaḥ ||55||
pūrvasyāṁ sva-sukhāyāpi kadācit tatra sambhavet ||56||
iyam eva ratiḥ prauḍhā mahābhāva-daśāṁ vrajet |
yā mṛgyā syād vimuktānāṁ bhaktānāṁ ca varīyasām ||57||

A particular quality of sex desire is never separated from this kind of love, which possesses an astonishing beauty, filled with waves of all-astonishing playful manifestations. As such all efforts [conducted in this rati] are performed exclusively for Krishna's pleasure, whereas in the prior rati it is possible that occasionally some are done for their own pleasure. When this rati becomes fully mature it reaches as far as the state of mahābhāva, which is sought after by the liberated souls as well as the greatest of devotees.

etāḥ paraṁ tanu-bhṛto bhuvi gopa-vadhvo
govinda eva nikhilātmani rūḍha-bhāvāḥ |
vāñchanti yad bhava-bhiyo munayo vayaṁ ca
kiṁ brahma-janmabhir ananta-kathārasasya ||58||

These cowherd women have justified their human bodies on this earth, for they have achieved the most elevated feelings of love for Govinda, the soul of the unlimited creation. This is something that is wished for by the saints who fear material existence and by ourselves, as well. Oh! What is the need for a life even as long as that of Brahmā for one who is immersed in the infinite joys of hearing about the Lord? [SB 10.47.58]

=================

There is clearly far too much to be said about this rati, except that in order to make sense of it, we need to understand it as a human phenomenon and consider that all the interdictions and warnings are pointless, except as confirmation by negative means that these indeed are manuṣī līlā, bhajate tādṛśīṁ krīḍām and all that. So let us leave this raw material here for today and we will return for a meditation on it at some later time.

A few comments on evolution, science and so on

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:04:00 +0000

I think this will be the last article I post from 1997. After reading one of the others, a friend on Facebook told me that this scientific mode of thinking has reached its limits and that mystical techniques including psychotropic substances open one's "doors of perception" in ways that scientists have yet little hope of understanding, precisely because they are subjective experiences.

I will have to return to this question later, but it does indeed form the crux of much of the thinking that I am just now in the process of crystallizing. It centers on the left-brain/right-brain type duality that it is imperative, our psychological and spiritual duty, that we learn to synthesize. Functional equilibrium is far from meaning genuine synthesis.

Different personality types will always lean to one or the other styles of thinking and experiencing reality. But my friend Mathura Das [for it is he!] is fundamentally right on the principle of bhakti. Bhakti is ultimately not communicated intellectually as much as it is aesthetically, sensually, and emotionally. It is mediated through the brain by direct sensual means. This is the point of hṛṣīkeṇa hṛṣīkeśa-sevanam, hearing and chanting, etc.

On the whole, this was the argument I was making back in 1997, but I was still very much unbalanced towards the intellectual side, much to the detriment, I believe, of my bhakti. Nevertheless, I believe that I have assimilated both sides fairly well now -- just watch me get thrown into a total whirlpool of confusion and distress as punishment for such a brazen statement -- we are totally ready to get to the point of rasa.

One last thing I must say is that I do tend to "follow my nature." And even when I don't want to, I keep getting sucked back in. One day I will truly become a rasika, I swear it. Jai Sri Radhe!

Little known to those who think that science and religion are diametrically opposed, the Protestant reformation and the Puritan ethic played an important role in the development of the scientific outlook. Scientific research was seen to promote discipline, work and serious rather than idle thoughts. Puritans sanctioned science because they believed understanding how nature works gives humanity a better insight into the works of God.

I think that this idea is still applicable. yasmin vijñāte sarvam eva vijñātaṁ bhavati. What does this mean? Surely vijñāna cannot mean here detailed and scientific knowledge? And what does it mean to have "realized knowledge" of the Supreme? If one cannot know him completely, how can one expect to know the infinite manifestations of his energies? It seems that we are really talking about something else...

Acknowledging that sense perception is defective is the beginning point of scientific thinking. It asks the question, how can I overcome defective perception? Rather than just accepting a statement because some so-called authority claimed it (and who is likewise in conflict with x number of other authorities, Biblical, Quranic, Buddhist, Taoist, Amerindian, etc.) who all have different revelations, let me establish, to the best of my ability, the truth. In order to do this, I must be careful to protect myself from the bhrama, pramāda, vipralipsā and karaṇāpaṭava that dog my usual thinking. This will not be accomplished by simply accepting any authority.

Thus was born the scientific method, which calls for rigorous verification of every claim. A statement such as that there are 8,400,000 species is so empty of content that it is laughable to think that any scientist would "save time or trouble" by accepting it. This kind of statement also falls into the chutzpah category, by the way.

Who will accept such bold statements found in scripture? Rasaraja answers his own question, as does nearly every devotee, fundamentalist Christian, Muslim, etc. who faces similar questions: It is for the person to whom it is more important to know that "he is being cared for." Now why someone who believes that there are 7,136,287 species (whatever a species is) cannot believe yoga-kṣemaṁ vahāmy aham, I cannot say.

Certainly such acceptance simplifies our lives. I don't have to go out and count species ourselves (especially not on the basis of fluid definitions insuring the result will come out as EXACTLY 8,400,000, with EXACTLY 400,000 human species, etc.), I can just accept and go on with my life. If man has been to the moon or not has very little effect on whether I myself have food on my table tonight or whether my wife and I will still love each other after twenty years of marriage, so in a way, these arguments are purely academic. It is an amusement, a passe-temps like the X-Files for those to whom they are the new gospel.

Some people show a hesitant step towards a reconciliation of the faith-based and science-based point of view. This is a phenomenon that can also be seen in Islam as well as in Hinduism, which apologists will make, taking the form: "The [pseudo-scientific] statements of scripture are compatible with modern science."

Rasaraja cites Prabhupada and, of the moon landing issue, says that one of the following statements must of necessity be true: 1. claimants have not gone to the moon OR 2. claimants didn't see any living entities there because of their imperfect senses. The other possibility, that Prabhupada could have been wrong, that one of the four faults nyāya attributes to human thought might have affected him, was not raised. By prioritizing shastric truth, even when it is irrelevant to the claims of religion, we unfortunately become prone to accepting any nonsense as truth.

What ticks me off in all this is the fundamental hypocrisy that underlies it all. Scientific procedure has resulted in real improvements in our lives. This very act of communication via the internet would be an impossibility without the combination of thousands of discoveries accumulated through hundreds of years of application of the scientific method and then the practical application of these discoveries. When I think of all those devotees who passed through India and literally went crazy because of the lack of amenities there, it stuns me to still hear their pompous denigration of Western culture and civilization.

Prabhupad thought of Westerners as the blind man and India as the cripple. There can be little doubt that he admired Westerners for their technical prowess, but this technical prowess did not fall from the sky, it was not created ready made at the beginning of the universe. It came about through the discovery of the principles of creation by the application of the scientific method.

Now I can use this computer with only the vaguest notion of how it functions. But I will at least honor the process that led to its being a possibility. Whether those people who made these discoveries were atheists or not has absolutely no bearing on the matter. I think it is a matter of respect for the truth. I repeat, respect for the truth. Yes, I am shouting. [But not as loudly as I was in 1997.]

It is likely that the way something is used (whether for good or evil) is more important than these other considerations. A person entirely ignorant of scientific method can be a good and holy man or woman, I will not deny it. But to willingly close one's eyes to the discoveries of the scientific method on the basis on one person's say so even while using its fruits is nothing less than hypocrisy.

Evolution

I don't know what the Bhaktivedanta Institute is up to these days, but the last publication I saw was trying to "disprove" evolution on the basis of so-called evidence that had been "hidden." Once again we have another conspiracy theory to add to the conspiracy to make us believe that men had actually been to the moon and the conspiracy to make us believe that the earth is round and that it goes around the sun. What to speak of the conspiracy of historiography, which will tell us that the Bhagavatam was NOT written 5,000 years ago by Vyasadeva...

A scientist starts with an open mind and tries to find a theory that fits the evidence, and then as far as possible tries to find ways to verify his theory through experimentation. The point being that we subject the theory to a test that either confirms or disproves its validity. Here we start with a dogma and ask how can I find things that will defend it.

It is a bit like Satsvarupa's book on Indology. I am not denying that Satsvarupa made a few good points, as may well the Bhaktivedanta Institute scientists, but his overall argument is seriously flawed. The same kind of thing goes on in Indology also. Sudhir Kak was famous for his ability to make etymological arguments to prove that Hinduism and Sanskrit were once universal and that all civilization derives from them. The Shankaracharya, on the basis of a fanciful etymology of California, "proves" that certain events of the Mahabharata took place there. I can see some of you nodding, "Yes, that sounds right."

Prabhupad once said that all theists should ally to combat atheism, but this kind of alliance with the anti-evolutionists and all the rest of the fundamentalist Christian anti-scientist fringe like the Jehovah's witnesses just alienates anyone with a developed brain.

Krishna is satyam, he is nihitaṁ ca satye, 'hidden in the truth':

satya-vrataṁ satya-paraṁ tri-satyaṁ

satyasya yoniṁ nihitaṁ ca satye |

satyasya satyam ṛta-satya-netraṁ

satyātmakaṁ tvāṁ śaraṇaṁ prapadye ||

[See here for commentary.]

But if you start by accepting on faith that something which is not proved is true, and then you close your eyes to all evidence to the contrary, you are unfortunately not truly devoting yourself to the truth. You may have heard what happened to Galileo because he said that the earth went around the sun and other such things. Just recently it appears that the Catholic Church has discovered that it doesn't really matter whether the earth is round or flat, God remains God. So, they have reinstated Galileo. It took them 500 years to come to their senses.

Devotees do not have any desire to control or worship or manipulate material energy, for sense gratification or any reason. Their goal is to worship Krishna and seek dependence on him.

On the contrary, a devotee is attached to neither action (which by definition means manipulating the material energy) nor inaction (which means avoiding all contact with the material energy, an impossibility recognized by Krishna in the Gita). For the service of Krishna, everything is usable. The distant first rumblings of devotional service are in karma-yoga and varnashram dharma (see Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu). This means action in this world. To do your duty according to the varnashram dharma means manipulating the material energies.

What was Arjuna doing on the battlefield? He used the weapons of the gods, which I assume were technologically superior to those of the humans. Without karma you can't keep your body alive. Read Gita, chapter 3 once more. Being dependent on Krishna is not to say Inshallah and sit on your fanny. You KNOW this, so I don't think I have to say any more.

When confronted with threats of mystic power or otherwise, the devotee does not surrender to the material energy for protection. Durvasa challenged the devotee Ambarisa with his mystic power, creating a formidable demon. Ambarisa did not counter him with another display of mystic power, but only relied on Krishna's protection, which proved to be much greater than Durvasa's demon.

When confronted with the unknown or powers beyond our control, yes, we have no recourse but to turn to Krishna. Floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters, political uncertainty, war and genocide, unemployment, economic uncertainty, what to speak of inevitable diseases and death, all these things are generally speaking beyond the control of the individual. At these times he must surrender to Krishna. If he has a little time at his disposal, however, Krishna might open up to him, through his intelligence, a plan of action how to deal with these elements. Say for instance, a dike to stop a flood, concrete buildings to protect him from the hurricane, political action to stop the war, unions to deal with employer exploitation, etc. This is all varnashram DUTY and comes from Krishna. sva-karmaṇā tam abhyarcya siddhiṁ vindati mānavaḥ.

Materialists spend their whole lives in pursuit of controlling of material nature, usually just to increase the comforts of the material body. Srila Prabhupada always explains how this is a waste of human life. Devotees from the western sphere may be habituated to certain amenities, that is true, but still we may understand that the goal of life is Krishna and self-realization, and that making a career of service to the material body will not give us real happiness. We are intelligent to understand that. We are habituated to toilets and defecating in water, etc., still we do not make a career of service to the body, and still try to minimize it as much as possible. The toilets and such are not making a slave out of us.

Materialists try to control material nature for their sense gratification. But devotees also need material stability to engage in devotional service. That is why Yudhisthira was highly praised in the First Canto, was it not?

Devotional service is basically a leisure activity. For most people, the basic needs of food, shelter, health, security, etc., have to be dealt with before devotional service becomes an option. All propagandists understand this. I would even say that Prabhupad understood it when he instituted the prasadam distribution program (though this is confused with the magical properties of prasad). [I would be happy to return to this point later.]

So yes, toilets and other amenities are not per se against devotional service. And yes they don't bring real happiness, but just take them away from some high thinking devotee who looks down his nose at the materialist karmis and see how long he lasts. I lived in India for 11 years and I saw so many Westerners go "stir crazy." One French devotee was accused, with about 14 of us, of attempted murder in the 1977 fiasco at Mayapur. None of us was permitted to leave India for several years after that. Stuck in Mayapur, the holy dhama, without permission to leave! Is this Krishna's mercy or what? You will have to ask him how he felt about it. He wanted his flush toilets and his sour cream.

The point is, what is our true business? Just like these discussions we have, what is our true business, of which points of philosophy should we write about? There are so many arguments, but we should narrow it down to essential points of philosophy that will benefit the whole of society.

I agree with you, this is exactly what I have been saying: render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. But I don't think that we can come to any essential points if we pick only convenient "truths." I have pointed out that devotion to some extent rests on the material well-being of society. This is a natural action of the mode of creation (called by some passion). The kind of attitude you are promoting is on display as transcendental, but has certain elements of tamas, which is closing your eyes to the light.

Also, as said before, nobody went to the moon or mars, or beyond 25,000 miles from earth, they are all liars. There is proof of this, and this is not really a controversy any more. Srila Prabhupada was right all the time.

And here, Visoka, with this brilliant non sequitur, you show that you cannot maintain your own principle. You say it's not important and yet here you are, like a dog with a bone, insisting that this dubious position has been proven. It is not a controversy for me, either, but not because I agree with you.

Charisma, genius, chutzpah

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 15:30:00 +0000

When I first made my appearance on the internet on the Garuda listserv in 1997, many devotees found my use of certain terms in talking about Srila Prabhupada more than a little offensive. Take, for instance, one of the few responses I saved.

Jagadananda, to read your message is like reading a message from an unbeliever, an atheist. It manufactures many speculations and ends up confused and questioning. You don't want to offend, but then you write that the followers of Prabhupada "make" Prabhupada something, that Prabhupada is mediaeval and "chutzpah", only an ordinary person, that >Srila Bhaktisiddhanta did vituperous criticism on the sadhus, that sastra is not absolute, that guru is ordinary person... well, WHO is this hellish dog you did NOT want to offend?

I know that you had intimate relations with some of Prabhupada's godbrothers. Your message is proof that what Srila Prabhupada said about them, is completely right. You know of which statements I'm speaking. Look what they've done to you! They even made you a cheap guru? Look what they've done to you! What kind of dog is the dog who bites the giving hand of its owner and well-wisher? What do you expect from this kind of dog?

What you wrote is something what one expects to hear from an unbeliever and not from a disciple of Srila Prabhupada. But you are disciple of Srila Prabhupada. Krishna gave you so much and He will give you a lot more, but it's up to you, to use it for the higher purpose, for the well-being of people who didn't have your blessings. This shall be your greatness - the honour of your spiritual master and Krishna. Reject these dogs who want to bite those who love them. They'll do no good. Life is much to short to squander on this kind of people and they won't help you when you have to pay for your life.

Of course, this was in the early days. I have regularly faced barrages like this over the years, some much worse than this. I have long since stopped collecting them or give them much thought. Nor do I bother answering most of such letters. In these posts, also, I have mostly eliminated the questions and comments of others, no matter how good. That may be wrong of me, but I am interested in what I have to say, and to understand myself. Selfish, as usual.

Like I said in my last blog post, I am interested in a workable synthesis of Krishna bhakti and modern ways of thinking. By modern ways of thinking, I mean reducing as far as possible the necessity to depend on unsubstantiated authority and go as far as one can go with direct perception and rational discourse. Ultimately what we are trying to do is to explain a real phenomenon, that of religious experience generally and the experience of prema-bhakti in particular, not explain it away or to reduce to any other field of thought, like sociology or psychology.

But this is not being done without the serious caveat that we are practitioners. We are practitioners of raganuga-bhakti and sahaja-sadhana. We are not attempting to do anything other than to understand and explain our own experience. We are not the enemies of the devotees, we are simply trying to understand the "science" of bhakti. We study and we experiment, and we observe.

In my paper, The Parampara Institution in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, I used the word charisma to describe exactly the features of Prabhupada's character that devotees like to highlight. Charisma means in Pauline Greek, "gifts of the spirit." It is certain that this quality is one that is needed to mobilize a spiritual movement and there can be no doubt that Prabhupada possessed such.

When I speak of an archetypal process that repeats itself, I mean that it is rare, if not impossible, for a charismatic leader to be replaced by an equally charismatic leader. Charisma is generally speaking a perceived quality, not an empirically objective one. This is the real reason that movements that seek to establish stable successions have to understand the process known as "routinization of charisma," which of necessity means making objective standards that must be adhered to by the "bearers of charisma."

The solutions proposed by ISKCON and its different splinter groups are all different approaches to such routinization. Because of charisma's subjective character, it is all but impossible for the original movement to regroup under another individual's charisma as whole.

We see this often enough: A disciple who knows only too well the failings or limitations of his godbrother finds it difficult to be entirely honest to that godbrother's admirers or to heartily recommend him as a guru. It may be correct for the first disciple to say that he has a better perspective on the godbrother than his admirer, but he is also well aware that he is not about to succeed in changing her attitude.

All this reminds me so much of the way things operated in the Gaudiya Math. Did not Madhava Maharaj have a perspective on Bhakti Prasad Puri Maharaj that was more objective than the one taken by the latter's disciples? Of course. Did that change anything other than to embitter group rivalries? No. [To be honest, I don't think this was meant as a reference to anything specifically historical, though Madhava Maharaj worked with Bhakti Vilas Tirtha until he started his own math. But I can't remember hearing anything specific. (Jagat, 2013)]

Can we as disciples of Prabhupada, seeking that epiphany that is the encounter with the guru, expect it to happen again, now that Prabhupada is no longer materially with us?

Well, unless we are perfect, we had better hope so. The siksha-guru is a flesh and blood reality; the caittya-guru is a dynamic inner force, and they are true and existent, available for the sincere seeker. But I believe that these manifestations of guru-tattva have a tendency to lead us in different directions (centripetal movement). This multiplicity of directions is not necessarily a bad thing, as that wonderful divine hand of market forces supplies the specific, often unconscious demands of the Vaishnava clientele.

I find that the way things are working out has a certain aesthetical symmetry and I wish everyone the best -- may all they find a siksha-guru who will clarify their direction and like-minded sadhus who will help them on their way.

KUNDALI : Prabhupada, we might say, had charisma and reason. Sahajiyas opt for charisma sans reason. And they are nothing short of a nuisance. And the same applies to followers of any school of thought, including ISKCON devotees who think reason is the enemy.

First of all, bhakti without knowledge is not a nuisance, in the sense that the gopis were hardly a nuisance, even though their method of bhakti was original, i.e., not according to śruti-smṛti-purāṇādi-pañcarātra-vidhi. And yet they are our highest standard. It is something similar to the way that Christ says one must become as a child to enter the kingdom of heaven. A devotee who is not inclined to rational discourse and executes devotional service according to the directions of his spiritual master in good faith is still better placed than one who is overly active intellectually and has no prema. This is frequently stated in the shastra, so I don't think the point needs to be belabored.

Secondly, the word charisma is not exactly being used here in exactly the same way I (or Max Weber) had originally intended and it would be very misleading to think that it stands distinct from reason in any way, or that it is synonymous with bhāva. It means, basically, “spiritual power.” It is the defining quality possessed by a spiritual leader; it is the authority possessed by an individual that makes it possible for him to overturn an established tradition or win converts to an new way of thinking. It may therefore be a totally intellectual quality, whereby an effective debater sways people to his way of thinking.

Nor should one think that charisma operates entirely on sentiment, even though that is a substantial part of its nature. The point is that an intelligent person who is swayed by the "right" answers of a convincing rationalist may become an admiring and even sentimental follower. The psychology here can be quite complex, so we just use a general term, charisma, to summarize the gifts of leadership, which in spiritual life can refer to a very high bar indeed.

In Weber’s vision, charisma is of two kinds, personal and institutional. An organization like ISKCON, which has to maintain its life in the best way it can, promotes institutional charisma; this is why the current acharya system is in operation. There is nothing that bars someone with institutional charisma (by which I mean a position in the hierarchy of an institution, whose spiritual power comes primarily as a result of holding that position) from having personal charisma as well, and indeed, for an institution to flourish, or even for a person to advance within a hierarchy, such personal qualities are necessary. An extraordinary individual can overcome the limitations placed upon a particular institution and take it in a new direction.

Again, when I use the word charisma, I don't mean anything different from what a devotee would perceive to be pure Krishna consciousness. There is no difference between the two, just different terms, depending on one's particular belief stance. When we use the word charisma, however, that allows us to make comparisons with other religious traditions and their leaders or founders, who will have similar qualities in the way that they exercise personal authority over their followers.

I use the term charisma because it has a long tradition. It comes from the Greek kharis, which means 'favour, grace.' In early Christian theology, it meant "a special spiritual gift bestowed by the Holy Spirit on a group or on an individual for the general benefit of the Church." A second definition given by Webster is "an extraordinary power in a person, group, cause, etc., which takes hold of the popular imagination," etc. Unfortunately, in this latter meaning, it has become associated with smiling politicians and its original spiritual sense has been lost. Nowhere in anything I say am I insinuating that I am putting Prabhupada on a par with, say, Princess Diana.

Why do I use this term? I specifically use it because Max Weber, the influential German sociologist of religion, used it to describe the formation of religious groups and more interestingly for us in our situation, the process of succession. You may have noticed me using the term "routinization of charisma." This is a Weberian term to describe what happens after a founder of a religious tradition dies. If devotees weren't all so busy being offended by the use of a word they feel does not adequately describe Prabhupada's glory, they would see that Weber and other sociologists have described almost perfectly the problems that faced ISKCON in the wake of Prabhupada's departure.

This is because, whatever ISKCON's claims to being sui generis, since it is in the material world, it follows the rules of the material world. Clever and observant people, even outside of ISKCON, can perceive the mechanisms of religious societies and their successions and make reasonable commentaries on them.

