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Archive for the 'Monday Morning Greetings' Category

Monday Morning Greetings 2022 #18 – A Soul Killing Civilization

May 2nd, 2022

Śrīla Prabhupāda’s purport was fiery. Jaya Jagannath’s comment on it struck me: “What some people would look at forty or fifty years ago in Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books as polemical, would now just be read by the same people as news.”[1] Yes, the slaughterhouse of modern education, rascal scientists, demons trying to rule the world, and the degradation and oppression of modern civilization—all the things that he spoke about so strongly—seem to be playing out right before our eyes.

 

I was also thinking of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s desire for self-sustainable communities and his lack of faith that the modern economic system was conducive to practicing Krishna consciousness. I see that now more clearly than ever.

 

I visited a devotee for dinner. He gets very lucrative overtime pay in his union job, but he is forced to work nine hours a day. His wife also works, but the expenses for his family, mortgage, building repairs, and high taxes force him to keep working at that pace whenever the opportunity arises. A younger student came to me for counsel. She shared her woes. If she ever wanted to take initiation, she would have to quit her job as a consultant for a leadership seminar company. The too often nine-hour seminars daily were crushing her spirit. Of course, these were extraordinary cases—but were they? For some reason, in the last few days, story after story came to me of oppressive work situations, economic woes, exhaustion, and the toll modern life is taking on people’s spiritual life.

 

Of course, Śrīla Prabhupāda envisioned a solution: an alternate rural lifestyle for families in devotional communities based on simple living and high thinking. It does seem ideal, but can we live that way? I have my doubts. Most devotees are so conditioned by a false standard of opulence[2] that I see few spiritual aspirants or leaders who have made any effort to move in that direction, despite Śrīla Prabhupāda’s vision.

 

What to do?  Do we just wallow in our present situation crushed by the oppression of working in a materialistic society that continually increases our desires and inflates our needs so that even our hard-earned paycheck returns to their corporate coffers as we are forced to buy what we have labored so hard to produce?

 

It seems that if we want a more nourishing spiritual life, we require the faith and courage to exert our free will to either change our present situation to one more conducive for spiritual life—if that is within the range of our destiny to do so—or make the sacrifice to live more spiritually within our present situation—if changing our situation is beyond the parameters of our destiny.[3] One can’t therefore discuss making needed life changes without understanding the dynamics of faith. But what is that faith, and why is it so important?

 

Our faith is our goal and our conviction in the worth of that objective, and for a bhakta it is the trust in the sublimity of devotional service. Without such faith, how will it be possible to gain the inspiration to take the calculated risks necessary to transcend our fear-based narrative of resignment and complacency that immobilize us to a status quo that is killing our soul?

 

Therefore, the first principle of exacting change is an internal one beginning with prayer, and that prayer is for sādhu-saṅga, for only the bhakta can give us the faith to achieve the things that may well be waiting for us on the other side of our fear.[4] That type of courage-based faith is certainly the story of the success of Śrīla Prabhupāda and other great souls, and the story of those that followed them to give bhakti to the world, and it can be ours at least in making bhakti a more vibrant part of our life.

 

I will end with a story because I think there is another element to change. We all must deal with our psychology, which often requires tools to overcome the fear of taking reasonable risks. I should also give a disclaimer that I don’t accept that just wishing for something will allow one to achieve it, although certainly when Krishna sees our desire to serve, He is quite capable of moving the world around us to facilitate our devotion.

 

Sybel assisted me for seven years organizing the very popular Bhakti Immersion Retreat. She was expert, and those who attended the retreats appreciated how well-organized they were. A couple of years ago she called me for counsel. She was tired and exhausted by the grind of her job as a vice president for Morgan Stanley, one of the biggest financial institutions in the world. The hours, stress, and pressure were killing her. I had just happened to have watched a Ted Talk that very effectively discussed how to overcome the impediments to making needed changes in life and thought it would be relevant for her. It was. Sybel watched it, followed the recommended exercises, and quit her job to look for another. Instead of the grind and dissatisfaction of serving the world bankers, which also included a long commute three times a week from her home in Pennsylvania to New York City, she found a more rewarding high management position in a hospital chain for similar money only fifteen minutes from her home.

