Monday Morning Greetings 2020 #35 – I Regret

August 31st, 2020

Regret is the first stage of devotion. Without regretting, to one degree or another, our past mistakes that were based on a desire to control and enjoy, how will we ultimately embrace our identity as unalloyed servants of God? The Sanskrit for regret or remorse is tapa, which is the same word for austerity or heat. There is nothing that burns the false ego more than acknowledging that our life and self-image as the center was regrettable. Tapa is therefore the first of five saṁskāras for those committing themselves to the devotional path.

 

Those who can relinquish the false ego in this way and humbly surrender to the tenets of the bhakti lineage become qualified to awaken their spiritual identity. I lament that when first committing myself to bhakti my regret was not deep enough to thwart my lingering false ego that sometimes mixed with my devotional service. At the age of 70, I therefore look back on my life and see within my service many mistakes due to material identity (false ego).

 

Although it is difficult to look back and acknowledge our frailties, I can sense how sincere regret can potentially deepen devotion. The false ego covers the soul from feeling our connection with Krishna. Regret razes the ego, allowing us to directly feel Krishna’s mercy, which inspires us to call out His name in devotion.

 

Perhaps this sounds a bit morbid. Isn’t our self-esteem today already so battered?  It is true that regret diminishes our self-conception, but I think that is very different from low self-esteem. Low self-esteem is feeling bad about one’s lack of material status, although still desiring it. Tapa, on the others hand, is not about lamenting material status, but regretting having desired it, and in the process forgetting God. Regret thus uncovers the soul and allows one to feel authentic self-worth, being loved and recognized by God as His insignificant humble servant.

 

A well-known example of the type of tapa that impels one to heights of devotion is found in the story of Yāmunācārya. He was a king who naturally enjoyed the pleasure of wealth and women. Upon visiting the famous Ranganatha temple, he had an epiphany that his life of sensual pleasure was regrettable. He immediately renounced the world to live as a sannyāsa. His strong sentiments of tapa or regret kept him humble and inspired. They are immortalized in a famous line from one of his compositions:

 

“Since I have been engaged in the transcendental loving service of Krishna, realizing ever-new pleasure in Him, whenever I think of sex pleasure I spit at the thought, and my lips curl with distaste.”

 

Yāmunācārya was speaking as a great renunciate, who had transcended the bodily platform and was relishing the highest levels of devotional ecstasy. His mood of regret, however, is something for us all to emulate. I regret.

 

Regretting old faults,
toss them on the altar flames.
Fragrant soul ascends.

 

 

 

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2020 #34 –  Sri Radha Made Simple in Ten Easy Steps

August 24th, 2020

  1. In this world everyone is seeking happiness, and that happiness is ultimately found in love.
     
  2. If that is the guiding principle in this world, why should it not be part of its source, the ultimate reality?
     
  3. If there is love in the spiritual realm, there must also be beauty, for love means to offer the best.
     
  4. This correlation between happiness, love, and beauty is the key to understanding Śrī Rādhā.
     
  5. Krishna’s happiness potency (that which gives Him pleasure) is called hlādinī śakti, the essence of which is Krishna prema or love of Godhead. When that love is heightened to the highest degree, it is called mahābhāva. Śrī Rādhā is mahābhāva svarūpa, the form of the highest love (and pleasure). In other words, as Radha is the personification of the happiness potency, which is intense love, Radha has the full capacity to offer such love in terms of Her exemplary qualities.
     
  6. To understand Radha more deeply one has to understand the relationship between love, an internal emotion, and the necessity of a concrete expression of that love to enable another to feel it. An example should help. When we love someone, we may offer them flowers to express our love. Why? Flowers are fragrant, colorful, and may be soft and smooth. The experience of those flowers is not just a sensual experience, but an emotional one, which is the experience of the love from the person who has offered it so nicely.
     