The word "genius" (Websters: "extraordinary aptitude") is being used in a similar way. This is the first time that I hear people being offended because I call someone they respect a genius.

Now chutzpah, I admit, is a little different, and does have a somewhat negative connotation. Chutzpah is a Yiddish word which at its best means "boldness" and at its worst "effrontery." The example usually given is of the man who killed his parents and then asks for leniency from the court because he is an orphan. This is a Jewish joke and is a caricature of what is meant by the word, but it gives you an idea. The first time I used the word, I said "endearing chutzpah," because we know how bold Prabhupada was in presenting Krishna consciousness as an absolute philosophy with no compromises. He rarely allowed any scope for dual interpretations, a both this and that. There was always only one answer possible for Prabhupada. Only black or white, no grey.

For me the Vedic planetarium is a classical example of chutzpah because scientifically speaking, the Fifth Canto does not have a leg to stand on, and yet here we are supposedly going to replace modern, scientific cosmology with this archaic bit of mythopoeic mental speculation. And the gang of ISKCON PhDs who are trying to do so on Prabhupada's order are, in my view, wasting their God-given intelligence to try to prove not only this, but various other ideas (some of which seem to have no relation to anything in śāstra), which are similarly fruitless. They have various allies in the world of Christian anti-evolutionists, Vedic supremacists and other people on the fringes of scientific thought.

I am not saying that science is God, that scientists are infallible; but all these unsupported and unsupportable ideas are hopelessly unprovable. So one devotee conspiracy theorist can write that astronauts never landed on the moon but on Rahu's head, because the real moon is millions of kilometers further away and unattainable by human beings. X-Files stuff... And I get the impression that a disproportionate number of devotees are taken by these things.

What makes me sorry is that none of this has anything to do with Krishna consciousness. You can be Krishna conscious without having to believe that somewhere there is an ocean of honey and another of yogurt and another of milk. Are these mythical realities any different from śaśa-śṛṅga or ākāśa-kusuma, the usual nyāya examples of logical absurdities?

At any rate, I don't think that my point on charisma is a smokescreen. I am merely stepping back and trying to look objectively at the issues, despite my lengthy involvement with them. "Charisma' is admittedly a term which will not do justice to a true believer's faith in the uniqueness of a particular revelations of different sorts, from Sun Myung Moon to Guru Maharaj Ji. An outsider would only see Prabhupada as one amongst all these. What I am trying to establish, in my own mind, is whether natural laws discovered by social scientists for the formation of religious movements and their development into churches or established religions have been operative in the formation and development of ISKCON. To this, my answer is yes. Can we learn from this analysis? Once again, I think that the answer is yes.

That does not mean that we cannot use the term charisma and still be well aware of Prabhupada's uniqueness and of the role which he played in our personal lives. Alam atipallavitena.

Traditional Sanskrit knowledge and me

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 04:19:00 +0000

I just came back from a Smriti Sabha on the Parikrama Marg for Shyama Sharan Nyayacharya, who was Satya Narayan Dasji's pandit for more than 20 years. Babaji regularly studied from him--Yoga Sutra, nyaya, Vallabhacharya, Nimbarkacharya, Mimamsa, and more. The list is quite long. Shyama Sharan left his body in Vrindavan a little over a week ago, and this was the official memorial.

Ramanandacharya Shri Ram Nareshacharya Ji Maharaj

A great number of Vrindavan's cream, pandits and babajis, dominated by representatives of the renounced wing of the Nimbarka sampradaya, were there. But really, Satya Narayanji knew him best because he had studied with him for so long. The most impressive speaker, whom I had never heard before, was the Ramanandacharya, Ram Nareshacharya, who gave a relaxed speech, full of humor and anecdotes about Shyama Sharanji, but filled at the same time with delicious tidbits of his scholarship -- a bit of Patanjali's Mahābhāṣya here, an extract from Madhusudan Saraswati's commentary on the Gītā there. A little story about Shyama Sharan and Swami Karpatriji, one of the giants of 20th century Hinduism. There is something so lovely about a vidvad-goṣṭhī...

At first Satya Narayan Dasji used to go to read with him at Ananda Vrindavan, Akhandananda Saraswati's ashram in Moti Jheel, but after Akhandananda's disappearance, it became somewhat uncomfortable for him there, so he asked Satya Narayan to build him a kutir near the Krishna Balaram tree, just at the corner of Sunrakh Road, which is right in the Angrez part of town. Nevertheless, for all those years, despite his great enthusiasm to teach, he had few students. Certainly none with the lifelong commitment to learning that Satya Narayan showed.

Two thoughts came to mind. The first is related to the ecumenism of the group. Shyama Sharan was a Nimbarki, but he had studied with the Ramanandacharya in Rishikesh and Benares. His main student was a Gaudiya, and his first love, apparently, was Vallabhacharya's commentary on the Bhagavatam. It was clear that although there are many branches of Vaishnavism, the spirit of collegiality was there, despite inevitable disagreements on siddhanta. At least to honor this sadhu, there were representatives from all around, in the love of traditional Sanskrit knowledge and its branches. This struck me because I have just been in contact with some anti-Hindu fundamentalism types, and this assembly seemed to epitomize, at least in a restricted way, a kind of relaxed unity that Hindu liberalism can enjoy.

The second is more personal. In his speech Satya Narayan Dasji spoke of the waning of traditional Hindu scholarship. Shyama Sharan had few students. Indeed, I believe that Satya Narayan was the only one there who made the claim, and he was treated with a great deal of respect by the assembly. He made the point that there are so many programs to save endangered species like tigers, but no such effort is being made to preserve the traditional kinds of knowledge in the traditional manner. As a result, scriptural knowledge is becoming endangered in India, with popular religion ignoring the subtleties of the time honored Sanskrit traditions. The effect carries over: saving the Yamuna, for instance, is futile if the culture of honoring the sacred river is lost, and such culture depends greatly on the solid respect for traditional scholarship.

Satya Narayanji quoted Shyama Sharan as saying that "the Bhāgavata has ruined Vrindavan"! I have heard Haridas Shastri state a similar opinion. It also reminds me of Ananta Vasudeva, whose disciples told me that he blamed Gauḍīya-kaṇṭha-hāra for allowing the Gaudiya Math to depend on facile dogmatism based on selected verses rather than understanding the subtleties of Jiva Goswami's thought. He even stopped all math activities so that everyone could study the Sandarbhas in depth, especially Bhakti-sandarbha.

It seemed a bit strange for Satya Narayan Dasji to say that, as he is about as committed to the Bhāgavata as you could be... but of course, he sees the Bhāgavata not as stories, but as philosophy, through the optic of its numerous commentators, especially Jiva Goswami, to understand whom he has gone deeply into the other branches of Sanskrit knowledge that Sri Jiva would have been versed in. Indeed, any great acharya, whether Sri Jiva or the other Goswamis, or Vallabha and his descendants, would have mastered grammar and the six darshans as a matter of course. Such polyvalent mastery is becoming a rarer and rarer thing, and now just enough knowledge is needed to entertain the masses.

Indeed, as I stated above, I enjoyed myself. I confess, I like these assemblies of learned Sanskrit scholars. I like the quoting of Sanskrit shlokas, the easy references to obscure points of nyaya or Madhusudana Saraswati's commentaries, and the way that they are weaved into anecdotes. But I like the popular Bhāgavata discourses as well.

When I am in such an assembly here in Vrindavan, it is easy for me to slip into this reality, the reality of this world of sadhus and sampradayas and Sanskrit scholarship. This is my home. It is a totally different one from that which I came in so many ways. But the fact is that it is not quite the world that I am preaching, and in many ways quite different. I am resigned to the inevitability of change, and at the same time I am a believer that traditional scholarship is unlikely to go completely extinct, though it will always be a rarified breed that chooses these stomping grounds.

I am living here in Vrindavan -- two years ago I would have written an account, a report, for Vrindavan Today. But VT is only a passing thought today. I am pearticipating less and less in the local community, though I cycle daily to Jiva Institute and work with Babaji on the Sandarbhas. In fact, you might say that this is the first time in my life that I have really followed the traditional system, one on one with a pandit to study a text line by line from beginning to end.

I was editing the English translation, but at one point I realized that I would need to understand the subtleties of the argumentation in Sanskrit a little better and so I asked Babaji if we could go through the text and translation together. So I spend the day working on the text and in the afternoon we read both Sanskrit and English for an hour or two. And it is quite rewarding an experience.

So, though I am getting a taste for this world, at night I go looking through my old articles, finished and unfinished, and contemplate what to do with them all. How to make something coherent and cogent out of this tangled mess? And this is not the "traditional knowledge." I am still, for all of it, a Westerner observing a world that I love more than anything the Western world has to offer me. I am a part of this world, but still apart.

The 1997 articles I am currently revising and posting on the blog were written only a couple of years after I got my doctorate from SOAS. It was the beginning of the end of my academic career, in the sense that I never held a full time academic job after that, so I was little or no contact with academia at the time. I made renewed contact with devotees on the Internet, which was still a novelty in those days, after a hiatus of pretty much a decade.

The first devotees who heard me talking reacted predictably, from disappointed to downright nasty. Kundali Das was also on that group and he made a complete ass of himself, talking condescendingly to devotees and insulting them. It might not have been entirely unwarranted, but I have observed that this is a trap that those who discover "Western knowledge" find themselves in. I tried as best I could to avoid it myself, primarily because my experience of the Vaishnava world stretches far beyond ISKCON and Srila Prabhupada. But those were the early days of internet listserves and the such, and flame wars were inevitable.

Perhaps my time as a babaji and outside of ISKCON in Nabadwip and Braj inoculated me against this kind of militant spirit. And I think it also protected me from becoming overly influenced by the Western scholarly ideas, even though I was clearly making challenges that most ISKCON devotees do not take into consideration.

Looking back at these articles, I see how I took such a strongly Westernized position -- demythologizing, attempting to formulate a rational point of view where guru-tattva and Prabhupada were concerned, feminism, and various other things that are likely never going to fly on the basis of Sanskrit scholarship... at least not alone. And though I am not as forceful in my presentation nowadays as I was in 1997, when really it all came bursting out and I was telling devotees for the first time what I really thought on the basis of my attempts to understand Krishna consciousness as an objective phenomenon.

My conclusion had been that we need to separate the essential from the peripheral where our beliefs were concerned or Krishna consciousness just wasn't going to fly in the West. As a matter of fact, it was not going to fly for me, either. I figured I had understood enough of what Rupa Goswami is all about (I didn't), both intellectually and practically, but I had a big problem. I was no longer a member of the orthodox Vaishnava school, at least not in terms of belief, and I needed to deal with that intellectually. So above all I needed to understand the phenomenon of religion itself scientifically, as objectively as possible, in the Western manner. To see if I could make Rupa Goswami's ideas about madhura-rasa a real, living thing, in this world. In other words, to prove "pragmatically" that prema is the prayojana.

In other words, to have a thorough grasp of both Indian and Western approaches in order to synthesize them. It is the only way to do honor to our history, set into motion by the transplantation of Vaishnava ideas in the West.

I left India in 1985 and returned to university in order to get a broad scientific perspective on religion and to use it to analyze my personal experience of fifteen years in Krishna consciousness, both in the West and in India. And the things that I learned seemed pretty dang useful.
"
There is a lot in traditional Hindu knowledge, even though it is almost by definition very conservative. But I am never going to be a Ram Naresh Ramanandacharya. Nor for that matter a Satya Narayan. Actually, in going after both I may well be without either, like Arjuna's chinnābhram iva nashyati. Without honor or standing in any sphere.

Nevertheless, I am ultimately not here for any kind of scholarship, eastern or western. I am here for prema. And prema, of all things, is something for which you really have to depend entirely on Radharani's mercy, following the breezes of her grace as you cross the ocean of samsara.

I don't know about India so much, but I think that some people, especially Western ones whose brains give them problems, will appreciate any help I can give them in getting past their brains to prema.

Jai Sri Radhe.

Growing out of the Prahlada Myth

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:24:00 +0000

This letter is dated Sept. 4, 1997. I am posting these old letters with a bit of editing, and not really following the chronological order, which is a bit problematic. I will try to fix it later by putting them in logical sequence.

But, Prabhu, just WHOSE myths are you going to believe? The whole world is replete with myths! Tolkien said that myths are not lies, but they reflect truth and god. What seems myth may not necessary be a lie. We are not the only ones with difficult things to understand!

I am very glad that you have brought up the question of myths and myth interpretation. As I indicated in one of my previous letters, allegorical interpretation is something that seems historically to be an important step in the development of scriptural interpretation in all religious traditions. When a Tolkien or a Jung says that myths are not lies, but that they reflect truth and god, this is to correct a common misuse of the word; it does not mean that these are truths in the same way that a verifiable historical statement is true. The operative word is "reflects." The question, "What is truth?" is in itself an extremely loaded question, and no doubt the truth of even historically verifiable statements is not entirely above argument. But when we talk about the truth of myths, we are talking about truth of a different order.

Sometimes -- often -- actual historical events can take on a mythological aspect. This happens when real people function in archetypal ways. For us, this is nowhere more clearly apparent than in Prabhupada's own heroic personality.

A man who has lived a long, nondescript life, at the age of 70 decides to dedicate his life to an order his spiritual master gave him 30 years earlier. He leaves everything to go to a strange country where he knows no one, on the way braving death on the high seas, for all intents and purposes penniless, and after facing a year of setbacks, difficulties and tests, starts to transform drug addicts and directionless young people into devotees of Krishna, a god known to none of them before they encountered him. Within a few short years he has created a new society of devotees all over the world, absolutely and selflessly committed to him, transformed. Certainly this is a drama of mythical proportions! Even a non-devotee cannot fail to sense the richness of the archetypal themes in even this superficial, factual summary.

This is why for most devotees, Prabhupada is the only touchstone to reality. Even Lord Krishna and Lord Chaitanya take on only secondary importance because Prabhupada was the real presence in their lives. It was he who transformed us and not Krishna, not Chaitanya. And yet, in his honesty and his faithfulness to his tradition, Prabhupada never presented himself as anything other than a servant of his guru, of Chaitanya-Krishna, and of the devotees. As such, he also personifies the essence of the guru in more ways than one.

So this is the most important myth for the devotees; it is powerful because it is grounded in reality and in direct personal experience. It has force, because to say that I wish to model my life after Prabhupada is a concrete statement that has real, tangible meaning. We sought wisdom, we found wisdom in Prabhupada; emulate Prabhupada and we will attain wisdom.

The Personal Myth

In these letters, I have been talking a great deal about the problem of institutionalizing or routinizing charisma, truly a problem of mythic proportions. The ISKCON gurus who followed Prabhupada could not tell the story of their lives in a convincing way, the human and the archetypal remained too far apart, whereas Prabhupada's myth is strong enough to last generations. This is no doubt true. The guru is exactly that: when the inner archetype of the sage manifests externally, you have found guru.

The failure of a guru is often when he ceases to believe his own story. Most individual successes, I think, can be attributed to the clarity of vision of a personal myth. As long as that remains strong, one can continue to seek out specific goals. When there is disruption in the personal myth, then trouble arises, usually consisting of a little trip to tamo-guna.

In the early days of ISKCON, Back to Godhead used to contain, as a regular feature, articles on "How I Came to Krishna Consciousness." These stories were generally told with a strong sense of transcendental destiny; the feeling of inevitability is a strong element in the personal myth. In a guru-disciple relationship, the personal myth naturally shadows the guru myth and also makes use of other stories to nourish itself.

The Prahlada Myth

Now, what other myths are important? I refer frequently to a book written about 15 years ago by Poling and Kenney about the Hare Krishna Personality Type. This is a little book of research based on subjecting devotees from a number of different temples to various psychographic and personality tests. Though its scope is limited, it was interesting to me that the authors (as external observers) pointed to the Nrisingha-Prahlada myth as being of dominant in the minds of their respondents. For me, after years of concentration on Radha and Krishna, this observation startled me, as did their discovery that a high percentage of devotees belonged to a single category of personality type.

The Bhagavatam is a wonderful piece of literature, one of India's greatest contributions to world literature, even though in a category of its own. How many different myths there are in that book, tied up with cryptic philosophical discourses and simple exhortations to worship the Lord. In some ways it is comparable to the Bible. A successful religion usually has an encyclopedic selection of myths, some of which can take a central place or be reshaped to suit historical needs, and others that are supplementary and usually have a single moral or didactic purpose. For a Christian, the Christ myth of sacrifice and redemption predominates, but he may "top up" his needs with other stories of significance from the Old or New Testament, like those of Job, Moses, Jacob, or Joseph, to name a few popular ones.

Similarly, ISKCON devotees top up their Prabhupada myth with other stories. At that particular moment when Poling and Kenney were doing their research, the Prahlada story meant a lot to many ISKCON devotees, probably because the majority of them were still young and actively rebellious against their parents and society.

Now, I don't think that it is particularly fruitful to debate whether the story of Prahlada and Nrisingha is a "true" story or not. It is important to us because we can identify with Prahlada, a young child rebelling against his powerful but evil father and his society of asuras, who was in constant danger of being squashed by that unforgiving entity. With the dramatic personality of Nrisingha and the riddle of Brahma's blessing, the story can be told with great effect even in the modern world, but as myth, not history.

The moral is simple: the protection of Nrisingha will see us through. We don't have to believe the story literally, the moral of the story is what we need to believe: That in the service of Truth, Truth will serve the server and protect him against all the dangers of falsehood and evil. Satyam eva jayate. This is an idealistic statement that is completely unverifiable; indeed, in reality, we more often experience the opposite. Bad things do happen to good people, strong believers. The moral universe has to be believed in; the evildoers more often escape punishment and their victims find no succor. They barely can survive to tell their story. Indeed, it is just as likely that we will succumb to torture and not be protected from evil in the way Prahlada was, should we even find the courage to resist it in the way that he did. Thousands of examples of religious or other kinds of martyrs can be found in the pages of history. If we expect that in a situation similar to Prahlada's that a Nrisingha Deva will come flying out of a pillar to save us from the Hiranyakashipus of this world, we may be in for a big disappointment. The point is that the myth expresses an ideal truth that as such is not empirically verifiable, or even expected to be. It is meant to inspire us to take shelter in the Truth and to resist succumbing to social or parental pressure to compromise with evil, and above all to have faith in the protection of God. Just see how nicely the Prahlada story fits in with and tops up our personal myths. We model our personal story on his through identification, and "incarnate" the Truth of the myth through faith.

Now, the problem with myths arises when we feel obliged to believe in their historical truth before we can believe in the lesson that is being taught. Someone in this position is generally at a lower level of spiritual maturity, because his faith will be lost whenever Nrisingha does not come roaring out of the pillar to physically, dramatically, and ferociously destroy evil and protect his devotee from it. Because such a devotee believes literally, he expects it to manifest literally.

Meaning and myth

Viktor Frankl, the author of Man in Search of Meaning, died in Vienna yesterday at 92 years of age. He lived in an age when the philosophy of the absurd was particularly alive. He himself was a survivor of four years in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps and had a lot of insight into what keeps people alive in the most trying of circumstances. Basically, he said that it is meaning. Without meaning, there is no point in living. That is Thanatos, tamo-guna. This is generally where we were before Srila Prabhupada gave meaning to our lives. This is why I continue to pay my heartfelt obeisances to his lotus feet.

Troubles arise when our myths cease to have meaning. When the myths of America and Christianity ceased to resonate with us, we were, knowingly or unknowingly, on the search for a new myth, a new story that would give meaning to our lives. But most myths have a "sell-by" date. They need to be refreshed by new insights and religious experiences that lead to a new level of maturity. St. Paul said to "put away the things of a child." And, quite frankly, many myths are childish in the sense that when their purpose is served, they can be put aside only to be told to the next generation of children for their use. Here it is no accident that Prahlad is a child.

Once we have internalized the dimension of sharanagati that is "seeing the Lord as one's protector," we can dispense with any literal sense of the myth, retaining perhaps some affection for that form of the Lord, the affection a parent has for Santa Claus, for instance, when having children of that age.

It is quite likely that those who were new devotees in 1980 took some comfort from the Prahlad story to see them through there dramatic decision to become Hare Krishnas in a pretty hostile environment, but it is just as likely that they are less concerned with it today. We might say they have grown out of it. This is why I say that it is a naimittika myth, one that serves a specific purpose. The highest and most central myths in a tradition are nitya. Although some devotees seem to be a little confused about which myth that is, it is clearly the cycle of myths surrounding Radha and Krishna, and I would even go so far as to say that it is the Gita-govinda, but we have discussed that elsewhere, so I won't talk about it here.

Again, the problem arises when our belief in the content of a myth is dependent on its historical veracity. Certainly, for most people the content of the Prahlada myth does not depend on our belief in its truth as a historical fact; the inability to distinguish myth from fact is a characteristic of the child. So the first position, separating the content of a myth from its historicity is an important step in rationalization (I here use the term in its primary and not its psychological sense.).

Nevertheless, Nrishingha Deva can still be seen as a real entity, not just as a symbol of God's protection for his devotee. In other words, the scriptural truth is that if Nrishingha is the form of God that attracts you and to which you are devoted, then God will indeed manifest in that form for you, internally, and even externally. Your devotion will make him real. That is the power of myth, and that is how bhakti works.

In the infinity of possibilities that are open to the Supreme Truth, there can be no separation of symbol from reality. But symbols should also be scaled according to their meaningfulness, for which William James' "The Will to Believe" is a very helpful starting point.

Service to Radha Krishna is our Ultimate Concern

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 16:45:00 +0000

This article was first sent on the short-lived Garuda list serve run by Rocana Dasa, most probably in 1997. It was available on line on the Wise Wisdoms site for a while, but was taken down. On rereading, I find it still relevant.

We are human beings endowed with reason, with which we try to make sense of our experiences in life and learn from them. In Krishna consciousness we have been indoctrinated to mistrust reason and even our direct experience to the benefit of authority-based learning. The argument is, of course, cogent: You cannot invent your own language, and there is no point in reinventing the wheel, and if we wish to see far, it is advisable to stand on the shoulders of giants. But even when standing on the shoulder of a giant, it is with our own eyes that we see and with our own brains that we process the sensory or extrasensory information our eyes give us. Thus, where scripture is concerned, we state the following:

Certain aspects of scripture when understood literally are not in conformity with reason.
To understand them in non-literal ways we must have recourse to reason.
As such, reason takes the upper hand.