 

 

 

Let’s end where we began with Śrīla Prabhupāda and his prophetic words and advice:

 

“’Why should we work so hard, simply for eating, sleeping?’ […] But at the modern age, the human society is so made that one has to work like ass, whole day and night […] But this is not civilization. This is not civilization. Then how can they understand God?” (Lecture, August 23, 1972 Los Angeles)

 

 


[1] I attended the morning class of Jaya Jagannatha dasa when I was at Shyam Ashram in Cali last month. This is a paraphrase of a point that he made.

[2] Śrīla Prabhupāda asked Tejiyas das, a former Peace Corps    worker in India, to start a kisan (farm) movement in ISKCON. He spent two years in Boston studying every book he could read on self-sustainable economics. When I would visit him, he would share his realizations. He concluded that farm communities in ISKCON mostly failed because the devotees in the west were conditioned to a false and inflated standard of opulence and thus were deterred by simple life, not realizing that real opulence is a simple life in a devotional community with fresh air and home-grown food with a temple in walking distance.

[3] Change must always be done thoughtfully and with consultation. I know one couple that prematurely renounced a stable situation for a supposedly more devotional one. It didn’t work out and affected their marriage.

[4] This concept of the other side of fear is found in a quote by George Addair that was the basis of the following article that is relevant to our discussion: https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyblaschka/2018/09/04/everything-youve-ever-wanted-is-sitting-on-the-other-side-of-fear/?sh=11622ccf3979

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2022 #17 – How Bhakti Works Part 2

April 25th, 2022

How Bhakti Works Part 2 [1]

Analogies are a great way to communicate an idea. I just made up one. Just as a piece of paper burns only when the rays focused upon it through a magnifying glass are concentrated without break for a prolonged time, similarly the practices of bhakti, such as japa meditation, only bear the full fruit of realization when concentration is prolonged over a period without interruption.

 

Śrī Caitanya exemplified this principle by spending the last years of His life with protracted and uninterrupted focus on the holy name. He showed, however, that such focus on the holy name, like absorption on any object, is best achieved not just by will power alone, but when there is an emotional connection with that object. In the case of Śrī Caitanya, His absorption in the holy name was nourished by the most consummate emotion—a relationship in love—specifically the highest love, which manifests in relationship to God. To develop that relationship with the holy name He basically did two things: Visit the temple and worship Lord Jagannatha, the form of the person whose name He was chanting, and sit in His bhajan kuṭīra in Puri listening to the stories and songs of the person whose name He was chanting based on the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam from His most confidential associates, Śrī Rāmānanda Rāya and Śrī Svarūpa Dāmodara.

 

In fact, it was so important for Śrī Caitanya’s full absorption in nama bhajan to properly hear the appropriate poetic songs and stories to deepen His relationship with the holy name, that many well-wishing scholars worked diligently writing compositions to inspire Him.

 

Śrīla Prabhupāda also stressed that although of all the nine items of devotional service chanting is the best, it must be accompanied by hearing about Śrī Krishna, especially from the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, to ensure that one’s chanting has some feeling and efficacy.

 

“When we speak of hearing and chanting, it means that not only should one chant and hear the holy name of the Lord as Rama, Krishna (or systematically the sixteen names Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare) but one should also read and hear the Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam in the association of devotees.” (Bhag. 2.2.30, Purport)

 

In summary, to the extent our focus is concentrated on God, especially in the form of the holy name, is the extent to which we begin to feel the energy of devotion between us and God, which is called prema.[2] Concentration is most pronounced, however, when there is sambandha, a relationship between us and God, which awakens or is inspired by hearing the philosophy and stories of Krishna. And that is how bhakti works!

 

“When one reaches the lotus feet of Lord Krishna at Goloka Vrindavan, the watering process of hearing and reading, as also chanting of the holy name in the pure devotional stage, fructifies, and the fruits grown there in the form of love of God are tangibly tasted by the devotee, even though he is here in the material world.” (Bhag. 2.2.30, Purport)

 


[1] Part 1 can be found here – https://wavesofdevotion.com/2020/03/30/how-bhakti-works/

[2] I am using the term “prema” here not for the highest stage of devotion, but in general to indicate devotion, the natural energy of affection between two people in a relationship.

Monday Morning Greetings 2022 #16 – Inherent, Inherited, and the Culture of Faith

April 18th, 2022

The audience for my Monday Morning Greetings is a mix of people from various spiritual backgrounds. Many readers may therefore not be aware of the debated doctrinal issues that sometimes arise within the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava bhakti tradition. Today I want to touch on one of the issues that has been brewing recently. My objective in doing so is not to resolve the issue but to use it to highlight a related point: that great ācāryas sometimes seem to contradict one another, so how should we behave when a current ācārya writes or speaks something that appears to be at odds with something stated by a previous ācārya? Let’s begin our analysis by briefly outlining the dispute at hand.

