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Post by Nitaidas on Feb 1, 2011 12:07:35 GMT -6
Namaskar, I find the works of Julian of Norwich beautiful and revealing, she is said to be the first women to be printed in the English language, may be you have come across her, if not she is worth looking in to. Yes, I have read her. I may have even used her work in a class when I was teaching up at Iowa State. Anyway, yes, you are right. She is well worth studying. More recently I used Meister Eckhart in a class and discovered the communities of women called Beguines that he was at one point put in pastoral charge of and with whom he sympathized. Several of these women were extraordinary and they wrote books for which they were condemned and even burned at the stake. Perhaps Magaret Porete was one of the leading members of this movement (well it is not clear that she was actually a beguine; she was part of a "liberty of the spirit" movement that the church authorities found troubling.). Her work is The Mirror of Simple Souls and for publishing it she was burned in 1310. The book is in old French and I notice that there are at least two recent translations of it available. I have not read this work, but it is on my to-be-read list. I don't know anything about this book. Could you elaborate on the connection between Premananda and Bhaktivinode? I don't recall that from Carney's essay. It is quite likely that they knew each other, but I have never seen any discussion of that. That Premananda was close to Prabhu Jagadbandhu is beyond doubt. That he interviewed Bodo Baba is also unquestionable. That he also had connections with Ram Das Babaji is also clear. But I have never found any reference to his having a relationship with Bhaktivinode. When the Kybalion came out (1908) he was in the USA. He arrived in the USA in 1902. Bhaktivinode was never in the USA, as far as I know. How they could have collaborated on this and why? I don't know. The most likely author of the text is William Walker Atkinson, as Chicago lawyer who later became known as Yogi Ramcharaka. Atkinson did know Premananda Bharati. He contributed essays to Bharati's monthly journal. He may have even been a disciple of Baba Bharati. So I could see them perhaps collaborating on the book Kybalion, but not Bhaktivinode. Again the question is why? I have not read the book. Is there any clear Krsnaism in the book? Bhaktivinoda was a Datta (Kayastha) and Premananda Bharati was a Mukherji (brahmin). It is unlikely that they were related. Premananda also claims that his conversion took place while watching a drama on Mahaprabhu. I am not sure how big a role Prabhu Jagadbandhu had in that. Bhaktivinode and Bharati may have shared educational experiences because they were both upper class men living at roughly the same time. At first they was overawed by the West and later they turned back to their native roots. The same might be said of Vijaykrishna Goswami.
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Post by Nitaidas on Feb 1, 2011 12:21:47 GMT -6
Hi Nitaidasji Thank you for this site and for sharing your translations. Because you asked, I will tell you that I am very interested in the translations of the commentaries by the GV acharyas. Which ones, I dont know, somehow I have a feeling that there are some that have not been translated into english. I know that they sometimes come as very voluminous and the translations therefore would take much time, would require deeper engagement on the texts and thus hard work. What commentaries do you have in mind? Commentaries on what? Gita, Bhagavata, Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, Ujjvala-nilamani? No one is without biases. I try to be as transparent about mine as possible, keeping them clearly separate from the views of the text I am translating. I also like to include the text itself making it possible for others to form their own opinions on its meaning. Often this multiplicity of meaning is built into the text. I have. He awaits the pleasure of hearing from you. That is certainly his motivation for trying to establish these asramas and retreat houses. He can't do it alone. So far there has been little interest in serious sadhana like that he learned from our Baba. But who knows, perhaps things will change.
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Post by malati on Feb 2, 2011 1:00:08 GMT -6
What commentaries do you have in mind? Commentaries on what? Gita, Bhagavata, Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, Ujjvala-nilamani?
Nitaidasji
What I'm thinking about are those similar to Raga Vartma Chandrika by Srila Visvanatha Chakrivartipad ?? ( I'm not so sure because I gave my book to an Indian ISKCON devotee) which was commented upon by Srila Anantadas babaji.
BTW, I checked the members list so I can email Jagadishdas but he's not on the list. Anyway, If he's reading this, I'd like to wish him success in his project and like others here, will surely support it any little way I can. I hope to be one of the attendees in the near future.
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Post by Nitaidas on Feb 2, 2011 11:53:21 GMT -6
Nitaidasji What I'm thinking about are those similar to Raga Vartma Chandrika by Srila Visvanatha Chakrivartipad ?? ( I'm not so sure because I gave my book to an Indian ISKCON devotee) which was commented upon by Srila Anantadas babaji. I have started such a text in the Premodern Texts section. It is based on an edition of the five short works of Visvanatha by Prabhupada Syamlal Goswami with Goswamiji's translation/commentary. It was published in 1905. I could take that up again. I am nearly done with the first work the Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu-bindu and have started on the Ujjvala-nilamani-kirana. Have a look at it and see what you think. The Raga-vartma-candrika and Madhurya-kadamdini are the last two of those texts. Prabhupad Syamlal's comm has never been translated as far as I know. Jagadish dasji is known as jd33 on this site.
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Post by gerard on Feb 3, 2011 8:49:34 GMT -6
Namaskar, I find the works of Julian of Norwich beautiful and revealing, she is said to be the first women to be printed in the English language, may be you have come across her, if not she is worth looking in to. An interesting beguine was Hadewijch (middle 13th century) from the Low Countries who seemed to have espoused a bhedabheda or panentheistic philosophy. Letter 9 to a good friend: "May God make known to you, dear child, who He is, and how He deals with His servants, and especially His maidservants - and may He submerge you in Him. Where the abyss of His wisdom is [God] will teach you what He is, and with what wondrous sweetness the loved one and the Beloved dwell one in the other, and how they penetrate each other in a way that neither of the two distinguishes himself from the other. But they abide in one another in fruition, mouth in mouth, heart in heart, body in body, and soul in soul, while one sweet divine nature flows through both and they are both one thing through each other, but at the same time remain two different selves - yes, and remain so forever."
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Post by Nitaidas on Feb 3, 2011 16:24:49 GMT -6
Thanks, gerardji. I was hoping you would post some more of the beguines. Kind of from your neck of the woods, weren't they? Please post some more.
Wow! Someone woke up Jagadish. We haven't seen him for months and now he is all over the place! Welcome back bro. Look forward to seeing you around more often. I know the light is hard on your eyes when you emerge from your cave, but they will adjust. Still, it is good having a real bhajananandi around once in a while.
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sita
Full Member
Posts: 106
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Post by sita on Feb 4, 2011 8:26:14 GMT -6
Nitai prabhu, Thanks for the reply, I am a little pushed for time at the moment but I will come back to the points you have brought up once I am running at my usual pace. Good to see Gerard is back, we were missing him.
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Post by gerard on Feb 4, 2011 9:09:12 GMT -6
Thank you Sita-didi, for your kind remark, I'm missing this sanga too. This reply still comes from the Almughirah Telecenter as my PC is still out of commission.
Yes, Nitaiji, I'm also from the Low Countries but it is not so easy to translate the Middle-Dutch of these Beguines into English. I will see if I can find some more gems (perhaps from her Visions) but I think that Letter 9 is one of her best and most famous pieces.
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Post by Nitaidas on Feb 10, 2011 11:51:54 GMT -6
It has been a busy week. This midterms are coming up and I have been busy trying to prepare my students and myself for the test. This has kept me away from the CV work I have been doing. I did manage to sneak a little time on Tuesday and the Bhakti-grantha collection got my attention. Some interesting comments coming up from Shyamlal Goswamiji on bhava-bhakti. I will try to post some more of that by the weekend. Those who have been following our discussions on this forum will find much of what Goswami says familiar. It is clearly rooted in mainstream CV theology. Those who are still confounded by IGM misrepresentations will hopefully find it useful in correcting some of those misconceptions.
Been doing some interesting reading lately. I got a hold of a copy of Madhav Ashish's book on Dreaming. He sees dream interpretation as form a sadhana. The Higher Self speaks to us through dreams and one has to learn to pay attention to them. The Self in its efforts to regain wholeness levels criticisms at us through dreams and sometimes the criticism is hard to take because what is criticized is often very dear to us. Anyway, it is a small book but it presents some interesting perspectives on dreams and how they might lead us back to our true selves. He says something that I consider sad in the preface, but it is something I suspected about him and Krishna Prem for a while.
He says:
"Out of all this came the realization that we were dealing with a view of the universe and its spiritual origins which, if we were honest, would make us examine and reformulate the religious teaching which had guided us so far. For we had been introduced to and brought up in a school of the orthodox Krishna cult. There were some things one just did not question, such as what is meant by Krishna. I was given an overwhelming vision of Radha-Krishna, shining in all their glory, and within a few days shown that this was the view of an immature boy. It was by no means the end of the path, as it had seemed to be, but only the beginning of a new stage on the road to the completion of the human task." (Dream as Everyman's Guide to the Spirit, pref. xviii-xix)
In other words, they drifted away from Radha and Krishna. This is the risk sometimes, I guess, when one wants to modernize an old tradition. One risks throwing the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. It is hard to believe that someone who claims to have had an overwhelming experience of Radha and Krsna was not more deeply touched than this. Was it a real experience? How much credibility should be granted Ashish here? What comes after the vision seems more like a step backwards than forwards.
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Post by gerard on Feb 12, 2011 9:26:32 GMT -6
He says:
"Out of all this came the realization that we were dealing with a view of the universe and its spiritual origins which, if we were honest, would make us examine and reformulate the religious teaching which had guided us so far. For we had been introduced to and brought up in a school of the orthodox Krishna cult. There were some things one just did not question, such as what is meant by Krishna. I was given an overwhelming vision of Radha-Krishna, shining in all their glory, and within a few days shown that this was the view of an immature boy. It was by no means the end of the path, as it had seemed to be, but only the beginning of a new stage on the road to the completion of the human task." (Dream as Everyman's Guide to the Spirit, pref. xviii-xix)
In other words, they drifted away from Radha and Krishna. This is the risk sometimes, I guess, when one wants to modernize an old tradition. One risks throwing the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. It is hard to believe that someone who claims to have had an overwhelming experience of Radha and Krsna was not more deeply touched than this. Was it a real experience? How much credibility should be granted Ashish here? What comes after the vision seems more like a step backwards than forwards. If one has a "overwhelming vision" of God it will change your life forever, it seems unlikely that one can "drift away" within a few days! (But I also know of vaishnavas who spent half their life with CV and then turn atheist...) In the case of Madhava Asish his involvement with Theosophy might have had that impact; turning all the beautiful stories into symbols and allegories is like crushing jewels into dry sand. But it is difficult, as I recently said in another thread, not to read at least some of these stories as allegories when trying to come to grips with these stories. You realize you cannot take them literally and you cannot take them allegorically. What to do? To answer this question is unfortunately studiously and systematically avoided in CV circles, IMG or non-IMG.
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Post by JD33 on Feb 12, 2011 10:20:00 GMT -6
Gerard: "(But I also know of vaishnavas who spent half their life with CV and then turn atheist...)"
I am curious Gerardji - where they real CV vaishnavas? Indian or Western? Kindly explain. Thank you.
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Post by Nitaidas on Feb 12, 2011 13:39:24 GMT -6
If one has a "overwhelming vision" of God it will change your life forever, it seems unlikely that one can "drift away" within a few days! Yes. I agree. That is why I see this as so odd. I find myself at times very close to that position. I look around and see the absolute bunk that gets passed around in the name of religion and I want to wretch. On the other hand I love science. Science really does arouse a sense of wonder and amazement in me, camatkara if you will. Science simply works and it does so without appealing to any creator or supernatural force. And if we take Stephen Hawkings at his word, it all boils down to gravity, the Krsna of things, if I may put it that way. For me Krsna speaks more soundly through science than he does through the Gita. There are fine elevated ideas and teachings in the Gita and very suggestive ones at that, but altogether too amorphous and vague to be of any real use in forming and sustaining a livable worldview. The stubborn and irreducible facts get in the way. Nevertheless, I think that the path to a traditional bhajananandi lifestyle as I saw it lived in the backwaters of Vraja back in the 70s is still open to me. I can see myself retiring to some quiet place and doing three lakhs+ of the holy name a day and then. in the afternoons. listening to readings of texts recording the visions of R and K had by such luminaries as Sri Rupa and Sanatana and Sri Jiva. And then the day is completed with a sweet kirtan and prasad. One can regard Krsna as God or just as one's oldest and dearest friend. The latter is probably more pleasing to Krsna. I suspect that he does not much like being God. I suspect it embarrasses him in fact and makes him quite lonely. Better we disregard it and embrace him as a friend or a lover. This is the a-theism of CV. He has helped us immensely by not leaving a single fingerprint on the workings of the world. There is no evidence of his involvement. I think the problem really arises because of the terms, theist and atheist. Neither of them correspond to anything real. They're only good for picking a fight. Good analogy. Sometimes a cigar is a cigar. Why not? The literal does not necessarily exclude the allegorical. A lot depends on what one thinks the medium is. The literal must precede the allegorical, but does not necessarily exclude the allegorical. Give us a taste of how you might read the literal allegorically. Only in the ones lacking sophistication. Let's change that.
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Post by Nitaidas on Feb 12, 2011 15:40:58 GMT -6
Here is what Ashish says in the paragraph after the one I cited above. This is presumably what lies beyond his vision of Radha and Krsna.
"So slow is the pace of change at times that it took a long time before one could see how this 'new,' almost secular approach to the truth could be reconciled with what were also the real truths of the devotional approach. Omnia vincit amor (love conquers all), the Vaishnava greeting Jai Radhe (victory to Radha) and Krishna as Prema-svarup (the self-nature of love) were all saying the same thing, and one did not need to get stuck with a particular image. The love which glues the universe together is utterly real and needs no peacock feathers, necklaces and caste marks to make it visible." (xix)
This may or may not be true, but surely if it is true, it is much more sweet with the peacock feathers and necklaces. The first question, I guess, is whether it is true. Is it true? He seems to be equating divine love with love in the world. Well, his use of the word "love" is greatly expanded to encompass the physical forces that hold the world together, a highly metaphorical use of the word. In other words Krsna = gravity and every other case of attraction. This is a monistic view of love. If it is already visible then why do so few see it. I think it does need peacock feathers and necklaces in order to be seen. And once seen, how it is related to the glue that holds the world together needs to be determined. One can't simply assume that they are the same.
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Post by Nitaidas on Feb 13, 2011 13:30:06 GMT -6
Another paragraph or two from the great man (Ashish).
"The way I like to present it goes something like this: we find ourselves in this wonderful universe, full of living things that grow and decay --- sensitive plants, intelligent animals, singing birds, roaring tigers, and caterpillars that metamorphose into butterflies. And then there are men: wonderful men and horrible men, crude and refined men, dull and brilliant men, the only living beings capable of formulating the question of where everything comes from and what it is all about.
As a man, if one were to ask these questions while ignoring the second-hand wisdom passed down to us, might one not arrive at the conclusion that the answer to the whole mystery must lie in the solution to the greatest mystery of all, namely, what is the nature of the awareness that allows one not only to observe this mysterious universe, but also to know that one observes it---to lie in the distinction between the observer himself and the biological apparatus of observation?" (xix-xx)
In spite of his devaluing of Krsna as Krsna, the book is still worth reading for what it tells us about how to audit and interpret our dreams. For those who wish to use dream interpretation as an aid to sadhana and advancement on the path, this is a good book to start with. After it one needs also to read, with some skepticism, of course, the other classics of dream interpretation (Freud, Jung, and some of the more recent [but not lala] materials).
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Post by Nitaidas on Mar 15, 2011 11:36:09 GMT -6
Sorry I have been so silent this last week. Spring Break overtook me and I had to go off to Colorado and care for my parents. I was not able to check in very often last week. Now school has started again and I am more or less back on my schedule. Classes MWF and TTH for my own work and for participation in this forum. So. What has been going on in my absence? Something interesting from Gerardji on Hudson's work. Yes, I have an article by him that was published in a special issue of the Journal of Vaisnava Studies on the age of the Bhagavata. I will try to find that and scan some articles from it for the thread on that topic. I fear we got derailed there because of the intrusion of some IGM goofiness. Let us try to get back on track with that.
Also I am happy to see that Malati has responded to my reversal of the terms in McGrath's article in which I find a rather absurd and unrealistic representation of reason. I will give a line by line response to that when I find the time.
Though last week was rather stressful I find myself in reasonably good condition this week. Ready to tackle the chores of teaching and trying to finish something. I think I needed a break from the routines of the last few months. One can become stuck in some deep ruts and repetitive ways of thinking about and viewing at things. A break is always a good thing.
We are reading the Life of Milarepa in class and it is invoking in me a strong desire to meditate (that is, do more od our type of bhajan). His devotion to solitary meditation was immense and it reminds me of my own gurudeva's similar devotion for bhajan, not to speak of his asceticism and austerities. I highly recommend the book (Life of Milarepa translated by Lobsang P. Lhalungpa). There are some movies on Milarepa that are good to watch too. The system of meditation and practice he followed has many parallels and similarities to the more ascetic and solitary forms of CV.
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