Revelation (scripture or the words of the guru) thus becomes the raw material upon which to exercise the powers of reason, much as a petrie dish of mold was the raw material for Banting.

Now, before proceeding, we must say a word or two about bracketing or suspending judgment. This is usually applied when we do not immediately understand a particular piece of information that does not coincide with my experience. If I do not understand something that is touted as authoritative information, it is true that I may put off an attempt to understand it until later. This requires a certain amount of applied use of brain power also, as one chooses one's priorities. A member of the Hitler Youth, for instance, might have been enthusiastic and eager for National Socialism. When it came to gassing Jews, he may have decided to suspend judgment due to an a priori faith in Hitler's plan for a greater Germany. This might be construed as an unfortunate, mistaken prioritization.

Such bracketing is often related to the urgency or immediacy of a question. For us devotees, how urgent is the question of the Fifth Canto cosmology? Likely, its urgency differs for different people. Certainly, the prime reason that most people become members of a movement like Krishna consciousness is not because they are seeking scientific insight into the workings of the cosmos. I assume that most of us were and are fairly satisfied with the nine-planets-revolving-around-the-sun-version, and not many of us are in a position to debate the issue intelligently. Certainly very few of us would be able to intelligently defend a literal interpretation of the Fifth Canto to an audience of astronomers or physicists. Presumably, our priority in the Krishna consciousness movement was and is primarily to achieve Krishna consciousness, or service to Krishna, and in order to do so, knowledge of the exact outlay of the cosmos is peripheral, whatever meanings it may have for astrophysicists. Therefore, it is logical for us to bracket this section of the scripture, holding off any attempt to understand it.

However, in a preaching movement, it is necessary to ask whether peripheral elements of the scripture might not interfere with the essential elements. If we say to someone, “Scripture is infallible and 100% true and you must accept the scriptural version or you cannot attain Krishna consciousness; suspend all disbelief and take a leap of faith! Krishna consciousness means not only service to Krishna but acceptance of Bhagavata cosmology," we are clearly shooting ourselves in the foot. We must ask whether we can afford to take such a counter-productive position.

There is nothing new about the faith-reason debate; it has been going on ever since there was such a thing as belief and questioning of beliefs. Paul Tillich, one of the most important Protestant theologians of the 20th century, held that belief and faith are not the same thing. This is a great insight that has been very influential in liberal Protestant circles and I find it useful also in making an analysis of Krishna consciousness. Faith is defined by Tillich as “ultimate concern."

We are all familiar with Krishna Das’s definition of faith:

śraddhā-śabda kahe viśvāsa sudṛḍha niścaya

kṛṣṇa-bhakti kaile sarva-karma kṛta haya

The word śraddhā refers to a firm and confident belief that by engaging in devotion to Krishna alone, all of one’s duties will be fulfilled. (CC 2.22.62)

In this verse, Krishna Das is clearly identifying faith with belief. If, however, we look at it more closely, it does not say that one should believe in any particular myth or specific item of theological dogma, but in the truly essential point, that if we make the supreme personal God and service to Him our primary concern in life, our secondary concerns will be taken care of. Analogous to "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all things shall be added you."

Similarly, each devotee should analyze his own faith by asking himself, first of all, not “What do I believe?”, but “What is my ultimate concern?" This can most likely be reduced to a few short sentences and these are likely those which are the most repeated when he or she preaches, or those which moved him when he first heard the Krishna conscious philosophy. Kundali Prabhu is to be thanked for his extremely rich collection of quotes from various sources that show how our ultimate concerns in Krishna consciousness are shared with members of various other religious groups. Prabhupada himself said that we should seek an alliance with other theists. He told us that Krishna consciousness was non-sectarian. This means that we should seek common features with other religions rather than stressing accidental differences. As acintya-bhedābheda-vādins, we should be able to find this fairly easy...

Now Tillich says that mythology is the language of faith, but that myths do not have to be literally believed to be the vehicles for faith, all they need to do is to adequately express the ultimate concern of the faithful. Here we return to the story of Prahlada, in which I find that many devotees profess unconditional literal belief and which Kundali Prabhu has been the first to agree with me in saying that the important thing is the moral of the story, not the story itself.

The Prahlad myth beautifully expresses a number of particular “ultimate concerns," as I summarized in my previous letter. That is why the story is meaningful for us, and not because it is a historical event. It is an expression of faith, but it is not necessary for us to believe it literally.

Now, we are admittedly on dangerous territory here, because the closer myth and symbol approximate our ultimate concerns, the more (again I am using Tillichian language) the symbols participate in the reality of the ultimate concern. A sign on the street which says “Pont Jacques Cartier, un kilomètre" (to use an example from my own surroundings) does not share in the reality of the Jacques Cartier bridge. A cross, however, does participate in the reality of faith of the Christian, as do Radha and Krishna as the representations of our ultimate concern. Ask yourself, what is the symbol of the ultimate concern for you? Here are some choices:

The cosmology of the Fifth Canto
Nrisinghadeva, the half-lion, half man incarnation
the Matsya incarnation
Ramachandra
Jesus Christ
Prabhupada (and I hope that you will all be able to see that for everyone to whom Prabhupada is a guru, that he has taken on mythic proportions, i.e., he is more than his historical truth, he is a symbol of spiritual realization. This is true of all gurus, this is why we speak of the samaṣṭhi-guru and vyaṣṭhi-guru. The former, according to Sri Jiva, is the incarnation of Krishna who sits at his right-hand side in the Yoga-pitha, while the vyaṣṭhi-guru is the human manifestation appearing in this world.)
Krishna, the speaker of the Bhagavad Gita
Vishnu, the Lord of Vaikuntha
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
Radha and Krishna

Of course, we may find that we want more than one answer. There is nothing wrong with that, so it might be better to think in terms of reordering the list in terms of the degree to which the various symbols express your concept of what is most important in your spiritual life.

A yogi might indeed find (1) the best answer. There may be one or two devotees out there for whom (2) or (3) are significant answers, but (3) is especially unlikely. At (4) we are likely getting warmer; if you answered (5) you are probably in the wrong religion. If you answered (6) you are in the right place, but you must ask yourself, what was Prabhupada himself pointing at? The same goes for (9) Chaitanya, whom we may recall is symbolically understood as a combined form of Radha and Krishna. If you answered (7) you are undoubtedly a serious person and worthy of spiritual life. You may even be the best of the lot, and you likely have a lot in common with those who chose (8). If you answered unhesitatingly, (10), then you are a real Gaudiya Vaishnava, proceed directly to Govardhan (unfortunately impossible to do without collecting $200 first).

However, the problem does not end here. We still have to analyze and understand what Radha and Krishna mean as a symbol. In other words, symbolic differences are meaningful. They are not a question of taste alone, or signs all pointing to exactly the same thing. Prabhupad once said (and I speak from memory) that devotees accept Krishna as both a symbol and as a reality. That is no doubt true, though I approach the matter from the back end. I am concerned here with what they mean as a symbol and how the symbol informs our experience of the reality.

For example: the gopis running to the sound of the flute, abandoning all worldly duties, can be restated as a symbol of the abandonment of all relative truths before the supreme attractiveness of the highest truth. The story likely resonates with us precisely because of this symbolic meaning, in ways that various stories about demon-killings, from Arishtasura to the Zebra demon, don't. Even Bhaktivinoda Thakur felt it necessary to look for symbolisms in all these demons in order to bestow some substance on them, as for the most part even literary substance is not particularly manifest.

But I digress: there is much more to this particular myth, that of the gopis, and that is why it is the centerpiece of Gaudiya Vaishnavism.

What is the meaning of Radha's supremacy? Why Radha and not Arjuna? And yes, despite whatever Prabhupada may have said on the subject of gopi bhava, we do place Radha above Arjuna. I don't see Arjuna on many altars around Iskcon--though I am still wondering about Radha-Parthasarathi in Delhi. What the heck is Radha doing on Arjuna's chariot, anyway?

My question is, what do Radha and Krishna mean, symbolically? Why do they have force as symbols of ultimate concern? Why should they be prioritized and perhaps more interestingly, why are they NOT prioritized in the faith of most of those who claim to be Gaudiya Vaishnavas? Since Radha and Krishna are the symbolic expression of our ultimate concern, we must try to understand what exactly it is that they express. If they fail to express our true ultimate concern (perhaps Parthasarathi or Ramachandra do that), then we should adjust our beliefs and practices accordingly.

What exactly do we mean by ultimate concern? I think that Kundali Prabhu's efforts to scour the world of psychology and self-help literature is an interesting departure from the customary Iskcon practice because he has recognized that (at least for him) the ultimate concern is self-realization, the attainment of full powers as an individual, not only for the sake of service to the Supreme, but because that is in itself service to the Supreme. He is ready to use any means at his disposal to achieve that end. If the knowledge is not to be found in ISKCON (as is, regrettably, the case), then he is ready to go elsewhere. (And all blessings to those who go to Narayan Maharaj or anywhere else. As the Prophet Mohammad said, “If the truth be in China, go to seek it out.")

So how do Radha and Krishna symbolize this fulfilment in a better way than Arjuna and Krishna or Ramachandra, or any other of the symbols that Vaishnavism has in such rich quantities?

This is I think the most important question to answer if we wish to find our orientation in Gaudiya Vaishnavism. It is primarily to find such an orientation that we take a spiritual master, for the Bhagavatam clearly says:

tasmād guruṁ prapadyeta

jijñāsuḥ śreya uttamam

śābde pare ca niṣṇātaṁ

brahmaṇy upaśamāśrayam

One who is inquisitive about the ultimate good in life should approach a spiritual master who has thoroughly understood the purport of the scriptures, is fixed in divine realization and has attained peace from the sense impulses. (11.3.21)

It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.

In fact, the importance of myths for the most rational of humans should not be underestimated. This is what I was getting at with all that Tillich business in my previous posting. Myth is the language of faith. Symbols are its vocabulary. Jungian psychology teaches that symbols have archetypal functions in our subconscious. Jungian analytical psychologists try to flush out the personal myth that each of us is living. We are all living our own life story, the movie of our lives, like the kid playing hockey with himself who does the play-by-play of Gretzky scoring a goal. That is the nature of human consciousness, that we are not only living life, but modeling it and commenting on it as we go along. The most successful individuals are those whose personal myth is the most clearly envisioned.

An archetypal life like that of Prabhupad serves as a model for anyone, even a non-devotee, because it plays out in such a wonderfully mythical way. From the command of his spiritual master that stayed with him through to the end of his life which he had spent preparing to carry out, to the amazing achievement of almost miraculous success. Who could fail to be amazed? I would say that Prabhupad likely had this personal myth played out in his mind. The point is that we could all do the same thing if our vision was as clear.

But although we can see this rationally, it is not likely to be reason alone that moves a man to such achievements. It is myth, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. There is an irrational element of humanity and religion fits into that element. That is deliberate and many devotees are deliberately and exclusively committed to this particular aspect of religion. I and many others have been through periods when we tried to live like this and ultimately ran into difficulty. Rather than hate ourselves for it and choose materialism as an alternative, we have sought to use reason to balance out this kind of faith. What I look for is a middle way.

In order to do that, we must, as Tillich puts it, “break the myths." Because of the power of symbols, a myth doesn't necessarily lose its power to transform even after we have transcended its superficial “historical" truth. This is because of symbols' power to express a multiplicity of meanings simultaneously and because of their wordless power to convey our ultimate concern, like an atom that concentrates so much energy completely out of proportion to its size.

Symbols and myths lose their life when they cease to express ultimate concerns. Thus Isis and Osiris lost their symbolic power when they ceased to be meaningful in the Christian Roman empire and when some of their roles were usurped by Christian symbols. For instance, if all the people in the Krishna consciousness movement suddenly decided to accept the Freudian viewpoint (as expressed by Carstairs) and see Krishna as “a thinly disguised father figure as a homosexual lover", then it is likely that Krishna as a symbol of the ultimate concern would quickly die an ignomious death. That Krishna as a symbol of ultimate concern is deeper than that gives it life.

When we say that Krishna is God, this is unfortunately only the beginning of the answer. In effect, all we are stating when we say that is that Krishna is a symbol of our ultimate concern. I asked above which of ten different versions of Krishna or Krishna approximations you would consider to most effectively express the ultimate concern to you and why.

It is not enough to say that I want to serve God, we must analyze what that means in our personal myth. What do we see ourselves becoming? Wearing silks and sitting on a throne, eating rich vegetarian foods? Sitting in meditation having visions of Radha and Krishna? Living a humble householder llfe touching the people around us with love and caring?

So I would say that we need both myth and reasons, symbols and logic, to effectively emulate Prabhupad in our own way.

In defence of Sadhu Sanga

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:55:00 +0000

As I mentioned recently, I have been in contact with a new Facebook page that is attempting to reunite cyberspacially all of Srila Prabhupada's some 4500 initiated disciples. As of this writing, some 560 people have joined, for the most part the "less important" folk rather than the ones running ISKCON these days. It is turning out pretty much as I expected, a lot of nostalgia, reminders that we are coming closer to death and many of us have already left these bodies. There is also a bit of stirring up of old controversies. Today, one devotee posted the following Prabhupada letter:

I am in due receipt of your letter dated September 3, 1975 with the enclosed statement about Van Maharaja. So I have now issued orders that all my disciples should avoid all of my godbrothers. They should not have any dealings with them nor even correspondence, nor should they give them any of my books or should they purchase any of their books, neither should you visit any of their temples. Please avoid them.

Though one responder cleverly observed that he was not aware of even a single Prabhupada godbrother who is currently living, some others were quite happy to continue the controversy in the spirit of ex ecclesia nullum salus. My answer there went as follows:

When a particular instruction is given that contradicts a general principle, does the particular instruction become a general principle or not?

The general principle is sat-saṅga, which is one of the five most important aṅgas of devotion. Jiva Goswami says that if the guru stops you from seeking advanced association, he should be rejected.

śrī-gurv-ājñayā tat-sevanāvirodhena cānyeṣām api vaiṣṇavānāṁ sevanaṁ śreyaḥ. anyathā doṣaḥ syāt.

It is best if one serves Vaishnavas according to the order of the guru and without any obstacle in one's service to him being disturbed. Otherwise there will be a flaw.

yaḥ prathamaṁ śābde pare ca niṣṇātaṁ [bhā.pu. 11.3.21] ity-ādy-ukta-lakṣaṇaṁ guruṁ nāśritavān, tādṛśa-guroś ca matsarādito mahābhāgavata-satkārādāv anumatiṁ na labhate, sa prathamata eva tyakta-śāstro na vicāryate | ubhaya-saṅkaṭa-pāto hi tasmin bhavaty eva |

The question here is not of one who has taken shelter of a guru without the qualifications described in 11.3.21, and then does not receive permission from such a guru to greet or honor great devotees, due to enviousness or whatever, because such a disciple already stands in contradiction to the scriptural injunction. The poor guy is in trouble no matter what he does.

ata eva dūrata evārādhyas tādṛśo guruḥ. vaiṣṇava-vidveṣī cet parityājya eva. tasya vaiṣṇava-bhāva-rāhityeṇāvaiṣṇavatayā avaiṣṇavopadiṣṭena ity-ādi-vacana-viṣayatvāc ca.

In such cases one should worship his guru from a distance. But if he is inimical to the Vaishnavas, he should be rejected completely. This is because he demonstrates that he is without the natural spirit of a Vaishnava and is thus the subject of the verse, "Instructions given by a non-devotee, etc."

yathokta-lakṣaṇasya guror avidyamānāyāṁ tu, tasyaiva mahā-bhāgavatasyaikasya nitya-sevanaṁ parama-śreyaḥ. sa ca śrī-guruvat sama-vāsanaḥ svasmin kṛpālu-cittaś ca grāhyaḥ.

In the absence of a guru with the characteristics described earlier, it is in one's greatest interest to constantly serve an individual mahā-bhāgavata devotee. He should have the same spiritual mood as the guru and be merciful and kind to you. (Bhakti-sandarbha 238)

Then Jiva Goswami goes on to describe the two kinds of service, a very important distinction, as prasaṅga-rūpā, paricaryā-rūpā, hearing Hari katha from him and performing direct service of other kinds.(Bhakti-sandarbha 238)

The above passages need to be read carefully because clearly, as already stated by some above, one may have a different take on almost every line above in different situations. But the upshot is that ultimately you need to make the decision yourself, but that advanced satsaṅga is a fundamental and necessary principle of devotional service. If you yourself feel that you are in need of svajātīyāśaya, snigdha and svato-vara association, and if one is capable of recognizing for himself the qualities of a mahā-bhāgavata, then to not follow the direction of God within the heart is going to slow one's progress.

What are the qualifications of the mahā-bhāgavata who should be served?

śuśrūṣayā bhajana-vijñam ananyam anya-

nindādi-śūnya-hṛdam īpsita-saṅga-labdhyā

If one gets the desired association of a person who is expert in bhajan, who is undeviating in his dedication (ananya) and whose heart is entirely free of the tendency to criticize others, then one should serve him. (Upadeśāmṛta)

Prabhupada was no doubt afraid that his disciples were going to apparently knowledgeable and advanced godbrothers who were envious and would create confusion. But there is little doubt that the above passage makes it clear that the primary instruction is to associate, to learn to recognize the advanced devotee and if possible to hear and serve advanced Vaishnavas. To not do so is to stifle the growth of your devotional creeper and to fall into the trap of enviousness oneself.

And here is an article I wrote at least ten or fifteen years ago on some forum or other, "In defence of Narayan Maharaj." Since it is no longer available on-line, I am reposting here, as is. I doubt that I would write like this today, but still there are some good points.

K. wrote:

In order to satisfy Jagat, we would all have to disregard very stern orders from our spiritual master and go accept the association and concepts of all the sahajiyas, Gaudiya Math sannyasis and bogus babajis all over India.

Certain commands were made to be broken.

āsām aho caraṇa-reṇu-juṣām ahaṁ syāṁ

vṛndāvane kim api gulma-latauṣadhīnām

yā dustyajaṁ svajanam ārya-pathaṁ ca hitvā

bhejur mukunda-padavīṁ śrutibhir vimṛgyām

Ah, would that I could become
one of Vrindavan's herbs and plants
which are regularly sprinkled
with the dust of the gopis’ feet,

for the gopis abandoned their families
and their religious principles,
both of which are extremely difficult to give up,
in order to worship Mukunda,
the ultimate objective of all the Vedic literatures. (SB 10.47.61)

One of the big problems in Iskcon is that so many devotees have come to the point where they say, “Is this all there is? Where is the rasa?”

And even when they try to talk about Radha and the gopis amongst themselves, they do so self-consciously and embarrassedly, as though they don't know if they really should be doing this or not. And no wonder, they have never met anyone who was absorbed in that rasa.

And the discourse is nearly always political: Follow, surrender, work and everything will come—all Varnashram Dharma instructions. Where is the sanga that converts karma into bhakti?

It becomes like a bad marriage. Eventually the wife says, “What am I doing here? I wash the floors and cook the meals, bring up the kids, and all I get in exchange is abuse.”

So is it at all surprising that despite all the exhortations not to associate with Narayan Maharaj, as soon as a long-suffering devotee gets a little nectarean Harikatha from this lifelong sadhaka, he says, "So this is what I've been missing!!"C

cittaṁ sukhena bhavatāpahṛtaṁ gṛheṣu

yan nirviśaty uta karāv api gṛhya-kṛtye

pādau padaṁ na calatas tava pāda-mūlād

yāmaḥ kathaṁ vrajam atho karavāma kiṁ vā??

My mind and my hands, which were so happily absorbed in household duties, have been stolen away by you. Now my feet cannot step even a foot away from your lotus feet. How can we go back to Vraja as you instruct us? And even if we went back, what would we do?? (11.29.34)

In other words, something serious has changed. Once that invisible lobha barrier has been broken, there is no going back. Once milk has become curd, how can it become milk again?
The philosopher Simone Weil, after many years of grappling with her faith in Christ (she was born a Jew), she had to decide whether to be officially baptized a Catholic or not. She thought about it for some time before rejecting the option because, she said, that the Church was a social institution and "insofar as it remains a social institution, it belongs to the prince of this world (i.e. the devil)." That’s pretty heavy language. Even though she admitted that the Church did do good work, she felt that religion was ultimately about spiritual experience and not about social relations.

Now I don't entirely agree with this, but Simone Weil was only 34 when she died, not long after she made that decision. I too was only 29 when I left Iskcon with pretty much the same attitude. After all, Krishna puts the onus on the individual to determine what he wants in spiritual life. In the last instruction of the Gita, Krishna comes clearly down on the side of the individual in the “What is more important, society or the individual?” debate.

Ultimately, even the spiritual master is only a means to the end. That is why the shastra says there can be more than one spiritual master. The diksha guru you have taken determines the path you are to follow; the siksha gurus take you further along that path. Sometimes, the diksha guru is no longer present--as is the case in Iskcon (for Prabhupada’s disciples); sometimes the diksha guru is inadequate as a siksha guru--as is also often the case in Iskcon (for disciples of Prabhupada’s disciples). There is no need to abandon the diksha guru because he has directed you to the correct goal—Yugala-sevā—but Jiva says that he can be abandoned if he prevents you from associating with more advanced devotees who will help you reach that goal. (See Bhakti-sandarbha 238)

In any case, the order sarva-dharmān parityājya does not come up once or twice in a lifetime. It comes up constantly, from moment to moment. The ecstasy of surrender (or conversion if you like) is not a one time thing, after which we can sit on our hands. On the other hand, a major call, the sound of Krishna's flute, may only come a few times in our lifetime. If we don't heed this call, for whatever conventional reason, that is our loss. When we stop moving forward, we generally start slipping back.

These conventional reasons are generally social in nature, but even Iskcon is ultimately "of this world." As we have heard Puru Das say, “Prabhupada said Iskcon was his body; he also said he was not his body.”