 

One side states that bhakti is inherent in the soul and that this principle is a foundational tenet of our lineage, especially through the last three or four generations of our ācāryas. The other side states that Śrī Caitanya’s original followers whom He specifically empowered to systemize the tradition’s philosophical conclusions, led by Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī, espouse something different—that bhakti is not inherent but rather is a spiritual energy that must be bestowed on a spiritual aspirant by one who has attained it.

 

Again, it’s obviously beyond the scope of a weekly post to argue either side. What I want to speak about, however, is how essential it is to discuss and analyze these types of disputes by emphasizing how the tradition deals with its ācāryas through a principle I’ve come to know as “the culture of faith”.

 

I first heard the term “culture of faith” in a conversation I had after attending a conference I had organized for young Vaiṣṇavas studying for their doctoral degrees in disciplines somewhat relevant to the study of bhakti. I was concerned about one of the presentations at the conference, which offered a critical analysis of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, including references from an academic text sarcastically entitled Bhagavad-gītā As It Was. After further discussion among the participants, most of whom had studied the Gītā with Śrīla Prabhupāda’s commentary thoroughly at ISKCON’s VIHE,[1] the concluding consensus toward Śrīla Prabhupāda’s version was very favorable. Still, I was uncomfortable with the topic itself, so I asked Śrīla Prabhupāda’s learned Sanskrit editor, Pradyumna das, what he thought of such a critical presentation by and among followers of Śrīla Prabhupāda.

 

Pradyumna, too, questioned the tenor of the presentation, then shared several examples within the Vaiṣṇava culture of what he called “the culture of faith”—that is, how nurturing of faith in a bona fide guru and Śrī Krishna is prioritized throughout Vaiṣṇava discussions and dealings.

 

One of his examples particularly struck me. Great contemporary scholars in the Madhva tradition sometimes find what appears to be an error in a commentary written hundreds of years ago by one of their revered ācāryas. Even though they are unable to reconcile that ācārya’s point with their own understanding, they never presume, what to speak of write, that the previous ācārya was wrong.[2] Rather, they use the phrase “ṛṣi uvāca,” “the great sage said,” and then simply quote him directly. Only then do they write their own version, even though it may seem to contradict what the previous ācārya said.

 

But why not directly assert that they cannot understand what the ācārya has written rather than quote him without that qualification? Isn’t avoiding the issue simply a lack of candor?

 

Not if you understand Vaiṣṇava theology and, in cultivating knowledge, the importance placed on the role of faith. Faith is the deep impression in the mind of humble trust in authority; faith allows one to contemplate and comprehend truths beyond one’s present purview and understanding. Without such trust, our own capacity, conditioning, and prejudices are the limiting lens through which our concept of reality is formed. Faith, therefore, is essential in any learning, but it’s especially important when trying to understand the Divine, which operates through laws not limited to our two-dimensional, spatiotemporal reality.

 

Therefore, a culture concerned with uplifting its community spiritually necessarily protects its members’ faith, both by training and then holding accountable those who take positions of authority, and by how one deals with those qualified to be authorities.

 

This “culture of faith” principle is espoused in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. In the Eleventh Canto, chapter 17, entitled “Lord Krishna’s Description of the Varṇāśrama System,” Śrī Krishna outlines the brahmacārī’s duty to twice daily worship those in positions of reverence. He then lends His own absolute authority to those who represent Him by declaring, “One should know the ācārya as Myself and never disrespect him in any way. One should not envy him, thinking him an ordinary man.” (Bhag. 11.17.27) Krishna’s statement here indicates His own concern with culturing faith. He even warns us about the human tendency to envy, which results in attempts to denigrate or critically examine even those worthy of the greatest respect.[3]

 

Of course, one may object that this type of promotion of faith leaves one vulnerable to rationalization, loss of integrity, and consequent exploitation. I have already discussed these dangers extensively in a previous post called “The Perils of Faith.”[4] Obviously, one must be encouraged to be very thoughtful before reposing his or her faith in someone. But despite the perils of faith, cultured persons do not lose sight of the primary importance of nurturing reasonable faith. If faith is lost, all is lost.

