Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #40 – Entry Denied!

September 30th, 2024

The immigration officer looked up at me sternly, “Your student visa has expired June 10, 2024!”

 

What!? There must be some misunderstanding. I applied last October for a one-year extension. It has been granted. Look here under visa expiry date. It says 10/6/2024.

 

“In India, the month is the second digit. That’s June 10th.

 

I then realized what happened. 10/6/2024 was the expiry date of my passport when I entered the country last year. When I applied for a year extension, they could only extend the visa until the validity of my passport, but because 10/6/2024 coincidentally would have been the date for the usual one-year extension, if the 10 stood for the month of October and the 6 stood for the date of the month, I mistakenly thought I was extended for one year. Evidently, American Airlines made the same mistake and allowed me to board my flight to India with an invalid visa. I pleaded my case to the immigration official who called his superiors. Soon two officials came, took my documents, ushered me into a waiting area for the deportation office and told me I should wait while they made further inquiries. A flood of realizations entered my mind.

 

Waiting is the Greatest Surrender

 

Surrender means accepting God’s will. When you are waiting for some crucial decision or information, there is nothing you can do about it. You’re left without even a crumb of the illusion of control or participation in the solution. All you are left with is prayer and God’s will. Waiting is therefore the greatest surrender.

 

You Can’t Buy a Ticket to Vrindavan

 

I have been coming to Vrindavan for forty-eight years. I travel economy, but this year I had an upgrade for the first time. I never traveled in such luxury. When things go your way, you tend to think you are controlling your destiny. Boy, was Krishna teaching me a lesson. You can only enter Sri Vrindavan by the mercy of Radha, no matter what class you travel and no matter how many years you have been effortlessly allowed entry.

 

Krishna is in Control

 

In one sense I passed the time peacefully. At least, I was determined to be equal-minded about my happiness or distress, confident that Krishna protects His devotee, which means that He does what is best. I didn’t know whether that meant granting me entry or deporting me, but I never felt helpless at the hands of the government. It was clear that it was all in Krishna’s hands and they were just pawns to execute Krishna’s will, which would soon be revealed. Of course, it would be painful never to be able to come to Vrindavan again, but that possibility didn’t seem to be on the table. It was only a matter of having this one entry denied.

 

Spiritual Life Becomes More Intense in Crisis

 

My chanting, however, was intense. There was a feeling of density in my meditation, in the sense that I couldn’t afford to be lax and leave space for other thoughts. Why does it take crisis to reveal the abject need to thicken our thoughts and feelings in devotion?

 

Everything is Krishna’s Mercy

 

After forty-five minutes, another official came, this one dressed in a suit instead of a uniform. I immediately pleaded my case. He looked bewildered and put me on hold and got on his phone. I just stood next to him waiting to see what came next. The original officials came with a well-dressed representative of American Airlines. They kept the documents and said, “Come with us.” Then one of the officials, the nicer one, said, “We granted you entry. You have a ten-year tourist visa in your passport which is still valid. We will let you in on that. But don’t study at any institution. If you want, while in the country, you can apply to switch it to a student visa, but it may not be accepted, and if it is you may have to pay a financial penalty.”

 

I decided to stay in India on a tourist visa and no longer be affiliated with the institution named on my student visa. I think it’s a much better situation. There were many rule changes I wasn’t aware of, and in the final analysis in many ways I ended up with a better visa than I had before. So, it’s all Krishna’s mercy.

 

Entry Granted!

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #39 – Embrace and Love Death

September 23rd, 2024

I am fascinated with monastic communities. I recently watched a short documentary about one.[1] Mount Athos is a somewhat inaccessible mountain on the Athos peninsula in northeastern Greece governed as an autonomous region by a community of twenty monasteries and various small and single occupancy hermitages. The architecture of the monasteries is beautiful, and the art decorating them and stored there is priceless. They feature, however, a more traditional monastic life as compared to my more modern and social preaching life as a Hindu monk (sannyāsī). I was impressed and humbled in many ways as I learned about them. I thought it must be so peaceful to just completely leave everything of the world. Could I be so renounced? Maybe one day I can also chuck it all in and just retire completely to Govardhan. Would Śrīla Prabhupāda approve? I’m not sure. But certainly, I could do much better in my renunciation.

 

I remembered an interview in the documentary with one very educated American born monk, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, who in his interview talked about how his loving father in the USA on his deathbed requested to see him for one last time. He hadn’t seen him in twenty-seven years. This monk never went, never even thought for a second of going, and was completely unmoved about it. It seemed to me so heartless. I felt for his father. He explained it, however, philosophically. His eternal relationship is with God, all others are temporary. Okay, he’s a traditional monk who left the world with faith in God. Isn’t that what traditional monks do?

 

What really hit me was another interview with a monk who revealed the “mantra” which all the two thousand monastics living there accept as their mission statement: “Embrace and love death.” They see death as their ticket to heaven and their lives as monks as paying the price of that ticket. That “mantra” really struck me.

 

When I heard that phrase, I felt some relief, but why? I don’t obsess excessively about death, and my vision is usually philosophical and optimistic. Maybe I still have some lingering fear of death, and the monk shared the phrase with such conviction that it gave me hope to transcend it.

 

A monk looks at death in a different way. For him real death is not the death of the body, but the death of the false ego, the illusory conception of enjoyer and controller. The consequent attachment with the body is the vehicle to fulfill one’s illusion. Monkhood therefore means practicing death by a fully renounced life. Therefore, instead of living according to the dictates of the body, the monk leaves the world to facilitate a life of the eternal soul fully surrendered to God’s will.

 

The bhaktas don’t have to leave the world to be renounced. Their renunciation is giving up those things that have no value in serving God. That doesn’t discount the benefit of living and striving for a life more unencumbered by social and economic restraints. And there  is a need for one in my order of monkhood (sannyāsa), to be an exemplar of a simple and renounced life. In that sense, I admire the monastics of Mount Athos and strive also to fully embrace and love death. Isn’t that our philosophy?

 

“My dear King, if you want to be fearless in meeting your death next week (for actually everyone is afraid at the point of death), then you must immediately begin the process of hearing and chanting and remembering God.” (Nectar of Devotion, Chapter 2)[2]

 


[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mXl8C4-M_4

[2] This quote by Śukadeva Gosvāmī is paraphrased in the Nectar fo Devotion. If anyone knows where the verse from the Bhāgavatam is located please write us.

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #38 – Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Greatest Challenge and His Genius in Meeting It

September 16th, 2024

As important as speaking the truth, is having the truth understood. To accomplish that you must understand the language of your audience. When I say the language of your audience, I am obviously not talking about the vernacular of a country or people, but how people according to their culture or experience understand different words and concepts within the same vernacular. In other words, the same word may be impregnated with different meanings according to that person or group’s culture and therefore when a preacher/teacher uses a word, it is necessary to understand what that word or concept means to that audience. The most difficult challenge in communicating therefore is when there is a mixed audience where the attendees understand the words and concepts in different ways. I discussed this challenge previously in terms of how various cultures react, some positively and some negatively, when they hear the word or concept “surrender.” As Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books were addressing a very mixed audience, I think communicating effectively to them was one of his greatest challenges.

 

And just consider how varied his audience was. His listeners were everyone from non-devotees to neophyte and advanced devotees, from progressives to conservatives, and from those foreign to Vedic culture to those immersed in it. We could go on and on.

 

His teachings also needed to be time tested, as he would be speaking to people through different epochs, and he wanted his books to be the standard books of knowledge for thousands of years in a rapidly changing world.

 

Another challenge exists because bringing the teachings of Sri Caitanya into modernity is not always popular, no matter how well you try to accommodate the frame of reference of your audience.  Although his aim was to reach everyone, he wasn’t going to water down his teachings like many who came from the East before him.

 

Was he successful? If so, how did he do it?

 

In terms of success, it is fact, and he would often point this out, that despite so many translations of the Gītā that came to the west before his own, no one fully imbibed its message and surrendered to Krishna. Thousands became devotees after reading Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. It’s hard to question his success.

 

My interest in this subject was sparked by preparing for my recent lectures about Sri Radha to honor Her appearance day. While conducting my research, the nature of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s challenge dawned on me. I envisioned his concern while writing his books. If he didn’t restrain immature readers from prematurely dwelling on the pastimes of the gopīs, his movement could be cheapened and lose its reputation. In fact, that had happened previously just a few generations after Sri Caitanya left the world. At the same time, I envisioned him being equally concerned that he offered his followers what Sri Caitanya came to give, “the most sublime and radiant mellow of devotional service, the mellow of conjugal love” (Caitanya-caritāmṛta Ādi-līlā 1.4). What did he do?

 

He chastely presented the main teachings of Sri Caitanya, by translating the two main foundational teachings of the tradition, the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and the Sri Caitanya-caritāmṛta. Everything is there from the beginning teachings to gopī-bhāva while through his purports the strong restraint from taking the more esoteric teachings cheaply is presented in no uncertain terms. In my preparation I especially marveled at the Kṛṣṇa Book which is basically a straightforward rendition of the verses and commentaries of the Tenth Canto presented in story form. Still, when it came to the five chapters describing the gopīs he added just enough of his own commentary to inoculate one from projecting their own mundane sense of eroticism onto the page. In that way those qualified to go deeper have the essence of Sri Caitanya’s teaching while those with less qualification are protected from abusing it. It looks so simple but that’s the point. That it was done so seamlessly shows Śrīla Prabhupāda’s genius in meeting one of his greatest challenges—to speak the truth to a mixed audience but have that the truth understood by all who are sincere.

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2024 #37 – Some Thoughts on Envy and the Path of Devotion

September 9th, 2024

Sometimes my Monday Morning Greetings is inspired by a question that I was asked recently in class, such as one from last Sunday which sparked a discussion about envy and the path of devotion:

 

“Is there envy in the spiritual world?”

 

Of course, although there is the facsimile of jealousy in the drama of Radha and Krishna, all rasa (loving exchanges) in the spiritual world are born purely out of ecstatic love. Therefore nothing that happens there can be born of envy or hate. That, however, is not our story in this world.

 

“O scion of Bharata, O conqueror of the foe, all living entities are born into delusion, bewildered by dualities arisen from desire and hate.”

 

“…The illusory energy is manifested in the duality of desire and hate. Due to desire and hate, the ignorant person wants to become one with the Supreme Lord and envies Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead…” Bhagavad-gītā 7.27, verse and purport

 

There you have it, the foundation of the material world in a nutshell. We come to this world out of ego desiring superiority and thus we naturally hate or envy those who threaten that self-conception. We may think that as decent people this no longer refers to us, but before making that assessment we should at least reflect just how much the disease of envy is inherent within us once we have accepted a material body. Consider the following.

 

At the end of one’s life, in consideration of our past deeds and our present desires, God decides through his supporting agencies the appropriate body that will give us the best opportunity to evolve in consciousness in our next life, mostly by frustrating the desire to enjoy and control which the present body has afforded us. This identification with the material body is facilitated by the element of false ego which delimits our consciousness or awareness so that we fully relate to the specific body which we have received. In other words, our material identity is based on the false ego, which is primarily characterized by the desire for superiority, and thus our present body and its attachments are naturally imbued with the duality of desire and hate!

 

It should now be clear from this current exposition why the path of devotional surrender, or pure service, is the most direct and powerful process of liberation from material entanglement. Serving God and consciously cultivating the true ego as His servant is completely antithetical to the false ego, the cause of the bodily concept and its dualities.

 

In fact, the path of bhakti is so antithetical to the false ego, and its consequent dualities of desire and hate, that in the beginning of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (1.1.2), it is proclaimed that this book is for the devotees (satām) who are completely free from hate, (nirmatsarāām). Therefore even religious activity that offers reward for one’s sacrifice (which includes most of the Vedas) is adamantly rejected in the Bhāgavatam because it is also still infused with the dualities of desire and envy.

 

Does this mean that devotees are automatically free from envy? Obviously, not.

 

What it does mean is that the path of devotion is not for one with material aspirations connected to the false ego. Rather, its practice and goal is pure devotion:

 

“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.” Bhakti-rasāmta-sindhu 1.1.11

 

And it means our exemplars are devotees like the Six Goswamis:

 

“…They are just like the ocean of love of God, and they are popular both with the gentle and with the ruffians, because they are not envious of anyone…” (emphasis mine) Ṣa-gosvāmy-aṣaka 1

 

And that was our brief discussion on envy and the path of devotion.

 

 

Monday Morning Greetings #36 – A Commentary on the Lakota Code of Ethics

September 2nd, 2024

A Commentary on the Lakota Code of Ethics[1]

Recently Madhavananda dasa shared with me the Lakota Code of Ethics. Evidently, he saw some depth in it. I did also. The Code expertly provides the basic principles of behavior of this native North American native tribe. More than the clarity and force of its presentation, what struck me is how it demonstrates the universality of truth. We say truth is veda, which means knowledge, but we don’t limit truth to just what is found within a book, no matter how comprehensive the presentation. Truth is embodied in the world. It exists eternally and independently of human creation. A book just encapsulates it and communicates it appropriately to its intended audience. Throughout the ages, and even occasionally in modernity, great thinkers have seen and realized aspects of that truth and have communicated it according to the language and frame of reference of the people of their time.

 

After looking at the Lakota Code, I could write an article on each item listed, but that is far beyond a Monday Morning post. Therefore, I will briefly comment on the first one and then just list the rest. The main thrust of this entry, therefore, is to use the Lakota Code to show the universality of truth, which should become evident when you read it.

 

 

Lakota Code of Ethics

 

  1. Rise with the sun to pray. Pray alone. Pray often. The Great Spirit will listen, if you only speak.

 

Commentary:

Rise with the sun to pray: According to Vedic calculations, the twenty-four-hour day is precisely divided into thirty muhūrtās, or forty-eight minute periods that reflect the different effects that different parts of the day have on one’s consciousness. The early morning around sunrise, especially the brahma-muhūrtā, the forty-eight minutes before sunrise, have by far the greatest impact on the mind for peace and concentration. Serious spiritual practitioners make good use of those hours to deepen their spiritual life.

 

Pray alone: For meditation we need a time and place reserved exclusively for Krishna where we sit alone separated from all of life’s other responsibilities. That place is called our āsana, literally a seat for exclusive concentration. When the mind becomes focused, āsana becomes upāsanā, which literally means “to sit near (upa).” This conventionally implies worshiping, or serving, as one must be present near the object of worship, not just physically, but in the mind. Without that type of regulation by which our worship can be exclusive and one-pointed, our mind will be divided between the object of worship and our responsibilities and attachments. Yoga or meditation will not take place.

 

Pray Often: To get true realization our thoughts need not only be concentrated and without interruption, but also prolonged. “Practice becomes firmly established when it has been cultivated uninterruptedly and with devotion over a prolonged period of time.” Yoga-sūtras 1.14

 

The Great Spirit will listen, if you only speak: “Simply by chanting the holy name of Lord Viṣṇu, such sinful persons may attract the attention of the Supreme Lord, who therefore considers, ‘Because this man has chanted My holy name, My duty is to give him protection.’” Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 6.2.10

 

  1. Be tolerant of those who are lost on their path. Ignorance, conceit, anger, jealousy and greed stem from a lost soul. Pray that they will find guidance.

 

  1. Search for yourself, by yourself. Do not allow others to make your path for you. It is your road, and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.

 

  1. Treat the guests in your home with much consideration. Serve them the best food, give them the best bed and treat them with respect and honor.

 

  1. Do not take what is not yours whether from a person, a community, the wilderness or from a culture. It was not earned nor given. It is not yours.

 

  1. Respect all things that are placed upon this earth — whether it be people or plants.

 

  1. Honor other people’s thoughts, wishes and words. Never interrupt another or mock or rudely mimic them. Allow each person the right to personal expression.

 

  1. Never speak of others in a bad way. The negative energy that you put out into the universe will multiply when it returns to you.

 

  1. All persons make mistakes. And all mistakes can be forgiven.

 

  1. Bad thoughts cause illness of the mind, body and spirit. Practice optimism.

 

  1. Nature is not for us; it is a part of us. It is part of your worldly family.

 

  1. Children are the seeds of our future. Plant love in their hearts and water them with wisdom and life’s lessons. When they are grown, give them space to grow.

 

  1. Avoid hurting the hearts of others. The poison of your pain will return to you.

 

  1. Be truthful at all times. Honesty is the test of one’s will within this universe.

 

  1. Keep yourself balanced. Your Mental self, Spiritual self, Emotional self, and Physical self — all need to be strong, pure and healthy. Work out the body to strengthen the mind. Grow rich in spirit to cure emotional ails.

 

  1. Make conscious decisions as to who you will be and how you will react. Be responsible for your own actions.

 

  1. Respect the privacy and personal space of others. Do not touch the personal property of others—especially sacred and religious objects. This is forbidden.

 

  1. Be true to yourself first. You cannot nurture and help others if you cannot nurture and help yourself first.

 

  1. Respect others’ religious beliefs. Do not force your belief on others.

 

  1. Share your good fortune with others.

 

 

 


[1] Reprinted, rewritten and edited from September 23, 2019. I am thinking that regularly, not more than once month I will include a reprint from not less than six years ago. There is some good stuff and after 2018 they have not yet been fully edited and refined.