This was one of Siddhanta Saraswati's brilliant realizations. When he created the "daivi varnashram," of which the Gaudiya Math with its "daivi" Brahmins and Sannyasis was the vanguard, he never intended for it to be the last word in spiritual life or commitment. Varnashram is a vehicle that is necessary for gradual spiritual development, but it ultimately needs to be discarded, in principle if not in fact. Bhaktivinoda Thakur said that if household life is conducive to Krishna consciousness, there is no need to abandon that life--indeed it would be an error. By the same token, if math/ashram/temple life is conducive to bhajan, then one can remain, otherwise not.

Narayan Maharaj has put his finger on the problem and Puruji, in his spirited and aggressive manner, is merely conveying the message. Naturally, Iskcon does not like the message, nor do the Ritviks, for to them, Iskcon IS Prabhupada. This is not an ignoble sentiment and, as that is their nishtha, it is perhaps wrong to disturb their minds.

The Bhagavata says:

tāvat karmāṇi kurvīta

na nirvidyeta yāvatā

mat-kathā-śravaṇādau vā

śraddhā yāvan na jāyate

One should engage in one's Varnashram duties and not renounce them as long as one does not develop strong faith in hearing about Me. (11.20.9)

Iskcon devotees, who have surrendered so much by converting and committing themselves fully to serving Srila Prabhupada, may find it strange, even absurd, to hear this instruction being applied to them. To me, however, it seems that they have been doubly cheated: on the one hand, they have been deprived of the bhajan and Harikatha of a fully committed life, and on the other, they have been deprived of even a "Varnashram dharma."

Iskcon has consistently alienated its devoted householders by denigrating their vocations and service. They have done this to their own great detriment--all that money those householders could have given if they thought they were getting their spiritual money's worth. Instead, they mostly get kirtans that are noisy and untidy, lectures that are dull and uninspired or aggressive and haranguing, and to top it off, condescension from arrogant leaders. (And that is not even mentioning all the other, unmentionable stuff.) Only the most desperate loyalty to Srila Prabhupad could keep them coming back, but even that eventually is insufficient for many.

By giving Varnashram Dharma a spiritual value, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati was implicitly giving householder life a meaningfulness within the whole spiritual scheme of things. Srila Prabhupada also said, "Establish Varnashram Dharma." This instruction has never worked in Iskcon because of the society’s consistent marginalization of householders.

Meanwhile, the temples demand full commitment and "service," especially "book distribution," from their brahmacharis. It's a wonder that any of them even know anything of Prabhupada's books. I have found that very few lifelong Iskcon devotees I meet know much about even Chaitanya Charitamrita or the Srimad Bhagavatam, what to speak of the hundreds of books that Srila Prabhupada never translated.

Most of you should be ashamed when you see how well Puruji knows Prabhupada's books, and those of so many other acharyas. Heaven knows he is indiscriminate in his cutting and pasting. I hope that one day he becomes a little more judicious in his quoting—less is sometimes more—but I would still bet that he gives a pretty decent Bhagavata lecture. And I'd also bet that Shyamarani and many of Narayan Maharaj's preachers are far more inspired and inspiring than G. Maharaj (for example) could ever be. I could probably even sit through one without squirming and getting an unbearable urge to run screaming out of the temple room. In Iskcon, I usually have to hold myself back by remembering Vishwanath Chakravarti Thakur's reminder that advanced devotees do not discriminate between good and bad Hari-kathä, but I confess that such good counsel is generally insufficient. It does matter.

Narayan Maharaj preaches to Iskcon devotees. And well he should. Prabhupad made them hungry and now they are without nourishment. How kind of Narayan Maharaj to give them what they have been hankering for, sometimes without even knowing what it was. He is giving water to those who were thirsting in the desert. He is moving the Krishna consciousness movement back towards the Radha Krishna consciousness of Srila Rupa Goswami.

On Fences around the Devotional Creeper

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:28:00 +0000

I left ISKCON in 1979, which is a good long time ago. In the intervening 33 years, I have had plenty of experience with life, but for the most part I keep a healthy distance from the institution in which my spiritual life had its beginnings. There were numerous steps in my development that made me a very different person today than I was as a young Hare Krishna brahmachari.

Recently I was invited to participate in a Facebook forum for Srila Prabhupada disciples. I thought this was intriguing, an opportunity to feel the pulse of this interesting segment of the world's population, the 4500 or so people who took initation from Prabhupada between 1965 and 1977, all of whom are now at least 50 years old, many in their 60's and even older. They are, in other words, in the latter stages of life; indeed, many are approaching death, some after living their entire lives in dedication to the movement and in service to Sri Chaitanya.

There are many who left ISKCON to take initiation again in various other sampradāyas, including non-Gaudiya lines like the Nimbarkis. But this is actually welcome because it shows an advancing interest in the essence of bhakti itself, which is bhajana, for which higher association with a bhajana-vijña sādhu is an unavoidable and absolutely necessary step. The order to associate with advanced sadhus is one of the most powerful commands in the devotional path, and the constant awareness of the guru's presence in various forms, externally and internally, is also an integral measuring stick of spiritual progress.

But for many in ISKCON, the path of spiritual life has been so carefully delimited by various orders that Srila Prabhupada made. ISKCON was identified with him, as Srila Prabhupada's own body. Leaving ISKCON was made the same as rejecting guru-tattva itself. He made restrictions over associating with anyone not directly connected to him, his literature, his interpretations of the tradition, and so on.

Prabhupada may have made these kinds of orders out of a fear that his disciples would become entangled in the labyrinthine world of Indian spiritual politics and to keep them actively preaching Krishna consciousness worldwide, but in my estimation these restrictions have a double purpose.

One, which is better understood by the general society of devotees, was to protect the neophytes; the other, only understood by those who have moved on, is to create the kinds of obstacles that need to be overcome in order to truly follow the path of the gopis...

eta saba chāḍi' āra varṇāśrama-dharma
akiñcana hayā laya kṛṣṇaika-śaraṇa

If all this was supposed to be in order to "protect the neophytes," we have to wonder why Prabhupada's disciples, who are seniors now, are still neophytes. They should by now have become accomplished spiritual leaders, coming closer and closer to the highest attainments promised by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's grace.

Since the real criterion for advancement in the bhakti path is eagerness, especially eagerness to hear from a pure rasika devotee (śravaṇam), and since even the intention to hear is its own reward (sadyo hṛdy avarudhyate'tra kṛtibhiḥ śuśrūṣubhis tat-kṣaṇāt, etc., SB 1.1.2), there is no loss or diminution for those who follow this effort, even if they break down the fences that were created by the guru himself.

loka-dvayāt svajanataḥ parataḥ svato vā
prāṇa-priyād api sumeru-samā yadi syuḥ |
kleśās tad apy atibalī sahasā vijitya
premaiva tān harir ibhān iva puṣṭim eti ||

As a strong lion defeats many elephants and then becomes further nourished and strengthened by feeding on them, so too does sacred love, when exceedingly great, conquer all obstacles before it, whether they come from this world or the next, from enemies or from family members, from one’s own body or the things connected to it, or even from that dearest one who is the object of the love itself. Even if such obstacles should be as vast as the immeasurable Mount Meru, sacred love will conquer them and, having conquered, become stronger and more vital. (Prema-sampuṭikā , 54)

There is no offense to Prabhupada, because Prabhupada's real intent was that we should become Krishna conscious in the way that Rupa Goswami prescribed it. At least I hope so. ISKCON or Gaudiya Math consciousness may be an effective starting point, but it is most certainly not the end of the road. Not for everybody, anyway.

Just to make that a little more clear, the Gita says that one who desires to hear about yoga stands above the Vedic injunctions. In other words, the desire to hear about direct, anāsaṅga-bhajana, is above any scriptural injunction to follow dharma, even if that dharma is dressed up as "following the orders of the spiritual master."
To make that even more clear. Since lobha is the essence of progress in bhakti, if one receives the inner impulse to associate with advanced rasika devotees and inquire from them, this should be seen as the grace of the guru, not a temptation to be overcome, and as the grace of the antaryāmī guru who is giving light from within (Gita 10.10-11), not as some kind of great sin or offense.

Many Prabhupada disciples raise the question of initiation as though this is the ultimate offense; after all, Jiva Goswami says in Bhakti-sandarbha that reinitiation means rejection of the first guru, and in the case of a "bona-fide" guru, this would be an offense. Of course in the veritable musical chairs of initiation that followed Prabhupada's disappearance, it is rather strange that it should still be a matter for concern, but those who worship Prabhupada as a śaktyāveśa avatāra and so on cannot conceive of the logic behind a decision to be initiated by anyone else. How could anyone else be better? they ask.

The arcane problem of disciplic succession and the traditions that existed and were followed by Vaishnavas in Bengal prior to the Gaudiya Math are not things generally known or understood by foreign disciples new to this world. But Prabhupada himself was reinitiated by Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, as were many others who received a mantra from their family's kula-guru. This was current in the Gaudiya Math as it was in open warfare with the traditional Vaishnava order, the Goswamis and Babajis, so why not reinitiate? And of course the reverse was true, because the Goswamis and Babajis rejected Saraswati Thakur's interpretation of initiation and disciplic succession just as he rejected their legitimacy. Since we follow Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur, we have made the decision to follow his initiation, as it was given by him to his son, Lalita Prasad Thakur.

When the legitimacy of one initiation is rejected, there is nothing inappropriate about reinitiation. This rejection of legitimacy on both sides of the divide is the fundamental evidence that Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati created an entirely new sampradāya, even though his claim was to be the true guardian of the pristine and original teaching of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. At least Srila Sridhara Maharaja had the decency to recognize this fact by calling it the "Chaitanya Saraswata Sampradaya."

But the reason there are different sampradāyas is because there are differing goals and differing visions of God. So if one wishes to engage in madhura-rasa bhajana in the tradition followed by Bhaktivinoda Thakur himself and his guru-paramparā through Bipin Bihari Goswami to Jahnava Thakurani, one is more or less obliged to change environments.

In my personal case, I do not feel that this requires an official rejection of Srila Prabhupada because, as he himself so eloquently said once, long ago, "Guru Tattva is One." Srila Prabhupada came to give Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, to give Rupa and Raghunath, to give Radha and Krishna, to give Vrindavan, so how can pursuing those things be rejecting him?

There is the old fear of "jumping over" the guru. Somewhere along the line, Prabhupada created this fence, teaching his disciples that they could only access the previous acharyas through him. But if there is any meaning to initiation at all, it is that the guru gives his disciple the entire disciplic succession; he comes to give access to the sum total of the teaching, not a part of it. Initiation is just that: an initiation, an introduction to the world of bhajana.

Srila Prabhupada had a twelve year period in which to give several thousand, mostly uneducated and undisciplined, people an introduction to a very sophisticated system of religious philosophy and practice. His disciples accept on faith that he gave them everything. That is fine; I personally chose to investigate.

Everyone seeks their own level of comfort. But spiritual life requires a bit of discomfort. Physical discomfort is not as uncomfortable as anomie, but anomie or alienation is actually a greater challenge. Fundamentalist religion is based on avoidance or the fear of such alienation. This leads to a purely social model of religion, Varnashram or "quasi" Varnashram, which must be overcome in order to make headway into Mahaprabhu's religion of love as stated clearly in Ramananda Raya's teachings.

It takes a while to understand these things, and no doubt Prabhupada was very clear in his mind about what the limitations of the greater number of his students would be and decided that shastra, dharma, duty, Varnashram, etc., were a necessary substratum for further progress.

Some feel that it is a defect that most of the devotees who left ISKCON to go to some other teacher with a new charisma are preaching to ISKCON's disenchanted rather than to an entirely new audience, but this may have been Srila Prabhupada's real intent. After all, the institution has its limitations and its dangers, and may even be itself an insurmountable obstacle to progress. Ultimately, the failure to find loving guidance and elevated association, the impersonalism of the institutional mindset, and so on, will create disenchantment and the necessity of finding or founding micro-social groupings that are more conducive to spiritual community.

Perhaps those who have left ISKCON and fine-tuned their spiritual understanding will find ways of communicating to the larger public that ISKCON, in its sclerotic incapacity to jump over the fences that Prabhupada created, will never find. The world does not stand still.

Let us not forget that in relation to Gaudiya Math, the mission of his own guru, Prabhupada was himself an outsider, a householder in a world dominated by sannyasis and brahmacharies. Often the most creative solutions come from those who have the outsider perspective. His inspiration resulted in the creation of a new, powerful branch in the Chaitanya tree, but perhaps it is Mahaprabhu's plan that his tree will grow newer and newer branches.
Prabhupada has now been gone from the physical world for 35 years. Are we still such neophytes that we need to protect our fledgling creepers with such prudence? Are they still so weak? Are we still committing mad-elephant offenses?? Don't we need to grow up and become mature?

I was of the feeling that we are all truly a family, many of whose members have taken different paths in life--some have "deviated", some have "sinned", and so on and so on. But since we are "family" we should help one another, learn from one another, love one another. If the first thing we do is create this artificial division between "true" followers and others, then that is not helpful to anyone.

We say that Prabhupada built a house in which the whole world could fit. It is more than a little ironic that 90% of his own disciples no longer participate directly in ISKCON for one reason or another. The most intelligent are ostracized or made to feel unwelcome for simply being themselves because they do not adhere to a set of definitions made by a self-appointed elite.

Proselytizing for the Brave New World

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:49:00 +0000

In his classic dystopian novel, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley projected a future of human society, based on consumerism socially engineered to technocratic perfection.

One of the prominent features of this world, set in the distant future, was a complete separation of the sexual functions of erotic pleasure from reproduction, which was taken care of by advanced test-tube incubation centers and from-birth indoctrination in consumerist values. Without marriage or any need for attachments, sex was also separated from love in the sense of intense commitment to a single partner and simply a source of recreational pleasure, efficiently enhancing the qualities of life and smoothing social cohesiveness.

Though Huxley himself was rather sanguine about such developments, now it appears that his nightmarish vision is seeking realization. In their popularly acclaimed and controversial book Sex at Dawn, subtitled "How we mate, how we stray, and what it means for modern relationships" (Harper-Collins, 2010), Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha argue on the basis of primatology, anthropology and other evidence that human evolution should follow a course much like the one hypothesized by Huxley, even proselytizing for it with something akin to evangelical fervor.

Ryan and Jetha state that current social attitudes to sexuality and common received wisdom about male and female differences are fraught with misunderstanding, particularly if we examine the nature of our ancestors, both primate and primitive human. Indeed, in the introduction, the authors take pains to state overtly that our human character is only a thin veneer over our essential animal nature, claiming it is a mistake to say we are descended from apes, more correct to say that we are apes.

They point to the malaise in current sexual mores and ask whether this is the way for society to move forward, describing the current state of the marital institution as leading to an "unstoppable tide of swirling sexual frustration, libido-killing boredom, impulsive betrayal, dysfunction, confusion and shame. Serial monogamy stretches before (and behind) many of us like an archipelago of failure: isolated islands of transitory happiness in a cold, dark, sea of disappointment" (page 2).

Evolution gone wrong?

The authors' argument is this: About 10,000 years ago, humanity "fell from the garden of Eden" and left the social organization and lifestyle of hunting and foraging that had been its natural state since the beginnings of the race and took to agriculture. From that time, we have followed a social and sexual model that is patriarchal, by which is meant that in agricultural societies, the metaphor of planting seed and so on was applied to human sexual relations, and the male was considered owner of the field, or the woman, and its products, the children. In this model, fatherhood is an important value because it assures family solidarity and thus security in the land-bound agricultural community.

Agricultural societies differed from those of hunter-gatherers ("one-day return hunter-foragers") whose organization seems to have been rather closer to that of the bonobos and chimpanzees, who are genetically our closest relatives in the primate world. In these pre-agricultural societies, women were not Victorian ladies with the kind of loving fidelity that is so prized and championed by romantic idealists. The child rearing and so on that are the glories of motherhood in the family-based social organization are shared by the group in the hunter-gatherer tribe, whose numbers seem to be limited at about 150. Not only mothering, but fathering. By extension, a communal and communistic apportioning of roles seems to be the ethos that governs such tribal communities.

Like our hypersexual ancestors, the bonobos and chimpanzees, the authors argue that pre-agricultural humanity typically shared sexual partners, and the Romantics' much-touted female fidelity was non-existent. Moreover, the genetic patterns that governed our ancestors still remain an integral part of our physical and psychological makeup to this day. The monogamous ethos is thus unnatural and leads to the kinds of undesirable consequences that arise from all repression of natural tendencies -- fracturing, splintering, jealousy, enmity and so on.

So, accepted wisdom about men's and women's differing erotic psychologies, a prejudice found even in Darwin and many other scientists, namely that men tend to seek many partners to spread their genetic material to as many potential breeders as possible, whereas women seek a long-term partner to protect and provide for the offspring, is the prime target the authors wish to debunk. In other words, women are not the coy and wonderful creatures that the Victorian or Romantic idealist envisioned, but something a little more akin to the adolescent male fantasy of the ever-receptive and eager sexual partner.

We're being misled and misinformed by an unfounded yet constantly repeated mantra about the naturalness of wedded bliss, female sexual reticence, and happily-ever-after sexual monogamy—a narrative pitting man against woman in a tragic tango of unrealistic expectations, snowballing frustration, and crushing disappointment... "the tyranny of two."

The sociological role of such a freer sexuality is also defended. Thomas Hobbes' famous description of prehistoric or primitive human life as full of the danger of violent death, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" is extensively repudiated.

Now there is much to be appreciated in Ryan and Jetha's argument, which is presented with almost religious conviction, though no definite solutions are promoted. Nevertheless, our problem is this: The ten-thousand year history of changed sexual mores in the human species and its evolutionary effects cannot be totally written off, nor can we expect that in the modern, urban society that has grown out of it there is much possibility of a return to our state "before the fall."

Bonobo ape. Found only in a shrinking patch of forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this endangered species relies mostly on fruit and plant vegetation.

Evolution

Now I personally do not take the rather disingenuous position of the modern-day Vaishnava fundamentalists and Christians, etc., who flail in myopic indignation at the Darwinian fallacy. It is no sin to observe the world and to come to conclusions about how it operates. As far as I am concerned, that does not change the fundamental principle that "life comes from life" or that consciousness precedes matter, even though the mechanics of such an idea may be a little harder to demonstrate. But for the time being let us keep aside debates about evolution and simply accept that we may be better off in a public debate by accepting much of current scientific knowledge, or at least dealing with it on its terms rather than engaging in the dubious endeavor of trying to fight it. We tend to follow Bhaktivinoda Thakur in this department. for he says that thought is progressive.

At least on the microcosmic scale, we are ourselves engaged -- as are all religions -- in an exercise of social engineering of sorts. Religions usually make the effort to explain the human condition on the basis of certain principles which are then applied prescriptively to society as normative. Now that religion has been replaced by science in many minds as providing the explanatory metanarrative for humankind, many of the narratives provided by religious traditions have been jettisoned, and nowhere is this more the case than in the relations between the sexes. Religion for too long has promoted a patriarchal model of social organization that in the present society seems entirely outdated and retrogressive.

Religions are also asking which way forward for humanity, but not in purely physical or psychological terms. The various religious ideologies will survive into the new age, but simply take new forms, as long as they keep their mission of providing solutions for the spiritual needs of humanity at the forefront. The old wine will go into new bottles, but it requires a deep understanding and experience of the current human situation as well as of religion, both in its theoretical and functional aspects, in both its universals and particulars.

We can to some extent control our evolutionary direction; this is what human intelligence permits. In this article, I wish to propose that any argument that states that we have taken a wrong turn evolutionarily speaking and that the solution is to revert to the norms of our primate ancestors and hunter-forager forefathers is disingenuous and should be put into question.

In this case, we ask whether the biological predisposition to a particular behavior, or the social structures that were successful in hunter-gatherer societies of the pre-agricultural age—and which were usurped by it—are going to be adequate or even useful indicators of the way forward in the new, post-agricultural, technological world.

Evidently, we cannot go back, even though we may draw on our experience. In other words, we must look at what the essence of human development is and where the way forward lies. In the case of those who are following Vaishnava dharma or prema-dharma, we ask whether the only benefits of monogamy were the promotion of a patriarchal social model that ignored or marginalized the feminine and in which women and children become the chattels of the males, the atomic family becoming the replacement for tribal organization as a median unit for an ever-increasingly more complex society.

In fact, much of Sex at Dawn ignores the other features of sexual sublimation, etc., pointed out by Freud as being the real motor of "civilization" as well as of its discontents. The kinds of repression religion introduced in order to control the potential anarchy of untrammeled sexual desire is fundamentally rational: it points to the victory of dharma over kāma, whereby kāma can only be fulfilled after passing through the necessary prerequisites of dharma and artha, requirements that appear to be fairly consistent and resilient even in the modern or post-modern world. In other words, there is no free lunch when it comes to sex.

But since these authors are all more or less agreed on the absence of a soul or a real spiritual consideration in their world views, though they may be still concerned with the discontents of the repressiveness in human society, their answers are seriously flawed.

But one thing that must be pointed out is that the problems of sexuality highlighted by Ryan and Jetha are not irrelevant to our religious concerns. Many Hare Krishna devotees adopted the conservative sexual ethos of Vaishnava Hinduism as a reaction to the lowering of restrictions on sexuality in the 60s and 70s. But they did not adjust easily and Western devotees have not shown themselves to be more capable of marital fidelity and parental commitment than their non-believing fellow citizens. It would be well to bear this cruel fact at the forefront of any discussion of the subject by religious idealists.

The Radha Krishna myth and the evolution of love

The Radha-Krishna myth is fairly simple, and yet directly appropriate to the concerns expressed here. Krishna is portrayed as the all-attractive male, whose sexual prowess and success is limitless. He is God in the sense that everything a man could want, he has; he is "full in six opulences." He is the Oriental potentate with a harem that encompasses the globe, the leader of a primal horde to whom all females accrue without competition. He is the sole male. In short, he is the masculine ego apotheosized to infinity.

But although the story stops there at the Rasa Lila in the understanding of most devotees, it is in fact only the pūrva-pakṣa for the second act of the drama, which is most clearly expressed in the Gīta-govinda. The pūrva-pakṣa is expressed in the viśveṣām anurañjanena verse (1.11), in which Radha watches Krishna cavort with cowherd women hanging to his every limb, the very incarnation of śṛṅgāra-rasa, and becomes annoyed that she has been treated as just another of his women.