 

Now that I’ve outlined the thesis, I would like to apply this principle of faith to the specific philosophical issue at hand. Again, the teaching being questioned is the statements of Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura and his lineage, which sees bhakti as inherent in the soul. This tenet is said to conflict with that of Śrī Jiva, the foundational Gauḍīya siddhāntic ācārya, whose teaching is thought to be that bhakti is not inherent in the soul but inherited.

 

Here are my thoughts on the culture of faith as applied to this matter:

 

  1. We need to be aware that by taking sides in a doctrinal conflict and declaring an ācārya wrong or mistaken, even if you feel the mistake is an isolated one, you risk establishing your authority over the ācārya. This leaves you open to relativizing and questioning anything that ācārya says and thereby limiting your knowledge and understanding to your own conditioned frame of reference.[5] One cognizant of the culture of faith is therefore extremely careful when dealing with apparent doctrinal differences among ācārya
  2. When we’re unable to understand how an ācārya’s statement is true given what other points of view we’ve heard, as faithful persons our duty is to reserve judgment and instead rigorously attempt to reconcile the conflicting views by doing sufficient research. After all, we’re not tattva-darśine, realized seers of truth, and the truth doesn’t always conform to our prejudiced convictions and understanding of reality. Often, in time and as our realization matures, we may find ourselves able to understand truths that previously we could neither accept nor appreciate.
  3. In our attempt at reconciliation, we should be careful that the solution we come to doesn’t inadvertently diminish the authority of the current ācārya. For example, dismissing Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s view as a “preaching strategy” might inadvertently present Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura and those who follow him as disingenuous or lacking candor.
  4. Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī is no doubt the ultimate philosophical authority in our tradition. Yet our present ācāryas also have extraordinary authority within Śrī Caitanya’s lineage, for they themselves have carried Śrī Caitanya’s legacy to every town and village in the world. Is it therefore not unreasonable to accept them as authorities in how they present their understanding of the teachings of the Six Goswamis, especially since they too are scholars who have studied Śrī Jiva’s work in its original language?[6]
  5. Matters of faith are very sensitive. We therefore need to be careful how we discuss these foundational, siddhāntic issues publicly. This is the age of the internet, and internet audiences come from all sorts of backgrounds and levels of faith, who have particular loyalties to perhaps ācāryas different from our own, many of whom have also strongly expressed opposing opinions on the same subject. The most likely outcome of pushing such issues into public forums is further division and conflict in the Gauḍīya family, even among those of deep faith and spiritual attainment.
  6. Even though I may not share others’ conclusions, I accept that sincere people, after deep study, can develop strong convictions supported by well-reasoned argument—in this case, that Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s statements on this matter cannot easily be reconciled with the conclusions of Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī.[7] And as Śrī Jiva is recognized as the siddhāntic ācārya of our lineage, his conclusions should stand supreme. I have no problem with this idea. But a truly learned and cultured person will avoid the careless mistake of placing any deficiency in understanding on great souls like Śrīla Bhaktivinoda and his lineage; rather they accept their own inability to reconcile opposing points of view. After all, subtle subjects like the one at hand deal with ontological issues relating to the soul and its origin beyond time. The topic itself requires faith. So such is the culture of faith.

 

This paper was initially written for my Monday Morning Greetings. I naively thought I could make a point, then whittle it down to my standard page and a half. What was I thinking?! I now realize that many more papers need to be written to do this subject justice.[8]

 

If there’s one thing I strongly wanted to communicate, however, it’s that in discussions about topics espoused by our ācāryas that are beyond our comprehension of scripture or even defy our social or moral convictions—and these will naturally arise,[9] we need to be soberly and strongly grounded in a culture of faith.

 

 

 


 

[1] Acronym for the Vrindavan Institute for Higher Studies, the first and perhaps most prominent institution in ISKCON for śāstric studies.

[2] Due to its relevance, I’m including an excerpt from Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s commentary on the Brahma-saṁhitā (text 37): “Whatever is spoken by pure Vaiṣṇavas is true and utterly free from any bias or party spirit, but there is a mystery surrounding their apparent verbal disagreements. Those whose intelligence is materialistic and lacks the spirit of devotion cannot fathom the deep secrets of the loving controversies between pure Vaiṣṇavas, and thus they wrongly conceive of such great personalities as philosophical adversaries.

