Low Level Hack

Two weeks ago Jagadananda had a blog post arguing that “Sahajiyaism goes together with Radha-Krishna prema like butter with rice” – in his own words. I feel this needs to be addressed in some way.

Now, “low lever hack” is not my categorization of Jagadananda Prabhu himself, it’s actually a compliment to the strength of his argument. In popular computer talk we have a concept of “zero day exploit”, which refers to finding a vulnerability in the software that was missed by its very creators. In relation to our books it would be like finding a mistake by Srila Prabhupada that has been there all along, we have developed a wrong understanding of something because of it, and to fix it we need to do the unthinkable – edit his books for *his* mistakes.

If you think this never happens, meaning there are “no zero day mistakes” in Prabhupada’s books – occasionally they have been found. The most famous (and probably most controversial one) is confusing ragatmika and raganuga in the Nectar of Devotion. I’m not going to untangle it here, but the claim is that if we think of Nanda Maharaj and others as “raganugas” instead of “ragatmikas” then we will never become qualified to follow “raganuga bhakti”, which is what people say limits spiritual development of ISKCON devotees.

Back to Jagadananda, by “low lever hack” I mean he exposed a vulnerability on the level of our most fundamental pramanas – Sridhara Swami’s commentary on Bhagavatam. Typically, we would refer to Srila Prabhupada’s purports as conclusive evidence for us, but Prabhupada got only as far as the 13th Chapter of the Tenth Canto while Jagadananda discusses one line in one of the concluding verses of Chapter 33, the last one in “rasa pancadhyayi”.

In Krishna book Srila Prabhupada doesn’t mention anything about this line, so we are out of our most authoritative pramanas. BBT purport doesn’t mention anything either, so that’s a second level pramana that is out. Okay, Bhanu Swami translated commentaries by Sanatana and Jiva Goswamis and by Srila Visvanatha, but even if they do not explain the same line in the same way they don’t rule out Jagadananda’s explanation of Sridhara Swami either. Lord Caitanya told us to treat Sridhara Swami as the original commentator and every vaishnava acharya deferred to him ever since, meaning their own commentaries must be seen as an addition to Sridhara Swami’s, not alternatives to him.

Okay, maybe we can look into Sridhara Swami’s Sanskrit and see if Jagadananda’s explanation is possible, maybe we don’t need to actually understand it, maybe that passage simply doesn’t exist. Where do we get Sridhara Swami’s Sanskrit? From Grantha Mandir where it was uploaded by Jagadananda! That’s what I call a “low level hack” – it’s impossible to defend from unless we go even lower, which means get our own sources and translate them ourselves, which is beyond my capacity.

It’s not all bad, however. Sridhara Swami’s commentary in Devanagari can be found on Archive site, one would just have to flip through endless pages to get to the right verse and right commentary, but what if this line is missing from some earlier editions and was inserted there by sahajiyas themselves? How can we possibly defend against that? We’d need to go even earlier in history.

Alternatively, there is a translation of this verse and Sridhara Swami’s commentary by one “Gaurapada das”. I don’t know anything about him, except that he wrote super-excellent translation of the first three chapters of the Tenth Canto, surpassing even BBT standards of publication. Maybe the quality of his translation itself is not that high, I wouldn’t know. Personally, I was a little put off by his occasional rants against mayavada which I thought were uncalled for in discussing the Tenth Canto. More worrying is that he didn’t stay with his original publisher, Touchstone Media, and wanted to produce the rest without the same level of editorial oversight, so the volume that deals with Chapter 33 does not get the same endorsement as Volume 1. I don’t know his side of the story so let’s leave it at that and get to the actual point – the line itself.

In BBT translation it’s:

siṣeva ātmany avaruddha-saurataḥ

with the point of interest being this “ātmany avaruddha-saurataḥ“

BBT word for word is:

ātmani — within Himself; avaruddha — reserved; saurataḥ — conjugal feelings;

In BBT translation it’s rendered as “the Lord was not internally affected by any mundane sex desire.”

Jagadananda gives two alternatives, one by Satyanarayan Babaji and one by himself:

“while keeping the procreative potency contained within Himself.“

and

“has captured the amorous energy within Himself“

Jagadananda then gives Babaji’s commentary on this verse when it appears in Priti Sandarbha:

“The word saurata is derived from surata, “sexual union,” i.e., that which is connected to sexual union, i.e., sexual enjoyment. Śrīdhara Svāmī has glossed the word as semen.

There are a group of people who interpret the meaning of śiṣeva ātmani avaruddha-saurata to mean that Kṛṣṇa enjoyed sex with gopīs (saurata) while not discharging semen (śiṣeva) but holding (avaruddha) it within Himself (ātmani). They practice coition with their partner while not discharging semen. This they aver will make a man god-realized. Not discharging the semen but raising it up to head will make one’s consciousness to be one with brahman or make the dormant love in the heart be awakened. According to them this is called rāgānugā-bhakti.

Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī refutes such an explanation and interprets the verse that is in harmony with the subject under discussion, the prema.”

Now you should finally see what the point of interest is – Krishna practiced sexual plays with the gopis but retained His semen. Huh? Bhaktividyapurna Swami wants his sannyasa back! Well, actually I want his sannyasa back, but that’s not the point, the point is that Jagadananda wants to use this interpretation as confirming sahajiya ideas about the point where material sexual agitation can cross into genuine Krishna prema.

I don’t want to actually argue for or against that and I won’t argue if I somehow misformulated Jagadananda’s point, I’m only interested in Sridhara Swami’s commentary and in what other acharyas had to say about the same phrase.

Gaurapada’s word for word:

“avaruddha—is confined; saurataù—He whose sexuality;”

and he gives three alternative translations:

“whose sexual enjoyment is confined to the soul”

“whose amorous feelings are restricted to His own kind of women”

“He confined sexual enjoyment within Himself”

The second one says “His own kind of women” and Gaurapada justifies it by citing an occasion where our acharyas explained “atman” as direct reference to gopis. He thought it would be permissible here, too. In word for word he has it :”ātmani—in Himself (or in the soul, or toward His own kind);” with a footnote explaining why it can mean gopis.

In translation of Sridhara Swami’s commentary he has:

“A descriptive term is expressive of triumph over lust: His semen is kept in Himself (ātmany avaruddha-saurataḥ = ātmany evāvaruddhaḥ saurataś carama-dhātur na tu skhalito yasya).”

Then Vallabhacharya:

“After that, Kṛṣṇa confined sexual enjoyment in Himself (ātmany avaruddha-saurataḥ = tad-anantaram ātmany eva avaruddhaṁ saurataṁ yasya tathā jātaḥ). He did not place His love in those women, otherwise He would have become a father.”

Then Srinatha Pandit:

“Kṛṣṇa kept the pleasure of sex within Himself (ātmany avaruddha-saurataṁ surata-sukhaṁ grāmya-dharmo yena). The sense is He blocked this: Sex is love. Sex between Him, Īśvara, and those women, who are Īśvarīs, would be improper. The writer of a master treatise on Rasa stated: anaucityād ṛte nānyad rasa-bhaṅgasya kāraṇam, “The cause of the disruption of Rasa is no other than inappropriateness” (Dhvany-āloka 3.14 vṛtti). But if Īśvara and an Īśvarī are married to one another, then there is nothing wrong in kissing and other aspects of the romance.”

This is an interesting turn – Krishna didn’t want to ruin rasa by resorting to actual sex. This makes sense, too, and it’s a rasa, not mechanics based explanation so an extra point for that.

Then there’s Visvanatha Cakravarti’s commentary on the same line and it’s a bit long but it doesn’t talk about semen:

“With ātmany avaruddha-saurataḥ, he says: At that time, the Lord’s mind was only focused on those love games: “He by whom everything related to sex is kept in the mind and put in place therein”
(= ātmani manasi avaruddhāḥ avaruddhya sthāpitāḥ sauratāḥ surata-sambandhino yena saḥ). Everything’ includes bhāva (feeling) (first development of rati), hāva (allurement) (rati is more apparent), bibboka (disregard for a desired thing), kila-kiñcita (hysterical delight), and other alaṅkāras of śṛṅgāra-rasa, vāmya (contrary mood), autsukya (eagerness), harṣa (joy) and other emotions, stambha (being stunned), sveda (perspiration), vaivarṇya (change of bodily color) and other sāttvika-bhāvas, as well as gazing, touching, embracing and other anubhāvas. The word saurata is used in that general sense in this verse:

evaṁ saurata-saṁlāpair bhagavān jagad-īśvaraḥ |
sva-rato ramayā reme nara-lokaṁ viḍambayan ||

“With such conversations related to sexual enjoyment, the Lord, the controller of the universe and a delighter in the self, had fun with Lakṣmī (Rukmiṇī) while imitating the ways of humans.” (10.60.58)

In this text, the word saṁlāpa was placed next to saurata with the intent to express a particularity, whereas in the verse under discussion no particular aspect of saurata is meant, and so everything
about it applies.”