From there, the drama develops until we have Radha's total victory over Krishna and her feminine immortalization as the svādhīna-bhartṛkā. The Gīta-govinda is a myth, but its purpose is to say: "The collapse of the male ego before the divine feminine is the path to happiness."

On the Sahajiya path, we hold that monogamy, in which the romantic urge is spiritualized through the awareness of conjugal unity as a practice leading to and promoting the highest realms of prema, is the way forward for evolution. Not even the svakīyā or dharmic marriage, which indeed is fertile ground for civilization's discontents. As such we do not feel that marital fidelity is a value that usurps the natural desire to seek a spiritual partner with whom the culture of spiritual love (prema) is given primacy.

In Europe, the romantic notion, as I will discuss in a future article, had its origins in the medieval period. As with most of the other romantic ideals, including that of Radha Krishna, the story is a sad one, as if such an ideal was automatically associated with ultimate sacrifice, disappointment and impossibility. Though on the one hand, the man was edified by the love of a woman and became a better man, introducing an idea which is the optimistic essence of romance, whereby it is love and the feminine that are civilizing forces, not masculine strength, logic or technological superiority, on the other hand it contrasted the ultimate limitations of human love with the perfection of divine love of God.

But such love will be valued inasmuch as it reaches a profound and total unity that transcends its human limitations, where it is not only a spiritual experience in itself, but a doorway to innate understanding of the Absolute. In this, the profound difference between mere sexuality and romantic love (for want of a better word) is highlighted.

Sex at Dawn, like Huxley's dystopia, is a profoundly anti-romantic treatise, as are most atheisms. This is because there is no knowledge of the soul, and physical, mental and intellectual satisfactions alone are the rule of the day. Religion or spirituality is seen as being of purely subjective value, not in itself incorrect, but incorrect only due to its marginalization of the subjective and the role of the idea.

The way forward

When we look at the way forward, we must be careful to examine what is of value and what not. It is not that the romantic ideal has been attempted and found wanting, it is that it has not been properly understood or fully attempted. Civilization's discontents have been noted, but civilization's real meaning has not been plumbed.

The fact is that we, not even men, do not pine for numerous sexual partners: we pine for the One soul-mate. If we do not find a human soul-mate, we look for it in either God or a pet dog.

Ryan and Jetha have no discussion of love and its perfection. It talks of an attitude, patriarchy, associated with social forms that developed with the agricultural society. But the underlying craving for spiritual intimacy with a "soul mate" appears to be too religious, too mythical and impractical a psychological attitude. But we ask the question whether bonobos or primitive hunter-gatherer jungle tribes are to be the model on which the future of human behavior is to be constructed.

On page 236 of their book, the authors publish a revealing chart that says bonobos and chimpanzees, which both have frequent sexual encounters through the day with various partners, have average copulation times lasting 15 and 7 seconds respectively. The human average, according to this chart, is between 4-7 minutes. In other words, the average human sexual encounter lasts only that long before being obstructed by the male orgasm.

This is not "expertise" in action. Nor is it a sign of fulfilled sexuality. But most of all, it is a sign of a failure of love. Is it any wonder that most people are bored or frustrated with their love lives? So they take to unnecessary and artificial chemical means like Viagra to compensate -- hardly a satisfactory solution, and certainly not a natural one.

Anyone who has experienced meditative and ecstatic devotional lovemaking that lasts for hours is unlikely to have any questions about the costs and benefits of seminal retention. But stated in ways that a spiritual practitioner will understand, let it be said that 4-7 minutes of lovemaking is approximately equivalent to 4-7 minutes of meditation or kirtana, a pretty pitiful attainment for an activity that is supposed to provide so much meaning and causes so much anxiety.

Our fundamental philosophical, psychological or behavioral problem is to recognize the difference between sexuality and love kāma and prema, even though they may externally take a similar form. premaiva gopa-rāmāṇāṁ kāma ity agamat prathām.

Pramāṇa: Reading between the lines

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 08:47:00 +0000

A big question that is frequently asked of me is about where I get the authority to say things, i.e., about my sources of knowledge, or pramāṇa. This is what we call epistemology: How do we know what we know?

Many devotees are appropriately very attached to the words of śāstra and their gurus. I have myself spent most of my life in a study of the Sanskrit and Bengali texts related to our school of thought out of a great respect for our acharyas, a respect that was instilled in me by Srila Prabhupada himself. As a result, I have long contemplated the value and meaning of these texts, along with my spiritual practices, and come to certain conclusions.

In the article linked to above, I simply wrote that I had no pramāṇas for my spiritual path, but this of course is not entirely true. I still need to know that what "I know" is real knowledge. So I do have a position on pramāṇas, which is as follows:

Pramāṇa is used in argumentation to verify one's position, to establish it, and then to convince others of it. So agreeing on pramāṇas is an important step in any debate, but in fact it is quite well known that there are many people, particularly those of an authoritarian bent, who have a remarkable ability to juxtapose contradictory beliefs uncritically; in other words, they are not really swayed by evidence in a rational way. Epistemology is not a particularly burning concern for them. To some extent we are all a mixture of rational and irrational tendencies, so a pure concern for truth ultimately falls down for what is convenient or pleasant. So an awareness of this tendency is necessary in any discussion of epistemology. In other words, we do not always want to know the truth.

In Indian philosophy, though the Naiyāyikas accept ten kinds of pramāṇa, others schools less, the Bhagavatam accepts four pramāṇas: pratyakṣa, anumāna, aitihya and śabda. This last is also called āgama and āpta-vākya. Vaishnavas most often accept three, dropping aitihya, i.e., tradition or history, which is subsumed into the other categories, particularly revealed authority. This is all in Tattva-sandarbha and various other places, and common knowledge to most devotees. But the Yoga-sūtra quite correctly places pramāṇa ("correct knowledge") in the realm of vṛttis (1.7) or mental modifications, meaning that they are external to real spiritual experience.

In practical terms, we generally tend not to accept pramāṇas that do not jibe with our personal experience, until as such time as we are ready to do so. In the matter of practical physical reality, we tend to be more open to being convinced by authority and reasoning when our physical senses, etc., fail us (the "four defects"). This is because verification in this area is becoming more and more simple.

In spiritual life things are not always so simple, however. In the Vaishnava tradition, as in most other religions, there is a strong belief in revelation, scripture and the authority of the "realized soul" or guru, whose importance is also stressed in the scripture. But we are also told that sadhu, shastra and guru should have a harmonious understanding, a kind of difficult trifecta that gets harder and harder to realize as our situation becomes more and more individualized, in other words as we become spiritually more advance and individuated.

Those of an authoritarian bent in the Krishna consciousness movement tend to accept the unicity of these sources as a point of faith, even though in practical terms there are so many internal contradictions. For them the hermeneutical challenge becomes one of establishing consistency, something that may become quite a task. But certainly we must be able to distinguish between those things that are easily verifiable on the basis of direct perception and logical argument. The domain of revealed authority is, of necessity, an increasingly restricted circle.

Furthermore, the shastra and individual gurus have pointed out here and there that the scriptures themselves are nothing but the words of realized souls. What else is revelation? Revelation has to be revealed to someone through whom it comes into the world.

Of course, it is incumbent on us, as preachers (as it were) trying to convince others of the validity of our beliefs and practices, to make use of pratyakṣa and anumāna. No charismatic authority can establish any meaningful new direction without doing so. The playing field has changed since the 16th century (what to speak of earlier times). It is not adequate to call it "Kaliyuga" and condemn everything that today's enhanced or evolved pratyakṣa and anumāna have revealed to humanity. You cannot expect the more intelligent people to accept any external or ancient authority when it contradicts easily available evidence and common accepted wisdom.

This does not mean that our spiritual path is lost. Rather it means that we need to think about it in ways that make it sensible to ourselves and to other intelligent seekers. That is our task. I have said that the failures of the IGM are failures of prema, but they are also failures of the intellect. We need to learn the path of positive argumentation also. We cannot argue from the negative ("The modern consumerist ethic is a dead end") or even from a quasi-mystical experience ("I feel bliss when chanting Hare Krishna") to a positive: "The Bhāgavatam is literally true in its every word." Even the Bhāgavatam warns that the rishis and Krishna himself sometimes prefer indirect or misleading speech (parokṣa-vāda), and there are even plenty of texts in the great scripture that have apparent monistic conclusions that need to be interpreted in the light of guiding revelations.

Our capacity to argue from anumāna and even śabda (selectively quoting supporting passages, etc.) comes from our very own personal ṛṣi-pratyakṣa or vidvad-anubhava, i.e., the enhanced experience of spiritual truth that comes from our own practice, i.e, which is revealed to us by divine grace. And this process of selective quoting and logical argument (such as using Nyāya syllogisms and principle like sat-kārya-vāda) is exactly what Jiva Goswami is doing in his hermeneutic of the Bhāgavatam. At any rate, the word vidvad-anubhava appears numerous times in the Sandarbhas, with Sri Jiva calling it the "crest jewel of all evidence" (sarva-pramāṇa-caya-cūḍāmaṇi-bhūtaḥ, KṛṣṇaS 115) and "the king of kings of all evidence" (pramāṇa-cakravarti in Sarva-saṁvādinī to BhagS 1), etc.

Divine grace does not take the same form with everyone. This is important to understand. But if we have an idiosyncratic mystical understanding (it must be idiosyncratic!, i.e., individual) we may make attempts to universalize it by using the three kinds of pramāṇa to convince others. But we must be careful here: Are we attempting to legitimize our own -- doubtful -- stance in order to confirm our ego attachment to a particular belief system, or are we genuinely sharing something beneficial with those who are in need and towards whom we feel compassion?

In this matter we only have history to adjudicate. If we can convince others of the utility and effectiveness of our realizations, then our ideas (or "memes") will survive. If we can't, they will end up in the dustbin of history, a loser in the free market of ideas.

The Role of Charismatic Leadership

Max Weber, the famous German sociologist whose influence in the study of religion is widespread, wrote that religious authority is of three kinds: charismatic, traditional and rational-legalistic. Generally speaking, there will be a mix of these three in any religion, even though foundations and major changes most often come from a charismatic leader or saint, like Srila Prabhupada, who is seen as a direct source of revelation. But Srila Prabhupada also pointed to tradition (paramparā) and, less so, to his legal or bureaucratic qualifications, since he had not been named by the Gaudiya Math as the acharya or received any official status from them except for sannyas. As a matter of fact, the looseness of the legal status and sometimes the break with or critique of traditions -- such as Prabhupada of the Gaudiya Math -- often enhances the charismatic qualifications of a religious leader, and in this case it was true.

Most people in today's world are not willing to accept authoritative statements about the transcendent reality, and for good reason. There are too many conflicting statements, the authorities tend to act in ways that demean their authoritative status, but most of all, the authorities themselves tend to overstep the limits of their authority. This makes it difficult for many rational people to suspect charismatic leadership.

But the kind of charisma we are talking about here is not simply a big smile and a loving demeanor, though all that may be helpful. The capacity to offer a consistent, meaningful and rationally convincing explanation of the world and its spiritual purpose is an integral part of charismatic leadership. But charisma is primarily an aesthetic and emotional phenomenon, hence very relevant to our understanding of bhakti.

Another thing is that charismatic authority tends to declare independence from shastra and tradition, primarily because of the time and circumstance. Generally, the charismatic leader will say he is coming to give the same truth in some new form appropriate to time and place, like Krishna at the beginning of Gītā, chapter 4. Such a declaration, which must be made with appropriate logical argument and justifiable criticism of the break between the ideal and the real, can only be made by someone who is willing to dare renounce the established dharmas, as stated in Gītā 2.52-53 and 18.66.

In an important verse, the Mahābhārata says to follow the great souls, mahājano yena gataḥ sa panthāḥ, after one has become confused about the contradictory nature of the arguments of philosophers and the scriptures. In other words, following the charismatic authority, i.e., the carrier of new revelations or reformed understandings, stands above scriptures and purely logical argument as a sure way of progressing.

But the words of the charismatic figures are also notoriously full of contradiction. In the case of Srila Prabhupada, though his fundamental message was unequivocal, there are many cases of internal contradictions in his writings, in matters both religious and secular are in question. These include the famous "fall" from Vaikuntha (the origins of the jiva, which still stirs up controversy) as well as the relation of Vaishnavism to Hinduism, women, and even evolution. Followers then have to come and clean up the mess, so to speak, through the use of hermeneutics based in their own experience and rational understanding.

The authoritarian mindset wants simple, ready-made, black-and-white truth. Truth however is primarily situational, especially spiritual truth, which makes things a little more difficult. Moreover, Gītā 4.11 and BhP 3.9.11 are both major pillars of the Vaishnava (and Hindu) understanding. All these verses, as well as Gītā 7.21, recognize the form that God takes for His devotee an almost entirely subjective matter and that God even assists a person with impure or incomplete understanding follow a particular concept of God and religion that suits their qualifications.

The Nārada-pañcarātra also says:

maṇir yathā vibhāgena nīla-pītādibhir yutaḥ |

rūpa-bhedam avāpnoti dhyāna-bhedāt tathā vibhuḥ ||

Just as a crystal when in contact with different colors takes on a different appearance, so too, the Supreme Lord appears differently according to the particular method of meditation. (Cf. BhagS 39)

Again, the Gītā (2.39-53, 10.10-11, etc.), stresses the goal of directly and individually accessing the divine intelligence (buddhi-yoga), meaning that ultimately we have to understand that there is no other authority but ourselves and the God who sits in our hearts, i.e., our conscience. In other words, the authority of tradition, scripture, logic or the charismatic teacher has the greatest role in the beginning stages of spiritual life, particularly in determining the general direction one will take on his or her path (such as Gītā 4.34), but in the later stages, we will have to trust our own personal revelation.What is the meaning of God-realization itself if we do not have a personal revelation?

Practically speaking, this process starts to take place for most people when their gurus, their spiritual community and scriptural authorities disagree with their own direct experience and rational or moral understanding, even if they first try to avoid confronting such conflicts. We may be able to juggle the distortions up to a point, but in some cases, such as the Bhāgavatam's cosmology or the wild stories of Ugrasena's bodyguards, and creation myths, etc., most reasonable people come to the conclusion that the Bhāgavatam must be read figuratively or mythologically in order to be able to extract any significant meaning. The literal meaning is inadequate as an explanation.

Hermeneutics

This is where the discussion of hermeneutics comes in. Our acharyas also talk about abhidhā (direct literal meaning), lakṣaṇā (indicative meaning) and vyañjanā-vṛttis (figurative meaning) in interpretation, even though officially the Gaudiya school follows Jiva Goswami (in Tattva-sandarbha), or Caitanya-caritāmṛta, where Mahaprabhu says that we only accept abhidhā in our scriptural interpretation. But even the acharyas recognize that this rule is untenable when we encounter both internal and external contradictions to direct experience or logical reasoning. Then we have to look beyond the literal to understand the meaning.

This is especially true when we deal with myth and symbol, which usually have multiple layers of meaning that are not extinguished by a purely literal understanding. As a matter of fact, the literal interpretation of myths and symbols is the most immature level of understanding and one who is locked into that gross (sthūla) dimension of interpretation is of necessity held back from subtler levels of realization.

The most important parts of our path are in our myths and symbols, and the history of any religious tradition is in its prioritization of certain myths and symbols over others. In a religious tradition like Hinduism, with its richness of such contents, a screening out, winnowing and weaning out of this mythological content becomes the essence of its evolution.

So we see that the Vaishnavism of the distant past -- even of the Gītā and Bhāgavatam -- and that of the 16th century are significantly different. The stories of Prahlad and Dhruva, though still surviving in the mythical world, become secondary, and of all the myths and symbols, the only ones that really count are Braj, Vrindavan and the Kunja. Again, of these three, the Kunja is the most important.

We accept this hierarchy on the insight and authority of Rupa Goswami. Generally speaking, hermeneutic consistency only comes when we accept certain statements as axiomatic (mahā-vākyas) or as guiding principles, paribhāṣā (aniyame niyama-kāriṇī, Cf. HNV 1.46, Kṛṣṇa-sandarbha 29). Some typical paribhāṣā statements established in the Sandarbhas are BhP 1.3.28 or 1.2.11, but in fact there are many, many more, especially when we move into the area of rasa-śāstra.

In my thinking, the words prema prayojana are such a major guiding principle.

It is somewhat interesting that the simple hermeneutic tool named above is the key to understanding. The literal meaning (abhidhā) is not always acceptable, and the indicative meaning (lakṣanā) is still gross. The example of the indicative meaning is "the cowherd village is on the Ganges." Now of course, no village can be on or in the water, so the meaning of "on" is revised to mean "nearby." But in the case of "her eyes are like a blooming lotus flower" no such secondary meaning is possible, so it must be understood metaphorically (vyañjanā).

Now what the poeticians, and Rupa Goswami after him, understood, is that there is no rasa in direct or secondary meanings, or at least whatever rasa is there is weak in comparison to that which is elucidated when we enter the realm of rasa. But, as Bharata Muni says, rasād ṛte na kaścid arthaḥ pravartate (Nāṭya-śāstra 5): "No substantive meaning is established without rasa."

When we talk about the three kinds of authority taught by Weber, also, we will see that charismatic leadership is based on rasa, even at the expense of logical reasoning or tradition. It is also rasa that distinguishes the vaidhī from the rāgānugā path (BRS 1.2.277). The vaidhī bhakta has a gross understanding of spirituality based on scriptural injunctions and their corollaries, as in the Karma Mīmāṁsā philosophy (codanā-lakṣaṇo’rtho dharmaḥ, Mīmāṁsā-sūtra 1.1.2). In other words śāstra (scriptural injunctions and prohibitions) and yukti (logical argumentation and reasoning) are both external impetuses for devotional actions; though a vaidhī bhakta believes in grace and thereby does not believe in the gross causal relationship between devotional acts and the promised results, he is nevertheless subtly infected by such thoughts. Therefore he is tied to the shastric words, like Arjuna at the beginning of the Gītā, and needs to find the way to go beyond the limitations that are placed by such injunctions.

Similarly, yukti or tarka, logical reasoning is clearly an intellectual (jñāna) admixture to bhakti. Uprooting the jñāna and karma admixtures is a necessary part of our spiritual progress in devotion, as the paribhāṣā verse of Bhaki-rasāmṛta-sindhu 1.1.11 makes perfectly clear.

For the rāgānugā devotee, the impetus is rasa alone. Rupa Goswami's philosophy of rasa (rasa-darśana), it should be noted, gives an indication of how to understand these things, and no one can experience rasa better than one who is well prepared (saṁskāra-yugalojjvalā, BRS 2.1.8), but ultimately bhakti-rasa is totally independent of śāstra and yukti. Therefore, though the vaidha-bhakta is a devotee, he is not entirely free of the effects of karma and jñāna. Though, as Rupa Goswami says, knowledge and renunciation may have some value in the beginnings of bhakti, but they are not actually bhakti themselves (BRS 1.2.248). This is the beginner's big handicap.

In the final analysis, then, one has to learn how to come to pure bhakti, and the only path is rasa. Therefore, for instance, Rupa Goswami highlights the difficulty here in this verse, which is truly worth contemplating:

siddhāntatas tv abhede’pi śrīśa-kṛṣṇa-svarūpayoḥ |
rasenotkṛṣyate kṛṣṇa-rūpam eṣā rasa-sthitiḥ ||

According to scripture and logical reasoning, there is no difference between Krishna and Narayana, i.e., both are God. Nevertheless, when looked at from the point of view of rasa, Krishna is superior, for his form is the ultimate resting place of rasa.

At any rate, hermeneutics is the art of finding guiding principles and significant fundamental insights, marginalizing certain kinds of statements while synthesizing contradictory passages, and then of reading between the lines. In my approach, I will use all the tools at my disposal to establish the conclusions that I have come to after more than forty years of research, study, and practice. We will see whether history has any sympathy for them.

Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur, as we have noted before in these pages, was a believer in hermeneutics and is interpreting the revealed knowledge according to time and place. Ultimately, this may be a more important tradition than the words that were written down in some distant time and place. Putting old wine into new bottles may surprise many an old bottle lover.

It may appear audacious to some that I would claim authority to be a vidvat who has some anubhava, but that is indeed my claim. If I cannot make that claim now that I have crossed over into senior citizenship, with a lifetime's experience of engagement with the texts and practices of this tradition, then what was the point of such an engagement. The Bhagavata says that just as one's hunger become satiated and one is nourished with each mouthful one takes, as one surrenders to the spiritual master and the Lord, one attains direct experience of the Lord (pareśānubhava). The process thus starts from the very beginning, one should hope that a lifetime's commitment will produce more than just trivial insights.

Neither attachment nor aversion is the ideal strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:36:00 +0000

I have received a few private remarks, including the complaint that I seem to be obsessed with sexuality. Do I have no other subject that interests me? Of course, there are plenty of things that interest me, but my principal subject is prema, but because of Rupa Goswami's emphasis on the madhura-rasa, I have expanded my areas of interest to include the sexual, the spiritual and Sahajiyaism, the natural way to prema.

One of the most often heard criticisms or comments is that I think that sex leads to prema. This is of course ridiculous. It is like saying that the reason kirtan is effective is because of the music. If that were the case, every musician would be enlightened, which is certainly not the case. It is music when used in the service of the Holy Name, like clothes and decorations on the Deity, that it becomes effective. In the same way, in a mind that has been properly prepared, sahaja-sādhanā propels one into the realm of prema. But understand, sexuality, however powerful, is only one component in the complex of this sādhanā.

In the five kinds of prema or components that go into the mix of madhura-rasa, only one is physical lovemaking. The other four are the characteristics that predominate in the śanta, dāsya, sakhya, and vātsalya relations. One who does not cultivate those characteristics of love cannot expect that simply engaging in sex one will achieve prema. Then, as the self-satisfied critics smirkingly say, "even the bonobos would have prema."

But when has the good fortune to have a loving relationship with a devotee, the act of physical lovemaking serves as a most powerful sādhanā. It takes us right to the source of the problem, sex desire, and deals with it directly: it is therefore its solution.

You can look at sexuality either from the standpoint of attachment or aversion, both of which we see plenty. But neither attachment nor aversion is the ideal strategy, as the words of the scripture repeatedly emphasize.

So what is the median position?