“Only the worldly beliefs of those who are imbued with mundane intelligence are missing in Goloka. Different visions of the variegated pastimes in Goloka are realized according to one’s level of qualification. Thus it is difficult for one to establish a fixed conclusion to determine which aspects of those varieties of visions are illusory and which are pure. Therefore, there is no need to argue and counterargue this matter because it will not elevate one’s qualification. The truth of Goloka is filled with inconceivable bhāva, and any attempt to investigate this inconceivable reality by the mind would prove as unproductive as threshing empty husks. Hence, one should disregard the method of empirical knowledge, and strive for realization through the practice of unalloyed devotion.”

[3] The Sanskrit word asūyā in Bhag. 11.17.27 can be read as “envy” or “ill will,” but it also means “to depreciate” or “to detract”—in other words, to attempt to diminish the worth or value of the guru by thinking him an ordinary man who makes errors. In the Catholic tradition, detraction is the unjust damaging of another’s good name by revealing some fault in that person.

[4] I encourage you to also read my earlier article, “The Perils of Faith”: https://wavesofdevotion.com/2022/03/28/the-perils-of-faith/

[5] I realize that in this issue it’s not that one is trying to establish authority over the ācārya, but rather to establish the authority of Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī over the philosophical view of all others, as it should be. What must be cautioned, however, is that the later ācārya has studied the writings of Jīva Gosvāmī and nonetheless presented something in a particular way, and not in an isolated instance but consistently and repeatedly throughout his writings. What one risks doing, then, in correcting this ācārya is privileging one’s own reading and understanding of Śrī Jiva over that of this ācārya’s.

[6] An example of this type of faith is exhibited in the statement of Śrīla Bhakti Prajñāna Keśava Mahārāja, the sannyāsa guru of Śrīla Prabhupāda [ A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami]: “I don’t know or recognize the path of the previous gosvāmīs. I simply accept Jagadguru Śrīla Prabhupāda’s [Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura’s] line of thought as unerring truth, and I will try to know and understand the previous gosvāmīs through Śrīla Prabhupāda’s vision. I will first accept the excellence of his explanations and commentaries.”

[7] “By accepting the Six Gosvāmīs as his instructing spiritual masters, the author specifically makes it clear that one should not be recognized as a Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava if he is not obedient to them.” (Cc., Adi-lila 1.37)

[8] Another issue that needs further discussion is what to do if we find that a more contemporary ācārya seems to contradict himself within the corpus of his own recorded teachings. In such cases, his actual intention may be clarified by referring to the foundational ācāryas. For example, Śrīla Prabhupāda’s statements take both sides on the “fall of the jiva” issue. In this case, not only the foundational ācāryas but Śrīla Prabhupāda’s immediate predecessors share a common view. In a case like this, I have no objection if on that basis one concludes that the living entity did not fall from Vaikuntha if one simply acknowledges one’s own inability to reconcile or understand Śrīla Prabhupāda’s other statements on the matter.

The issue I mentioned in this article also discusses origins, and this appears to be the area where most contentious issues arise. This is because by discussing these issues we enter the realm of the Lord’s inconceivable potency—a place where we’re forced to describe beginningless phenomena with temporal language. How do you use words to denote something that has neither cause nor a beginning?

However, the inherent/inherited controversy discussed here can’t be easily solved in the way I suggested concerning Śrīla Prabhupāda’s statements on the fall of the jiva. This is because Śrīla Bhaktivinoda’s contention is clearly a foundational principle found throughout his writings and strongly supported by those who follow him. Perhaps he makes isolated statements that can be interpreted in a way that contradicts his foundational tenet about the nature of the soul, but they really can’t hold weight against his declarative, consistent, and plentiful concerning inherency.

One hermeneutic principle used to clarify what a teacher means to say in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is to analyze the common understanding of the teacher’s students. It’s clear that those who came after Śrīla Bhaktivinoda, including contemporary respected senior Vaiṣṇavas who have carefully studied Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami’s books, have understood his teaching as espousing bhakti as inherent in the soul.

[9] If we accept that our vision and understanding is imperfect and limited, we cannot expect to find everything we read and hear from an ācārya’s corpus of teachings—including his translations and commentaries on scripture as well as his recorded testimonies in a variety of other circumstances—to fit neatly or exactly into our conditioned worldview.

Monday Morning Greetings 2022 #15 – An Original Argument for the Existence of God

April 11th, 2022

Please excuse me again for a reprint. I was working on a post about a difficult doctrinal issue and it has been taking be an inordinate amount of time to finish. I’ll be back next week with a fresh post.