Bhanu Swami’s translation is not very different so I won’t cite it here. I’ll give his translation of Sanatana Goswami’s commentary on this line instead:

“He has accepted (avaruddha) all acts of love or the most intense pastimes (surata), since he has appeared as avatāra for this purpose. He gave enjoyment to the gopīs without indifference, and with inner determination (ātmani). He experienced everything personally with great attachment, by accepting them within himself. Or he experienced the highest bliss by ignoring his feature as ātmārāma.”

This last sentence beginning with “Or..” is a signature Sanatana Goswami – he’d quite regularly introduce completely opposite explanations of the same words and we are left wondering how it could all fit together. At least that’s how Bhanu Swami translates it. There is no equivalent in Gaurapada’s translation, but Gaurapada ends the commentary on the whole verse with:

“The rest was explained by Śrīdhara Svāmī”

which is one more demonstration that all other acharyas only add to Sridhara Swami’s commentary, which everybody is supposed to know and accept. But that doesn’t mean there could be no disagreements with Sridhara Swami either. See how Bhanu Swami translates Jiva Goswami’s commentary on the same line:

“In what condition did he serve them? His mind (ātmani) was firmly fixed (avaruddha) in all emotions and gestures suitable for amorous contact with the gopīs (saurataḥ). This means he could not give them up. Since a particular bhāva is not mentioned, all bhāvas are indicated.

evaṁ saurata-saṁlāpair bhagavān jagad-īśvaraḥ
sva-rato ramayā reme nara-lokaṁ viḍambayan

And so, the self-satisfied Supreme Lord of the universe enjoyed with the goddess of fortune, engaging her in lovers’ talks and thus imitating the ways of human society. (SB 10.60.58)

However, in this example there is particularization with the mention of saṁlāpaiḥ (with conversations). The cause of his mental fixation of loving affairs is given. There were many women with anurāga. The cause was anurāga in prema within Kṛṣṇa and the gopīs. It was not the material lust of material people because his desires are pure (satya-kāmaḥ). Parāśara and Vaiśampāyana have said

evaṁ sa kṛṣṇo gopīnāṁ cakravālair alaṅkṛtaḥ
śāradīṣu sacandāsu niśāsu mumude sukhī

Thus Kṛṣṇa, ornamented with circles of gopīs, enjoyed happily in the moon lit nights of the autumn season.

In his commentary Śrīdhara Svāmī explains that avaruddha-saurataḥ means “without the influence of material sex desire.” Thus he has given another, not commonly accepted, explanation of this phrase.”

Gaurapada’s translation is a bit longer, with Sanskrit prose quoted, too, but in the end he makes the same point – Sridhara Swami’s explanation is unusual.

Now look at Gaurapada’s translation of Baladeva Vidyabhusana’s of the full commentary on the whole verse:

“With high regard, He took advantage (siṣeve = ādareṇa upacaritavān) of all those moonlit nights.” His desires and His gestures expressive of lust are transcendental (satya-kāmaḥ = satyaḥ svarūpa-vat pāramārthikaḥ kāmo vāñchā smara-vilāsaś ca yasya saḥ). After His lovemaking, the girls made love on Him (anuratābalā-gaṇaḥ= anu tad-ramaṇānantaraṁ rato ramaṇa-kṛd abalā-gaṇo yatra saḥ). The secret meaning is not obvious, in conformity with the maxim: dvy-arthaiḥ padaiḥ piśunayec ca rahasya-vastu, “One should conceal a secret meaning with double-meaning words.” The dual sense is the girls were always enamored of Him. Other occurrences should be looked into that way.”

What is this “lovemaking” and “girls made love on Him”? And the information that “one should conceal a secret meaning with double-meaning words” is not helpful either. How can we possibly figure out what happened there exactly after reading a commentary like this? It’s impossible, which is precisely the point – it’s a matter of realization, not parsing the language.

So, can Jagadananda legitimately extract a meaning supportive of sahajiya ideas? Sure, in the light of Baladeva Vidyabhusana’s commentary everything is possible because double meanings could be everywhere and you’ll never know which was actually intended. Would it be correct? We’ll never know until we have appropriate realizations, and until then everything is a fair game.

Personally, after reading through all of the above I choose to stick with Srinatha Pandit’s explanation – actually having sex with the gopis would go against their rasa. Sex is for wives, which I take he means “anyone you have sex with is your wife”, and gopis didn’t want to take that position in relation to Krishna. Maybe it’s not a classical explanation of gopis’ rasa but the titillation of gopis laying the red line “you can’t do that to me” takes it on a whole different level where it’s felt more acute and maybe even sweeter as it gives Krishna no chance to walk away and no chance to have sex either. Sex is for Vaikuntha, or in this case Dwaraka. Gopis were not going to raise Krishna’s children, too – not their rasa. All in all, I think this would be a more productive way to reflect on this story – if one ever feels inclined to do so.

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Bedrock of Rasa

Krishna spoke a lot of bogus philosophy when trying to convince His father to worship Govardhan instead of Indra, but he also slipped in a couple of slokas that are true and free from deception. Here is one of them:

na naḥ purojanapadā
na grāmā na gṛhā vayam
vanaukasas tāta nityaṁ
vana-śaila-nivāsinaḥ

SB 10.24.24

I won’t copy the translation, please try to look at Sanskrit and let the meaning come to you, it’s an easy verse to parse.

Second “nah” in “na nah” means not “no” but “us”. “Puro” means “city” and “janapada” means suburbs. Okay, it’s not how it’s translated but close – areas developed (padah) by humans (jana). Second line is obvious – “na grama” means we do not live in the villages, “na griha” means we do not have houses, “vayam” means “we” again. Third line then tells us where they DO live – “vana” is forest, of course, and “okasah” means “residents of”. “Nityam” means forever, “nivasinah” means “where we live”, and we live in “vana-saila” – forests and hills. So here is the verse again, look at it and let it come to you:

na naḥ purojanapadā
na grāmā na gṛhā vayam
vanaukasas tāta nityaṁ
vana-śaila-nivāsinaḥ

Earlier in this chapter Krishna addressed Nanda Maharaja as “pita” – father, but in this verse he uses a much closer, much less official term “tata”. So He turns to His father as close as He can, speaking in the most endearing way, and He lays down the foundation of their family – we do not live in cities or any developed areas, we do not live in villages and we don’t build houses for ourselves. We are people of hills and forests and we will stay this way forever. There is only us and nature, and civilization does not intrude into our lives.

A couple of verses earlier Krishna was speaking of the dharma of vaishyas and he listed four occupations:

kṛṣi-vāṇijya-go-rakṣā kusīdaṁ

SB 10.24.21

We know these things – krishi (agriculture), vanijya (trade), with only kusidam being new and it’s translated as “banking”. Krishna says in that verse that their family, however, was doing only go-raksa – protecting the cows. Trading and banking would tie them to people, and agriculture would tie them to one place – to tilling the land, to gardening etc, and we have seen that they were not interested in that – they were strictly the people of nature.

“Go” means cow and it also means the same as English “go”. Cows are animals that wonder around, looking for things to eat. Senses are called “go” for the same reason – they are naturally attracted to consuming their objects. It’s the same “go” as in the word for the universe – jagat – something that always gives birth to something new and in this way always moves forward. This is what “following the nature” means, too – the nature always brings forth one thing or another, cows and senses naturally follow, and Krishna protects them and brings them satisfaction as “Govinda”.

Why is civilization excluded? I’d say it’s because “nature” is dumb, in a sense that living beings that support it (“dharyate jagat” from BG 7.5) are too conditioned to spoil it with their own ideas. Nature follows the Lord, especially in Vrindavana, without abusing its free will. It’s a perfect example of “mama vartmanuvartante” from BG 4.11. Whatever comes down as a good idea from the spiritual world is fulfilled by nature here perfectly. It’s the humans that screw things up, relatively speaking – because people also do vartmanuvartante.

Now I have an explanation why I was always suspicious of agriculture and gardening, too. On one hand it brings people closer to nature, but on the other hand it lets people override God’s design for it and shape it in their own ways, which are not at all better. I was stunned by this realization once, ages ago, when I was asked to comment on a lawn. Lawns definitely look nice and are pleasure to walk on, but they lack this natural spontaneity, the wilderness that sets in when humans are not around. Lawns have only one type of grass but if you leave the same patch unattended for a month and all kinds of plants and creatures will take shelter there and transform it in unpredictable ways, always in competition and cooperation with each other. It’s not as pretty but a lot more inclusive, a lot more supporting, and a lot more forgiving environment than a lawn. Lawns are not places of love but forests are. In forests every creature is loved and every creature overflows with love for the world, too. Not exactly for the world but with honest and earnest appreciation for whatever opportunities are given. No twig and no leave would ever turn its face away from the chance to grow and shine forth. Only people can do that. Nature embraces life, people control and often deny it, and therefore Krishna follows nature.

Let’s go back to that verse again – Krishna declares what is most important for their lives. It’s connection to nature, the commitment to follow it, wherever it takes them. Vraja is not a place, it’s a style of life. An outlook on the world where you are not tied down to anything but to progress. An attitude where you never say “but we have to stay here” when the opportunity presents itself. I need a little clarification here.

We know nature is cyclical, that there are seasons and in winter everything goes to sleep. There are bigger cycles, too, however, and it’s very obvious when nature comes in touch with people. At first it brings forth fruits and honey and grass for the cows but eventually forest resources becomes depleted and that’s when Vraja has to get a move on and find a new place where nature is fresh and bountiful again while the old place is given a rest and recharges itself. This was the reason given for moving from Gokula to Vrindavan in Hari Vamsa. The old place, Gokula, became depleted, too many cows ate too much grass, too many people collected too many fruits, nuts, and honey. It had to be given a rest. It also attracted wolves, Hari Vamsa says. Bhagavatam doesn’t talk about this but it does say that city people started noticing it – Kamsa’s demons discovered where it was and raided it several times, and that was also a reason to move on, away from civilization.

So here it is, Krishna’s sweet sweet description of their lives: “There is only you and me, Tata, our cows, and the forest, and that’s all we ever need”. Why did I call it “bedrock of rasa”? Because all rasas find nourishment in this arrangement. Gopis meet Krishna in the forest. Cowherd boys can’t wait to get away from their homes and spend time with Krishna in the forest. Nanda Maharaja, as the protector of the realm, rules over forest and cows and makes sure Krishna is alright – this is the object of his vatsalya, too. Also, in the chapter about the autumn in Vrindavana the reason for giving this description is that because nature in autumn automatically produces sringara rasa in both Krishna and the gopis and so Sukadeva Goswami had to describe it to set the mood as the narration changed its course, setting its sights on rasa lila.

As I said earlier – nature is surcharged with love and nature accepts everything, which are distinctive characteristics of madhurya. Neither in nature nor in madhurya can a devotee say “I’m sorry, I can’t do that”. Mother Yasoda and cowherd boys excuse themselves from conjugal pastimes but there is absolutely nothing gopis won’t do for Krishna. They can bathe Him and they can play sports with Him, maybe not as well as Yasoda or Sudama, but they would never say “no, it’s not for us”. Similarly, no one ever says “no” in nature. Every shrub has a right to express itself. It might not be accommodated because of competition for sunlight and such, but it would never say “No, I don’t want to grow”.

In this way the forests of Vrindavana are on the lowest stage of devotion by one count – in santa rasa, as they say (though everything in permeated with madhurya there and so pure santa rasa doesn’t exist). But from another perspective the nature gives impetus to sringara and sringara becomes totally dependent on it. Thus, if we start counting from sringara and go down we will get to nature’s santa but then santa would link to sringara again, completing the circle.

I intentionally inserted a couple of Sanskrit words in the previous paragraph to make it sound theoretical. Let the theorists proceed in that direction if they want. The main point is that talking about gopi-bhava is theoretical without seeing it in the nature around us. Granted, it’s not Vrindvana, but nature is still nature and all the rasas are still there, either as seeds or as reflections, and nature is available to us – we all can go out and embrace it. I think it would be a much better and much more useful exercise than sitting around talking about gopi bhava. If one can’t see it nature he won’t see it in these conversations either.

Real Bhajana Rahasya for Our Age

Just before Radhashtami Bhakti Vikasa Swami gave a series of talks called “There are no gopis in ISKCON”. I didn’t mean these in my previous post, but in the second installment he recalled “gopi bhava club” incident from Hari Sauri’s Transcendental Diary. The end of Prabupada’s argument there was “preaching will stop” and it seems very conclusive, but I don’t think it would work on “gopi-bhava” devotees themselves.

For them preaching is an external activity, external reason for Lord Caitanya’s appearance, while they are interested in the internal reason, which we all accept as being higher. They would also argue that external behavior, ie preaching, is automatically manifested from the internal one. I’m sure you’ve heard it many many times practically everywhere – preaching should come from the heart. If you heart is not pure then it’s not preaching, people can sense it, and it has no value. Aindra argued like that, for example. It’s very common and it’s common sense, too. I don’t think I have an objection to it either.

So how is “preaching will stop” argument is going to stop “gopi-bhava” proponents? They would also say that by preaching we actually mean accumulating money, followers, and temples, not actual preaching. They might also argue that it was super important during ISKCON expansion in Srila Prabhupada’s time so preaching had relatively higher value back then. They would also mention “boil the milk” instruction and another instruction not to open any more temples but only restaurants given to Tamal Krishna Goswami. This makes sense, too – everybody who was ready to surrender themselves had already joined and the rest needed only kirtans and prasadam, but mostly prasadam – because eating is the only activity that never stops.

Does Srila Prabhupada’s “preaching will stop” argument sounds as conclusive now? I hope it still does, but for a different reason – it is not as external as gopi-bhava devotees think. When done properly it is absolutely internal with absolutely no connection to events of this world. It is a pure manifestation of those same internal emotions cherished by gopi-bhava devotees, and it is nothing else. Whatever they mention – experience of Radharani’s love, experience of separation, experience of Lord Caitanya experiencing these things – it’s all there, on the street. You want bhramara-gita – it’s there, nobody can be as mad as a book distributor. You want kapalika yogi talk from CC? It’s there on the streets, too. A book distributor sees all kinds of forms as weirdly connected to Krishna, even the most abominable – because nothing can touch him, no substance of this world is able of polluting him, and so every connection to the Lord, however small, shines forth like a million of Suns.

Of course this level of realization takes years to attain but it won’t come from discussing gopi-bhava, it comes from being out there on the streets and actually learning how Lord Caitanya’s mercy works. For real, not from the books.

In other words, when Srila Prabhupada warned us “preaching will stop” he didn’t mean the external activity of making new devotees but the actual flow of Lord Caitanya’s mercy. Fools think it can be found anywhere else but in sankirtana, and only ignorants think that this mercy doesn’t flow when talking to meat-eaters. They think that unless you talk about gopi-bhava it doesn’t flow, but it does! And it doesn’t appear externally – it’s not in the words, so if you record and transcribe the conversation you won’t see it. Actual gopi-bhava is a lot more subtle than that and it is perceived by the heart even as a person mumbles something about money in his wallet. Only a real “bhavuka” devotee can see how, despite his mumbling and lame excuses, this person is totally on the hook already and his arguments are like gopis’ arguments when they were standing neck deep in cold waters of Yamuna and telling Krishna they don’t want to come out and they don’t want Him to see them naked.

Out in the streets you can actually see and feel how this pastime plays out, and this is how we are expected to realize its meaning and its rasa. But if people think “it’s only external” and think they can extract this rasa by talking – they are only fooling themselves. You would actually have to go out, find a potential gopi in the not so mature stage of development of her prema, show her Krishna, and watch how she struggles being torn between obligations to this world and these mind blowing books that simply can’t be resisted even if they say completely outrageous things on the surface. “On the surface”… – at this point only gopis’ heads were above the surface and their minds were telling them one thing but their hearts, deep within prema filled waters of Yamuna, were saying another. The hearts wanted to come out and the minds were trying to stop it.

Just go out in the streets and actually experience this pastime in real life, and don’t pay attention to people who call this “external”. It isn’t. And Srila Prabhupada was absolutely right – if preaching stops our actual spiritual progress stops, too, and it can’t be revived by reading those CC and SB chapters or tons of other books going into minute details. Even those subtle shades of rasa can be found on the streets, if you are worried about missing out.

Or we can challenge external-internal dichotomy itself. If someone says the pinnacle of siddhanta is separation experienced by Radharani in Vrindavan, or as it was experienced by Lord Caitanya in Gambhira, we can answer that no, there is something higher than that – the same experience as manifested through otherwise most separated parts of the Absolute Truth – specs of His material energy. That would, logically, be the pinnacle of acintya bheda-abheda tattva – the farther you go away from Krishna the closer it feels. Or the more insignificant you become the greater the rasa.

So let the fools deride us for being only external devotees who talk to people about trivial things like they are not the bodies. What do they know? Certainly not the actual rasa.

And, of course, we could be telling people about reincarnation and know nothing about rasa, too – if we think it’s only about getting a donation or about book scores or about **doing** our service – all kinds of external reasons and explanations. We actually have to learn how to find these gopis in the streets, eternally connected to Krishna underneath their external appearances. We can’t theorize or only imagine it either, we actually have to see, and this vision is given by Lord’s mercy. There are ways to attain it but, ultimately, **He** has to give it.

This is not a theory.

Srila Prabhupada’s Disappearance

We almost midway between Srila Prabhupada’s disappearance day of 2020 and of 2021, so what am I talking about? There is a paradox of sorts there – on his disappearance days we make special efforts to remember him and so we come closer, he actually “appears” in our consciousness, while in the middle of the year he kind of “disappears”. But that’s not what this article is about.

What I want to reflect on here is largely an Indian thing, though it manifests among western devotees, too, in somewhat different ways. When I say it’s an “Indian” thing it doesn’t mean all Indians are affected in the same way – there are simply too many Indian devotees to fit under any particular umbrella. I’m talking about a particular slice I see in particular communities and I hope it doesn’t spread to other Indian devotees elsewhere. These affected sangas are significant and non-trivial, and therefore I feel the problem deserves to be addressed.

