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Archive for April, 2024

Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #18 – Dog Bites Monk: Part Two

April 29th, 2024

After that dog attacked me, I remained quite calm, almost as an observer. I guess different people react in different ways—some shaken up, some perhaps angry or even hysterical. I was a bit proud of how much I could extract myself from the drama, but after my friend cleaned my wound and I went back to my room, I was surprised by how much the dog’s antagonism towards me had entered my body. In other words, although I wasn’t traumatized, in the sense that I could observe what happened and not react to it emotionally, I could still see that trauma of aggression within me and feel it somewhat physically. Thinking back on that observation affirmed an important realization: Our words and actions can carry our emotions to others—a realization that is also applicable to the path of devotion where our words and work serve as a vehicle to carry our devotion to God for His pleasure, which is the essence of devotional practice.

 

This phenomenon is clearly expressed in Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī’s principal definition of pure devotion where he explains that the primary characteristic of pure devotion is that the endeavors of one’s mind, body, and words flow towards Krishna carrying our intention to please Him.[1]

 

This same principle is also indicated in the Yoga-sūtras in terms of japa meditation, where Patañjali writes that one should dwell on the meaning of the mantra, which is full surrender to Īśvara (God), and carry that mood of devotion to God through the mantra to invoke His mercy.[2]

 

And certainly, this applies to kirtan. What is kirtan? “Kirtan is when the bhava (devotion) in the heart is expressed through the discipline of music.”[3]

 

Our practical service must also carry our devotion to Krishna. I heard this nicely explained by a local sādhu in Vrindavan in a charming way: “The term for servant in Sanskrit is sevāk. If you take away sevā (the mood of service) from sevāk (the person doing the act of service) you are left only with vak. Vak or bak represents Bakāsura, the duck demon in krishnalīlā who represents duplicity.”[4]

 

As I was chanting this morning, this realization of the mantra carrying my devotion to Krishna came to my mind, impelling me to listen carefully to the sincerity of my chanting so that I truly meant what I was saying—a call to Śrī Krishna begging for a heart of service and the mercy of the holy name.

 

So, this ends my two-part series of “Dog Bites Monk” (and enlightens him).

 


[1] “One should render transcendental loving service to the Supreme Lord Kṛṣṇa favorably and without desire for material profit or gain through fruitive activities or philosophical speculation. That is called pure devotional service.” (Brs.1.1.11)

[2] Vyasa, the main commentator on the Yoga Sutras, describes how the mantra expressing surrender invokes His mercy: “Devotion to God, according to Vyāsa, involves a particular type of devotion, bhakti-viśeṣa; simply by the yogī’s longing, God bestows his grace upon the yogī. When this happens, the fruits of samādhi become quickly available.” (Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, commentary 1.23, Professor Edwin Bryant)

[3] Sat Hari Singh Khalsa, “Kirtan: The Sacred Music of the Sikhs,” Journal of Vaishnava Studies, Volume 17, No. 2 (Spring 2009), 169–184.

[4] I can’t remember where I heard it.

Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #17 – Dog Bites Monk: Part One

April 22nd, 2024

Dog Bites Monk: Part One

 

Nothing serious. I just got my robes ripped to shreds and a nibble on my calf and thigh. Maybe a little more than a nibble, but nothing too serious.[1] Anyway, another opportunity to see things through the eyes of śāstra.

 

Realization One

 

Somehow, it was a peaceful time, the rare stretch where things seemed to fall in place, or at least no real major life challenges, which usually seem to always plague one, and a little more excitement than usual —some real good programs to look forward to. So just feeling great, and then I opened the door to the luxurious tropical backyard from the guestroom at my friend’s house in Boca Raton on the east coast of Florida. Ruff, ruff, ruff, real loud and vicious—I was attacked by a ferocious large, white half-German Shepherd, half-Labrador Retriever before I even got out the door. My first thought after the adrenaline rush to deal with the task at hand: “There was nothing I could do. It was destiny. Anything can happen at any time. I am not the controller.” And it became clear to me why Śrī Krishna never lets us rest in our comfort zone. My thought process:

 

It’s subtle, but this is what I witnessed in myself. I saw that if one is not careful when things are going well, one can subtly fortify the general illusion that we are the controller and enjoyer, which fosters the misplaced faith that happiness is based on our ability to conform a world to one’s desires, which is never under one’s control, instead of the proper and soul-nourishing faith of conforming one’s desires to God’s will in service, which is always under one’s control. The dog therefore represented the challenges that destiny brings to dampen the fantasy of attaining happiness now and in the future based on controlling destiny to impel to us to a healthy faith dependent on simply our free will, the choices we make. I think my point will be better understood by sharing one scientific study:[2]

 

There were two rooms with ten frogs each. One room had a large pot of boiling water and the other had a large pot of just hot water, but not hot enough so the frogs could not go in. After a few days, the rooms were opened and all the frogs in the room with boiling water were alive and all the frogs in the room with hot water were dead. What happened? In the room with boiling water, the frogs who naturally love water went in and immediately jumped out. In the rooms with hot water, the frogs stayed in the water, got dehydrated and died. Similarly, just like the frog in the water that killed them, we get attached to the world to the extent it goes our way, but as it binds us to the bodily concept of life, such attachment ultimately increases our suffering, especially of the unavoidable experiences of death, disease, and old age. And just like the boiling water that prevented the frog from dwelling in something that would kill them, the disturbances that come from destiny detach us from the world of birth and death and impel us to surrender to and serve God, to find real happiness by changing our consciousness rather than simply manipulating the world.

 

Ruff, ruff, ruff, and that’s what I learned from dog bites monk.

 


[1] It was my friend’s dog who had just come from a shelter and was being trained. He was familiar with the family but apprehensive of strangers. I was warned, but when I saw my friend outside, I thought I would be safe. The dog was already checked for rabies and was clear, and although I still have two definitive bite marks on my calf and thigh, it was somehow never painful.

[2] I heard this once, but I don’t recall where.

 

Monday Morning Greeting 2024 #16 – From Logos to Mythos: A Practicum in Adding Life to One’s Spiritual Practices

April 15th, 2024

When Jaya Jagannath arrived for this year’s Bhakti Immersion retreat in Colombia, I told him that I had changed the topic I would be speaking on. Instead of speaking on the Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta I would be speaking on the Śikṣāṣṭaka prayers from Chapter 20 of the Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta. He seemed pleasantly surprised, announcing it as “serendipitous”. He explained why: His idea was to teach the attendees of his seminars to approach the text from the platform of what he called mythos, where one engages with the prayers of the Bhāgavatam as if they are the characters of the narrative and the prayers are coming from their own hearts, rather than what he called logos, approaching the text as a passive observer from the platform of understanding, which is exactly what is described in Chapter 20 of the Caitanya-caritāmṛta. There it is described how Śrī Caitanya used the stories of the Bhāgavatam to also enter its mythos, or the prevalent attitude that the verses of the narrative communicated. Jaya Jagannath is using the word mythos creatively, but when I share the exercise that he gave to the students in his seminar, and the work that they produced, it will be apparent what he was trying to do, and how it is exactly what the Bhāgavatam as a rasa-śāstra is meant to accomplish—to not just explain what is bhakti, but to make the reader feel and own the prayers of the text as if it is their own.

 

I will share two of the poems written as part of the exercise Jaya Jagannath gave, although they were all exceptional. Mind you, most of the participants were people who have only recently come to Krishna consciousness.

 

This may be a little longer than my usual Monday Morning Greeting, but I guarantee that once you read one, you will continue. They’re that good.