 

An Original Argument for the Existence of God

June 13, 2016

I am fascinated by apologetics, the discipline of defending the existence of God through reason. I have listened to and read the best apologetics, from William Lane Craig to Alvin Plantinga, and I have studied their arguments carefully. I even devised a public seminar called “Can God Be Blue? A Study of Krishna” based on apologetics, including arguments for God being a person and for that person being Krishna.

 

I coined what I thought was an original argument for the existence of God. I call the argument “The Argument by Coincidence.”

 

Basically, I argued that if a person carefully studies his own life, he will find a synchronicity between certain events, or “meaningful coincidences,” as Carl Jung termed them, whose probability of occurrence is so small that it is far more likely that the cause of those events rests beyond any random occurrence under the laws of nature. What makes the events even more improbable is the link between those external events and our inner life, as if the events were personally directed toward helping us grow. An example from Jung’s practice illustrates this phenomenon:

 

A classic illustration of synchronicity presented by Jung involved one of his patients, a woman with a highly developed rational mind—a fact that made her psychoanalytic treatment difficult. One day she was telling Jung about a dream she had had in which she received a golden scarab, a beetle with significance in Egyptian mythology. Just at that moment, Jung reported, he heard a noise “like a gentle tapping” on his window. When he opened the window, a scarablike beetle flew in. Jung caught the beetle and presented it to his patient, saying, “Here’s your scarab.” The stunning impact of this synchronicity overwhelmed the defenses of her rational mind and led to a breakthrough in her treatment.[1]

 

Here is a similar example from my own life:

 

I met the devotees in 1970 while visiting California during the summer break after my second year in college. While we were in Los Angeles, my friend received an invitation card from the devotees chanting on Hollywood Boulevard for a Sunday Feast at their new temple on Watseka Avenue. Four of us went and very much enjoyed the feast and chanting. In fact, we enjoyed it so much that we decided to chant nonstop on our drive the next day up Highway 1 to visit San Francisco. In San Francisco we specifically wanted to eat at one famous Chinese restaurant. When we finished, to our surprise, we saw the devotees chanting on the street right outside the restaurant. I immediately joined in, as I was already familiar with the chanting from our visit to the temple the Sunday before. When the chanting ended, we proceeded to find a place to stay by calling the various references and leads we had collected in our travels to the West Coast. The only person who was even the least bit accommodating was a young man who offered that we could sleep in our car in the parking lot of Kezar Stadium on the southeastern side of Golden Gate Park, smack in the middle of the city, and use the bathroom in his apartment across the street. When we drove into the empty parking lot, which we discovered was used only on Sundays for football games, we noticed that the back of the stores on Frederick Street faced us about twenty yards away. And when we looked up, we saw through a back window billowing smoke and robes. It was the Hare Krishnas working in their kitchen! I turned to my friend and said, “Holy cow, everyone in this city is into this!” We called out, “Hare Krishna!” Two devotees (Gaura Hari and Babhruvahan) leaned out the window at the beckoning four travelers and exclaimed, “Ah! Krishna has brought us four! Have some prasādam!” We were offered a tray of peanuts, raisins, and chickpeas, which we wolfed down with gusto. We stayed in that lot for the last two weeks of our summer break, visiting the temple daily and meeting many wonderful devotees such as Jayananda, Madhudvisa, and Locana dasa, to name just a few. The rest was history. We all became devotees.

 

Of course, not everyone in San Francisco was into this. That was the lone Hare Krishna temple in a city. I am not sure that what happened is exactly synchronicity, but the probability of this series of mutual coincidences—how I went to temple, met the devotees outside the restaurant, and was granted a place to stay outside the only Hare Krishna temple in a city of millions and then dedicated myself to that same path—was small enough to at least stretch the concept of godless randomness. If this was the only coincidence of my life, I could pawn it off as chance, but when I look at my life and see how the world has repeatedly moved to teach me needed lessons geared directly at the most subtle impurities in my heart, the sheer probability of such synchronicity is implausible.

 

It could be argued that I am just seeing in my apparent destiny things that don’t exist, that synchronicity is just in my mind. But besides the fact that synchronicity happens too often in the lives of too many people to be disregarded as chance, the fact that there is a moral force or destiny in every person’s life beyond randomness—which is called “the law of karma” and can be proven by the science of astrology—makes providence undeniable. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss it all in detail, but I am puzzled as to why no one has applied the scientific method to the study of astrology to prove that there is a destiny set at birth. It seems that it can easily be done.