According to the goal desired, that median position will be different. But the Sahajiya or general Vaishnava strategy is to understand and employ the sexual energy in the service of prema. Seen thus, one is detached from sexuality as a force to be feared or loved for its own sake. Of course, as a sādhanā it will be loved by the qualified sādhaka because of its effectiveness, in which case it is the appropriate use of rāga: it is called ānukūlyasya saṅkalpaḥ.

Those who reject sexuality as being inimical to spiritual life in general and bhakti in particular do not seem to have assessed it objectively for its usefulness. They simply deny its utility except for procreation, and as fortune would have it, they have plenty of scriptural evidence to support their position. But such scriptural strictures are meant to warn against the main problem that arises from the powerful force of sexual desire, which is excessive attachment (rāga) on a purely physical or mundane level, which is essentially rājasika or tāmasika, perhaps sāttvika, and therefore leads to both internal and external disruptions.

But its opposite number, dveṣa, is simply the reverse of rāga and so it too is rājasika or tāmasika, at best sāttvika, and therefore can neither be the solution to the problem of sexuality, nor answer the question, how is it to be used?

Attachment and hatred or fear are both inimical to the proper assessment of sexuality, or indeed any other universal factor that may or may not be beneficial to devotional service. Generally speaking, devotees (like nivṛtti-mārgīs in general) are more likely to think that something is bhakti or service if it has elements of austerity or renunciation. It is the principal of no pain, no gain. If you suffer, it must be good.

This rather strange guiding principle does not account for pleasure as a psychologically significant motivator. There are no sticks without carrots. For, without a carrot, a stick will have only the most limited effecctiveness. You can get the donkey out of the carrot patch with a stick, but the donkey will only try to find another, better carrot patch.

The positive force that we envision is love, but not the love that is merely the opposite of hate. Prema is not on the level of the body, but on that of the soul. Those who cannot see the usefulness of sexuality as a means to prema-bhakti generally have an abhorrence of the act itself. They deny that it has other functions beside procreation. Indeed, the very fact that human sexuality goes far, far beyond procreation in its functions is one of the things that differentiates human beings from most other creatures. Any philosophy or religious practice that has an unrealistic understanding of the social and psychological functions of sexuality, in their subtle as well as gross manifestations, cannot help solve the problems that arise from it.

Where sexuality is concerned, of the two, attachment and revulsion, the former is a stronger and more powerful motivator than the latter. But for most of those who are revolted by sexuality, this is primarily an intellectual position, not a visceral one. Nearly all transcendentalists are ambivalent about sexuality, in other words, fearful of its power and control over their will, and so try to counteract its influence by cultivating revulsion (bībhatsa-rasa) in the same spirit as some Buddhist sects by thinking of the horrors of the material body, and so on, disdaining the pleasure of sexuality and human love as illusory, ignorance and destructive of true spirituality.

Most people see a detached view of sexuality as an impossibility. One must cultivate disgust because that is the only remedy for this overwhelming attachment to the pleasure of sexual enjoyment and the material bondage to the world that follows.

But we take a position that glorifies love beyond liberation. We see the Yugala-sādhaka's experience of śṛṅgāra-rasa in the company of a loving devotee of Radha and Krishna, drenched in the chanting of the Holy Name, Yugala-nāma as the singlemost effective agent in attaining madhura-prema.

The ecstasies of lovemaking experienced in the depths of a Yugala-sādhanā are the unfailing barometer of one's advancement. These ecstasies spread to every other activity, especially Harināma-saṅkīrtana.

Probing the pramans with Prem Prayojan Prabhu

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 15:02:00 +0000

Probing the pramans with Prem Prayojan Prabhu,
one of the brightest lights on the Gaudiya Vaishnava horizon.

A short time ago, I met Prema Prayojan Prabhuji in the MVT restaurant. We have met several times before, and he even honored me with an invitation to address his congregation at Ananda Dham in Vrindavan last year.

The ostensible purpose for the meeting was to discuss certain aspects of shastra. Prema Prayojan has been following a train of thought about manjari-bhava and was asking some questions about the Mañjarī-svarūpa-nirūpaṇa of Kunja Bihari Dasji, which I translated way back in 1983 and copies of which are still floating about despite the fact that it has never been officially published. Prema Prayojan thinks that Kunja Bihari Dasji, probably based on Haridas Das's translation of the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, promoted the widespread (he believes) erroneous interpretation of bhāvollāsā rati as being equivalent to mañjarī-bhāva as well as an independent sthāyi bhāva distinct from the five major rasas that are described in the BRS.

Prema Prayojan was the one who pointed out to me a mistake I made in the translation of the bhāvollāsā rati verse, and a most embarrassing one it was indeed. Anyway, one makes mistakes... and this one is nearly thirty years old.

I suspected that Prema Prayojan had other motives for the meeting and so I was admittedly a little wary. Though I did not become a self-designated "Sahajiya" specifically to invite discord, the choice of title was something of an intentional challenge to received wisdom in the Gaudiya Math line, so for better or worse I have drawn a fairly big target on my forehead as the "anti-party." Thus I was a little curious about how the subject would come up, and somewhat on the defensive.

Prem Prayojan is a good scholar and, moreover, most enthusiastically presenting Srila Bhaktivedanta Narayan Maharaj's message of rasika-bhakti and service to Srimati Radharani. I have heard him speak a few times and I know his memory to be prodigious and his breadth of knowledge of the Six Goswamis' texts and Gaudiya Vaishnava siddhānta to be vast.

In his personal life, also, Prema Prayojan is an interesting phenomenon on the current world of international Gaudiya Vaishnavism. A few years ago, he took sannyas and was a prominent figure in Srila Bhaktivedanta Narayan Maharaj's sangha, even being spoken of as a potential successor, though still quite young. His knowledge of Sanskrit and Hindi made him the principal translator of his guru's books and his exposition of Gaudiya rasika-kathā made him one of the favored speakers in the sangha, if not a star in his own right.

In 2005, however, when Bhaktivedanta Tirtha Maharaj was accused of sexual abuse for the first time, it was followed by the familiar regime of denial and promises of reform. At least one of Narayan Maharaj's sannyasis left the sangha at that time either as a protest or an expression of disappointment in the adoption of such failed methods of dealing with such serious and legitimate accusations.

Although this was not Aranya Maharaj's specific reason for abandoning sannyas to get married, many indulged in the customary bit of Schadenfreude at the "fall down" of the high-and-mighty, and some outside the sangha took it as salutary testimony to the injudiciousness of speaking of madhura-rasa "to the unqualified." From what I gather, there were many other reasons for his decision to do so, including circumstantial fears surrounding sangha politics and a general discomfort with the sannyas culture in the Gaudiya Math. It is this latter standpoint that is of interest to us.

Prema Prayojan's decision to become a householder has had its repercussions, of course. The fact that he decided to continue on in his preaching activity, sticking to the formula he followed as a Gaudiya Math sannyasi, has been something of a bold step. For many in the Gaudiya Math, only a sannyasi is qualified to become a guru or a preacher. Householders are meant to earn money and support the math. In an attempt to change this culture in the math, Prema Prayojan has apparently been planning to consecrate mūrtis of Bhaktivinoda Thakur along with Bhagavati Devi, the mother of both Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur and Srila Lalita Prasad Thakur.

Bhaktivinoda Thakur surrounded by his family, ca. 1895.

I personally consider his intent to rehabilitate the grihastha ashram and to reestablish the legitimacy of householders becoming religious professionals to be noble and appropriate. Though there are a handful of senior ISKCON householder devotees who also are active preachers and initiating gurus, they are comparatively limited in numbers, power and prestige. And, of course, women are for all intents and purposes non-existent in the role of guru. Despite the well-known siddhantas and history to the contrary, most factions of worldwide Gaudiya Vaishnavism these days promote a uniquely celibate leadership.

I have been in favor of householder guruship for some time, based on the institutional models that would have prevailed in the sampradaya for the two or three centuries immediately following Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. At the same time, I wonder whether Prema Prayojan is on the right track in using Bhaktivinoda Thakur's orthodox example, or whether establishing that ideal will do anything to change existing Gaudiya Math culture and the prejudices that it supports.

Although remembering the stalwart example of Bhaktivinoda Thakur may warm congregational devotees to householders as guru, it should be remembered that Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati deliberately worked to establish the Daiva Varnashram system by reorienting it around a new form of Vaishnava sannyas. The shastra, Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Saraswati Thakur himself may well proclaim that householders who are "knowledgeable about Krishna tattva" are equally qualified to lead and initiate, but in practical fact, there is little or no action in this area in any Gaudiya Math. Indeed, it is fairly certain that Saraswati Thakur wished to replace the prevailing model of household gurus in Gaudiya Vaishnavism with the leadership of celibate monks. The fact that his revered father was a householder did not trouble him, though it is clear that he was troubled by the standards of other householder gurus in the Vaishnavism of his time.

Except for the possibility that householders may be rehabilitated for such service, Bhaktivinoda Thakur's model cannot really bring about a radical change in Gaudiya Math "Daiva Varnashram" ethos. Householder life in the classical varnashram model taught by Siddhanta Saraswati, is based on the same "better-to-marry-than-to-burn" and "sex-is-bad-celibacy-good" concept. Wherever such ideas hold sway, the same kinds of misogyny, double standards, and hypocrisy tend to follow. In this day and age, such ideas are progessively being marginalized.

Bhaktivinoda Thakur fulfilled his social role in an exemplary manner, even while leading an equally exemplary devotional life of Nam bhajan, scholarship and pracāra. This is dharma in its ideal form, no doubt, and its promotion cannot be anything but positive in this age of selfishness, debauchery and materialism, but at the same time it must be remembered that the Vaishnava dharma of rāgānugā bhakti is essentially antinomian. It requires sarva-dharmān parityājya, like the gopis', whose example is held high above all others.

We are ready to accept the argument that renouncing dharma is meaningless without qualification and character formed through a solid social structure and a basic individual discipline in dharma, but in our view, renouncing lower dharmas for the higher is the very way to transcendence, and Mahaprabhu's path of devotion was not so much concerned with dharmas, except to suggest minimally that everyone should lead an honest life. In the path of bhakti, devotion trumps duty.

Besides which, this basic kind of religiosity is being preached by various organizations - why should it preoccupy those who are preaching prema-dharma? And if devotee marriages are failing, is the injunction to be a good dutiful grihastha on the model of Bhaktivinoda Thakur really going to do the trick?

The tactic of using Bhaktivinoda Thakur as the exemplary householder, whatever good there is in it internally for the Gaudiya Math, is unlikely to be appreciated by the majority of those in the Western world who, for better or worse, hold to romantic notions of sexual love. But the romantic notion holds sway in the writings of the Six Goswamis, as well.

In Bhaktivinoda Thakur, we are still talking about the classical svakīya relation, as applied in the Indian marriage model, where marriage is strictly a social and dharmic rather than individual function. There are all kinds of conjugal partnerships and I think that we can accept the legitimacy of most of them, but Rupa Goswami glorified pārakīya for good reason.

We may well decry the sinfulness of the "love marriage," when the arranged marriage is one of the few Indian social conventions that still hasn't been brought down by the onslaught of globalization, but Rupa Goswami – or at least Jiva Goswami – actively argued in its favor. We cannot mask this promotion of the pārakīya ideal by relegating it exclusively to the Disneyworld of Braj and obscure theories of rasa.

We may argue all we like that Western romanticism leads inexorably to the collapse of all sexual morality, but whenever we argue against it in favor of dharma, we are inevitably led to take a position contrary to Rupa Goswami.

Indeed, the romantic or pārakīya concept does inevitably lead to untidiness in the realm of sexual love and appears to undermine dharma and the marriage institution itself, but in the search for Sacred Love, this is not held as a negative thing. We take it on faith that Love is above Dharma, in other words, Love is the highest dharma. Love that is subservient to other dharmas is ultimately weakened and compromised. And so, in the hierarchy of love, Rupa Goswami placed romantic sexual love at the top.

In other words, in terms of internal sādhanā, as well as social organization, we have to find a way to accommodate and sacralize the drive to find love in human relations, and to make that the basis of both. I think that the Bhagavati/Bhaktivinoda Thakur yugala will fall short in this respect.

Another problem I, as an adherent to the Sahajiya way of thinking, have with the use of Bhaktivinoda Thakur as a model for the ideal couple is that it favors the patriarchal social models, which I consider to be inimical to the exalted position of Radha, the Divine Feminine. In Hinduism, the male plays the role of guru, his wife that of subordinate and disciple. Though this division of sexual roles may be considered natural, and there is plenty of glorification of women and worship of the feminine in Hinduism, it is fundamentally a patriarchal society dominated by men. And women's version of dharma, strī-dharma, is one of the most stringent.

We may consider the worship of Radha to be a corrective – despite the immense possibility for critique of that narrative coming from the feminist perspective. But we do not consider the story of the Gīta-govinda and so on to be a parable for sexual power relations, as such, but as a parable for Love. And since we consider Love to be the highest of the arts, sciences, or religions, we tend to look at such power struggles in a different way.

At any rate, Love does not like inequality. Intimate love, sexual love, least of all. Inequality is the essence of aiśvarya. So any idealized model of sexual relationships must be careful not to promote this kind of inequality between the sexes.

I am promoting the Sahajiya concept of a yugala or dual guru tattva for Yugala sadhana, as well as the concept of mutual guruship within the relationship. I feel that there will be little progress in the matter of Sacred Love until we can reach the stage of ego (especially masculine ego) abatement, so that the flow of mercy and prema can really pick up momentum.

***
I decided to address Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Bhagavati Devi as the ideal, mainly because I think it illustrates a significant contrast in approaches to issues of sexuality as imagined by Prema Prayojan and by myself. In what I expect was the real purpose of the conversation, towards the end of our time together, Prema Prayojan finally did ask me about scriptural "proofs" (pramāṇa) for my proposals about the role of sexuality on the bhakti path.

Of course, knowing Prema Prayojan's deftness with argument, I chose to simply admit that I had none. After all, there is no discussion or approval of or specifics to any esoteric sexo-yogic practices anywhere in the Goswami writings. So why argue where there is no argument? If anything, the anti-yoga stance would preclude any tantric posturing in the sampradaya. There is no reliable evidence that the Goswamis engaged in any such practices and I make no such claims.

Prema Prayojan looked quite astonished that I took this stance. He asked again and I said that one needs to read between the lines of Rupa Goswami's work and one would eventually be led to the same conclusions that I see with what looks like sva-prakāśa clarity.

This was met with further disbelief by Prema Prayojan, and I can well understand that. The Gaudiya Vaishnava sampradaya has an elaborate scriptural tradition based in the Bhāgavatam and the Vedānta, neither of which favor Tantric or Sahajiya approaches to sexuality. By "reading between the lines," I mean of course, that there is a subtle transformation of perception with regards to Radha and Krishna, whereby one comes to recognize the relation and relevance of their Divine and archetypal eros (navīna-madana) to the eros of worldly experience.

Some articles containing a few of the scriptural arguments that favor this understanding might be found here: The Path of Prema, Sex and Bhakti-yoga, Part I, Sex and Bhakti-yoga, Part II.

The Bhägavatam says that the very things that are causes of bondage (the senses) can be transformed through bhakti to become the causes of liberation, to which we add "prema". Krishna in the Gita makes a point of saying that He is Himself desire or (as usually interpreted) sexual desire (käma) when it is not contrary to the principle of religion (dharmäviruddha). The principle of religion is prema; the ultimate principle of religion is the abandoning all other dharmas for the sake of the highest prema, devotion to Radha and Krishna.

Further pramāṇas lie in the understanding of mādhurya as opposed to aiśvarya. The ultimate avatar of mādhurya is here, in the body, when we see the presence of Radha and Krishna in our own romantic life. How this can be done is fairly straightforward, and no text is more helpful in this endeavor than Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi. But who will see these things other than the one who is favorably disposed to understanding in this way? Certainly not one who has been inundated throughout their devotional career with propaganda of both a philosophical, personal and political nature.

Whether he believed in it or not, Rupa Goswami could not have spoken of sexual sādhana or Yugala Bhajan directly, mainly because of the limitations of his audience. Rupa Goswami was a Sanskritizer of vernacular traditions, as I have shown to some extent in my articles on the dāna-līlā. So he kept his discussions within the framework of socially approved discourse in poetics and literature.

If you say Rupa Goswami did not practice Sahaja bhajan, I will say we may never know, but we will still know what his focus was: divine romantic love.

If you say that you will not accept my "in-between-the-lines" version, and that Rupa Goswami was a literalist who did not accept any other understanding of bhakti than the literalist version we know, I will argue that I do not think so, or from the Unconscious, that Saraswati guided his pen to make Sahajiyaism the most natural interpretation of the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi.

Or I might say that like the Puranic Shankara who incarnated to mislead the Mayavadis, Rupa deceived the moralists and the Mayavadis and steered them away from madhura-rasa bhajana.

Or I might say that Rupa Goswami had to leave the essence of his revelation to be fully exposed at a later date, the pramāṇas yet to be forthcoming.

For the pramāṇas are the result of the direct experience of the realized souls, the siddhas. It is here that the ultimate pramāṇa is to be found. If this doctrine bears fruit and stands the test of effectiveness in producing the experience and culture of prema – even for one person (perhaps I should say two) – then no amount of scriptural texts will be able to stand against it.

The Yugala Bhajan formula

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:28:00 +0000

Here is the formula for Sahaja Bhajan.

upāsya-rūpaṁ yugalātmakaṁ vai

upāsakatvaṁ yugala-svarūpe |

upāsanā śrī-yugalābhidheyaṁ

tathopadeṣṭṛ-yugalaena prāptam ||

The worshipable object is the Divine Couple.

The ideal worshiper of the Divine Couple is the sadhaka couple.

The worship of the Divine Couple is based in the chanting of their Names.

The Guru Tattva for this worship also takes the form of a Divine Couple.

This formula condenses most of the points that are made on this blog.

1. The worshipable object is the Divine Couple, Radha and Krishna.

Needless to say, this is repeated again and again here, most recently in the article Do Radha and Krishna really have nothing to do with human love? Radha and Krishna are the worshipable object of all the rasika sampradayas of Vrindavan, but little thought is given to the implications of the distinction that is made between the Dual form of God as represented by the Divine Couple and any other form of God in either male or female form.

Sahaja bhajan takes the position that the dual form of the Godhead as the worshipable object has inherent significance.

We do not worship Krishna as God, as such. We do not worship Radha as an appendage to Krishna, as his "shakti." We worship them as two "Moieties" as Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati liked to call them. One does not exist without the other. Radha is Krishna's guru and God, just as Krishna is her God and guru.

Godhood is not identified with the male or female genders. God is beyond gender. We must try to understand what is the meaning of a God with form as opposed to God without form. Form in this case means gender; it begins with gender. But a concept of God that identifies Deity prima facie with masculinity is incomplete, erroneous, and conditioned by a patriarchal concept of social hierarchies dominated by the male. It is this vision of Deity that we object to and feel can only be corrected by the cult of the Divine Couple.

2. The ideal worshiper of the Divine Couple is the sadhaka couple.

The implications of God as a Divine Couple can only be realized by a practicing sādhaka couple. It is here that most of the complications and difficulties about this sādhanā are raised. I have dealt with some of these issues and shall return to them again and again, but suffice it to say that the very concept of devotion as defined by "simultaneous oneness and difference" requires that the practitioner not strive for an independent, isolated and subjective spiritual experience (kaivalya), but one that is defined by a genuine intermingling or union with the Other, God, who is present not only in the Divinity manifest in word and symbol, but the Divinity as manifest in the pure soul appearing as the sādhana partner. This is the "internal" guru tattva as it expresses itself in the mutual relationship.

Although a man and woman practicing yugala sādhana may be at differing levels in terms of their spiritual achievement, when the contents of a sincere devotee's unconscious are projected onto another devotee in the phenomenon that we call "falling in love," and this is further purified by dispassionate self-examination and sādhana, etc., then it must be taken as axiomatic that guru-tattva in the matter of prema-sādhana is acting through that person, i.e., being revealed through the sādhana partner by the grace of Srimati Radharani.

It is very rare that any couple has matching and equal sentiment for one another in the beginning. The whole point of the sādhana itself is that one cultivates prema through a combined effort. This can only be achieved if one has faith in and discovers the presence of guru-tattva in the sādhana partner. The mutual guru relationship is the best sādhu-saṅga.

At any rate, if a single person wishes successfully cultivate the religion of prema, there are plenty of paths open to them. Most Vaishnava schools swear to celibacy and prescribe either individual and independent practices and social rituals to that end. We call this the "monadic approach" (kaivalya). We do not begrudge these sādhakas their faith or belief. We simply say that they have missed the point, and the opportunity that comes from the Dual concept of Divinity.

The subtle psychological truth manifest in the concept of mañjarī-bhāva or sakhī-bhāva plays an important role in Yugal bhajan, but by no means indicates that the monadic (kevala) approach is intended.

3. The worship of the Divine Couple is based in the chanting of their Name.

The prurient interest of most of those who inquire into Sahaja Bhajan is based on a curiosity about sexuality. Since we are talking about couples here, we are of course confronting the questions of sexuality head on, but we are making an important point here: that this is not about a purely mundane sexuality.

Over and over again I am told by the brave orthodoxy that kāma or material sexuality, etc., cannot lead to prema or pure spiritual love of God. We do not contest this. To make this point of agreement more clear, we are saying that we worship the Divine Couple through their names, Radhe Shyam.

The Holy Name precedes, accompanies and follows all other sādhanas. Whatever the Sahajiya does in terms of esoteric practices is fulfilled by the association of the Holy Name; the Holy Name accompanies, transforms and sacralizes all other practices, and the ultimate residue of the practice is the enlivening, the spiritual surcharging, the prāṇa-pratiṣṭhā, as it were, of the mantra and the Holy Name.

4. The Guru Tattva for this worship also takes the form of a Divine Couple.

This is perhaps the most radical of the ideas we are working with here. Since the Yugala Tattva contains the division of gender—Krishna and Radha representing the male and female, respectively—their complementarity and their fundamental unity, they cannot be represented by a Guru Tattva that does not take the same form.

There are several possible arguments that can be presented in opposition to this idea.

First of all, it is said that Radha and Krishna, God Himself, are beyond sexual differences. Sometimes it is even said that they are pre-pubescent and that there is no question of sexuality in them.Such an argument from asexuality just avoids the very essence of what Radha and Krishna symbolize and everything that they represent.We take their forms seriously: Radha is a female and Krishna a male and their relationship in madhura-rasa is an erotic one, with everything that it implies, including genital sexuality.

Others say that an individual man may take on the female identity as a gopi in Vrindavan, so where is the question of his maleness? It may also be said that the perfected sādhaka, male or female, finds an internal equilibrium of masculinity and feminity, as stated in yoga and tantra texts or in the Jungian goal of coniunctio oppositorum. We do not in principle oppose this concept, but when it comes to guru-tattva for those couples who wish to practice Yugala sādhana, we say that both genders must be represented.

If the Yugala follows the fundamental principle of mutual guruship (as described above in #2) then the guru-principle that manifests in the sādhaka as well as in the sādhikā must also be manifest in the guiding principle to new sādhaka couples who wish to learn the practice. This principle may have been de facto present in the past, historically, but the emphasis was usually given to the male partner who would have been named or identified as the guru, śikṣā-guru or dīkṣā-guru, his wife or partner playing a secondary or supporting role.

In every couple, there will be an individual dynamic, and of course different forms in which they find their equilibrium and conjunction, but the essence of what we are driving at here is the validation of the female principle as an equal and even primary force to the male. One needs to understand Radha-tattva as an explanation of female power, particular in the domain of love and the pleasure principle, and the role of the hlādinī śakti in the Radha-Krishna relation is no less real in the functioning of every male-female couple.

This then is the natural sequence and framework in which this sacred sādhana must operate. The goal is Yugal, the practitioners are a Yugal, therefore the guiding principle or guru-tattva must also be represented in a dual form.

In this sādhana, a man alone cannot speak for or guide a woman. Neither the male nor female represents objective reality on their own.

Moreover, as objectors regularly point out, this sādhana presents a potential danger -- real or imagined -- that needs to be guarded against. The idea of a practice of the cultivation of prema that has within it a sexual component could be easily exposed to exploitation by unscrupulous or misguided individuals who present themselves as preceptors. A bit of yogic training leading to control of seminal emissions can mislead one into thinking that he is a siddha and capable of bestowing prema on women disciples through the magic of his membrum virilis. And, of course, a similar mirror image could also be true, but this tendency is clearly more pronounced in the masculine gender, which usually appropriates the guru role and is more susceptible to falling down to its temptations.

It is partly to avoid all such confusions that I am taking a stand and saying that the guru-tattva must also be represented by a couple. But since sexuality is an integral part of the Yugala sādhanā, this stipulation is meant to further avoid the potential embarrassment of men directly or privately instructing women in sexual matters and vice versa.

In a siddha couple, the predominant roles played by each, male and female principles, i.e., their respective zones of guruship, will have been clarified through their personal experience of the sādhanā. They will thus, as a yugala, be able to provide initiation, proper guidance and an example to both individuals in a sādhaka partnership.

What this principle is about, clearly, is the apotheosis of the feminine in all aspects of the practice. Radha represents the feminine in the erotic relationship, and as we have said many times, the female is always the guardian of the gates of love. An advanced sādhikā will be intuitively and instinctively wise where the purity of love is concerned. The advanced sādhaka and sādhikā will have ripened mature awareness of the process, but the female principle, like Radha, stands as the ultimate guardian and arbiter of the purity of love.

Sahaja bhajana is yugala bhajana. But the Yugala itself is the apotheosis of the feminine. It is about the synthesis of maleness and femaleness, i.e., the complementary aspects of the couple, through prema. The human couple strives for the same mystic experience of unity in difference that characterizes Radha and Krishna, through identification with and service to that very Divine Couple, through the process of sacralization that is conducted through the Yugala name and the Kāma Gāyatrī mantra, etc., and by the combined grace of the Yugala Guru.

Radhe Radhe.

Do Radha and Krishna really have nothing to do with human love?

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 06:16:00 +0000

An oft repeated error of orthodox Vaishnavas is that the the love of Radha and Krishna has "nothing to do" with the romantic love of human experience, especially not where parakiya-rasa is being considered. I say that it would take only the blindest and most deluded observer to say such a thing. The Gaudiya Math and ISKCON have deliberately obfuscated the connection between Krishna's madhura lila and our human experience to promote the pan-Indian belief in sannyas that arises from the Buddhist and Shankarite schools.

As I often say, the entire corpus of Rupa Goswami's work is meant to demonstrate the superlative position of madhura rasa. But any such hierarchy of rasa must be based in real human experience. Ideals have a relation to reality; they are meaningless without them.

You need to see the madhura lila of Radha and Krishna as an object lesson in how to deal with sexual desire, not how to destroy it. Through worshiping Radha and Krishna we become aware of the possibility of realizing the ideal, which is the spiritual union of lovers in the mood of Vrindavan.

We see the world as what we ourselves are, rather than seeing it as it is. From my vantage point, ISKCON and the Gaudiya Math, indeed Indian spirituality in general, is possessed by a fundamental abhorrence of the sexual. And yet, the Vaishnavas have made the Radha and Krishna, whose union is the result of purely erotic attraction and not dharma, the symbol of the highest love.

This is either, as Freud would have it, repressed sexual desire manifesting itself unconsciously in the spiritual symbolism of the Vaishnava sect, or it is a conscious glorification of madhura rasa, as known in human experience and idealized in art and symbol. The idea that the world of Radha and Krishna has nothing to do with the aspirations of the human being for loving intimacy with another human person is the breeding ground for all the sexual hypocrisy that runs rife in the ISKCON-GM world.

I suggest that we all study Rupa Goswami in the light of conscious revelation rather than false renunciation and asexual idealism.

Though Rupa Goswami has given the basic sadhana in his books with this intent, there is clearly a great deal that is unstated. Thus there are so many misconceptions.

What Rupa Goswami has stressed is rasa. Krishna consciousness makes one capable of tasting rasa, because, ys the Upanishad says, rasa is the locus of the Supreme. This is, no doubt, only one of multiple definitions of the Supreme, but is the one with which most Vaishnava sampradayas prefer to work.

Rasa has two dimensions, one is the basic understanding that comes from the Sanskrit poetic tradition in India, the second is Rupa Goswami's adaptation of it for bhakti. The latter cannot be understood without the former.

In order to understand the relation between Rupa Goswami's adaptation and his contemporary (but constantly evolving) rasika tradition, it is important to understand the concept of bhava or rati. The basic premise of the material rasa shastra is that we possess natural (archetypal) moods that are awakened through hearing (etc.) of literature or other artistic products (i.e., "entertainments"). These are said to be eight in number. These instinctual moods make it possible for us to identify with universals that are mediated through characters in such a play or novel, etc.

In other worlds, we hear about Ram and identify with Ram in his epic struggles with Ravana. Or with Arjuna and the Pandavas, etc. The most powerful of these identifications generally occurs with the erotic mood, whether it is the grossest tamasika levels of pornography or the most transcendent of sattvika love poetry. This points to sexual desire as the most fundamental element of human psychology.

It is my sincere belief is that we need, as Vaishnava doctrine advises, to find a way to adapt this fundamental human problem in sacralized ways so that it enhances our bhakti rather than being seen as a purely animal corruption of the flesh that must be uprooted. That is what Rupa Goswami is really talking about.

The idea of fundamental or instinctive identification is adapted by Rupa. He says that we need to purify our nature and transform our natural inclinations so that they produce a different kind of rasa.

This different kind of rasa is transcendental and devotional. It is connected to Radha and Krishna. Rupa Goswami’s does not deny the “material” rasas, but simply converts them, finding the ideal essence of each of them. There is no meaning to parenthood or sexual relations in the spiritual world, as spirit has no need of physical reproduction.

The process of developing bhava or Krishna-rati (the two words divided here by Rupa, the former a purely bhakti term, the latter coming from the poetic tradition) has both components (i.e., related to the spiritual essence and the so-called material forms). In the earlier stages, we reform the mind by inundating it with the archetypal universe represented by Braj, in which Radha and Krishna and their erotic love takes the central place. In the middle stage we apply this transformed psychology to our own lives, as type related to idea or archetype.

This identification has multiple levels. Although on one level, it appears to be the hated ahangrahopasana, on higher levels it takes the form of Radha-sakhya. Ahangrahopasana should be understood as the capacity to identify with Radha-Krishna lila, without which no rasa can be experienced. This is the abheda aspect of achintya-bhedabheda. The sakhi-bhava or manjari-bhava is the essentially devotional stance that represents the bheda. Ahangrahopasana is clearly condemned philosophically, but not from the point of view of rasa, where it should be seen as essentially the same as sadharanikarana.

This latter understanding is a bit mysterious, but essential to the practice. Without taking on the feminine vantage point, no man can understand love. Therefore simply engaging in sexual acts in the masculine identity is not in itself bhakti. It might carry some secondary spiritual benefits as tantra, etc., but that is not prema.

Devotees often mistake love between devotees as nothing but "mundane attraction." Devotees who fall in love with one another need to make their love an integral part of their devotional practice. Then it is no longer mundane, but becomes the very inspiration for devotion. Love between devotees makes Radha and Krishna real. It makes their lila a living thing, being lived in your own experience. Dig it!

This is the real art of sadhana.

Baulsphere

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 06:02:00 +0000

One of the most exotic and exuberant streams flowing from the spring of Sri Chaitanya and his followers is that of the Bauls, who are broadly classifiable as Sahajiyas and thus treated as a heterodox or apasampradaya sect by the mainstream followers of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

At various times over the past century, the Bauls have sprung into prominence in Bengal and further afield, without ever really penetrating the public consciousness. They remain, as Shashi Bhushan Dasgupta classified them, an "obscure religious cult." This despite the support they received from no less a figure than Rabindranath Tagore, whom Dasgupta even calls "the greatest of the Bauls of Bengal." [Obscure Religious Cults, 187).

In recent times, prominent members of the tradition such as Purna Das, Kisan Das, and Paban Das Baul have attracted some public attention, primarily as folk singers in the world music and fusion genres, rather than as a specific religious school. Some scholarly interest has taken researchers from the West to the Baul centers of Bengal to investigate their beliefs and customs, perhaps precisely because of their heterodoxy and the more sensational of their practices.

So it was with some interest that I read Mimlu Sen's memoir, Baulsphere. This is the story of Ms. Sen's entry into the world of the Bauls, by way of her attraction for their music and her love affair with Paban Das Baul, currently one of the major international performers and exponents of Baul music and culture.

Born into a wealthy upper-caste Bengali family, Ms. Sen had a strong rebellious streak that took her as a teenager from political and social action in the poorer parts of India to France, where she spent many years. Her political activism at the height of the Naxalite period in the early 70's even led to a one-year stint in a Bengali women's prison.

During her time in Paris, she came into contact with the talented and charismatic Paban Das for the first time. When she returned to Kolkata some time later, she soon found herself traveling in the most unlikely company of the Bauls through the villages and countryside of West Bengal. Most unlikely because the world of rural and suburban poverty inhabited by Paban Das and his milieu is totally different from the ones she has known – those of the big cities of India and Europe.

Now there are a lot of Bengali poets and artists in the bhadralok world who sympathize with the freewheeling Baul culture, but there are fundamental barriers that exist between the world of the urbanized and educated elites of Kolkata and the mostly illiterate and poverty-stricken strata of society that is the world of the Bauls. But Sen's sympathies lie with the Baul critique of the world of middle and upper class Bengali values, especially with the comparative freedom that exists, in theory at least, for the women of the sect. At one point she laments the compromises that even the Bauls have made to the traditional patriarchal values of the greater society, while elsewhere exulting in the presence of strong female figures like the woman guru Gaurima.

In particular, she remarks on the problems related to the social divisions in several places, particularly after she and Paban Das go in the early 80s to live in Shantiniketan where Tagore had started his experiment in bringing the bhadralok and Baul communities together:

My first impression of this town was that it had an atmosphere of sterility. Emaciated old people lived here, shuttered in their dilapidated bungalows and wrapped in memories of the transient glory Tagore had given it. Their withdrawal from reality was indicative of a shrinking of the arteries of rasa. Tagore had lauded a lifestyle close to nature and espoused the philosophy of Baul poets and philosophers, but how could he teach sensual life and the concepts of democracy to the caste-conscious, puritanical bhadralok society which had taken over the administration of the university.

Tagore had created the Paus Mela, a multicultural and multidimensional fair, with the idea of creating a bridge between the indigenous popular living arts of the local region and the cultures of the West... Tagore had hoped that these projects would spiral upwards into a fecund and rich communion between city and village. In half a century, that spiral had been straightened out and reduced to a conformist straight line, separating the world of the babu from the world of the Baul. If only Tagore could have foreseen that the destiny of a place like Shantiniketan after his death would finally be determined not by the individuals he had drawn there through his personal magnetism, but by the continued impoverishment of the village and forest world that surrounded it, a hardening of caste attitudes and total obliteration of the sensual and imaginary life of its women. The poets' dreams faded out with his life.

Mimlu notes that the Baul tradition appears to be endangered, though it is debatable whether there has been any real change over the centuries. The poor and lower classes have always been engaged in a struggle for existences, which inevitably leads to the vitiation of values in exchange for survival. All religions have always railed against the sell-outs. But whether it is singing for your supper while doing madhukari door to door or busking in the Katwa local, or adding mundane folksongs to your repertoire to widen your audience, the danger of watering down is always there. But the real crisis is in the changing times and the relevance of Baul philosophy and religion to the world.

Sen's unique position, of course, resulted in her being able to help Paban Das and other Bauls connect with the educated and artistic community of Kolkata, as well as to bring his art to the Western world. In her company (and that of her children) Paban Das, who was completely illiterate, himself starts to learn to read – even though many of his confreres in the tradition protest, as the Vedic brahmins once did, that to learn to read would result in a loss of the power that exists in a uniquely oral transmission. But that is only the beginning of a cross-cultural merge between the two that continues to give equal footing to both continuing participating in the Baul cultural circuit as well as the attempts at penetrating the international market.

But Ms. Sen's incursion into Paban Das's world and her resulting attempt to bridge the two, either by attempting to save the endangered tradition by modernizing it, or by "selling it" to the modern world, seems to be somewhat vitiated by her secular approach to the Baul tradition. From the very beginning, her principal attraction is to the music and the freewheeling antisocial mood of the Bauls, as well as the poetry of their songs. Perhaps it was her leftist sympathies for the downtrodden, which she took to a level of practical application that is certainly rare in the world... But my question is about the specifically religious and practical insights of the Baul religion, which gives the impetus to all its music and poetry. Can the one flourish without the other?

Mimlu is not a historian, but her replicating the oral accounts of Baul history is of some interest, even though they differ considerably from the textual traditions we have received. These are too numerous, but we will refrain from enumerating them as this will distract from what I really want this summary, which is the spiritual aspects of Baul dharma that she mentions.

Though Ms. Sen brings up the matter of sexual sadhana several times in the book, she does not seem to be particularly invested either in it or in Baulism as a religion. She makes a bit of fun at the expense of a Baul guru who impregnates a Swedish disciple, saying "so much for retaining semen"! But in fact Paban has not been initiated in the practice when he meets her and has to send the curious Westerners who approach him elsewhere.

At the time of her initiation she says that she does not believe in God, and Hari Goshain pacifies her by saying,

jā dekhibo nā nija nayane
tā biśvāsa koribo nā gurura bacane

"If I cannot see it with my own eyes,
I will not believe it, even on the guru's word."

In a way Hari Goshain's teachings are modern: He interprets the Gita and Mahabharata allegorically. He makes an interesting division between anumāna panthis, those who only conjecture about what is divine, and the vartamāna panthis "who created divine life themselves."

Hari Goshain whispered the mantra into her right ear and Ma Goshain into her left, and in the opposite ears of Paban Das.

One thing that is obvious to me from reading this is that Bauls can be considered a branch of Sahajiyaism. The external forms have taken a bit of different direction, as the Sahajiyas tend to engage in lila and nama kirtan, whereas the Bauls have their own style of songs, and there may be other philosophical differences also – Mimlu Sen mentions a controversy with the "Chintamani" sect, which "who indulge in sexual promiscuity," [associated indiscriminately with the orthodox Vaishnava Goshains of Nadia] but initiation is in the Vaishnava Kama Gayatri mantra. Mimlu calls it the beej mantra, and even describes it as "indispensible in the practice of hatha yoga" [!]) with the power to transform the senses. But at the time of the initiation ceremony, which she describes in some detail, the initiating guru Hari Goshai gives a detailed breakdown of this mantra.

Mimlu Sen renders the Kama Gayatri in a butchered form (kling sling kama devaya bidaha pusha binaya dhimohi tanna tanga prachodayang), but for the purpose of our readers, we have reconstituted it in its proper form.

klīṁ = ka, la, ṅg, candra, bindu. [The third part of the mantra should be ī, as in the usual breakdown of the bīja]

ka = Krishna.

la = Radha

ī = āhlādinī [she who desires to be caressed]

candra = the divine beauty of lovers

bindu = Vrindavan, the garden of love.

In the Baul Kama Gayatri, there are five characters and five forms. (?)

kā = from this sound is born the seed of knowledge

ma = Know for certain that Madana is the origin of ma.

de = (do) He who sings do in dohās, tames Krishna, surrendering his body [I suspect that deha was intended, drinks rasa.

vā = (written rā, probably bā for bāhu, arm) lift up your arms, embrace at the sound of [ra] kiss the intangible couple again and again.

ya = [written aw as the antaḥstha ya] Rādhikā's soul opens up at this sound. Radha knows what Krishna desires.

vi = at this sound awakens the sensuous incantative body, which none can apprehend except through the eyes of Sri Rupa.

dma = at this sound take pride and drink the rasa; he who is always steeped in rasa attains knowledge

he = at this sound, the golden love of Radha awakens; Krishna savors it, nurturing this love

pu = at this sound, he whose body flowers in the luxury of union, as with an arrogant prostitute, is a great man.

ṣpa = at this sound, the heart of Radhika, full of flowers, blooms the blossom with the flavor of Krishna.

bā = at this sound, the bhava Krishna, whose love is unchanging, judges the space of good and evil

ṇā = at this sound, the actor becomes the rasa Krishna, nurturing and tasting the goddess Radha

ya = a strange sound, the essence of the knowledge of the material world; tasting the feminine, Krishna becomes marvelous.

dhī = at this sound, slowly and steadily the two fluids rise to two orifices and are tasted in the body

ma = at this sound, the great element is interiorised within the body at the moment of sexual union.

hi = at this sound, the cinnamon colored ancient rasa will rise and the actress [nāyikā] will mercifully reveal her secret to the actor [nāyaka]

ta = at this sound, the actress becomes conscious; if she can hold herself, she becomes enlightened.

nno = at this sound, the new Radha is imbued with new knowledge, with new rasa, new love and so a new body.

na = at this sound, the two bodies become pliant and soft; if they are disciplined, the couple will encounter the light.

ṅgaḥ = at this sound, he who masters the body will attain the results desired in all his pilgrimages.

pra = at this sound, he whose heart is happy will attain the priceless element.

co = at this sound, the devoteed waits like a chataka bird waits for rain, calling the name day and night one-mindedly.

da = at this sound, address yourself to the element desired. He who is one-minded can attain it.

yā = at this sound, the mysterious element is the essence of all mankind. He who can master it conquers death.

t = at this sound, the half-moon of the mysterious element is mastered. Look, Shiva has it on his forehead.

The initiation had a profound impact of both Paban and Mimlu, who writes that "despite my scepticism it sealed our love in an intangible bond." However, she does not elaborate on the transformation that it may or may not have had spiritually on them both. Ultimately she admits that the two of them placed more importance on the poetry and songs more than the religious or physical practices, which she says are optional.

I would question this assessment. The Baul music is not entertainment, but a method of sacred communication that has its roots in sankirtan. The poetry, whatever else it may be, specifically intends to communicate a spiritual message. And that is the basis of the poetic and musical tradition, without which it has no standing. But the great discovery of Sahajiyaism is the role of spiritual sadhanas in enhancing the life of love. To some extent, the external ritual alone carried out that function for them, but the real purpose of any initiation is to "initiate," to induct one into a spiritual practice, without which one remains on the level of anumāna, rather than the vartamāna.

Me and Santa Claus

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 16:41:00 +0000

Teaching Sanskrit in the winter sun at SRSG.

Ever since I arrived at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama ashram a couple of months ago, people have been suggesting that I take the role of Santa Claus in the annual Christmas celebrations.

Now it is a strange fact, perhaps mostly due to the presence of numerous American and European residents here that Christmas is probably the most celebrated festival on the calendar. Deepavali, Janmasthami, Shivaratri and other important holidays do not go unnoticed, but Christmas is celebrated with a tree and many other familiar trapping, as well as a kind of "talent" night with different ashramites putting on performances of various types.

In past years I have participated. One year I told the Dickens' story "A Christmas Carol" in Hindi, another time I attempted to tell O.Henry's "A Gift of the Magi," with much less success. But the groundswell of requests to have me play Santa this year made me progressively uneasy. Perhaps the five years I have been in India, especially the last two in Vrindavan, have changed me to such an extent that the very memory of the treacly carols that bombard the average Canadian for the two months from Halloween to Christmas day give me a feeling of nausea..

Finally I wrote the following on Facebook:

Dear friends as SRSG. I know I have grown a big white beard, but that does not mean I am Santa Claus. I refuse to play the role of the incarnation of Western Consumer Culture. I came to India to get away from Christmas. Whoever St. Nicolas may have been originally, or even as recently as a generation ago, to me he is no longer a saint. I see him as a symbol for the root problem of modern civilization. I will not play along. Sorry.

I do not doubt that the Santa symbol has many positive aspects, and I certainly can sympathize with the highest ideals of Christianity, but I felt and still feel that dressing up as Santa is not my role.

At one point I had been thinking that perhaps I could dress up as jolly old Saint Nick, and put on some kind of one-man play about how he had been transformed from a kindly saint giving to the poor into the poster boy for conspicuous consumption. But I quickly realized that dampening others' innocent fun is not my style either.

Although many people understood and approved this comment, there were several others who found it curmudgeonly, and the usual words associated with a lack of Christmas spirit -- "humbug" and "grinch" -- were soon in appearance. But the more that others defended Santa, saying that I was being selective in my understanding, projecting my own negativity onto the symbol rather than seeing its original positive aspects and trying to redeem them, the clearer my sense of revulsion for the entire consumer culture that this figure represents sprung to my mind, and I responded that he is in fact irredeemable.