 

The Monday Morning Greeting format is not long enough to elaborate on all the preliminary teaching and preparation that Jaya Jagannath gave to the attendees, but the gist is that he asked the students to try to own, in a very honest and practical way, the following verse:

 

“Dear Kṛṣṇa, please pour the nectar of Your lips upon the fire within our hearts—a fire You ignited with Your smiling glances and the sweet song of Your flute. If You do not, we will consign our bodies to the fire of separation from You, O friend, and thus like yogīs attain to the abode of Your lotus feet by meditation.” (Bhag. 10.29.35)

 

The first poem is by Patrick from Chatham, New York. He is in his mid-thirties, and for most of his working career he has earned his living as an actor in New York. He is gay. Normally one’s sexual orientation is not worth mentioning to describe one following the path of bhakti, but it is necessary here to do so here to understand the context of his poem.

 

“Knowing You Now”

 

I’ve been burned by You before

but I didn’t know it was You

I mistook You

for Scott, Steven, Sebastian and Tom

I stopped short of seeing You

Making these men my god.

And so I suffered in a blaze of material existence.

Expecting them to fulfill what only You can.

Fruitlessly worshipping their form, situating myself ever deeper in my material condition.

Seeking to extinguish this small fire with medicines that would only temper the flames temporarily.

But this suffering is like a sunburn

compared to the inferno of what I know is possible

by Knowing You Now.

What once singed, now scorches.

The fire of my desire to know you Krsna is so intense it transforms

my material lust into an authentic love thirst that only the nectar from your lips can quench.

You taught me that my capacity for worshipping form wasn’t entirely wrong. Just misguided. That You too have form, and hips and eyes and a smile that I might meditate upon.

Instead of their slender physique I now yearn for your soft belly and curved hips.

Instead of their attention, I now only desire Yours.

And yet…you play me more than any of the guys I’ve crushed on in the past.

More intense yet is the fire of separation when I am not near you Krsna.

When you seemingly disappear from my sight.

You call me, I come running but You are nowhere to be found.

So fervent are the flames of this fire that it transforms my form in such a way that I no longer recognize who I once was

The shape of my former self

melted away like hot molten

cast in a new form

again and again

closer and closer each time to what will one day be revealed to me as my own true identity in eternal loving relationship with You.

But today—I burn.

You started this fire and only You can put it out.

I am not attached to the outcome.

Extinguished or not.

For You are both the fire and the fire fighter.

If You desire that I burn—then so be it.

But grant me at least that I burn in deep and unrelenting meditation on your Lotus Feet.

 

 

The next poem is by Anastasia Catz. She is just past her mid-twenties and a very talented actress, who like most actresses beginning their career, has to supplement their income from acting with a full-time job.

 

“For you”

 

Every day I come home from work

Fall on the floor and internally scream

Why do I have to endure a block after block

And it’s still full on darkness and no sign of your mercy’s beam

 

Have I not made enough sacrifices, have I not chanted enough rounds

Have I not cleaned my vices

Have I not crossed the right bounds?

Have I not cried enough by the altar have I not poured my heart inside out

Or is your heart made of the rock of Gibraltar

And you didn’t hear when I howled?

 

If you meant to leave me waterless in this drought

And I am to burn in this invisible flame of life

Then why did you gift me the divine sound

That made me feel so fortunate and rife

 

Why did you reveal the ultimate truth like it’s no big deal

And now leaving me on read after the whole ordeal?

 

I want to go deaf when you’re not playing your flute

I want to go blind when you’re not showing in my meditation

I want to follow Sati’s route

I need salvation.

 

I just want to serve you some butter

And go back to my original form

I am so tired of being in this gutter

All I am asking really is for you to take me home.

 

But if you don’t

here is what I am going to do:

I will continue coming home after my debilitating work

And I will continue yearning for you.

 

 

And that’s just a sample of from logos to mythos, a practicum on how to add life to one’s spiritual practice that more than met our expectations.[1]

 

 


[1] For those of you who would like to experience from Logos to Mythos and my seminar we will be doing the same thing in Upstate New York also joined by Hari-kirtana das. Information below:

 

Ready to liberate yourself from the mundane this Fourth of July?

 

Join Dhanurdhara Swami, Jaya Jagannath das, Hari-kirtana das, and special guests for the annual Bhakti Immersion—Upstate New York Retreat from July 4-6, 2024, at Pumpkin Hollow Retreat Center in upstate New York.

 

These three amazing days will feature: Transformative classes and workshops. Rollicking kirtans. Uplifting association. Nine delicious vegetarian meals. And enough free time to relish the 130 acres of open fields and lush forests or take a jaunt to any of upstate NY’s little towns and hamlets.

 

Arrive at Pumpkin Hollow on Thursday July 4th any time after 2:00 pm. Depart on Sunday July 6th after lunch.

 

Cost: $675 per person for a shared room. There are a limited number of single rooms available at $800 per person. Camping sites are available for $175 per person per day, and commuters are $150 per day.

 

A $150 deposit holds your spot and gives you first dibs on the cabin of your choice. If you came last year and liked your cabin, we would be happy to assign you to the same room.

 

For information and registration contact [email protected].

Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #15 – A Beautiful and Puzzling Theology

April 8th, 2024

A puzzling verse:

 

“Only the most fortunate will relish the mad words of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, which were mixed with jubilation, envy, agitation, submissiveness and grief, all produced by ecstatic loving emotions.” (Cc. Antya-līlā 20.1)

 

This verse is from the last chapter of the Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta. I was up to this verse in my class and was asked to explain it. I thought deeply about how and realized that first I needed to explain the theology of Śrī Caitanya. Below are my thoughts as to why Śrī Caitanya is such a necessary manifestation of the divine and then my attempt to explain this verse in context:

 

  1. God means the Supreme Controller.
  2. Supreme Controller means Supreme Enjoyer. Why else would control be necessary?
  3. The ultimate enjoyment is pure love, and therefore to be the Supreme Enjoyer means to have the fullest experience of pure love.
  4. Love is an energy experienced between two people in relationship to each other – the object of love (the beloved) and the subject of love (the lover).
  5. It is a principle of love that the lover enjoys more than the beloved. Take motherly love, for example. The object of that love is the child, the beloved of the mother, and subject of that love is the mother, the lover of the child. They both enjoy the same energy of motherly love but from a different vantage point. But who enjoys that motherly energy more? Is it not our experience that the mother, or one who gives love, even though selfless, enjoys more than the beloved, or one receiving it?
  6. In the same way, according to Gauḍīya theology, in terms of love of God, although God (the beloved of the devotees) and the devotee (the lover of God) both enjoy the same love or energy between them, called prema, it is the devotee who enjoys that love more.
  7. Therefore, for God to be the Supreme Enjoyer and thus claim an Absolute position, He must also experience love from the perspective of His devotee.
  8. And that is the story of Śrī Caitanya, how God, who is relishing the love of His devotees, also becomes His own devotee in order to experience the joy of being a lover of God. But there is more.
  9. Śrī Krishna (God), to be the Supreme Enjoyer, must not only enjoy the love of His devotee, but He must also enjoy the love of His topmost devotee and at the height of that love. Therefore, Śrī Caitanya is the story of Śrī Krishna becoming His own devotee to experience the love of Śrī Radha at the time of her deepest separation from Śrī Krishna, which is the height of Her love.

 

Now that I have explained the ontology of Śrī Caitanya, now let us try to make sense of what is described in the first verse of this chapter referenced in the introduction. When emotion reaches an all-consuming height, it is called rasa whether it’s tragedy (karuṇa-rasa), romance (śṛṅgāra-rasa), chivalry (vīra-rasa), or in the case of devotion to God, bhakti-rasa. Now if bhakti-rasa is the all-consuming height of devotion and, in fact, the pleasure potency of God, then how can we imagine the height and intensity of that emotion experienced by Śrī Radha in her deepest feelings of separation from Śrī Krishna and emulated by Śrī Caitanya? Describing the very end part of Śrī Caitanya’s life, Śrīla Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja tries to give us a glimpse of what Śrī Caitanya’s attainment of such overwhelming ecstatic emotions is like, beginning with introductory verse of the final chapter of Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta.

 

“Only the most fortunate will relish the mad words of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, which were mixed with jubilation, envy, agitation, submissiveness and grief, all produced by ecstatic loving emotions.” (Cc. Antya-līlā 20.1)

 

A puzzling verse indeed and this is my humble attempt to make sense of it.

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #14 – How a Podcast Saved My Life

April 1st, 2024

Not really, but I think listening to one recently may have significantly improved my life. Here’s the story:

 

The non-stop flight from New Delhi to NYC is grueling. The passion of fast paced traveling and the ordeal of being confined to a less than ideal seat does not create goodness nor enlightened consciousness, to say the least. I resist the lure of the entertainment offered on the touch screen, but I needed some distraction. In desperation, I turned on the screen and looked for a kosher podcast. I found one—a wisdom one. I want to relate what I heard, but I didn’t even remember the name of the podcast, nor the person being interviewed who had impressed me. I was, however, able to find his name by searching some catchy phrase that I remembered in the title of the book he wrote, Tiny Habits. Professor B.J. Fogg has dedicated his life to the study of behavior modification, focusing on favorably developing good habits, the things we do in a regular and repeated way to improve our life. His analysis was brilliant and immediately applicable. A summary is below and then a link to his Ted Talk.[1]

 

B.J. Fogg has found that the most important thing in developing habits is making small commitments or tiny habits instead of proposing some significant change. He explains what he found to be the three foundations of developing a successful habit: motivation, ability, and a prompt or trigger.

 

Motivation is self-explanatory—the degree to which you believe or have reason to achieve a proposal. Ability is one’s capability to achieve one’s goal, and a prompt or trigger is an event that causes something to start.

 

B.J. Fogg discovered that, in general, the more difficult one’s commitment to implement change, the less one’s motivation is when it comes the time to do it. As a result, we rarely succeed in creating a habit when what we want to achieve is too challenging. Makes sense. How many times have we proposed some change in our life and failed because we found the task to laborious and our motivation consequently waning? Therefore, Dr. Fogg suggests that to develop a habit we should keep our motivation high by proposing easily attainable goals that facilitate success in developing a regular and repeated activity. Once the habit has been regularized, the intensity of the habit can then naturally increase.

 

One more thing is needed to solidify a habit: a prompt to remind one to do it. He defined a prompt as something that triggers a new behavior, which is best done by having the new habit follow an existing activity that is already being done regularly. I will now give an example from Dr. Fogg’s own life that demonstrates how brilliant and effective his technique is.

 

Dr. Fogg’s doctor told him that he needed to regularly exercise to maintain his health. He had been trying for years, but he set rigid goals and therefore lacked the motivation to implement them regularly. He then applied his three-fold technique to the problem. He vowed that every time after he passed water, he would do two push-ups, which gave him both the ability and motivation to succeed. The trigger was also obviously there, because going to the bathroom many times a day reminded him of his small commitment. Having been habituated to regular exercise, it was now easy to naturally increase his commitment. He now does almost two hundred push-ups a day regularly and repeatedly.

 

I was inspired by Dr. Fogg’s talk and practical system of behavior modification. I therefore decided to also implement his system in my own life by adding one habit a week. I started with the most important thing: reading the Bhāgavatam. It’s not that I don’t study śāstra. I am now studying and teaching Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta and writing on the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, but I felt that to further nourish my relationship with Śrīla Prabhupāda I needed to engage with the sound vibration of his purports daily. I thus decided that every day when I get up I would read for fifteen minutes. The trigger was obviously there because one rises daily, and the motivation was also there because fifteen minutes isn’t a lot. It works and I now read the Bhāgavatam every day for at least fifteen minutes, but usually more. Next week I will work on exercise, and the following week taking my vitamins, which I always seem to forget to do. I have long list of habits to implement and improve my life. It’s exciting.

 

And that’s how a podcast saved my life or at least improved it!

 


[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdKUJxjn-R8