 

In summary, the argument of coincidence states that the preponderance of the occurrence of mutual coincidences in people’s lives and the fact of destiny are so far beyond the explanation of chance that the only plausible explanation for them is God.

 


[1] Nancy Seifer, “Synchronicity and the Soul.” http://whenthesoulawakens.org/synchronicity-and-the-soul_288.html

 

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2022 #14 – How a Bhaktivedanta Purport Saved Me from a Mental Hospital

April 4th, 2022

Dhanurdhara Swami has been hosting a retreat this past week in Shyam Ashram in Cali, Colombia and hasn’t been able to finish this week’s Monday Morning Greeting so we are reprinting one from 2016.

 

How a Bhaktivedanta Purport Saved Me from a Mental Hospital

October 24, 2016

 

I am fortunate to have had very wonderful parents. In fact, my ninety-six-year-old mother is still alive, and when I am in the US I try to stay with her for a couple of days every month. Why am I saying this? Because I am about to tell the story of when my parents had me kidnapped to save me from being a Hare Krishna, which they were convinced at the time was a cult, and I would not want anyone to think bad of them in the least. They were very decent people. They kidnapped me over forty years ago, when we young, passionate, dedicated devotees couldn’t always communicate properly the profound truths that we were experiencing, especially to our parents, and when most people, such as my parents, had very little frame of reference to understand an exotic new religious movement in America. Out of love for me, they tried to save me from something they thought was harmful, and unfortunately, not being properly informed, they resorted to deprogramming. Looking back, I blame myself equally for that miscommunication.

 

I am just going to highlight the part of the story where the recollection and sharing of a Bhaktivedanta purport saved me from being committed to Kings County Mental Hospital.

 

After being kidnapped from the temple in Dallas, Texas, by the famous deprogrammer Ted Patrick, I was eventually able to feign that he was successful in his attempt to deprogram me. I was thus sent home, but under the watch of his assistant, a thug named Goose.[1] When my father and Goose took me shopping to get new Western clothes at Kings Plaza, the largest shopping mall in Brooklyn at the time, I made a run for it when Goose went into a bank to change money. As I was running out of the mall with my father chasing me, the police nearby apprehended me, thinking I was a thief. When they asked my age and understood that I was twenty-four years old, they initially wanted to let me go free, but on my father’s insistence that I was crazy, they agreed to take me to a mental hospital to determine if I should be committed.

 

I was booked at the nearest police station, handcuffed, and taken to the mental hospital to be interviewed by a psychiatrist who would make the final decision on my mental status. My parents were interviewed first to register their complaint. I was left in the waiting hall outside his office. I paced back and forth among the other people there, chanting on my fingers (my beads had been taken). Many of them were also in the process of being committed. I remember one lady talking to the wall as if it were her boyfriend who had jilted her, and another man strapped to a wheelchair in a straitjacket screaming and kicking as violently and angrily as anyone I have ever seen.

 

The interview with my parents was soon finished and the psychiatrist called me in. I sat down directly opposite him, and he examined me carefully. He looked me in the eyes and asked in earnestness, “Are you hallucinating?”

 

“Why do you ask that?” I replied.

 

“I saw you pacing back and forth in the hallway, talking to yourself.”

 

I must have looked crazy, I thought. When I had returned home, I’d had no Western clothes, and my parents had confiscated my devotional attire. That’s why they had taken me shopping. All they had been able to find around the house were extremely baggy jeans (before they were in fashion), an old high-school sports-team jacket, and a strange fez that my father had been gifted by a Pakistani insurance salesman. To make my appearance even stranger, I had been pacing back and forth, shaking my head rapidly back and forth in ecstasy as I chanted the Hare Krishna mahā-mantra aloud, keeping track by counting on my fingers. I must have looked, well, crazy!

 

But somehow, in response to the psychiatrist, I had the gumption to look him right in the eye and with the Hare Krishna missionary zeal, enthusiasm, and confidence of those early days of the movement—“fired up” as we would say—repeat exactly what I had read the day before I was kidnapped in a purport from the Third Canto of the Bhāgavatam.

