Waves of Devotion

I was always struck by the famous quote of Saint Augustine about humility: “If you ask me what the essential thing in the religion and discipline of Jesus Christ is, I shall reply: first, humility; second, humility; and third, humility.” Although Saint Augustine is talking within the context of his own faith, his insight is universal and certainly applicable to the essence of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. Therefore, if I was asked the same question that Saint Augustine was asked but in reference to my own tradition, I would also certainly give a similar answer. Below is my own creative analysis of humility! humility! humility! from a Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava perspective:

First Humility

According to Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, spiritual life begins with humility. The living entity is nitya baddha, conditioned since time immemorial. That means their spiritual self is covered by a conceit—that I know what is best for my life, and it’s to selfishly control and enjoy. The problem is that simply based on our own authority, the pursuance of this misdirected ideal has failed us again and again, for happiness is not in seeking superiority, but in submitting to and serving God and others. After limitless births of directing oneself with such a miserable result, the fortunate soul may finally admit defeat and search for guidance. That recognition—that to be fulfilled I must submit to an authority and truth higher than my own—is the seed of humility and the emblem of character.

Second Humility

According to the school of bhakti, this initial expression of humility attracts the attention of God, who arranges for us guidance in the form of sādhu-saṅga, saintly people, which ultimately leads one to commit fully to serving the truth by surrendering to one who has realized the truth. Such surrender is the foundation of humility because it is not just acknowledging a truth higher than one’s own authority, but making a full commitment to follow it, especially by the process of initiation, which is a solemn vow of full dedication to the teachings of a qualified mentor.

Third Humility

This development of humility, however, does not end with initiation. Nurturing devotion means continually deepening one’s humility, because advancing on the path of devotion means putting the Absolute Truth more and more in the center one’s life and oneself more and more at the periphery as His servant. As humility is integral to devotion, this path of progressive devotion and deepening humility naturally culminates at its height in dainya, utter humility, a devotional mood of extreme meekness and spiritual desperation and despair,[1] which is non-different from prema-bhakti, the height of divine love.

Humility! Humility! Humility! Let me end with humility by offering another quote by Saint Augustine on humility. Please ponder it deeply:

“Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending.”

[1] The idea here is that as devotion deepens the greatness and sweetness of God is increasingly realized which progressively humbles one to the point of increasing feelings of unworthiness for His grace. The despair and desperation one feel are just manifestations of love for God and thus the highest sentiments of devotion and counterintuitively the greatest joy.

I’ve exposed myself before as an “alien”,[1] a person who grew up revering asphalt and stickball,[2] never went camping, and hates country walks. Still, by Śrīla Prabhupāda’s grace, I aspire for the forest of Vrindavan and the planet of the cows. I also honor “earthmen”, people who not only commune with nature and love country walks but can live off the land. If there is any failure of the modern-day Hare Krishna movement, it’s that despite Śrīla Prabhupāda’s teachings of “simple living and high thinking”, almost all of us, his followers that is, are stuck in the city or suburbs conditioned by a false sense of opulence based on technology and could never see Goloka Vrindavan as the spiritual world if it didn’t have 5G. Seriously!

Where did this rant come from?! A friend sent me a short video interview with a pious young Christian named Titus. He lives without running water and electricity on his own sustainable farm on a strictly plant-based diet. He works hard all day, and if he has spare time, he reads the Bible and an occasional history book. He seems peaceful and fulfilled. The quality and especially integrity of his life hit me because it reinforced in me many of the things I needed to hear again that Śrīla Prabhupāda stressed about simple living, especially that most of our material problems are self-created by the way we choose to live and that few people today, if any, have a relatively peaceful life.

Just think of the struggles the average family is facing today. Have you recently checked the price of gas, which affects the price of everything, or gone shopping for groceries? Our purchasing power has been rapidly decreasing to the extent that those entering the workforce today are the first generation in America whose economic prospects are worse than their parents. Even the most basic things such as owning one’s home, getting married and raising a family, and retiring at a reasonable age have suddenly become a challenge, even a dream. What’s even more stressful is that the fate of our sustenance is increasingly dependent on people who care little about our plight in life. That strain, Śrīla Prabhupāda warns us, over dependence on such people’s mercy,[3] is one of the root causes of disease. I could go on and on with the madness of modern life, as those who hold power and “know best” are increasingly intruding on our privacy and subverting our values. My main point, however, is that Titus had a solution for such oppression, as did Śrīla Prabhupāda—simple living and high thinking.

I found Titus’s video tempting, yet personally challenging. Tempting because it seems so attractive to trade our attachments for a relatively worry-free life, and challenging because even as a renunciate I am not sure I could live that way. Have I already been too spoiled by the impressions in my heart of an attraction for a life of technology and comforts? Are we all doomed to a life of endless complexity, anxiety, nine-to-five slavery, and oppression just for a few trinkets of technology? Introducing Titus, the consummate earthman:[4]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir3eJ1t13fk

[1] I have used the phrase “aliens and earthmen” this way before. It comes from my Godbrother, Varsana Maharaja, who has dedicated himself to developing New Vrindavan and has a unique communion with nature, animals, and the land. He described to me two classes of devotees: earthmen—those who commune with the land, and aliens—those who have little relationship or attraction with nature. I should note that at the time he shared those phrases with me, perhaps thirty years ago, the masculine gender in plural referred to all people. Probably, if he coined phrase today it would be earth people.

[2] I grew up in Brooklyn and was conditioned to the joys of the city. I never went camping and loved stickball. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stickball_(street_game). Here is an article I wrote about my feelings towards country walks.  https://wavesofdevotion.com/2017/07/17/now/

[3] “[…] By keeping regular habits and eating simple food, any man can maintain his health. Overeating, over–sense-gratification, overdependence on another’s mercy, and artificial standards of living sap the very vitality of human energy. Therefore, the duration of life is shortened.” (Bhag. 1.1.10)

[4] The video of Titus was by Peter Santenello. I like his work. I previously used him when I wrote an article about Lakewood, a city of Hasidic Jews in New Jersey. Here is another video by him on simple living: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LEoW81mUXU

Without understanding what something is, do we really perceive it? All the senses of an animal are functional, with some more acute in perception than ours, but if you gave a monkey a computer, would they know what it is? And if not, are they truly perceiving it? It seems obvious from this example that the complete perception of an object entails expanding our awareness of what it is, and therefore the ultimate purpose of knowledge is the expansion of awareness or perception. But why would that be important?

It’s important because of the causal relationship between such heightened perception and contentment. In other words, a deeper meaning or knowledge of reality elevates our consciousness and happiness. If that were not the case, or there wasn’t such a relationship, then why do we help someone in distress by helping them see their situation more clearly or with deeper meaning? The principle that knowledge enhances our perception of reality and consequently our contentment is certainly true from a theistic standpoint where reality is ultimately connected with God, and when used according to its logos (purpose) brings us closer to His nature and joy. What else could be the purpose of a creation by an omnibenevolent being?

That logos of everything in Sanskrit is called the Vedas, or śāstra. The idea is that from “oṁ”, the sound from which the whole universe manifests, simultaneously the Vedas, the meaning and utility of everything, is also manifest. In other words, śāstra shows how everything is directly or indirectly related to the purpose of creation, which is the elevation of consciousness, including such variegated subjects as health, social philosophy, and metaphysics. For Vaiṣṇavas, the best representation of Vedic knowledge to elevate one to the platform of meaning beyond a limited or superficial understanding is the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

A classic example of this principle of enhancing one’s perception and contentment through knowledge is the story of Vidura, who was insulted, threatened with violence, and ultimately thrown out of the kingdom by his evil nephew. While most people would perceive such an incident as being victimized and develop enmity towards his oppressor, Vidura, who was already educated beyond a superficial perception, could observe reality at the level of meaning. He saw that in addition to the fact that his nephew was evil, he was unknowingly serving as an agent of God and delivering to him an important message—that at his advanced age it was time to leave the palace intrigue, go on pilgrimage, and dedicate himself fully to the service of Sri Krishna.

I have a choice. In fact, we all have the same choice. We can remain in this world with a limited vision of reality and intensely suffer its dualities, or we can follow and apply a tradition of wisdom and expand our consciousness to the level of meaning and contentment. With the increasing insanity of the modern world, is that not more urgent than ever?

Due to facilitating the Bhakti Immersion in Colombia this week,I was unable to finish a Monday Morning Greeting. I am republishing this one in honor of Janmastami.

Can God Be Blue?

July 31, 2017

That’s simple. God can be anything He wants. If there were any other reason that God was blue, then He wouldn’t be God, because if a reason or cause external to one’s own will dictates one’s nature, then one would not be fully independent, which is one of the basic criteria for being Supreme. So, the only reason why God is blue, if He is indeed blue, is because it is part of His intrinsic nature. So, the real questions in relation to the nature of God’s color should first be whether there is a God, is He a person, and whether that person is Krishna?