  7. Similarly, as Śrī Rādhā is an expression of God’s own potency of love, there is no limit to the intensity and greatness of Her qualities to express that love. Descriptions of those characteristics and abilities, however, can give us some idea of the intensity of her love. For example, here is a description of Śrī Rādhā’s beauty from Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, just one of Her twenty-five prominent qualities:
     
    “The beauty of Śrī Rādhā’s smile defeats the beauty of a blue lotus. The beauty of Her face defeats the beauty of a forest of blue lotuses, and the luster of Her body puts gold in a painful situation.”
     
  8. Śrī Rādhā’s many ornaments and decorations, which She adorns only for the pleasure of Krishna, are also a personification of mahābhāva, the highest manifestation of Krishna prema, and naturally non-different from Her. Therefore, Krishna’s experience of Śrī Rādhā, down to His appreciation of those decorations, are the highest experience of happiness.
     
  9. Only someone who is impersonal is not conquered by love. As Krishna is the Supreme Person, He is responsive to and conquered by true devotion. As Śrī Rādhā is the highest form of love, Her twenty-fifth transcendental quality is that She always keeps Krishna under Her control.
     
  10. How is this relevant to us? Śrīla Prabhupāda instructs us:
     
    “Rādhārāṇī, the symbol of the topmost bhakti, is so powerful that She has purchased Krishna. Therefore, Vrajavāsīs[1] take shelter of the lotus feet of Rādhārāṇī, for if She recommends, ‘O here is a nice devotee,’ Krishna must accept him.” (Teachings of Queen Kuntī)
     

 

 


[1] The devotees who reside in Vṛndāvana, Śrī Krishna’s abode.

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2020 #33 – If You Think It is a Good Idea

August 17th, 2020

There is something charming about Krishna’s relationship with the residents of Vrindavan. Almost as enlivening as hearing about the rasa of Krishna and the Brijabasis is hearing the gems of philosophical understanding that are placed within those stories. It is almost as if they have been carefully placed there just to take advantage of the receptive heart that has been opened by the sweetness of those stories itself. Today we will discuss one of those points. First the context:

 

Krishna’s friends forcibly, but with love, ask Krishna and Balarama to quell their hunger by going to the forest of Tālavana, where hundreds of thousands of succulent, fragrant tāla fruits are lying on the ground, guarded by the ferocious man-eating ass demon and his cohorts. After informing Krishna three times in no uncertain terms how great their desire is for these fruits, they end their entreaty by qualifying their request with two simple words: yadi rocate (“if you think it is a good idea”). Thus, hidden within this sweet story rests a powerful instruction: There is room on the path of bhakti for our own personal desires, as long as they conform to the will of God.

 

Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura speaks very strongly about the necessity for personal enjoyment even when on the path of bhakti: “Without enjoying the sense objects, a living entity cannot survive. As soon as the living entity gives up sense enjoyment, he leaves the body.” (Śrī Bhaktyāloka p. 2)

 

When I initially read Śrīla Bhaktivinoda’s comment, I was a bit surprised by how strong it was, considering that the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam seems to repeatedly espouse almost the opposite. One of my favorite verses in this regard: “My dear sons, there is no reason to labor very hard for sense pleasure while in this human form of life; such pleasures are available to the stool-eaters (hogs).” (Bhag. 5.5.1)

 

The simple reconciliation of the two perspectives is that sense gratification is heavily condemned when not sanctioned by the Lord and allowed if Krishna “thinks it is a good idea.” The question, then, is when does Krishna think it is a good idea?

 

A healthy peaceful mind facilitates meditation and devotional service. For that, different people require different levels of enjoyment. When our goal is self-realization and we sincerely take only what is prescribed to keep body and soul together, then our sense gratification is what Krishna so desires, or at least has been sanctioned by Him.

 

When sense pleasure, however, becomes the goal in itself, which is usually the case in this world, then it is not what Krishna thinks is a good idea. It is then utterly condemned.

 

This relationship between sense pleasure and devotion is clearly outlined in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.2.10 in response to a question that commentators imply from the previous verse: “What about sense gratification (kāma) on the path of bhakti?” Sūta Gosvāmī answers that sense gratification is not for the pleasure of the senses in itself (kāmasya nendriya-prītir). We should only take as much as we need (lābho jīveta yāvatā) to maintain a heathy life for the purpose of realizing the self (jīvasya tattva-jijñāsā). Simply put, although we may get pleasure from the senses, its purpose should only be to satisfy our need for a peaceful mind for the higher endeavor of self-realization.

 

The cowherd boys’ simple words, “if you think it is a good idea”, in the midst of their sweet, playful exchanges with Krishna are a powerful template for all of one’s activities. The most important consciousness for a devotee to have, therefore, is the mood and conviction that nothing I do or want should be independent of the will of God. A sincere bhakta, therefore, carefully gauges all of their activities, even their sensual and emotional needs, by sincerely petitioning Krishna in their heart with the same simple words of Krishna’s friends: “if you think it is a good idea.”

 

The Highest Scoring Spiritual Performance – Dhanurdhara Swami’s Vyāsa-pūjā Offering to Śrīla Prabhupāda

August 12th, 2020

The Highest Scoring Spiritual Performance

I was a fan of watching the Olympics when I was young. One thing that I found intriguing was that gymnastics and diving competitors wouldn’t be scored just for the quality of their performance, but the degree of difficulty of the routine or dive they were attempting. I had a thought today. Why not use that same lens to increase our appreciation of what Śrīla Prabhupāda achieved in his mission by briefly highlighting the degree of difficulty of the task he accomplished?

 

For those of you who may not know, Śrīla Prabhupāda crossed the ocean by steamship in 1965 at the age of seventy to start his world mission in New York. By the time he left the world twelve years later, he established over 108 centers worldwide with thousands of followers dedicated to the promotion of bhakti-yoga, primarily focused on kīrtana. He also personally translated, expounded upon, and published over eighty volumes of authentic Indian spiritual texts, which were then translated into over fifty languages. More than a half a billion of those books have since been distributed worldwide. There’s more, but let’s keep our focus on our subject: the difficulty of his task.

 

Śrīla Prabhupāda alights on the shore of the New York Harbor with only eight dollars in his pocket and a trunk of his translated works. His mission is to spread bhakti and kīrtana in the Western world and to transplant an ancient culture, which, for all practical purposes, has never before left the shores of India. He stands there as a lone man with no backing, followers, or resources directly facing his opposition to the West – the full force of the most powerful material civilization known to man. Perhaps an even greater challenge is where, by providence, he was directed to start his mission.

 

After a short while in America, he winds up living in the Bowery sharing a loft with a young man he hopes to teach Sanskrit. One evening the young man suddenly loses his mind on LSD and Prabhupāda is forced onto the streets of the Bowery in the depth of night. With the help of some early followers, he soon settles in an apartment in the Lower East Side with use of a storefront for his lectures. The impediments he faces are unimaginable, especially for a man of his culture.

 

“Why have I come to this place? Why have I come to this place?” he ponders while sitting in his storefront in the Lower East Side, the last place a devotional, learned, and cultured Bengali Vaiṣṇava gentlemen would retire to serve his own personal needs. He immediately answers his own audible reflection, “I was cent per cent faithful to the order of my spiritual master!” By force of that faith, he continues with his calling.

 

He gradually collects a group of sincere young people to help him. It is by no means easy. His field of potential candidates is not of any noted culture or training, to say the least. He takes what comes and tries to train them. One story comes to mind:

 

A young lady from the Lower East Side joins the mission and is soon initiated by Śrīla Prabhupāda. To start his mission, he has no choice but to be extremely merciful. This young lady, however, hates men. After six months she requests to see Śrīla Prabhupāda. He grants her audience. “I have been chanted Hare Kṛṣṇa for six months, but I just can’t stand worshipping that man Kṛṣṇa!” Śrīla Prabhupāda, replies without losing a beat, “That’s OK, we worship Rādhā.”

 

It is hard to imagine a more insane place to try to transplant traditional Vaiṣṇava culture than the sex-crazed, drugged-out, hippy land of the Lower East Side.

 

Another story comes to mind:

 

Śrīla Prabhupāda’s new disciples indiscriminately organize programs for him to share his message of devotion and culture. They arrange for him to speak at a rally of Louis Abolafia, the founder of the Naked Party. He is running for President of the United States with a catchy slogan: “What have I got to hide?” When Śrīla Prabhupāda enters the room, the supporters of Louis Abolafia are dressed as bananas and are wildly dancing, mostly naked. Śrīla Prabhupāda remains sober, talks briefly, and leaves. Afterwards one of his disciples informs Śrīla Prabhupāda that Louis Abolafia couldn’t officially run for President because he didn’t meet the minimum age required. Śrīla Prabhupāda finds that hysterical and bursts into laughter. He certainly had a sense of humor and would sometimes chuckle or laugh, but the devotees never saw him laugh so hard. I can imagine what he was thinking: “As if his age was the reason he has not qualified!”

 

It is hard to imagine that a person whose mission was to create a class of Vaiṣṇava brāhmaṇas actually accomplished it within such a milieu of madness and at such an advanced age, with challenged health, I should add. He had suffered two heart attacks on his journey across the sea. Should not the score of his unprecedented accomplishments therefore be exponentially increased by the substantial challenges he faced?

 

A final story:

 

It was the disappearance festival of Śrīla Prabhupāda in 1978. Several of the most distinguished scholars of Vṛndāvana were assembled to offer their respects. I remember the homage of one of them. “If Śrīla Haridās Ṭhākur, Śrīla Rupa Gosvāmī, and Śrīla Prabhupāda were in the same room and Śrī Caitanya appeared, who would he go to first? I say Śrīla Prabhupāda! Who could be more attached to the holy name than that person who spread it around the world!”

 

Of course, Śrīla Prabhupāda had just recently passed from this world and the talks were in the mood of eulogy, but considering what he accomplished and the degree of difficulty of his task, is it not possible that we have witnessed the highest-scoring spiritual performance in the history of Vaiṣṇavism?

 

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2020 #32 – The Yoga of Slander and Sickness

August 10th, 2020

A friend recommended that I look through the discourses of Epictetus, one of the prominent Stoic philosophers who taught during the second century AD. He marveled how much Epictetus’s teachings paralleled basic Bhagavad-gītā philosophy. I was especially intrigued by how the Stoics described karmic challenges, such as slander and sickness, as God bestowing one with the means to go deeper in spiritual understanding. Their perspective would be analogous to the tougher and tougher challenges a trainer gives to the trainee when it is time to go to the next level of fitness.

 

The basic Stoic philosophy is that God has given us the gift of making good use of our will or choice. If we focus our lives on making the best use of that power by making honest choices, which is always within our control, rather than trying to focus on what happens to us, which fluctuates beyond our control, we can always live with dignity and satisfaction.

 

The word “stoic” therefore became synonymous with the act of enduring hardship without showing feelings, because a true Stoic is even minded in response to happiness and distress, knowing that glory and virtue lie not in destiny, but in free will. Sounds like Bhagavad-gītā:

 

“Act while fixed in yoga, abandoning attachment, and remaining the same in success or failure. Such even-mindedness is called yoga.” (Bg. 2.48)

 

This concept of Stoicism, as found in Epictetus, is especially comforting in relationship to one of the most disturbing karmic situations, slander.

 

When one’s objective is the reformation of consciousness rather than the outcome of events then even the most disappointing consequences, such as being slandered, are no longer disturbing because they serve one’s mission, which is to uplift one’s thoughts. Such consciousness is certainly not easy when one’s reputation is sullied or one is ill, but a yogi (stoic) trained as described above, is already naturally, as the Bhagavad-gītā says, “indifferent to all that has been heard and all that is to be heard,” (2.52) which certainly includes slander. In that regard, I love how Epictetus instructs a student who is concerned about how people will think of him:

 

“It is not in a good person’s nature to grieve, complain or whine; they don’t go pale, tremble and say, ‘What kind of hearing or reception will he give me?’ Idiot, that’s his concern—don’t concern yourself with other people’s business. It’s his problem if he receives you badly.” (Discourses and Selected Writings II.2. 17)

 

A perfect example of a yogic or stoic response to slander is Socrates’s response to the Senate assembly in Greece when they unfairly accused him of treason and condemned him to death.[1] His response can almost serve as a mantra for the yogic view of tolerating slander, which deems the offender who misuses his will as harming himself more than the victim who responds with reason:

 

“If you think you can harm me, you will not harm me; you will only harm yourself.”

 

The Stoic’s reaction to illness parallels his reaction to slander, so there is not much more to add. We do our duty to keep the body reasonably fit[2] and leave the results to God. As the results, whether health or illness, are the will of God, we remain equipoised towards the body’s condition and instead focus on the deepening of our consciousness in response to whatever God has brought us.

 

Conclusion: We do not suffer from the events in our lives, but to our response to them. We can thus always live with inner peace and integrity, especially in this increasingly turbulent world filled with sickness and slander that inevitably ends in death, if we simply choose to respond to what comes to us with dharma and devotion, rather than ceaselessly trying to alter our fate.

 

What gems of realization the Stoic’s shared with us, and how much they parallel the basic teachings of our eternal Bhagavad-gītā!

 

 

 “God’s greatest gift to man
In all the bounty He was moved to make
Throughout creation-the one gift the most
Close to his goodness and the one He calls
Most precious-is free will.”
 Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

 


[1] Although Socrates predates the Stoics, it is not surprising that aspects of their philosophy parallel his, as he was certainly one of their inspirations.

[2] When Epictetus was asked how much we should be concerned with external things like health he answered, “Only so far as not to trouble himself about them unreasonably.” (Discourses and Selected Writings I. 10.16)

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2020 #31 – Inspiration and the Path of Bhakti

August 3rd, 2020

Last week, my new book, Monday Morning Greetings: Giving Strength to the Week, went to print. It contains more than three years of my weekly posts. When I skimmed through the articles in the galley, it was hard to imagine how I was able to come up with something somewhat original to write about every week.

 

Of course, many posts came from an event during the week that sparked a realization, but that was certainly not always the case. Sometimes an idea came from a weekly inspiration that suddenly popped into my mind, often the day before I needed to start my writing. I can’t claim any major significance to what I write, but many great artistic compositions or startling scientific discoveries are reportedly born from inspiration, where brilliant and often fully formed ideas enter the mind far beyond one’s conscious endeavor, as if from an external source. This is how Mozart described such a creative process:

 

“When I feel well and in good humor when I am taking a drive or walk…thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as you could wish. Whence and how do they come? I do not know and have nothing to do with it… once I have a theme, another melody comes, linking itself with the first one, in needs of the composition as a whole. It does not come to me successively, with its various parts worked out in detail, as they will be later on, but it is in its entirety that my imagination lets me hear.”

 

Mozart is such a good example of demonstrating the power of inspiration, and there are several ways to explain it from the Vedic perspective – but back to the subject of my inspiration, the main subject of the post.

 

One of the most powerful effects for me in the experience of inspiration is the strengthening of faith in God, for higher guidance seems to have much more explanatory power to describe the phenomena of inspiration than randomness, the only alternative explanation.

 

Inspiration also seems to have a special place on the path of bhakti. Bhakti is the path of grace, which means that a dedicated practitioner is able to achieve far beyond their capability in service and practice. By its very nature, bhakti is therefore the path of inspiration, the descent of higher guidance.

 

“To those who are constantly devoted to serving Me with love, I give the understanding by which they can come to Me.” (Bg. 10.10)

 

It is interesting here how easily in bhakti inspiration generates feelings of mercy or kindness, because no matter how great the idea one comes up with, or however brilliant the plan to execute it, both are ultimately the mercy or inspiration of Krishna.

 

“I am situated in everyone’s heart, and from Me comes remembrance, knowledge, and forgetfulness […]” (Bg. 15.15)

 

Inspiration is therefore a powerful tool to cultivate humility, for the experience of inspiration informs us that no matter how much we accomplish, our achievements are dependent on the grace of God.

 

I am excited that Monday Morning Greetings: Giving Strength to the Week has finally gone to press. Do I feel a sense of accomplishment? I can’t say I don’t, but thankfully in writing it I’ve had enough experiences of something greater than me working through me to be convinced that it is all the mercy of guru and Krishna.