You have to look at what he represents in today's world. Practically speaking there was no Santa 100 years ago. Take a look at Dickens' Christmas Carol... there is no Santa there. Practically speaking, Christmas itself is a construct of the consumer culture. And Santa Claus was the creation of marketers and advertisers, who made use of the positive connotations of kindness and giving to sell ever more useless stuff.

At least it seems that the Jesus symbol has not been degraded to quite the same extent, even though I must say that the disfigured merciless Jesus of the Christian Right in America, the one who is barely distinguishable from Ayn Rand, may have put even him beyond redemption.

I am a Vaishnava. I left North America precisely because I rejected the the rajasik and tamasik ethic of hard work, competition and sense gratification that it idolizes. I see the Western civilization, which unfortunately is being blindly copied by the rest of the world, including India, as engaged in a helter skelter rush to destruction. I cannot support this misguided civilization and I won't put lipstick on this pig by pretending that Santa Claus represents something other than the wasteful world of modern capitalism.

The British environmentalist writer George Monbiot writes in a recent article that the level of consumption in western society has become pathological. In other words a kind of collective madness. One that has become so normalized that to oppose it is to "expose yourself to opprobrium and ridicule."

But the consequences of this "collective madness" are apocalyptic. Is it not madness when an entire civilization is so convinced that insane levels of consumption are the only way that societies can progress economically?

Yet this destructive course is symbolized by Santa Claus, a harmless looking jolly elf, but whose one purpose and one purpose only is to suck you into this vortex of consumption, making you buy things nobody needs, which leads to environmental degradation, and simply supports the cycle of more and more consumption.

If you are spiritually minded in any tradition--Christian, Buddhist, bhakta, yogi, environmentalist, whatever--even if you just have a little bit of common sense, you should see through this scam and realize that it is destroying the world itself, which means it is demoniac. You may dress it up with a jolly "HO HO HO!" but that won't fool me and it should not fool you, either. It is the symbol of a progressively self-destructive, demonic world view.

You cannot separate the symbol from the symbolized. It may seem commendable to try to redeem St. Nicolas, but my position is to just say, "No more!"

Perhaps if Santa Claus did not exist, there would only be something else to take his place to push us to consume, but let us begin our revolution by removing this Santa's mask. I am pessimistic about efforts to turn back the clock on this monstrous distortion, this appropriation of religious figures to justify a demonic course for civilization, well meaning as they may be.

I favor the revolutionary approach. The situation is drastic and it is time to speak loudly against the symbols that drive the world in this direction.

Most likely we will have to wait to see what remains after the apocalypse, when the smoke has cleared and the cinders have cooled. In the meantime, I say it is time to change the gods. Silence the infernal repetition of "Santa Claus is coming to town" and chant Radhe Shyam nam.

Ecstasies of the Yogi

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 05:38:00 +0000

Swami Veda quoted this Bhagavata verse last night in Yoga Sutra class while discussing sutra 4.25.

vāg gadgadā dravate yasya cittaṁ
rudaty abhīkṣṇaṁ hasati kvacic ca |
vilajja udgāyati nṛtyate ca
mad-bhakti-yukto bhuvanaṁ punāti ||

One who is united with me in bhakti yoga, whose words are choked with emotion, whose mind has melted, who cries constanty and sometimes laughs, who shamelessly sings alound and dances... such a devotee purifies the entire world. (11.14.24)

Swamiji does not usually quote full verses in his classes, though he makes a point of teaching his disciples the Sanskrit terminology used in the Yoga Sutra. Needless to say, it was a pleasure to hear him recite this sweet verse so nicely. And he pointedly said that he was doing so for me. Because "Jagat knows the Bhagavata."

The context here was the following sentence from Vyasa's bhashya,

yathā pravṛṣi tṛṇāṅkurasyodbhedena tad-bīja-sattānumīyate,
tathā mokṣa-mārga-śravaṇena yasya romaharṣāśru-pātau dṛśyete,
tatrāpi asti viśeṣa-darśana-bījam apavarga-bhāgīyaṁ
karmābhinirvartitam ity anumīyate |

"As the existence of seeds is infered from blades of grass shooting forth in the rainy season, so it is infered that he whose tears flow and whose hair stands on end when he hears of the path of liberation, has a store of karma tending to liberation (apavarga) as the seed of recognition of the distinction [between the puruṣa and sattva]." (B.D. Basu edition, 1912).

Swamiji said that here was evidence of the presence of emotional bhakti in the Yoga Sutra. He also said that there was a time when he was young whenever he heard the word "God" or īśvara, even in a bus or train, he would be overcome with tears and trembling. This, he said, went on until he met his spiritual master, Swami Rama. Indeed, the sutra itself, in the context of the concluding portion of the Yoga Sutra, describes a first rung of sadhana (viśeṣa-darśana) that then proceeds through

viveka-khyāti (2.26-28)
prasaṅkhyāna (3.55)
dharma-megha samādhi (4.29)
kaivalya (4.34)

You will have to look those terms up yourselves, dear readers. I put the relevant sutra numbers in there. But I thought the Bhagavata verse preceding the one he cited is perhaps even more appropriate for the context:

kathaṁ vinā roma-harṣaṁ
dravatā cetasā vinā |
vinānandāśru-kalayā
śudhyed bhaktyā vināśayaḥ ||

"How can one's storehouse of karma (karmāśaya) be purifed without the hairs standing on end? Without a heart that has melted, or without streams of tears flowing with joy from the eyes? Without bhakti, devotion?" (11.14.23)

Of course, there may be a small technical difference here... between the Bhagavata and Yoga-Sutra. Nevertheless, the language of Vyasa, simply by virtue of touching the language of ecstasy, does indeed ring the bells of bhakti.

Human typology and Religious Institutions

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 05:32:00 +0000

Many people criticize and condemn religions and religious institutions because of the evil done in their name. This is often based on a predisposition to anti-religious sentiment. One should recognize that religion is a human institution and subject to the same frailties as all human institutions. Those who are in such institutions should recognize these frailties and take steps to control and counteract them.

According to Patanjali's Yoga-sūtra (4.7), there are four kinds of people. Patanjali does try to estimate what percentage of human society fits into each category, no doubt since modern ways of enumerating populations was not yet devised. In any case, such percentages no doubt change as societies change.

Patanjali divides people according to the kind of work they do in relation to the goal of enlightenment. The first three are (1) kṛṣṇa (black, or dark karmas), which are the actions performed by the evil; (2) śukla-kṛṣṇa or mixed karmas, which evidently are the kinds of activity performed by the greater number of people; and (3) śukla-karmas are the activities of sincere sādhakas engaged in the kriyā-yogas described in YS 2.1, etc. The commentators say that these types correspond to the tamas, rajas, and sattva guṇas respectively.

The fourth category, which is the specific object of sūtra 4.7, is called akṛṣṇāśukla, neither white nor black. This is the activity of the the yogi or the perfected transcendentalist. Such liberated transcendentalists, though engaged in activity in the world, are not bound because they are nirguṇa, beyond the guṇas of Prakriti.

Any religious group will have representatives of all these four kinds of people. Though obviously Patanjali was not thinking in the same ways that modern psychologists such as Robert Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba do, there is some interesting correspondence between them, as well as with the Bhagavata Purana's division of kaniṣṭha, madhyama and uttama bhāgavatas.

Patanjali's first group correspond to what Altemeyer calls "social dominators." They are the most dangerous humans because they are ruled by the "demoniac nature." They can be identified primarily by their thirst for power, their holding on to that power, and what they do once they have it. Such persons can be most expert in playing the role of a saintly person and using religion or other kinds of idealism for social manipulation, especially of those that can be grouped in Altermeyer's "authoritarian followers."

They are the asuras of Bhagavad Gītā 16. Though the Bhāgavata-purāṇa's kaniṣṭha is not an asura, he has tāmasika tendencies as described in Gītā 18.22. If these become dominant in his religious life, he can become very destructive, either as a leader or a follower.

The second group, because they are mixed, are easy fodder for the manipulations of the first group. Paradoxically, this happens especially if they are more pious, with a tendency to superficial religiosity, foolishness and wishful thinking. They are easily led into hypocritical behavior, mainly because they deny the tāmasika half of their nature and like to pretend they are better than they really are. These people can be salvageable in the right circumstances, but the danger is that they may just as easily become Nazi foot-soldiers if the circumstances are changed.

But there are also sincere sādhakas and real yogis also. And for them, the religious symbols reveal their true meaning. So critics should be careful not to mistake the religious system, the practices and symbolic meanings as exploited by tāmasika and rājasika practitioners for the true meaning of these things. By the same token, it is always dangerous in principle to over generalize about people.

Institutions tend to create an environment wherein Patanjali's kṛṣṇa-karma people, the asuras or social dominators, find it easy to rise to the top. They in turn eliminate the śukla and akṛṣṇāśukla people because these are not good institutional types. The śukla people generally are forced out one way or another, while the latter group usually shun institutions by nature.

So, it is not that complaints about religious institutions are unfounded. The kṛṣṇa- people will dissimulate their real motives and in order to maintain power and position, they need at all cost to preserve the appearance of religiosity. Hypocrisy is their trademark; it is their bread and butter in the religious institution for it is the way these power grabbers dupe their weak-minded followers.

Though criticisms of defective institutions that have come under the influence of such leaders, even if relatively benign, are thus well-founded, it is still my opinion that a critic would be well-advised to become a simple saint first before trying to play the role of an Old Testament prophet. Worse yet are those who make blanket criticisms of all religion or one specific religious institution without understanding the mixed nature of all social groups, including religion. We have enough prophets, each proclaiming hell-fire and damnation from their pulpits on the mountain tops of their own idiosyncratic belief systems. Better one should first climb to the top of the mountain of love and teach by example before condemning the fallible.

The truth generally lies between extremes. I do not believe you can become an uttama or advanced sādhaka by skipping the beginning or kaniṣṭha stage. You can get stuck in the lower levels of spiritual progress, but that does not mean you can avoid them. You can't jump to the top of a ladder. That is why we have ladders.

The ekāgratā or single-minded purpose of mind of all yoga systems is also adored in the cultic form of religious institution as well as in totalitarian political ideologies, since that is the way they accomplish their goals. We must learn how to manage ekāgratā in order that we progress to higher stages of spirituality and not get led into tamas.

In other words: sādhanā may give the impression of creating stress, but this is actually good stress. In the beginning it is hard to manage and results in the cult-like symptoms that one sees in some religious institutions. If one is fortunate, one does grow out of it, without losing the ekāgratā, or single-mindedness that is its principal feature. And all the rewards of sādhanā arise from ekāgratā.

The real test is what the goals of such ekāgratā are. If the goal is prema, as we say in Gaudiya Vaisnavism, we have to be on our guard for symptoms of "not-prema," which are the consequences of an institution that is dominated by asura types. If we are told that we are "not ready," etc., for prema, as in dicta like "Work now, samādhi later," then in all likelihood we are getting the wool pulled over our eyes.

On the other hand, it is not enough to just stick it out with an institution (as some say) as though the institution itself is the bestower of prema. Rather you should stick it out with your own original ideals of purpose, and the meaning of the symbol system and fundamental practices that you were given, if they match that ideal purpose.

The great conundrum for religions is how to preserve the essence of a tradition without becoming prey to the anarthas that institutions tend to produce.

Joseph O'Connell introduced me to the concepts of "hard" "soft" and "medium" institutions. Hard institutions have strong lines of authority with strict guidelines of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and centralized power to censure and excommunicate non-conformists. Soft institutions include the books, literature and sādhanā practices of a tradition, where there is a great deal of individual freedom of interpretation. Medium institutions in the pre-modern era were usually concentrated around festivals and informal sat-saṅgas. The paramparā or disciplic succession was also considered a medium institution because the lines of authority are looser than in a hard one.

The hard institution is that which is most subject to anarthas. But other kinds of institutions will still have to exist, even if it is something as simple as two people meeting for a shared friendship in relation to spiritual progress, such as internet discussion groups.

Human institutions, saṅghas, are an inevitable feature of human life, for we crave like-minded human association. Therefore we need to apply our intelligence to the best, or least damaging, ways of managing this need.

The gopis insult the banyan tree

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 06:14:00 +0000

We have been reading about the gopis in separation and how they are madly asking the trees for Krishna's whereabouts. In 10.30.4, the first trees the gopis approach to ask for Krishna's whereabouts are the ashwattha, plaksha and nyagrodha, all variants of the banyan or sacred fig. This is ostensibly because they are the tallest trees and would have been best able to see Krishna from their lofty height.

They are also the kings of the forest, representing Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma respectively. But when these trees don't answer their polite request, which is accompanied by a confession of their distressed state of mind ("the son of Nanda has stolen our minds and run away!"), Vishwanath paraphrases the gopis' reaction, saying that they insult them, saying, "You are just dirty-minded men and, besides, you just have small fruits!"

When I read this, I burst out laughing because of the implications of this insult.

Some people suggested that the gopis are pointing out that the devas and the three presiding deities of the three gunas who only give lower or small fruit and cannot really give Krishna himself, who is beyond the gunas.

This interpretation is appropriate, but here [I think Vishwanath intends to say] the gopis first approach the male trees, the "big shots." But as in the next verse, they don't trust them because they are men and Krishna is a man, and so they will naturally take his side over theirs. Besides, such important personages don't really understand or sympathize with the plight of women in love. Moreover, they are Krishna's friends or servants and do not dare to offend him.

So the gopis say they are duṣṭāntaḥkaraṇa, "polluted in mind," since they put other concerns ahead of charity and empathy. And furthermore, because they lack the courage to betray Krishna by helping them, they make use of a popular insult that refers to the roundish, seed-bearing entities that males possess.

This of course is my own dirty mind seizing on the implications. But I suspect that these forest dwelling milkmaids (āraṇyā) are not necessarily above such things! Since the meaning is somewhat ambiguous, and they only said it to each other, and since they are under great stress, we may forgive them.

In the next verse, they go to the flower bearing trees like the ashoka, thinking that they will be more sympathetic, even though they too are males. The flowers are representative of smiles and a lighthearted, purer and kinder nature. But unfortunately, those trees also let them down. But at least they shake their heads by way of a slight breeze that moves their uppermost branches to let them know that they cannot answer or do not know.

Only Bhakti is the path of joy

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 06:02:00 +0000

In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna describes the joy that a devotee feels in the execution of devotional service. Those who emphasize the jnana, karma and yoga practices described in the Gita have no understanding of how the bhakta experiences such joy in his love for the Lord and the association of other devotees.

mac-cittā mad-gata-prāṇā

bodhayantaḥ parasparam |

kathayantaś ca māṁ nityaṁ

tuṣyanti ca ramanti ca ||

Their minds fixed on me, their lives totally dedicated to me, they spend their time in explaining the path of devotion to one another. Speaking of me constantly, they feel intense delight and pleasure. [Gita 10.9]

The Bhagavata Purana also describes the joy the devotee feels in the company of other devotees.

satāṁ prasangāt mama vīrya-saṁvido

bhavanti hṛt-karṇa-rasāyanāḥ kathāḥ

taj-joṣaṇād āśv apavarga-vartmani

śraddhā ratir bhaktir anukramiṣyati

If you have the good fortune to be in the company of devotees, you will hear of my glories, which are like magic medicine for the ears and heart. By becoming absorbed in these talks, you will quickly traverse the path of liberation, from faith, to joy, to love. (SB 3.25.25)

Swami Veda Bharati paraphrases Vyasa's Bhashya to YS 2.14, "For ordinary people, pain is felt to be discordant with one's own nature, whereas the yogi has this feeling of natural discordance whether he experiences either pleasure or pain."

The bhakta experiences a similar discord whenever he even hears of the notion of kaivalya or mukti, where consciousness and the object of consciousness are so merged as to make any awareness of an Other impossible.

Is it possible to have being without an object of being? Perhaps... But what is the meaning of being if it be like that of a rock or a lump of clay?

Is it possible to have consciousness without an object of consciousness? Perhaps, but what is the meaning of such consciousness? What is its purpose? What is its joy?

Is it possible to have bliss without love? And is it possible to have love without an object of love? And the supreme bliss must come in relation to the Most Complete Being, the fountainhead of all being, consciousness and bliss.

No wonder Prabodhananda says that being "solo" (kaivalya) is hell. My apologies to all my yogi friends and to Swami Veda himself. I cannot stop feeling this way. I love yoga and I love my yogi friends, but for me, kaivalyaṁ narakāyate. Or like our Raghunath Das says, kathā mukti-vyāghryā na śṛṇu kila sarvātma-gilanīḥ: "Don't even listen to the talks of liberation. They are like a tiger which will surely swallow your soul."

Bhakti is the natural condition of the soul. One must cultivate BOTH Oneness and Otherness. But recognizing the Other is in itself a path to the Oneness of love. Oneness without Otherness contradicts the natural relation of the part to the whole.

Some say that to become Brahman means to become Love itself. This is actually closer to the Vaishnava view, but is still inadequate. Yes, Love is the all-pervading Ground of Being, but if the Supreme Truth is Love, then variety, distinction, even that of God and individual soul, must be eternal!

The proper understanding of aham brahmāsmi is that we become Love, and that we become one with the object of Love in love. In his inconceivable nature, God is the one, undifferentiated Absolute, who in order to fully manifest his potential for love, divides himself into the infinite multiplicity of human experience. To describe or experience the former without the latter is an inadequate description or experience of the Absolute.

If you have become love, then have you lost your personhood or kept it? Does love exist without a subject and an object? As soon as there is love there must be both! And such love can only exist within the matrix of the individual soul's love for the Supreme Soul and the reciprocation of that love through grace.

Please don't take offense. I believe in the sincerity of all seekers. And I respect each and everyone's niṣṭhā. But I was taught long ago that the desire for liberation was the "last snare of nescience," and I cannot give up the conviction that this is the truth. The desire for liberation is the trap of sattva-guna; it is the refusal to give up the last latent bahir-mukhatā or reluctance to serve God, in other words, to give up one's own claim to actually be God.

But what kind of God must we become to become God!! On the way we accumulate a few mystic powers, but those too we must give up to become the salt dissolved into the ocean, the ghaṭākāśa become paṭākāśa, or to become floating monads in a sea of undifferentiation. To become god we must give up the very jewel of our personhood.

And even when we pretend to try to attenuate our egoistic desire for liberation by a Bodhisattva doctrine of delaying liberation or nirvana until "all souls are liberated", it is still a false love, because we only seek to make them too "negative" Gods in the same image: "the-grapes-are-sour-gods" "sore-loser" gods.

Enlightenment without service to the personal God is darkness. You can be one with God, but you cannot BE God. Freedom from suffering is only half of the hen, the other half, the positive half, is love of God. The bhaktas have things to learn from yogis and jnanis and karmis, but the fundamental Truth is that we are eternal servants of God, and liberation from anarthas only serves to makes us more perfect servants. If we abandon the positive half, what does it gain us to be rid of the negative?

Rasa and theodicy

noreply@blogger.com (Jagat) — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 08:14:00 +0000

Without situations there are no stories. Without stories there is no rasa. Therefore, the existence of evil in the world is only to create situations. With no obstacles to overcome, love is unrealized in its scope.

Someone may object: What about horrendous evil?

Evil is not being condoned. Simply it is being said that the greater the evil, the greater the potential for heroism. And love shines all the brighter in the darkness.

This of course requires accepting the world-view of the Bhagavad Gita which says that there is no true death, no true suffering. We are engaged in a play in which the only reality or value is Rasa. raso vai sah.

This of course includes the karma doctrine, which means that everyone answers for their evil. But the law of karma does not answer ultimate questions about evil, for it too faces the problem of infinite regression.

There is a hierarchy of rasas, which are arranged in order from horror (bibhatsa), fear (bhayanaka), anger (raudra), pity (karuna), heroism (vira), wonder (adbhuta), the comic (hasya) and romantic love (shringar). Without evil, without obstacles, none of these rasas can manifest in their purest form. Take, for example, Schindler's List as a tale of heroism in the face of horrendous evil.

I understand heroism to be the primary male rasa, shringar the primary female rasa, with shringara being the overall primary rasa. All rasas are not equal.

I am of course refering to the classical eight rasas here. But if we use Rupa Goswami's model, then the five kinds of relationship in love, or the five kinds of love become the real emotional backdrop in which the other rasas are played out

I am not really saying anything radically original here. Theodicy is always a dicey game to play. For someone who views evil with the conviction of its existential reality, i.e., as a force that actually has or can have the upper hand in absolute terms, in other words, someone who has not completely given up the belief that evil is a winning strategy, the problem is intractable.

Rasa is just an extra dimension to understanding the problem. Rasa is the way we give life meaning. Everyone, including the evil person, is looking for rasa. Rasa includes external sense gratifications etc., but it mostly includes the meaning that we invest in that sense gratification. Rasa is about the story of our own lives. Rasa does require a certain distancing, the ability to see oneself as an objective character, a player in the play.

Great evil also requires this kind of framing of one's one heroism. Like Ayn Rand, who admired a serial killer for his complete indifference to the rules; she thought of him as a kind of superman. Or a Hitler or Stalin, whose acts of barbaric evil were contained within a vision of radical heroism, framed as they framed it.

Although narcissism is not what rasa is about, nevertheless, no one can stop being the center of his own universe. We create ourselves as an author creates the character in a story. But the difference between volitional evil ("the demoniac nature" or pathological narcissism) or the saint, and the common person, is in the strength of the story line.

Yet, we all exist in relationship with the "other" however we conceive of it, through our upbringing and predispositions from other lifetimes and our natural instincts that are a result of our particular species of life. Our lives are about the relationship of self to non-self, the other.

The other is conceived of as either personal or impersonal. This is the difference between love and evil. In Martin Buber's language, this is called "I-Thou" and "I-It". Impersonalism reduces people to objects, Personalism elevates all things, all others, or rather it _recognizes_ all others as the Other, the Divine Conscious Being, present in infinite variety in relation to ourselves.

"I am That" means that I and That are together in the same story. His/her story. We are engaged in a dance. A love story.

The world and the presence of evil are there for the dramatic contrast.