Limitations of this article

This is a very deep subject. Libraries of books have been written about the nature of God. How can I possibly do justice to such a vast subject in such a short article? I think what is possible here is to give a solid outline supporting the reasonableness that there is God, who is a person, and whose name is Krishna.

Criteria for ascertaining whether God exists

The main criteria by which atheists have argued against the existence of God, especially in the twentieth century, and which greatly informs their reasoning to this day, is called the verification principle—a premise that states that no one should believe a proposition unless it can be proved to them rationally by logic or empirically by sense perception.

At first glance, this seems reasonable, but in reality this principle falls far short of how we actually reason about things in the world. There are many things that people reasonably accept as true that can’t be verified by such criteria (including, ironically, the verification principle itself). Even what we call proven scientific facts, such as the existence of protons or neutrons, are not personally verifiable by us, but are accepted on faith in the experts whom we trust on such matters.

Atheists themselves cannot abide by the verification principle when arguing against the existence of God, and certainly not when professing a theory for the cause of this world. So when you get down specifically to establishing the existence of God on the rational platform, the argument comes down to which theory of the world makes the best sense of it, not to absolute verification.

Arguments for the existence of God

It seems that the proposition that there is a God makes better sense of the world than the theory that everything happened randomly by chance. For example, if one wakes up in the winter and sees a snowman, by the evidence at hand it seems to make far more sense that a person made it than that snow randomly blowing around caused it, even though there may not be a way to absolutely verify it. In a similar way, the evidence of the complex and continued regularity of the world points far more to a transcendent creator than a haphazard coalescing of molecules by chance, by the simple fact that even if one of the constant variables at basis of creation swayed by one in a million, the world as we know it would not exist.

There are many other powerful and reasonable arguments for the existence of God. Here are a few of my favorites:

The only beings that have intrinsic moral values are subjects, beings who can undergo experience and who have values, concerns, and other mental states. If you deny that there is subjecthood at the foundations of the universe, you also deny that moral obligation is a fundamental feature of reality. In other words, if you believe human rights are a reality, it makes much more sense that God exists than that He doesn’t. If everything is just a product of matter coalescing by chance, it is ultimately inconsistent to believe in transcendent moral values, even such values as aversion to child abuse or racial genocide.

Lastly, it is more reasonable to believe that something comes from something than that something comes from nothing. This same simple logic is also presented succinctly in one of the prominent verses of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad:

“How can what is existent be born from what is non-existent? On the contrary, in the beginning this world was simply what is existent—one only without a second.” (Patrick Olivelle’s translation—Chapter 6, Book 2.)

I could go on and on, also discussing the reasons against God’s existence, but it is certainly reasonable and even compelling that God does exist.

Is God a person?

Srila Prabhupada addressed this point effectively and tersely: “God does not have the defect of impersonality.”

The brilliant answer by the respected Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga to the question of whether God is person also sufficiently satisfies this inquiry. His response: “God is not less than a person.”

Ascribing form and personality to God doesn’t limit Him. Denying that He has attributes, including personality, does. It is certainly reasonable that if there is a God that He is not less than us, and thus also a person.

Is that person Krishna?

If God is a person, then the highest manifestation of that personhood, as with all personhood, is not majesty and power, but an all-loving personality. Srila Prabhupada uses a simple analogy to demonstrate this principle in relation to the Divine. Just as when a high-court judge checks his intimate self to appropriately reciprocate with those approaching him reverentially, but sheds his grandeur to reveal his full or intimate self at home, similarly the fullest manifestation of God is when He is home in Vrindavan as a cowherd, where the complete sweetness of personality can blossom as a child, friend, or lover unfettered by the demands of reverence, not when God displays His full power as the creator, Narayana. Therefore Sri Rupa Gosvami, at the beginning of the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, his seminal book on Krishna bhakti, introduces Krishna as akhila-rasāmṛta-mūrti, the fullest embodiment of the sweetness of all relationships.

Position covers personality, and thus it is reasonable that if God is a person, His fullest expression of being would not be shackled by a display of position and opulence.

Again the scope of these short Monday Morning Greetings limit a thorough exposition of this subject, but I coined a phrase that I think sums up the reasonability of God’s fullest personal manifestation being sweet and modest like Krishna:

“Krishna is God with His guard down.” Sounds reasonable to me.