 

“Although I am not hallucinating,” I told him, “it can’t be said that I am seeing the same as you. Just like one who is not a theist sees a rose as separate from God and made only for his own enjoyment. A devotee, however, sees that flower as the energy of God and meant to be used in his service. And therefore, although I am not hallucinating, it cannot be said that I am seeing the same thing as you!” As I spoke those last words, I slowed down for emphasis and pointed my finger directly at the psychiatrist.

 

His jaw dropped, and he paused before gathering his words. “That’s very intelligent,” he finally said. “I think your parents are crazy!”

 

I could imagine the fervor with which my parents presented their case and the contrast between my lucid and clear explanation, practically word-for-word from Srila Prabhupada’s book.

 

The doctor released me. And that’s how Srila Prabhupada’s books saved me from being committed to a mental hospital.

 

Rathi Krishna recently found the exact purport that I had studied and repeated to the psychiatrist that one fateful morning forty-one years ago. I think the readership of Monday Morning Greetings will value its clarity and force. Even that psychiatrist, who probably wasn’t even a theist, appreciated its profundity at a time when the Krishna consciousness movement was not yet recognized as an established religion.

 

“A conditioned soul sees a very beautiful rose, and he thinks that the nice aromatic flower should be used for his own sense gratification. This is one kind of vision. A liberated soul, however, sees the same flower as a reflection of the Supreme Lord. He thinks, ‘This beautiful flower is made possible by the superior energy of the Supreme Lord; therefore it belongs to the Supreme Lord and should be utilized in His service.’ ” (Bhāgavatam 3.27.13, purport)

 

Epilogue: A few years after the kidnapping, my parents visited me in India and became very appreciative of what I was doing, as did the rest of my family.

 


[1] “Goose is big, about six-foot-five, and strong as iron. He wears his hair long, with a sweatband around it. His arms are tattooed, and when he goes out on a mission he wears heavy boots, a leather vest, and a black leather gloves like a strangler. I think all that is part of psyching himself up. At heart he’s really a gentle young man, but when he gets riled, he has known to become aggressive. That night he got carried away.”—from Ted Patrick’s book, Let Our Children Go!

 

Monday Morning Greetings #13 – The Perils of Faith

March 28th, 2022

To advance in learning, there is a necessity for faith. Unfortunately, there is also a danger in faith. In this post I want to discuss that danger and how to safeguard against being victimized by it, but first it is important to briefly discuss what faith is and why it is so important.

 

Faith is not blind. It is trust by experience. When, by following the guidance of someone who is expert in a particular field of knowledge, one realizes some truth, one naturally gains trust in their authority. That naturally leads to faith, the acceptance of that person’s authority in certain areas of knowledge beyond what one can personally verify. For example, if one’s health improves by the prescriptions of an expert doctor, one will trust that doctor’s authority and follow the health protocol he or she recommends, although one is not a medical authority nor able to confirm the legitimacy of that doctor’s recommendations.

 

The necessity of faith as a precursor to knowledge should be obvious. To learn something means going beyond one’s present perception and comprehension, an endeavor obviously requiring preliminary faith. If that is not there, then the effort to understand those truths would be lacking, and one would remain in ignorance of them. Now to the perils of faith—especially in the fields of transformational knowledge, such as psychology and spirituality.

 

Unfortunately, a person doesn’t have to be perfect in a field of psychological or spiritual expertise to give someone a preliminary experience of transformation and thus generate trust in their authority. And, if such an authority is motivated by personal gain, he can easily manipulate rather than enlighten those who trust him or her. I think the dangers of acceding that type of authority to another is obvious, and the history of such exploitation is common and quite documented. We are thus left with a dilemma.

 

On one hand, without faith in an accomplished teacher we are generally limited to the authority of our own opinions. On the other hand, if we get the wrong teacher, we get cheated. In that regard, here are some guidelines I wrote in terms of finding a proper spiritual authority, while at the same time safeguarding oneself against being exploited.

 

  1. Finding a conduit to spiritual knowledge begins with the sincere intention to want to be ruled by knowledge with the faith that God in the heart will respond to our honest entreaty by manifesting externally to us through a humble and learned guide.
  2. A teacher is one who was the faithful student of his teacher. A bona fide teacher should therefore be connected to a recognized lineage of teachers.
  3. The teacher’s legitimacy and one’s relationship with him or her must be tested over a reasonable period of time.
  4. A teacher’s duty is to clear the doubts of their student and therefore must be open to and able to answer all doubts.
  5. