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Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #8 – The Mission of Śrī Caitanya and the Genius of Śrīla Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja in Presenting It

February 17th, 2025

I have written an article before about the genius of Sanātana Gosvāmī in presenting the mission of Śrī Caitanya in the first book of Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta. The mission of Śrī Caitanya is to give spontaneous love for Krishna (rāgānugā-bhakti) to the world. I was in awe of how creatively Śrī Sanātana did this. First, he weaved the plot of the book to build a foundation to help us understand its esoteric subject. Then, he highlighted the spontaneous love of the gopīs for Krishna through various dramatic exchanges between the devotees of Dvārakā in the last chapter. I recently saw the same type of literary brilliance of highlighting an essential point in various creative ways in the first chapter of the Antya-līlā of the Caitanya-caritāmṛta by Śrīla Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja.

 

Before I continue, a disclaimer: I like to write, but I am hardly an authority in literature. I suppose every classic has themes that are presented in various ways, often by telling, showing and dramatizing as found in Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta and Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta. Still, I found these works exceptional. The authors not only insert their points through the texts in dramatic and creative ways but do it in verse form. The genius of their presentation certainly shone through to me and I’ll try to share some of that here with you.

 

The Antya-līlā of the Caitanya-caritāmṛta is the story of the last eighteen years of Śrī Caitanya’s life as he settles in Puri to fulfill the internal reason for his descent (his personal objective rather than his contribution to the world)—to relish the love of his topmost devotee, Śrī Radha, at the height of her love. It is the most esoteric subject in Krishna bhakti, and we are told throughout the book that it is impossible to grasp it simply by the force of one’s intellect. How then to enter the Antya-līlā , where this subject will be extensively discussed? We need the mercy of God and His pure devotees. Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja establishes this point throughout the first chapter in a myriad of ways. I found the way he did it quite brilliant. Here are some of the ways he approaches the subject.

 

By direct declaration, as we are informed in the first verse that the impossible is made possible by mercy:

 

“I offer my respectful obeisances to Śrī Krishna Caitanya Mahāprabhu, by whose mercy even a lame man can cross over a mountain and a dumb man recite Vedic literature.” (Antya-līlā 1.1)

 

By his personal example:

 

At the beginning of the Madhya-līlā (the middle pastimes), only one third through the Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, he decides to summarize the pastimes of Śrī Caitanya, which were practically known only to himself due to his direct service and access to Svarūpa Dāmodara, the Lord’s personal confidante. He begins composing one verse for each pastime, and having completed that, hopefully plans to unpack each verse to tell the full story of Śrī Caitanya’s life as far as he can go. His fear is that he is old, nearly blind and invalid, and that he will either die or become incapacitated before he completes the book. Imagine his daunting task. He had to create one verse after another in Bengali in his mind, encapsulating his subject within strict poetic parameters, and then having only one shot to put it to paper. Somehow, however, he completes the Madhya-līlā and now he is faced with an even more daunting task, to approach the Antya-līlā , which describes the most esoteric part of Śrī Caitanya’s life and philosophy in verse form. His hope:

 

“My path is very difficult. I am blind, and my feet are slipping again and again. Therefore, may the saints help me by granting me the stick of their mercy as my support.” (Antya-līlā 1.2)

 

Through the story line as he presents it:

 

Śrī Caitanya has just returned from Vrindavan to fulfill the internal reason for his descent. His devotees get word of his return and proceed on the long journey from Bengal to Puri to join him under the leadership of Śivānanda Sena. On their journey Śivānanda gives shelter to a stray dog who joins the party. It’s a long story about how this dog was cared for by Śivānanda, and the story ends with the dog going back to Godhead. The message is clear: The impossible is possible by the mercy of God’s devotees. We too can enter, or understand, the Antya-līlā by their mercy. Śrīla Prabhupāda’s commentary encourages us:

 

“We may conclude that even as dogs we must take shelter of a Vaiṣṇava. The benefit will be the same as that which accrues to an advanced devotee under a Vaiṣṇava’s care.” (Antya-līlā 1.24, purport)

 

I could continue how expertly this theme of entering Antya-līlā for Śrī Caitanya, His devotees, the author, and the reader are expertly woven into the text, but it’s beyond the scope of a brief post. I haven’t even recounted the epiphany of Śrī Rupa on his journey to Puri that reveals the essence of the Antya-līlā and our entrance to the subject through him. I wanted to give just a glimpse of the literary genius of Śrīla Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja in giving us the method of entrance to the heart of Śrī Caitanya and what He has given us and the world. Without a doubt, he’s a kavirāja, a genius of wordcraft.

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #7 – Is Teatime an Item of Devotional Service?

February 10th, 2025

Joking. Not really. The story:

 

I was holding my fourth annual BIG (Bhakti Immersion Govardhan) Retreat. It was a motley group of devotees from a professional clown and a lead hard-core guitarist to the housewives of New Jersey—three middle-aged ladies with twelve children between them with at least one of their teen girls here to boot. Sure, we would have morning and evening program and daily parikramā, but this group, I thought, also needed “fun.”

 

Before the evening program I scheduled a get-together in my ashram in the downstairs apartment next to mine. I had our charming Middle Eastern lady and her beautiful and talented twenty-four-year-old daughter arrange teatime with the ambrosial brews of orange blossom and saffron infused teas they brought from their country. At least I thought such “fun” was needed. Their non-stop raucous cacophony of laughter pierced the Braja sky, and certainly the wall of my adjacent room, with what sounded like bhakti-killing “prajalpa” (idle talk).

 

What kind of offering was this before the sacred mount of Govardhan, just fifty yards before us and visible from their courtyard? A thought spontaneously arose in my cloistered Hare Krishna monk mind, a kind of, “Is this authorized, prabhu?” I thus happily broke up the party just in time for evening kirtan.

 

Young Satya, our middle eastern tea brewer, was designated to lead. She closed her eyes and for two hours with deep bhāva and a simple but melodious melody gradually built up the tempo. As I looked around the room, I couldn’t find a single devotee soul not deeply lost in the experience, all immersed in the holy name. Then suddenly the collective bhāva of the kirtan finally merited an explosion of the tempo and we all danced and danced. From the quiet male hairdresser to the former lady infantry soldier, we all danced without attachment and without inhibition. Parmananda of the old music band Shelter called the kirtan epic. For me it was arguably one of the deepest kirtans I ever experienced.

 

So I was wrong, “Teatime is an item of devotional service.” Well maybe not an item of devotional service, but certainly of value to our devotion. I guess I owe an explanation.

 

Day after day the devotees, mostly the ladies, joined for joyous teatime and shared their lives and thoughts and jokes, and more jokes. Each day the kirtan reached new heights. I saw a connection.

 

People today generally live in a lonely world, and if they are blessed with a community, their gatherings are too far and few between. A tight trusting community allows us to shed our self- interest for a spirit of common interest. It helps us to drop the self-centered and limited concept of “I” restraining us from the uninhibited and non-detached open heart required for full immersion in the nectar of the holy name. It’s thus a principle of rasa that shared bliss is higher than individual bliss, and thus saṅkīrtan, chanting with community, gives special feelings of heightened devotion. We did start with many people who had a deep connection already, but I don’t underestimate the power that our teatime had to bring everyone into the fold of community.

 

Wait—isn’t prajalpa one of the obstacles to devotion? Isn’t sense gratification antithetical to pure devotion? We are not against sense gratification. We just need to understand it’s not the goal. We take what we need to forge a peaceful mind for the higher endeavor of Krishna consciousness. Teatime may not be for everyone, and it wasn’t for me, but most people today desperately need community . It brought our group, from the clown to the housewives of New Jersey, together in the saṅkīrtan of the holy name with a depth and relish unimaginable weeks before, even for me.

 

Teatime anyone?

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #6 – Love Makes the World Go Round and Śrī Caitanya’s Practice of Bhakti Yoga

February 3rd, 2025

Years back, when I was giving seminars at yoga studios, I was always looking for a relatable definition of bhakti for my audience. One day I unexpectedly found one. I was walking through the flower gardens of Vrindavan when I came upon a calf being born. I watched as the calf immediately went to drink milk from the mother’s udder, and the mother began to lick its calf passionately in return. The calf didn’t have the capacity to analyze her situation, thinking “this is an udder, and it provides my sustenance. It is from a cow, my mother!” Still the calf, due to their natural relationship, spontaneously identified with and reacted to the cow as its mother.

 

Observing this, I had an epiphany—this spontaneous exchange between the calf and cow is a perfect template for love in general which is the spontaneous energy flowing between two people with a natural relationship. It also offers a perfect analogy for the natural energy of bhakti that flows between the soul and God. More important for me, it was the relatable definition of bhakti I was looking for: bhakti is the instinctive energy of love that naturally flows in the relationship between the soul and God.

 

This also gave me insight into the spiritual practice Śrī Caitanya performed to attain His goal—to experience the devotion of Śrī Radha, His best devotee, at the height of Her love. In the mood of His own devotee, He drew out this natural energy of affection between Himself and God by focusing on the Supreme Lord in the form of His holy name and He also recommended that same practice to all of us to awaken our true self. But there is more.

 

He also was day and night tasting the verses and songs of the person whose name He was chanting and He daily worshiped Lord Jagannath, the form of the person whose name He was chanting. By doing this, His sambandha or relationship with the holy name, and consequently his absorption in the holy name, deepened. And this increased the intensity of the flow of love between Himself and God to the level of prema, perfect love for God.

 

As soon as I saw the spontaneous and intense exchange of love between the calf and cow, I immediately understood that I had a powerful way to explain to relatively new practitioners what bhakti is and why chanting God’s names is such an effective method to awaken love of God in our hearts. It worked! What could be a more relatable concept of reality and our relationship with reality (God) than the concept that there is an energy of pure love that helps define the ultimate reality, and that our participation in that exchange of pure love is the goal of life. So yes, “love makes the world go round!”

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #5 – Logos, Logic, and Prasādam

January 27th, 2025

Logos, Logic, and Prasādam[1]

Have you ever gone on a “word journey”? I made the term up, but I really think it is an apropos name for my engagement with the word “logos”. That journey began when I heard it used in a particular context in a lecture and was inspired to begin a search for the root of its meaning. I then began a correspondence about the term with a friend who is a professor of Philosophy. I thought a lot about it since and feel that I gained some very important and practical insights from that journey that I would like to share.

Here is the basic notion of logos, as my friend presented it in our conversation:

“Originally, ‘logos’ meant something like rationale, reasoning, or account. So if you gave a speech or made a case for something that would be your logos. The pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus adapted it to be the term for a divine world order, the ordering of the world around a rational principle. So, if you were in touch with the fundamental logos, then you could see the world in harmony. If not, it would seem confused and disjointed. Christian authors adapted this idea to say that the logos is God’s divine will that orders the world. And when they say, “Jesus is the WORD,” “WORD” translates “logos” from Greek.”

Now let me summarize what I learned from this journey about the meaning of logos.

  1. The universe is rationally ordered according to God’s plan.
  2. When you act according to His plan there is harmony.
  3. When you act against this order there is chaos and suffering.
  4. God’s rational plan for the universal order is expressed in words. Such knowledge is called Veda or based on śāstra (scripture.)
  5. Therefore the most important service in society is to create order by the clear conceptualization and expression of knowledge that creates peace and harmony.

Based on these principles I also came up with what I think is a reasonable definition of logos that I need to share before explaining my insights: the divine rational order of the world and the knowledge or words that express that. Now I will share the practical insights I gained from this study.

Every year I host a retreat in Puri, which is where I am writing this article now. I take pains to organize every detail of the retreat because I have the strong conviction that there is a way or “order” to do things and when executed properly there is harmony and ultimately happiness. While overseeing the retreat in this way I realized how connected this type of effort is to the concept of logos that I was meditating on. The activity of the retreat that best struck me as a way to highlight this correlation was the serving of prasādam. In that regard, I have made an outline below showing that correlation:

Prasādam Serving and Logos at the Puri Yātrā

  1. The universe is rationally ordered according to God’s plan.

There is a right way to serve prasādam that I learned by living in India for over forty years. I believe even practical details like this are ultimately embedded in logos or the divine rational order of the universe.

  1. When you act according to His plan there is harmony.

The prasādam was served properly and people thus enjoyed the prasādam without anxiety in addition to feeling served or loved in the process.

  1. When you act against this order there is chaos and world suffering.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen, but just one person who serves improperly would have impeded the quick and gracious flow of serving and caused anxiety.

  1. God’s rational plan for the universal order is expressed in words. Such knowledge is called Veda or based on śāstra (scripture).

There is a proper way to serve prasādam that is carried down in word or oral tradition in India that I learned from observing the beauty and efficiency of the process by living there for over forty years.

  1. Therefore the most important service in society is to create order by the clear conceptualization and expression of knowledge that creates peace and harmony.

Before we began I personally instructed the servers on the proper method to serve prasādam. I then carefully supervised the serving to make sure they understood how to do it properly. Notice that we have used language and verbal directions inspired and directed by divine order to create harmony and peace.

Below are just a few of the main principles I emphasized.

  1. The cook will instruct people how much to serve of each item and in what order.
  2. The servers will carefully and quickly place the modest amount directed by the cook on people’s plates in a pleasant mood of service and move on to the next person.
  3. Ideally the servers should move in a way so they can serve quickly. Best therefore if they can remain bent at the waist so they can proceed without having to bend again and again slowing and impeding the serve out. At all costs they should not put the bucket down to engage with any person disrupting the flow of service.
  4. If people sitting are not conversant in the culture of prasādam serving and demand huge helpings when we first go around, politely tell them that seconds will come, or if they insist just give them a little more and move on.
  5. Remember that the joy of prasādam is not just the sensual experience but also the exchange of love that people feel when being served nicely, which means efficiently and graciously.

The result of following guidelines in serving prasādam is that it is served quickly, graciously, without waste and peacefully. Doing it with these principles in mind not only pleases the devotees but also invokes Krishna’s grace on the assembly. Of course this is just one example, but the principle remains in all activities – that if things are done properly reflecting an order that is imbedded within the universe by God there will be harmony.

Conclusion: By tapping into the proper ordering of things, and by properly instructing those who are willing to learn about the proper ordering of things, we can be centered on the Lord’s will in any activity and create harmony and joy for our self and others.
 


[1] Please excuse me for the second reprint in a row, which is very rare for me. But I am fully immersed in leading and teaching in our 19th annual Puri retreat and don’t have a minute to spare. One additional service I have is that at the retreat I personally take charge of serving the prasādam in a more traditional way. This article explains why and is distributed to anyone who wants to assist me.

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #4 – Believers and the Elephant in the Room: Tackling the Challenge of Evil

January 20th, 2025

Believers and the Elephant in the Room: Tackling the Challenge of Evil [1]

At the age of twenty-one Jeff, my youngest cousin, was mercilessly beaten to death by the local police in a Midwest jail for no reason. His crime: He had asthma and was Jewish. From what the family could gather, it was Jeff’s first day of law school and due to his asthma, he sat near the window in the library to help with his breathing. When the school librarian told him to move because the window seats were reserved for upperclassmen, he refused due to his health and out of principle; the place was nearly empty. When he repeatedly denied the librarian’s demands she summoned the local police. They eagerly hauled off this city boy from Los Angeles to jail, and unfortunately he never again saw the light of day again. He died in jail. His parents and his three older sisters, who loved Jeff practically more than their own lives, were devastated. This sort of suffering and loss is all too common in this world. And it leads us to consider the elephant in the room for theistic belief, sometimes called the problem of evil. If God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, why then when He knows about it, has the power to do something about it, and is supremely good does he allow such cruelty to continue? The existence of evil thus logically contradicts the existence of God. Or does it? Below is my attempt at theodicy: answering the challenge that if God exists, why does He permit evil?

 

Explanation I: One good argument doesn’t necessarily prove one’s point. One must weigh the cumulative evidence or arguments.

 

There may be very strong evidence or argument that one has committed murder, but that is not enough to convict a person. There also may be very strong arguments that one is innocent. The jury must come to a fair conclusion based on the cumulative evidence. Similarly, the argument against God from the reality of evil is a strong argument, but to come to a fair conclusion one must weigh the cumulative evidence. I would posit that the arguments for God’s existence are very strong, stronger than the problem of evil. Just one of the arguments below called “Monkey on a Typewriter”:

 

It is more probable that a monkey on a typewriter by chance produced the complete works of William Shakespeare or the Encyclopedia Britannica than this world happens by chance. And if you think about it, as I write this very article, every word scribed that fits into a sentence, or anything in the world that moves with reason or order, at every second increases exponentially the improbability that this world has happened by chance. And if the probability of the world having arisen by chance is as close to nil as mathematically possible and ever increasingly so, then the account of the world wherein God creates it has far more power to explain the nature of the world than the denial of God and its consequent randomness. Therefore, the argument by evil, although strong, cannot in itself establish the verdict that God does not exist.

 

Explanation II: The argument for evil itself proves the existence of God.

 

By recognizing the existence of evil we are acknowledging that objective moral values exist, which seems to far more point to the existence of God than to deny His existence. If everything ultimately is just particles of matter moving randomly then on what basis can any action be judged moral, and if everything is deterministic how can anyone be held morally accountable? In other words, our capacity to deem something genuinely good or morally evil requires an acknowledgement of something transcendent that is morally meaningful (God), otherwise moral judgments, even concerning the most horrendous actions, become reduced to subjective expressions of cultural conditioning or personal preference simply based on chance and consequent evolution. Even the most hardened atheists shudder to fully embrace the consequence of atheism where even the most horrendous actions are deterministic and not objectively wrong. Therefore the existence of evil, rather than denying God, points to His existence.

 

Explanation III: The acceptance of free will includes the choice for evil.

 

Love, which is the supreme ethic, requires freedom and thus the possibility of wrong choice—even evil. Thus rather than evil negating the possibility of God, evil affirms God’s existence because it is a world of humanity and not compliant or forced “good”. Simply put, God allows sin (moral evil) at the cost of freedom and that is His perfection. There are many reasonable arguments, both simple and complex, by substantial religionists and philosophers that deal with this train of response to the problem of evil. They are a little beyond the scope of this paper, but I recommend researching them. [2]

 

Although there is some weight to the argument of free will, I can also conceive some challenges to the argument by a conception of an all-powerful God who somehow is able to create a free choice and consequent love without the possibility for evil,[3] which is why I like the argument given by Leibniz as a complimentary one. It follows.

 

Explanation IV: The world God created is the best possible of all worlds.[4]

 

Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura gave a similar reason to one posited above by Leibniz. He argued that God would not be complete as the enjoyer of all energies if He didn’t also have the experience of exchanging with the material energy. On the surface, this argument may make God look self-serving or callous, but I think there is a sense to it that I would purport as follows: The material world allows for the beauty of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and the special flavor of a soul’s personal triumph over suffering that enhances God’s manifestation rather than contradicts His existence.

 

Explanation V: Soul-making theodicy and the law of karma. [5]

 

Evil only negates the existence of God if you look at the world from the very selfish perspective of affirming God’s goodness only when it serves our enjoyment and control. Judging God in that way is like a spoiled child evaluating his parent’s character based on the rewards and punishments he receives. In a similar way, evil and suffering is best understood by looking at the world from God’s perspective, which judges what is ultimately good, not what superficially rewards or punishes. In traditional Indian thought this perspective falls under the conception of the law of karma, which sees and even tries to prove that whatever happens to one, even if painful, are perfect conditions created by God to rectify one’s behavior for the purpose of everlasting joy. At least one serious about spiritual life should be able to connect the trials and tribulations in one’s life to his or her personal growth and then to project that onto the world. Evil does not therefore a priori negate the existence of God’s benevolence. It is a tough pill to swallow, but all traditional Indian philosophies, even if they disagree fundamentally on many core points, agree on this one: There is a moral force called the law of karma that is Absolute and ultimately good, even when one is on the receiving end of cruelty.

 

Explanation VI: Humility

 

It is one thing to equate suffering with growth and renewal, but what about pointless suffering? Does not pointless suffering challenge the existence of God? Bhīṣmadeva answered a similar question when enlightening Yudhiṣṭhira. I like his answer from a traditional Indian philosophical perspective: “No one can understand the inexplicable will of the Lord.”[6] As we have been entangled in this world since time immemorial, it is not possible to estimate our level of misconception and what it takes for the Lord to enlighten us. I think anyone on a genuine spiritual path cannot help but be amazed at the sheer number of constant and unending painful life lessons that one has endured that have helped expand one’s present awareness, lessons that one had absolutely no ability to comprehend at the time they occurred. So basically the answer to seemingly pointless suffering is to humbly accept that we lack the capacity to understand what we need, or to fully ever understand God’s will.

 

The elephant in the room—the problem of evil: Acknowledge it. Confront it. The theistic conclusion still stands.

 

 


[1] I have been busy organizing our 19th annual Puri retreat. Please enjoy this article originally posted on March 26, 2018.

[2] Alvin Plantinga’s summary of his argument for free will: A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can’t cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren’t significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God’s omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.

[3] In Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism we have the concept of Śrī Rādhā and her eternal associates, who are the embodiment of the highest love, but have no choice of choosing evil.

[4] Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz, 17th century German Philosopher

[5] John Hick developed what is called “soul-making” theodicy in which he argued that God allows evil and suffering in the world in order to develop humans into virtuous creatures capable of following His will.

[6] Bhāg. 1.9.16

Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #3 – Do You Believe in Miracles?!

January 13th, 2025

Do You Believe in Miracles?![1]

 

When something miraculous happens, we have two mutually exclusive choices to explain it. Either its cause is supernatural or within the scope of known natural laws. For example, the famous magician David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. His audience was blown away, but when later it was discovered how he did it, it was clear that it was just a brilliantly orchestrated stunt.

 

But does that mean that all “miracles” have an explanation within the laws of nature? In this post I will explain at least some miracles in my own life that don’t seem to have a natural explanation. You can be the judge about which approach provides the best way to understand them: Are they miracles, events not explicable by scientific laws, or just natural occurrences?

 

The mystic jaundice doctor

 

In Vrindavan, there was a simple sādhu named Shyama Sakhi who cured jaundice by chanting mantras and pouring water over the afflicted. As the water turned yellow, the jaundice would wash away, so he claimed. Many people I knew gave testimony backing his claim. Despite their claims, I remained skeptical until a visit to Bangalore one summer when I completely lost my appetite and began to sleep all day. I was forced to immediately accept medical help because in three days I had a non-refundable ticket for the forty-eight-hour train ride back to Vrindavan for an extremely important meeting. The doctor checked me thoroughly and pronounced his diagnosis: “You have a very severe case of jaundice and must rest for a minimum of three weeks!” I wasn’t happy when he also nixed my travels plans. The train ride was much too dangerous for someone in my condition, he emphatically informed me. By providence, that afternoon I met a local person visiting our ashram who was informed of my condition. He told me of a simple middle-class housewife who could cure jaundice. I was desperate and I made an appointment to see her that afternoon. I remember this very ordinary housewife splashing water over my eyes. The water turned yellow, and soon I was free of jaundice. Within a day I was eating samosas and was able to return to Vrindavan as scheduled! Seems like a miracle to me.

 

The mystic rasagullā

 

In 1974, my college roommate invited me to visit him at ISKCON Dallas during my summer break from graduate school. We had met devotees four years earlier together. While he immediately joined, I hesitated. Despite my own conviction in bhakti, I was unable to make the decision to become a “devotee.” In those days, for a man that meant shaving up and moving into the ashram. By fortune, however, just a week after I arrived in Dallas, Śrīla Prabhupāda was also visiting the temple. He invited all the devotees to his room to distribute prasādam to them. I remember waiting on a long line for my turn to enter. The whole time I was fervently praying for the strength to fully surrender, but still the obstacles seemed insurmountable. I concluded that despite my desire to join, that there was just no way I could become a devotee. When my turn came, I walked respectfully into Śrīla Prabhupāda’s room, paid my obeisances, stretched out my hand and received a rasagullā directly from his hand. The minute I bit into it, all doubts were gone and I decided to stay and move into the ashram. I was shocked. How did that happen? Certainly, those without my faith could offer so many natural explanations based on their study of psychology. I know my mind, however. The change was just so sudden, so beyond my reasoning at the time, and the transformation so timed with that one bite, that the only plausible explanation is the inconceivable mercy of God’s devotee.

 

The miracle of coincidence

 

I have written about this several times. I met devotees at a Sunday feast in Los Angeles, became inspired, and the next day with my friends headed up to San Francisco on Highway 1 singing Hare Krishna. Our first stop was a Chinese restaurant. When we left the restaurant, the devotees were right outside chanting in a lively kirtan. We joined in. That evening the only place we could find to sleep was the parking lot of a football stadium adjacent to Golden Gate Park. There was only one Hare Krishna Center in the whole city. Somehow the back door of that storefront temple opened to that parking lot and by coincidence we parked our car directly under their window! The rest is history, so to speak. I became a devotee.[2] An excerpt from an article where I describe this incident:

 

“Basically, I argue that if one carefully studies his own life he will find a synchronicity between certain events, or ‘meaningful coincidences’ as Carl Jung defined it, whose probability of occurrence was so small that it was far more likely that the cause of those events rests beyond any random occurrence under the laws of nature. What makes those events even more improbable is the link between those external events and our inner life, as if those events were personally directed towards helping us grow.”

 

In summary, the best explanation for the preponderance of the occurrence of mutual coincidences in my life, and a devout life in general, is so far beyond the explanation of chance, that the best explanation for them rests outside the laws of nature.

 

The miracle of fine tuning

 

This is a big topic and a more general one, but it involves a miracle in our life, nonetheless. Basically, the universe is extremely fine-tuned for the appearance of life. Many favorable, but unlikely, conditions, are met. The probability of all those conditions happening by chance is likely under 1 in 10120. The conditional probability of life arising by chance should be set close to zero. So yes, the existence of a fine-tuned universe supporting our existence itself is just a miracle. And the best explanation is God.

 

Do You Believe in Miracles?!

 


[1] This is a relatively famous quote spoken in 1980, but perhaps not for someone born after 1965 not in the USA. Anyone in my audience also know the source?

[2] https://wavesofdevotion.com/2016/06/13/an-original-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #2 – How Intellectuals Found God

January 6th, 2025

In my senior year of high school, Joseph Zogby, my English teacher, asked the students to write an essay on Voltaire’s quotation, “If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.” Looking back, it seemed Mr. Zogby wanted to indoctrinate us with his own values. I fell for the bait. I wrote what I thought was a brilliant essay showing how God was a concept born of convenience. It all but reconfirmed in my heart the intellectual ethos of the ‘60s—religion was just the opiate of the people.

 

It appears that times have changed. People are again turning to God. From 2019 there has been almost an eighty per cent increase in converts to orthodox Christianity.[1] One of the largest Christian revival meetings in US history took place just recently at Ashbury University in Kentucky and it was led almost entirely by young people.[2] It has also been my own experience that more and more people are turning to God after years of turning away.

 

What convinced me of this revival more than anything else was my observation that even many modern intellectuals, those who were previously against God, were turning to Him. This was confirmed for me by a very interesting article I read in The Free Press titled “How Intellectuals Found God”[3] which told the story of prominent intellectuals coming into the theistic fold.

 

Matthew Crawford is a best-selling author and respected philosopher. At the beginning of his career, he seemed to be the typical American academic who in his own words “was impressed, as a young man, with Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity.”

 

Thirty-five years later, however:

 

“I liken it sometimes to a psychedelic experience. You feel like you’ve gained access to some layer of reality, but you just weren’t seeing it.

 

“A lot of very thoughtful people who once believed reason and science could explain everything—why we’re here, what comes after we’re gone, what it all means—are now feeling a genuine hunger for something more,” he said.

 

“There has to be a larger order that comprehends us and makes a demand on us,” Crawford added. “It’s clear that we can’t live without a sense of meaning beyond ourselves.”

 

The article also charted other prominent intellectuals’ spiritual growth:

 

Johnathan Haidt, New York University psychologist and best-selling author, although perhaps not a convert, reaffirmed this phenomenon in his own way. “There is a God-shaped hole in every human heart, and I believe it was put there by evolution.”

 

Jordan Peterson, world renowned academic, philosopher and biblical scholar, and author of the New York Times’ recent best seller We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine, never directly declared his faith in God, although he was pressed on the matter several times. Recently, however, in an interview, he finally acknowledged it: “I would say God is hyper-real, God is the reality upon which all reality depends.”

 

In this way, the article traced the way of ten prominent thoughtful people, previously agnostic at best, who have “reasoned their way to God”.

 

At this point of the Monday Morning Greetings, and near the deadline to get it to my editor, a question arose in my mind.  “What’s the focus here and how is it relevant to your audience, those of the path of bhakti?” My take:

 

It is always edifying when reading a well thought out piece that confirms an observation of one’s own—in this case, that the Western intellectual world is more and more turning to God. I am not surprised. The Western world has increasingly descended into chaos under the direction of atheistic and post-modern thought. It has become increasingly obvious to thoughtful people that such chaos and suffering are caused by straying from a rational order represented by the teachings or words (logos) of God-centered wisdom traditions. Reflecting on that idea—and I am sure that they are not unaware of the harm also caused by religious fanaticism—they looked back at a prior world which in many ways had more of a semblance of order and harmony.

 

This revival should also give solace to those following the bhakti tradition. We are taught that even at the stage of perfection, when one no longer has personal suffering, we will still suffer, but only for the suffering of others. It is thus good news to hear that especially in the West, where society has been increasingly deprived of the experience of God, with secular reasoning taking its place, that more intellectual leaders are finding God. And perhaps we can all even become brothers-in-arms “to deliver the Western countries, which are filled with impersonalism and voidism,” which is our spiritual master’s stated mission.

 


[1] https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1722890523/saintconstantineorg/wwfz57wzdrdkx7tj1xu1/ConvertstoOrthodoxy.pdf

[2] https://www.thefp.com/p/why-students-in-kentucky-have-been

[3] https://www.thefp.com/p/how-intellectuals-found-god-ayaan-hirsi-ali-peter-thiel-jordan-peterson

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #1 – Happy 9th Birthday Monday Morning Greetings!

December 30th, 2024

Every year I celebrate the birthday of Monday Morning Greetings, January 4, 2016, by dedicating my post on the Monday closest to the New Year to an aspect of the process of my writing.

 

This year I will discuss my voice in writing, the consistent style or personality in my composition. Looking at it from just a slightly different perspective, when you read my posts, I hope my voice comes through as if you were personally hearing me speak. Are you hearing my voice now?

 

In the “Zonal Ācārya Days” they had a unique arrangement in the Krishna Balaram Mandir in Vrindavan for the morning Bhāgavatam class. Towering over the vyāsāsana for the Bhāgavatam speaker was an adjacent and bigger marble vyāsāsana. If in attendance, one of the eleven “ācāryas” would sit there facing the audience. One day during my class, Bhavananda, the local ācārya, was sitting next to me. He is certainly, to say the least, a flamboyant and dramatic person. That day he really liked my class. Immediately after it was finished, he raised both hands above his head with palms out and fingers gently moving back and forth. He pointed towards the audience and declared in the confident mood and voice of a born and bred New Yorker (although I think he is from Jersey City just across the Hudson River):

 

“I like Dhanurdhara Swami because he is from New York, Jewish, and a devotee!”

 

He paused and then with even more drama declared:

 

“In that order!”

 

I hope my readers hear my “voice” in my writing, but not in that order. I am first and foremost a devotee and from Vrindavan, and I hope that voice drowns out my Brooklyn accent, which I am told persists a bit after almost fifty years in Vrindavan. I am also karmically packaged from New York and if you also hear that voice, so be it, especially if it flavors my overall voice in writing in Krishna’s service.

 

The most important point is that I and the regular readers of Monday Morning Greetings have been together for many years. You hear my voice every week and thus know me and I guess we are all therefore friends. I don’t write from a distance. I share my life, and even a little of my struggles, which I hope makes my writing somewhat authentic.

 

A few other observations about my writing:

 

Writing is like giving birth to a child. It also takes birth after labor and when it is born, there is great joy. For parents to get the joy of parenthood they must wait nine months in addition to enduring the labor of the mother during birth, and to produce a book and get that joy takes even longer, sometimes years. What I like about my writing is that I don’t have to wait to get that joy. I get it every week by giving birth to Monday Morning Greetings. I therefore thank you for lending me your time by reading it. Now I will reveal something personal about Monday Morning Greetings that you may find interesting.

 

I have a penchant for branding. Do you know where I got the title for this weekly publication?

 

Well, before Krishna consciousness I was, like many Americans, a sports junkie, so to speak. I especially enjoyed the football (not soccer) games on Sunday. The person with the most responsibility in directing the football team during the game is the quarterback. When someone criticizes or gives advice about a game after it has been played, that person is therefore called a Monday-morning quarterback. The term has become a general term for someone who passes judgment on and criticizes something after the event. Now, I am not exactly doing that in Monday Morning Greetings, but I got the name after a famous football column called “Monday-Morning Quarterback” which reviewed the games each Monday, a day after they were played. When branding my column, I thought the appearance of the column on Monday would help people greet the coming week with some wisdom teachings rather than something mundane. Monday Morning Greetings, like Monday-morning quarterback, seemed to me a catchy title. I think it works.

 

I think the main voice I would like the reader to hear is a devotional intellectual who shares his realizations on relevant topics from devotional practice to societal issues, mostly within a spiritual movement. Sometimes, like this week, it becomes more personal, and perhaps you hear that voice today more prominently.

 

Well, I am a proud father. Happy ninth birthday, Monday Morning Greetings![1]

 


[1] Every week Rathi Krishna sends me a list of people who clicked on my articles so that I get a sense of the audience and some people occasionally write me to appreciate or comment on an article. It helps me to know my audience. I see on the list many people I met years ago. If any of the readers would like to drop me a line and say hello or introduce themselves, I welcome that, and this is the time. Perhaps some could even pick out an article they especially liked and explain why. They are all listed on www.wavesofdevotion.com.

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #52 – My Greatest Fear

December 23rd, 2024

Well, maybe not the greatest fear. The Gītā explains that the greatest fear is losing this rare human birth which gives us the ability to turn to God. Fortunately, that’s not my worry. This guarantees that one on the path of God is protected from losing that precious opportunity. So, what is my greatest fear?

 

Presently, I am reading the first chapter of the Tenth Canto. I am up to the part where Vasudeva is trying to pacify Kaṁsa. Kaṁsa is threatening Vasudeva’s wife Devakī because her eighth child is predicted to be the cause of his death. Vasudeva, an expert diplomat, unsuccessfully tries many approaches to assuage Kaṁsa’s fear. One of his last attempts is the use of philosophy. He briefly explains to Kaṁsa transmigration of the soul. This body is not all in all, he explains. What we do in this life, and especially the mental state we develop, creates our next body. You will not therefore solve anything by killing Devakī. Rather, the heinous activity of killing your sister, and especially your envy of her, will carry you to a body in your next life racked with even more misfortune and fear.

 

What really struck me in this section, even more than the verses, was how this point was developed in Śrīla Prabhupāda’s commentaries. Here’s the gist of it:

 

“At the time of death, according to his mental condition, the living being is carried by the subtle body, consisting of mind, intelligence and ego, to another gross body.” Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.1 40, purport

 

Of course, I knew this already, but Śrīla Prabhupāda’s purports, and the conviction with which he spoke, forced me to examine more closely all that I am doing and the consciousness in which it is done. If even my devotional activities sometimes get subtly mixed with motive, then what is the quality of consciousness in which I lead my daily life? Am I actually creating the proper mental state to carry me to a spiritual body in the future?

 

If you look at all this soberly and honestly this is scary business. But aren’t devotees supposed to be fearless? Yes, but it seems this is the one fear that devotees should have.

 

“A pure devotee is always fearful of material existence. No one knows what will happen next, for one may have to change his body at any moment (tathā dehāntara-prāpti). Knowing this fact, a pure devotee acts in such a way that he will not have his life spoiled by being obliged to accept another body and undergo the tribulations of material existence.” Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.2.6, purport

 

Of course, there is the promise in Gītā that Śrī Krishna will provide what his devotees lack and preserve what they have. Didn’t Śrīla Prabhupāda promise that he would deliver his sincere devotees who adhere to their vows and serve his mission and isn’t Lord Caitanya the deliverer of the most fallen? There’s an abundance of mercy, undeserved kindness, in serving the mission of God’s pure devotee. I truly believe that, but it is also true that normally only a pure mind attracts God’s full mercy and carries one to the best spiritual destination. That’s what I am reading today in purport after purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda. Isn’t it better I look at my life in that way rather than expecting “an honorary degree” or “free ticket.”

 

My conclusion is that I would be a fool to just wait for mercy to elevate me to my desired destination. I must be cognizant of what I do and how I think and pray that my sincerest effort attracts the Lord’s mercy and grants my spiritual wishes. That is my greatest hope and failure my greatest fear.

 

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #51 – The Battle for Our Souls

December 16th, 2024

The Battle for Our Souls[1]

 

The success of yoga depends on our ability to focus our attention on a particular object. Never in history has there been so much competition for that attention. Perhaps the biggest competitor for our attention, and thus our spiritual life, is social media. Here’s a short analysis as to why.[2]

 

A successful business markets a product. How then did Big Tech become one of the most successful commercial enterprises in history overnight if it’s available for free? The answer is simple: we are the product. Big Tech markets us to advertisers. We are a valuable commodity because advertisers seek certainty in sales, and the extraordinary amount of data Big Tech collects on us ensures them that certainty. Whoever learns the science of utilizing the vast data of our preferences and proclivities will be, without doubt, successful in sales. Such predictability is obviously the advertiser’s and businessman’s dream.

 

I think we all already know this to some extent. What I don’t think we know is the extent to which they are able to control us. Simply put, we are dealing with behavior-changing geniuses. They have perfected the science of recording the gradual and imperceptible changes of what we think, what we do, and how to market things not to help us but to fill their pockets. Perhaps even more frightening is that as they collect more and more data over time, their prediction models on each of us becomes increasingly refined, enabling them to not only control us for commercial purposes but also to inculcate their own materialistic values.

 

There are obvious ramifications and a basic conflict in all this for those with a spiritual goal. On one side we stand, trying to mold our attention towards a culture of selflessness and devotion, and on the other side stands a business model geared to get as much of our attention as possible for the purpose of inflating our ego and greed. Just see the juxtaposition. While the whole purpose of yoga is to quell the frivolous fluctuations of the mind, the purpose behind social media is to exponentially increase them. It is a battle for our souls. May Lord Krishna save us.

 

“There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.”—Edward Tufte

 


[1] This is a new edit of a Monday Morning Greetings originally published December 27, 2021.

[2] Much of my analysis comes from the documentary The Social Dilemma.

 

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