It’s “Indian” because they see Srila Prabhupada as one of them. Krishna is their God, not Prabhupada’s God. Bhagavatam is their purana, not Prabhupada’s purana. Lord Caitanya is their saint, not Prabhupada’s. Okay, Gaudiya Vaishnavas consider Lord Caitanya to be Krishna Himself, but for most Indians He was only a saint and if Gaydiyas make claims otherwise they accept them as “okay okay, whatever…” Indians are followers of “sanatana dharma”, as they love to proclaim, not followers of Prabhupada.

In other words, Srila Prabhupada is not as essential to them as to western devotees who had no idea of any of those things before Prabhupada came and informed them. Indians put Prabhupada in context of their religion and culture, but for western devotees Prabhupada himself created context from scratch and they put Indian culture into this context created by Prabhupada.

See how their visions are fundamentally different, how they are practically mirrors. It doesn’t matter for the moment which vision is correct and which isn’t, just that they are completely at odds.

Typical reconciliation is that Srila Prabhupada gave us the true, correct, and pure culture while today’s Indians live in some kind of degraded forms of it. Indians can accept this argument, too – no one would argue that onions are bona fide, for example, or that common Indian perceptions of God are not tinged with mayavada. Nevertheless, approaching Prabhupada from these two different angles cannot be reconciled completely and sooner or later the differences will come up to the surface.

Typical example of that is disagreements over some aspects of the siddhanta. For western devotees whatever Srila Prabhupada said is accepted as final truth and everybody else’s opinions to the contrary are rejected, but for Indian devotees allegiance to previous acharyas are never to be dropped. If previous acharyas said something than it must be accommodated, and, if necessary, Prabhupada’s opinion put aside. Note how I said “opinion” – not truth, but only an opinion. Sometimes it can be elevated to “personal realization”, but still not to the level of “truth”.

Srila Prabhupada might have spoken strongly on demigod worship but Indian vernacular doesn’t even have “demigods” in the vocabulary, so Prabhupada’s statements need interpretation. Maybe he didn’t mean it, or maybe he meant it only for westerners, or maybe he meant it only to certain types of demigod worship. At the end of the day, Indians are bound by their karma to respect the worship done by their ancestors and by their acharyas, they can’t give it up just because Srila Prabhupada said something somewhere.

This is understandable, but it’s still not what I meant by “disappearance” in the title. I mean something far more radical – Srila Prabhupada, as he was known to his western disciples, was not a person of Indian origin, not even of Gaydiya Vaishnava origin. His appearance in the west was a total surprise even for Srila Prabhupada himself. He had no idea it would turn this way. He himself couldn’t attribute his success to anything “Indian”, it had full potency by itself. The only connection he could trace was to the orders of his spiritual master. This is what he said again and again – my guru ordered me to print books, I did it, and this is what happened. He didn’t say that his mother taught him how to cook and so everybody loved his prasadam, and that’s how his first ISKCON temple survived. He didn’t claim proficiency in singing or playing mridanga. By Aindra’s standards he wouldn’t be allowed to play karatals on his 24hour kirtan party. Okay, he dedicated Krishna Book to his father, but that was one off. All the other times he gave credit only to following his guru’s order. Not even to his guru as a full personality – only to following one specific order.

The point is that Srila Prabhupada’s success was unique and it had a life of its own. It didn’t depend on anything else and it couldn’t be described in any other terms – it was a substance by itself, a category by itself. I will repeat – I think when Srila Prabhupada arrived in the US he himself had no idea what it would be like, it was a total surprise.

When it came Srila Prabhupada embraced it exactly like that – like it had a potency of its own and it had to be served, not controlled. This “success” dictated how Srila Prabhupada had to to things, not the other way around. I use the word “success” as only a label, it had to be felt to be described, as I said. I think the word “success” conveys the undeniable aspect of it – everybody knows what “success” is, everybody knows how good it feels, and nobody can deny it. But what you or I experienced as “success” is not the same thing as what was experienced by Srila Prabhupada and his followers.

Srila Prabhupada gave some explanations, the root of which is that it was a mercy of Lord Caitanya – based on the statement in CC that preaching can become successful only if Lord Caitanya puts His potency in it. On other occasions he attributed it to the power of the holy name, which he saw as absolute. This is the point where I can finally start talking about disappearance – we don’t see the power of Hare Krishna mantra as absolute anymore. An example – one devotee complained about being overwhelmed by sexual desires and Srila Prabhupada’s answer was to simply chant. In his explanation the power of Hare Krishna would drive away all lust from disciple’s heart. In Prabhupada’s experience he saw that happening all around him – hippies were chanting Hare Krishna and forgetting drugs and girlfriends. He saw it worked. We don’t. We offer all kinds of other solutions instead, like “watch your diet” or “stop watching porn”. No one today would say that simply chanting Hare Krishna mantra will solve your lust problem in a minute but Srila Prabhupada meant it exactly like that – chant loudly and lust will be gone immediately.

This is what has disappeared – the power of the holy name, and I would argue that its disappearance is linked to disappearance of Srila Prabhupada. It worked in his presence, we have many anecdotes documenting how minds and hearts immediately became pure in his presence, it was undeniable. Now the name is still with us but without Prabhupada its power is not manifested to the same degree. What I mean to say is that it’s Srila Prabhupada who has disappeared, not the Hare Krishna mantra.

Hare Krishna mantra is not tied to Srila Prabhupada exclusively, we all know that, but Srila Prabhupada gave it a particular potency. Sooo many devotees felt it directly. The annotation to the first Hare Krishna mantra record spoke about it with absolute clarity as if it was obvious to everyone. It was repeated from devotee to devotee, it was all-pervading understanding back then. Now it’s absent and no one talks that way with any conviction.

For me, however, it’s the preaching aspect of that same potency of Srila Prabhupada that disappeared first. Maybe because I can’t recall any miracles associated with Hare Krishna mantra but I was fortunate enough to see mind blowing preaching in action. It had a life on its own and, listening to many remembrances of that era, I don’t know anyone who did not notice it. They usually say only a few words (“millions of books were distributed”) and move on but actually seeing these millions of books going away to meet their eager readers was something else. At the time it was spoken exactly like this – books were going away on their own. They were not sold, not distributed, not given – they were going away on their own, and the entire purpose of sankirtana, as it was called back then, was to find that sweet spot in space and time where, by Lord Caitanya’s mercy, books would get a life of their own and practically distribute themselves against all odds and against all objections. The power was irresistible.

This is what has become absent and, to me, it indicates disappearance of Srila Prabhupada. Of course books were not the only vehicle of this mercy. One time I clearly felt it was when one of Prabhupada’s early disciples was describing San Francisco Ratha Yatra. Not the first one in 1967 but the one a few years later where Srila Prabhpada started the address with “My dear frustrated youth of America” (not exact words, but that’s how some remember it). To me it was the same kind of potency, the same “rasa”, so to speak, as the one I remember from my own life. It still lives in the hearts of at least some of Prabhupada’s followers, but that particular disciple has left his body already. Others remember it but prefer to talk about something else, like today’s politics. There is a lot to be said about why and how and who but let’s not talk about it now.

This disappearance is “mostly Indian” problem because this aspect of Srila Prabhupada’s success was never known there in the first place. They don’t have reference points for it, except may be construction of Juhu and Mayapur temples, which is not a lot in context of the entire Indian history and gets easily overflown by memories and histories of other events. Those other events are no less significant, like self-manifested deity of Radha Ramana, for example, but they are not “Prabhupada”.

For the past twenty something years Indian devotees distributed many more millions of books, and yet I never hear them speaking of book distribution with the same “rasa”. It’s just absent and book distribution means something else to them. Likewise, TOVP is a massive project, far bigger than Juhu, but TOVP presentations do not carry the same “rasa” for me. They rely on other things to “prove” themselves – like everybody should do seva, or everybody should make donations, or everybody should bathe Srila Prabhupada with sacred waters etc, and because of this conviction one should… When Prabhupada was present the proposition itself, whatever it was, had a power of its own, it was self-evident, not reliant on one’s appreciation of “seva” or “donations” or “sacred rivers”. These are aspects of Indian culture and they were totally absent when Prabhupada came to the west. He didn’t have to rely on them at all – his preaching was self-evident and no one know what “seva” even was.

This is a principal point, actually – people didn’t know what seva was and that it should have been offered – they offered service because Prabhupada was there and they felt they should do something in appreciation. Today it’s “you know that seva is important, and therefore you should go and offer it to Prabhupada.”

That’s why I’m saying that Srila Prabhpada has disappeared even though he is arguably at the most remembered stage in ISKCON’s recent history. His name and his pictures are everywhere, but not the actual memory of his presence.

Many of our senior devotees worry about it, they just express it differently. To me this disappearance is not very important – because Srila Prabhpada is present eternally, it’s only us who moved to a different location and, if we so desire, we can move into the place of his presence again.

What I really wanted to say but wrapped it in the disappearance topic is that Srila Prabhupada’s “success” was an entity of its own and even Srila Prabhupada was its servant, that even he wasn’t in control of it. To me this is the biggest manifestation of Lord Caitanya’s mercy and in decades since I haven’t found any substitutes that come even close. And I really mean “any substitutes” – not even if someone starts chanting three lakhs a day or cry incessantly or go into trance every time they see an image of Lord Jagannatha. I would even say that some big name ISKCON gurus of Indian origin have never seen it, simply because they weren’t there when it was manifested, they were in India, but that is a whole other can of worms.

I remember one of these big gurus wanted to visit the zone where preaching was booming but his request was rejected because “his mood would spoil everything”. Today this sounds ridiculous and great many devotees, each of them great in their own ways, would reject this argument out of hand but I, after deliberating on it for some time, would still argue that it was the right thing to do and that Srila Prabhupada’s preaching mood, his preaching rasa, should have been rightfully protected and that once that protection was withdrawn it simply disappeared – scroll to the top to see an explanation how and why.

On Maharaja Yadu and the need for strong body and sensual power

To supplement this quote “The soldiers in this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement must always possess physical strength, enthusiasm and sensual power” (SB 8.2.30p) related to Gajendra lila.

Maharaja Yadu, the founder of Yadava dynasty in which Krishna himself appeared, gives us a valuable lesson in this regard. His father, Yayati, “triggered” his wife once and got cursed to become old for that. He begged for mercy and was allowed to exchange his invalidity for someone else’s youth and thus have his wife back. First he approached Yadu but was flatly refused and on this basis Yadu’s behavior can be classified as adharma – refusing his own father, but it’s not as simple as that.

Yadu refused an adharmic order of his secondary father but carried out the desire of the Lord, who is the primary father. Why adharmic order? That’s actually interesting.

I, and I assume many others, thought that Yayati exchanging invalidity for youth meant that Yayati’s old body became young, but a couple of commentators on Bhagavatam take it to mean that “Yayati the soul” entered the body of a young person – it was a body swap, not a change of one body. So, when Yadu considered this offer, he saw it as his young body having sex with the body of his own mother! EWWW! Never mind it was his father’s soul inside – it’s still clearly adharmic, especially if we consider that body comes with thoughts and desires and so with the ability to feel sexual arousal in contact with certain other bodies/ideas. Since we can’t actually see the soul, it was son having sex with his mother and there is no other way to perceive it externally.

Back to Yadu, his main reasoning was that invalidity is a big obstacle in performance of one’s bhajana and therefore it should be rejected. One could say that pure devotion is transcendental but that’s not how Yadu saw himself. He knew that for his bhajana – for his sadhana, really, he needed a young body capable of expressing and purifying his desires and that an old body was of no use to him.

He didn’t want to be a hypocrite and pretend that he was so advanced and free from desires. He didn’t care that his reputation might take a hit the way early ISKCON devotees were ashamed of getting married, especially if they had already taken sannyasa.

Come to think of it, this kind of sannyasa is a social obligation and it dictates how one should behave according to expectations and desires of others. Yadu, on the other hand, thought – to hell with others, my first obligation is to the Lord and if the Lord wants me to purify my materialistic proclivities then so be it. This desire of the Lord is more important than anything else and I don’t care if it makes me appear weak or disobedient or anything. If the Lord wants me to appear fallen then so be it, too. I’m not going to ignore the Lord and listen to my friends and family instead.

In this way Yadu took an unconventional and unexpected path to perfection, but because it was Lord’s desire and he accepted it the Lord eventually appeared in Yadu’s dynasty and – not a little thing – manifested His full sweetness while doing so. This sweetness is impossible in the dynasties of those who live strictly by the rules – He tried as Lord Ramacandra of the Surya dynasty and maryada-purusottama – the perfectly behaved human being, but it just didn’t work.

This is related to the nature of sweetness – it comes from being very close and forgiving. It appears when absolutely everything is accepted and so there is a complete unity between two persons. Completeness of this unity is not in thinking and desiring exactly the same but in eagerly embracing any and all different desires as one’s own. In simple words – whatever you do, I will not judge you for that and I will back you up all the way, we are in this together. It’s the foundation of unconditional surrender – devotees surrender to the Lord and the Lord surrenders to the desires of His devotees.

This sweetness – madhurya – permeates every other rasa in Vraja, they are all just variations of it. In this world, however, it exists only as a brief period of infatuation at the beginning of a relationship but today people are raised to ignore it and overpower it and behave in a self-interested way instead – because no one can be trusted and one might make serious mistakes affecting the rest of his life and because it saves one from heartbreaks and disappointments and so on. Therefore I don’t want to make any comparisons between madhurya and whatever is available in this world.

My point is that Yadu felt the need to deal with his material desires and the Lord fully supported him every step of the way – you want a wife? Get married, have children, rule the kingdom – get it out of your system so that these unfulfilled desires don’t bother you in your old age. This sounds like pravritti marga, which is not generally welcome in our sampradaya, but neither the Lord nor His devotees are conditioned by these considerations. Whatever works – in their relationship – is perfect and should not be judged or intruded upon. They are happy together and that’s all that matters. If we have some other ideas how they should interact we should keep them to ourselves.

There is a lot to say about Moon dynasty in this regard – the story of Moon god’s adultery plays a prominent part in how it developed. One could say it’s all built on illicit relationship, it’s an integral part of what makes it “Moon” as opposed to “Sun”. Sun is the manifestation of sat-shakti of the Lord, the shakti or righteousness and propriety while Moon is the manifestation of ananda – of whatever feels right. Therefore real ananda – madhurya – is impossible in the realm of sat and sat is impossible in the realm of ananda – think parakiya rasa as an example. Krishna just does not want to be married to Radha because it dampens their actual relationship, it takes the edge out of it – it must be illicit to be enjoyed fully.

Elsewhere this dichotomy manifests as right-hand and left-hand paths in Vedic society. We traditionally follow the right-hand path, especially in our behavioral norms, but our goal is totally left-hand, where Srimati Radharani stands. But we can’t get there without right-hand mercy of Lord Nityananda so both must be there. It’s hard to navigate these waters and even harder to describe a straight and narrow path towards our goal. I suspect it doesn’t even exist and there must be a point where a devotee says “good-bye my morning bath” as in that famous verse. If one is unable to make this step he will never enter the realm of rasa, we have been warned about that, too.

Vanity thought #1689. Single purpose

I wonder if my recent speculation about single flavor experiences through an apparent variety of services can be applied elsewhere, in particular to Kṛṣṇa līlā? It’s not how we imagine it, that’s for sure, but there are good arguments in support of it, too.

The starting point was our possible connection with Lord Rāmacandra – we don’t seem to fit in His epic story with Sītā and then war with Rāvaṇa but if we think of Him as a perfect king then varṇāśrama could be our way. Lord Caitanya wasn’t interested in it, Kṛṣṇa wasn’t interested in it either, but Lord Rāmacandra seems like the perfect patron Lord of performing our varṇāśrama duties.

When we talk about varṇāśrama duties we can talk about our real life experiences and that’s where it might get real speculative but I don’t think that there could be a big disagreement here. We seem to do a lot of things under the aegis of varṇāśrama and going to work feels very different from relating to one’s wife or children but once we get over the duality of our experiences we can all see the underlying driver – desire to serve the Lord to the best of our ability.

I’d argue that it’s the same motivation regardless of external engagement. It doesn’t matter whether our duties are pleasant or stressful at each given moment, we still have to perform them because doing so would please the Lord. I’d argue that it’s the only way to find a real connection between our activities here and Kṛṣṇa – everything we do must be done for His pleasure only regardless of our feelings and regardless of the results. Our guru wants us to be perfect little soldiers in this battle, too, though following varṇāśrama rules is not very high on the list of things we should be doing for Lord Caitanya’s mission.

Speaking of Lord Caitanya – everything we do for Him must somehow be connected to saṅkīrtana, to spreading the glory of the holy name. I’ve written a couple of posts about this back in December – it’s entirely possible to build our entire society around this single preaching mission so that every devotee, from temple pot cleaner to best book distributor to temple president see themselves not as cooks, managers, or salesmen but as servants of saṅkīrtana. It’s a beautiful attitude to have, the best ever possible, and we have had experiences of implementing it successfully. Maybe now is not the time for it, I don’t know, but when it worked it worked wonders.

Once we learn to see that connection in each bit of our service we should realize that it is driven by one and the same “rasa”, just like following varṇāśrama. We want other people to appreciate Kṛṣṇa, that’s our single motive behind everything we do. I put “rasa” in quotes there because we don’t have a name for it – it’s not exactly dāsya, even though we are servants. Lord Caitanya’s mood is described as audārya, meaning magnanimity or generosity, and it could be a sub-rasa under mādhurya or something, I wouldn’t delve into Six Gosvāmīs literature just yet to find out exactly – if they even mentioned audārya it might have been in different context anyway.

The same attitude was displayed by Prahlāda Mahārāja, btw, who is in dāsya mood but there’s an argument that his compassion towards other living beings was manifestation of compassion of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī. There’s an argument that rasas are not building up from śānti to mādhurya but rather spread down from Śrī Rādha to all other devotees who display parts of her complete spectrum of devotion. Some get this audārya and some choose to serve the Lord without it (if it’s even possible).

I’m not a sucker of compassion, a word I believe is generally abused in our movement, but that’s what Lord Caitanya’s mercy is – compassion. It’s what drives His saṅkīrtana movement even though saṅkīrtana itself can contain any other rasa. The best place to feel this magnanimity is in Māyāpura, it just permeates the whole atmosphere there and it is clearly different from the atmosphere of Vṛndāvana. To feel real sweetness of Vṛndāvana is impossible without being qualified for it but no one can escape the audārya of Māyāpura.

That’s probably why Śrīla Prabhupāda made us come to our annual festivals to Māyāpura so that we can recharge our batteries and return to preaching with full enthusiasm. It just doesn’t happen to those visiting Vṛndāvana where the most common reaction is to withdraw and dedicate oneself to chanting and recollecting Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes.

Anyway, it is possible to see all service under varṇāśrama as driven by one single motive, one single rasa. It’s possible to see all service under saṅkīrtana as driven by one single rasa, too. Is it possible to see all service to Kṛṣṇa in a similar way?

On the surface of it – no, because Kṛṣṇa has a variety of devotees serving in a variety of rasas. That is not the case with Lord Rāmacandra as the king of Ayodhyā and it’s not the case with Lord Caitanya. We reject Gaurāṇga-nāgarīs who pretend to have various relationships with Mahāprabhu from His pre-saṅkīrtana days and accept only serving to His preaching mission as legitimate means of relating to Him. Relationships with Kṛṣṇa are not so restrictive.

What could be restrictive is our personal relationships with Him. In the spiritual world we might indeed be a one trick pony. Even those devotees playing in manjarīs focus on one single aspect of their service, afaik. Usually it’s decorating something in preparation of the visit of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. From description of other gopīs we can see that they are all expert in one particular field. Some are good a putting tilakas, some are good a cooking, some are good a playing musical instruments and so on. It is quite possible that they do not know how to do anything else and can’t care less about Kṛṣṇa’s relationships with calves or cowherd boys, it just doesn’t occur to them because they are too busy doing their own thing.

We also have examples of seemingly inanimate objects that serve only one single purpose – like the rope and the milk in Dāmodara līlā. They might be aware of everything else that is going on but all their lives they wait for that single moment when the Lord finally interacts with them.

Another argument is the fact that devotees on higher stages of progress are given one single mantra to worship the Lord and these mantras disclose one single devotional sentiment. From Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta’s commentary on Brahma-Saṁhitā I remember that everyone worships the Lord with mantras there. It’s only for us there’s a difference between mantra and the “real life” but in the spiritual world the sound and the reality are non-different.

One mantra, one sentiment, one rasa, one service – seems logical. It does not allow for personal variety but it should allow for variety of actions to express that sentiment, just as saṅkīrtana or varṇāśrama.

The only problem is pastimes where gopīs and Kṛṣṇa interact in unpredictable ways, especially when other devotees are involved, too. In those pastimes there aren’t any restrictions on what each and every person would do. Within limits, of course, because gopīs behave as gopīs and gopas behave as gopas. Still, some of these personalities are very versatile in their service. To this I could answer that we are never going to reach their platform, and that even with this versatility there’s always one single motive behind it anyway. Gopīs do not have any other interest but Kṛṣṇa or Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa, as the case may be, everything they do serves this singular purpose in one single mood.

Hmm, it seems my new speculation is holding up very nicely. It would be great to check it out personally but for that one would need to visit the spiritual realm which is not on the cards, unfortunately. Maybe one day…

Vanity thought #1688. One trick pony

Last time I talked about our possible connection with Lord Rāmacandra – service to varṇāśrama. It’s a speculative idea, of course, and I’m just getting started. Well, I used to say “I’m just getting started” but these days fifteen minutes after start I’m already thinking about a nap so nothing big will come out of it.

As I explained in the previous post, it’s hard to imagine how we could be useful to Lord Rāmacandra in any other way. We aren’t conditioned for Rāma līlā, we are conditioned for the mission of Lord Caitanya. We can fit very nicely in there even if removed from Lord’s appearance by five hundred years. The mission is the same – spread chanting of the holy name, the service is the same – chant, go out, meet people, tell them about Kṛṣṇa, the environment is the same – toxic, just to a different degree, the orders are the same, the philosophy is the same, so we are all set.

There’s a possible way to fit into Rāma līlā if we consider the inner meaning of battle with Rāvaṇa, though. If we consider Rāvaṇa not as a person, a demoniac king with plans to conquer the universe, but as an attitude – a demoniac wish to enjoy Lord’s property. In this sense we all have Rāvaṇas inside our hearts and we all have to battle them.

Are we going to kill this demoniac attitude? Nope, according to the story Lord Rāmacandra does that, we only assist to the best of our abilities. Considering that this demoniac attitude is rooted deep inside our hearts we are both the enemy and Lord Rāma’s soldiers, so our role here gets a bit confusing. Aren’t we also Sītā? We are being held hostage to our demoniac desires, too. Sītā didn’t fight, she just kept her chastity and patiently waited for the Lord to come to her rescue.

On one hand we aren’t supposed to sit and wait but actively fight against our anarthas, on the other hand, after many years of trying, we can also admit that until the Lord comes and helps us we are not going to achieve anything worthwhile. We can’t grow the tree of bhakti on our own, it has its own schedule. We can nourish it with chanting and pull out weeds of anarthas but bhakti, just like any other plant, ultimately needs the bright sun of Lord’s mercy. If that mercy is not there nothing will grow despite best attempts at gardening.

In that last metaphor our role as gardeners is only minor but pulling the weeds is Rāma’s battle with Rāvaṇa so it must be central to the story. As I said, translating Rāma līlā into our own lives is confusing and all these metaphors can easily get away.

Service within varṇāśrama, on the other hand, is solid. It’s always, always available, no matter what condition we were born into. We might not qualify by our occupational duties for the four varṇas and we might not qualify for the four aśramas by our personal behavior but we know what to be done and have the work cut out for us anyway. We know we have to get up, go to work, we know what we have to do there, we know when we have to come home, we know our chores around the house and our duties towards our families. It will never ever go away. We all have mothers and fathers and we all have sexual desires that need to be controlled even in the most degraded of relationships. We also all have to aim at eventual renunciation at the end of our lives even if full sannyāsa is prohibited in this age.

Speaking of sannyāsa – perhaps we shouldn’t look at that prohibition as simply an order, which would imply the choice of obey or disobey, but also as a description of Kali yuga conditions. It would mean that we can’t disobey this order even if we tried. It is said that in Kali yuga our prāṇa is attached to our flesh while in previous ages it was attached to the nervous system and even only the bones. It means that we cannot possibly survive without food while people like Rāvaṇa could undergo severe tapasyā for thousands of years. I mean even what is now considered fossils could still be, theoretically speaking, a living body of a meditating sage. That kind of sannyāsa is out of question, of course. We can’t survive by begging and living under the trees either, not in the present climate, not even in Vṛndāvana where summer temperatures require substantial shelters and electric fans not to die of a heat stroke.

Where was I? Ah, varṇāśrama – it seems we have multiple duties varied with our positions and our ages but in its essence the service is one and the same – following what needs to be followed. It’s in this sense that I meant “one trick pony” as a title. On the surface it would appear that we are doing so many different things but with practice we should all see that it’s all the same service, following orders, and there won’t be any other rasa involved in it ever.

We are not going to sit and watch our family duties being performed all by themselves, so no śānta, we are not going to treat the Lord and His orders as our friends and we are certainly not going to give orders ourselves, so no sakhya and no vātsalya. The only possible relationship with the Lord we can have under varṇāśrama is dāsya, there’s no other option.

As I said, it can manifest in a variety of ways but I’m not sure if this variety adds any transcendental flavors. In varṇāśrama these extra flavors come from interaction with other people, not with the Lord Himself, and they come only on the material level. Do these extra relationships exist in Vaikuṇṭha? Apparently yes – they have families, houses etc there, but it’s not how citizens of Vaikuṇṭha are defined – they are defined by their flawless service and by their constant absorption in the Lord. The fact that they also have families barely registers. We are taught to think that despite of the variety of engagements and personal flying airplanes all they can ever think of is their service.

So, I don’t think it’s dāsya mixed with attraction for their wives or with the exhilaration of flying your own vimāna. Nope, it’s just dāsya, so “one trick pony” description is true even there, albeit it carries negative connotations in modern language. I intend to overrule this negative connotation when talking about service but I’ll leave it for another day.

Vanity thought #1559. The gift of purnamrita

There’s a huge variety of rasas in the spiritual world. There are only five primary ones, of course, but all the variety in our world is a product of only three guṇas so mixture of five should give a far richer environment, not to mention that primary rasas are also aided by secondary ones.

None of those rasas are available to us while in the conditioned state, however. We get only perversions of rasa just as we get only perversions of spiritual bodies. Everything in this world is like an upside down reflection of a tree, as Kṛṣṇa allegorically explained in Bhagavad Gītā. When engaged in Lord’s service here, however, we get to practice dāsya, the service attitude. I doubt that it’s exactly the same rasa as experienced by Kṛṣṇa’s servants in Vṛndāvana, maybe when we achieve perfection in our service here but certainly not on a neophyte stage. As I mentioned yesterday, there’s one more rasa available to us and it’s a mysterious one – I am talking about saṅkīrtana.

As Lord Caitanya declared in the first verse of Śikṣāṣṭaka (CC Antya 20.12) it “enables one to taste full nectar at every step” – meaning it IS a kind of rasa. He also said that it increases the ocean of transcendental bliss so even if it isn’t a rasa in its own right it still acts like one, what do we care about its proper classification?

In Lord Caitanya’s words saṅkīrtana is pūrṇa-amṛta, full nectar, so it could mean that it carries the flavor of all rasas. When devotees achieve perfection in chanting they can, indeed, derive all kinds of rasa from the holy name so it’s not an unsubstantiated speculation. The question is, how much and what kind of rasa trickles down to us. Do we get to decide what flavor is there? Liberated devotees serve the Lord according to their spiritual inclinations, we don’t have those yet, so what kind of bliss is shown to us when we serve in the saṅkīrtana mission?

There’s an explanation that saṅkīrtana embodies the highest rasa, that of gopīs. Being brought in the line of Rūpa Gosvāmī we appreciate the service of mañjarīs higher than of anyone else but I’m not an expert on exact definition of their rasa. Sometimes they act asexually, is it a deficiency on their part or is it an evolution of their love for Kṛṣṇa? They also don’t see their service as more intimate than that of Śrī Rāḍhā, nor anyone else thinks this way, so it can’t be the highest.

The argument could be made that mañjarīs are actually in dāsya rasa, since all they do is serve someone else, but that is not the conclusion of our ācāryas. Somehow or other they list mañjarī bhāva under śṛṅgāra/madhurya. There are verses describing how mañjarīs, though not engaged in direct contact with Kṛṣṇa, experience the same transcendental emotions as Śrī Rāḍha herself, sometimes even to a higher degree. Again, I’m not an expert and I don’t even understand how I got myself in the position of having to explain it. Way above my paygrade.

Anyway, the point is that saṅkīrtana, and I’m talking mostly about book distribution here, though any kind of preaching would do, too, is exactly like the service of mañjarīs. Saṅkīrtana devotees find suitable souls and introduce them to Kṛṣṇa, thus increasing His and someone else’s transcendental pleasure rather than indulging in their own.

The greatest joy of saṅkīrtana is to see someone else’s soul lit up when hearing about the Lord, see the hunger for Lord’s service suddenly awakening in unsuspecting people. That’s what saṅkīrtana devotees go for – bring bliss of Kṛṣṇa consciousness to other people. Mañjarīs do the same thing, they find someone who catches Kṛṣṇa’s eye and introduce her to Him. Actually, this behavior is attributed to Śrī Rāḍha herself but mañjarīs are her extensions, they all share the same attitude of transcendental humility and eagerness to forgo their own pleasure for the sake of others.

The last verse of Śikṣāṣṭaka comes to mind here, too – if breaking our hearts is what pleases Kṛṣṇa at the moment than we ought to assist Him in this endeavor, and not just ought to but offer our services with enthusiasm. Lord Caitanya displayed the highest levels of bhakti, conjugal love in separation, so if we find similar attitudes in saṅkīrtana then it’s another argument for it to be the rasa of the highest caliber.

The argument can be made here that initial contact with Kṛṣṇa consciousness can be intoxicating but it eventually wears off. Shouldn’t we seek more mature displays of devotion than chasing those first impressions? This can be answered in two ways. First is that this initial contact is made in innocence and simplicity. It’s not inferior in any way, it’s just that with passing of time this initial simplicity and implicit faith gets lost and replaced by elaborate speculative constructions that make us into guarantors of devotion – we do things and learn things and deserve positions on devotional ladder. This contaminating attitude is absent on the initial stages where everything is seen as Kṛṣṇa’s grace.

Secondly, it’s not just tiny jīvas little highs that we are after. Kṛṣṇa experience the pleasure of reunion with the lost souls, too. It’s His pleasure that we should be seeking out first and foremost when serving the saṅkīrtana mission. Beginners ecstasy will gradually fade away and get covered by ignorance but Kṛṣṇa’s bliss won’t. One could see saṅkīrtana as making people happy and being pleased with it but one could also see saṅkīrtana as pleasing to the Lord and it’s in this second aspect of it that there’s no limit to the possible ānanda. It’s this ānanda that gets increased at every step – Kṛṣṇa’s ānanda, not ours.

The argument can also be made that we engage in saṅkīrtana on the orders of our guru and if that’s all that drives us then it’s dāsya rasa at best. Fair enough – not everybody gets to taste the bliss of book distribution, most fail miserably. In this case we need to persevere despite the failings and carry out our guru’s orders regardless. We might not qualify for the ultimate bliss this way but we WILL learn to appreciate the taste of selfless service which can raise us to brahma-bhūta platform. One can’t engage in bhakti until one reaches that level anyway, if we are not there yet we have little hope of appreciating saṅkīrtana in full.

Or, perhaps, Lord Caitanya’s saṅkīrtana is pūrna-amṛta and includes both dāsya and madhurya rasas as I argued here, and probably more. One thing is certain – He has given it to us and therefore we all are eligible to partake. It’s only out of foolishness and ignorance that we choose to pursue any other types of service for which we might never get the blessings. I mostly mean those into high end literature but those who settle on deity worship or management, too. Even though these are legitimate engagements but if they exclude saṅkīrtana they will not be fruitful.

Vanity thought #1558. Ranking rasa

The relationship between mundane and spiritual rasa seems to be unavoidable. In the conditioned state we can’t talk about rasa without referencing its mundane equivalents. Literally can’t talk – the words we use are defined by mundane reality. Whenever we say something about rasa we might mean well but what we actually mean is examples of materialistic relationships.

On such a platform nothing good can come out of discussions on rasa-tattva and so we need a different approach, we need to try to define rasa negatively – it’s not this and it’s not that, and all of it must be rejected. This is attitude is non-devotional, however, we are not impersonalists with their “neti neti”, our spiritual reality is positive, so we need to adapt our approach again – it’s not this, not that, but that other thing is genuine and we should seek it every moment of our lives.

When we talk about ranking rasa we say that śāntā is the lowest, then comes dāsya, then sakhya, then vātsalya, and then finally mādhurya, we know this progression by heart. It makes total sense to us and it explained very nicely in our Nectar of Devotion.

In śāntā rasa devotees are aware of Lord’s presence but they do not come in direct contact with Him, there’s no service to speak of. In Vṛndāvana these devotees get engaged by others on higher platforms. Flowers get picked up and presented to Kṛṣṇa by gopīs, for example. Milk get churned and fed to Kṛṣṇa by Mother Yaśodā, ropes come in contact with Lord’s body by Mother Yaśodā’s mercy, too. On their own these inanimate things just sit and wait, sometimes impatiently, but they do not initiate contact themselves.

In dāsya rasa service is full blown. It’s what service means in the material world – servants carry out orders and they are always subordinate. By contrast, we don’t talk about friendship as a service. That rasa, sakhya, is unique in this way – parents do offer service to their children, they serve each and every whim, and so do wives, but not friends, who are completely free from all service obligations. They never submit their own interests against their will, like parents are forced to do when the baby is crying. Wives have to put aside their egos, too, but not friends. If egos got bruised then there’s no friendship, as simple as that. It’s like there should be no service in friendship by definition or it will become weird.

This is probably where we should get the clue that describing spiritual rasa in terms of our mundane experience here isn’t of much help. Take the case of a crying baby. Parents might be willing to sacrifice their sleep to attend to the baby but this will has its limits, as well as the will to change diapers, wash clothes, warm milk and do all the other bothersome things. Exemplary parents might never fail in execution of these duties but even they won’t lie that sometimes they wish that the baby wasn’t there. This attitude obviously has no place in the spiritual world. And yet Kṛṣṇa can be extremely annoying there, too, especially for Mother Yaśodā’s friends who often come to complain to her about Kṛṣṇa’s behavior. It’s impossible to reconcile their anger at Kṛṣṇa with their constant, uninterrupted love for Him. When they are at Mother Yaśodā’s demanding action they are not kidding, they want punishment. It would take us major word jugglery to call this anger an expression of love. In our world it simply doesn’t compute.

Then there’s a little twist with parakīyā rasa, too – in our world, Prabhupāda noted very often, this kind of behavior is abominable but in the spiritual world it is the most sublime. It’s probably not very difficult to explain this away because as far as enjoyment is concerned, extra-marital relationships are right there at the top, condemned or not, but they feel very very good, practically irresistible.

Okay, we more or less understand all of that, and some of us understand it better than others. Some argue that discussing these pastimes is what we need to enter into actual Kṛṣṇa līlā and they engage in reading and contemplating this stuff as their daily sādhana.

I’m firmly against this approach, however. Our appreciation for these pastimes is purely material, we learn to understand and value them based on our material experiences of love, anger, gratitude, jealousy etc. We think that if we arrange these mundane rasa is a certain way they will unlock the spiritual reality. By “arrange” I mean avoiding rasa-ābhāsa and putting experiences in a certain order – first gopīs did that, then Kṛṣṇa responded as follows, then gopīs felt this and did that etc. One mellow follows the other, only certain mellows are admitted, there are books where all this is very nicely described, so if we can mentally recreate these pastimes it’s as good as seeing them for real.

Of course not. It has as much in common with spiritual reality as little girls’ tea parties with entertaining actual guests.

We cannot experience any spiritual rasa in a non-liberated state. It simply won’t happen, it can’t happen by definition. And yet our ācāryas do give us positive spiritual engagement – they give us service. Out of all spiritual rasas we are ordered to practice dāsya. It might not be real dāsya yet but this is what we are authorized to do.

We serve our guru, who is the external manifestation of the Lord. We do not fraternize with our guru, we do not practice sakhya or vāstalya, we do not practice śāntā either. We must only serve and always be subordinate, never equal. It’s the same rasa we must exhibit in deity service, too.

Does it mean that the bliss we derive from this kind of service is spiritual? Does it mean it’s a reflection of a genuine spiritual dāsya? I hope so, but if we ever get to experience glimpses of spiritual bliss it doesn’t always come from service itself, it’s just bliss, sometimes it feels that it’s Kṛṣṇa’s reciprocation, His mercy, that we earned it. Spiritual dāsya, however, is not about the rewards but about service itself. We can sit and enjoy moments of our bliss but actual servants never do that.

My point here is that our bliss is still not rasa. I think that at the very best it’s just droplets of ānanda being blown our way, real rasa, by comparision, is the ocean itself.

So, whenever we talk about this rasa coming first, or this rasa being contained within that, we have no idea what we are doing. It’s only mental speculations. The very first person to introduce rasa into our sampradāya, Mādhavendra Purī, is a tree in the spiritual world. The very first person to talk about rasa at all was Śukadeva Gosvāmī, and he is a parrot. Constitutionally they are both in śāntā rasa and yet they have no problems expertly educating us on all other mellows which, in our classification, should be beyond them.

There’s one more rasa available to us, we can taste it to our heart’s content, but it’s impossible to classify it with certainty. It’s a special case and it deserves a separate post, so tomorrow.

Vanity thought #1556. Raso vai sah

Lord Caitanya often invoked this statement from Taittirīya Upaniṣad as proof of the blissful nature of the Absolute. One who knows rasa knows all the bliss and one who knows Kṛṣṇa knows all rasa, it’s further stated there. Or maybe not, but the essential meaning is the same.

Looking for the verse itself I found it in a somewhat different place, not 2.7.1 as given by Śrīla Prabhupāda in this purport, for example. He probably got the number from Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura. This translation comes with commentary by Śaṅkarācārya, I’ve read it, still can’t understand how they avoid the conclusion that relationship with the Absolute is eternal. Apparently, they have to reduce rasa to simple, undifferentiated bliss and substitute it with happiness derived from Brahman realization of the Absolute. In our understanding it’s not even ānanda but only “sat”, eternity, and absence of misery that comes with liberation.

To them it’s all the same – rasa, ānanda, sat, Brahman, Self. So many terms without any actual distinction between them, they can’t have all this variety. We can, and we say that they are simply in denial. To us it all makes perfect sense because we are not advaitins, we are eternal souls in eternal relationships with God. Once you declare yourself to be one with God you can’t explain the variety that comes from relationships and so reduce it all to one vague bliss, which isn’t even bliss but absence of suffering, as I already said.

Interestingly, the subject of rasa poses a problem even for fellow vaiṣṇavas of the Madhva sampradāya. It is actually OUR sampradāya but the relationship is not that simple when it comes to rasa-tattva, or, indeed, to the rest of our Gauḍiyā philosophy, too.

When Lord Caitanya traveled in South India He went to Uḍupī, the headquarters of the Tattvavādīs, as followers of Madhvācārya are known. Instead of accepting them as His spiritual preceptors Lord Caitanya defeated them, which is not how we should normally relate to our predecessor ācāryas. At first Tattvavādīs considered Mahāprabhu a māyāvādī sannyasī and avoided talking to Him and only when they noticed His ecstatic love as He danced for the pleasure of their deity. Gopala, that they paid Him any attention.

First thing Caitanya Caritāmṛta says about Tattvavādīs is that they were very proud of their devotion and their knowledge of the scriptures, which is never a good sign. Lord Caitanya politely asked their chief about goal of life. Dedicating one’s life under the rules of vaṛnāśrama-dharma to Kṛṣṇa leads to five types of liberation, ācārya replied. Lord Caitanya, however, offered a different answer – hearing and chanting Kṛṣṇa’s name with nine kinds of devotional service that follow. When one attains this platform of loving devotional service he attains the fifth goal of life, which is premā.

Fruitive activities needs to be given up, and by analyzing duties under varṇāśrama one should come to the conclusion that they should be given up, too, and then Lord Caitanya quoted sarva-dharmān parityajya verse from Bhagavad Gītā. He further expanded on the topic of pure devotional service but offered a way out for the Tattvavādī ācārya at the end – seeing Lord Caitanya as māyāvādī he didn’t offer pure devotion as the ultimate goal of life on purpose, so it wasn’t really the lack of his knowledge but a matter of etiquette. The ācārya accepted everything said by Lord Caitanya as truth and that they, indeed, follow these precepts in their sampradāya.

This is where Lord Caitanya delivered His verdict (CC Madhya 9.276-277):

Both the fruitive worker and the speculative philosopher are considered nondevotees. We see both elements present in your sampradāya. The only qualification that I see in your sampradāya is that you accept the form of the Lord as truth.

Twice in these verses He used the word tomāra – YOUR sampradāya, not our sampradāya, meaning He clearly saw the difference. The explanation is that the sampradāya got contaminated by non-devotional mentality and as such we can’t pledge our allegiance to it. It doesn’t mean we reject Madvhācārya himself and it doesn’t mean we reject their philosophy, it’s just that they have become deviant in their goals and practices and lost the spirit of pure devotion. If it happens to us we would reject such dead branches, too, and god knows we have plenty of deviants ourselves.

Because Tattvavādīs got even the basics wrong there’s no point in arguing about rasa tattva, they don’t teach it at all. When liberation is considered the highest goal of life, which is a contamination by jñāna, there’s naturally no talk about relationships with the Lord in the spiritual world, they just don’t go that far.

Consequently, they reject rasa as a product of the material guṇas and treat our worship of relationships between Kṛṣṇa and gopīs the same way as māyāvādīs do – it’s not real, it’s just māyā pastimes of saguṇa Brahman. They can’t understand how we can possibly put Śrī Rādhā above Lakṣmī, it sounds ridiculous to them.

I actually understand their bewilderment. The scope of their spiritual inquiry is limited by the universe – what we can experience in pre-liberation stage. In the universal scheme of things Śrī Rādhā is just a cowherd girl, at best she appears once in a day of Brahmā, how can she possibly be greater than Lakṣṃī? How could Kṛṣṇa be greater than Viṣṇu? He is just one of the incarnations, which is true – from the universe perspective.

We, however, look at it from the POV of Goloka, which is far far above not only our universe but innumerable Vaikuṇṭhas that fill the spiritual sky. When we say that Kṛṣṇa or Rādhā are greater than Viṣṇu/Nārāyaṇa and Lakṣṃī we talk about Goloka Kṛṣṇa and Goloka Rādhā, not their appearances within the universe. Tattvavādīs, however, do not have a concept of Goloka, they only see Vṛndāvana as a village in northern India, that’s all.

The rasas enjoyed by Kṛsṇa with His devotees here, therefore, are non-different from rasas enjoyed by ordinary boys and girls and their parents, there’s no way, in Tattvavādīs view, that they can even approach the divinity of Lakṣmī-Nārāyaṇa, let along surpass it. They see these pastimes as temporary and insignificant, in other words as māyā, and that makes them practically māyāvādīs, if not for the acceptance of the eternal existence of Nārāyaṇa, which is the only good thing left in their sampradāya, as stated by Lord Caitanya.

Btw, what I said about them above is not some five hundred year old stuff, it’s what they are saying now.

How do they explain “raso vai saḥ”? I do not know, but the only meaning that makes perfect sense is that the Lord is always engaged in spiritual pastimes with His devotees and these blissful relationships constitute His very nature. Kṛṣṇa is greater than Viṣṇu on the basis of rasa – He gets to experience more varieties of bliss than Nārāyaṇa, while Madhvas and others judge greatness in relation to the observable universe, by the degrees of opulence, power, and control, which is at best dāsya. Followers of Rāmānuja at least appreciate rasa in dāsya, but, unfortunately, not Madhvas.

The only remedy for Tattvavādīs is to accept Lord Caitanya but they somehow can’t come to grips with that, so we get to keep all rasa to ourselves even if sharing it would have been better.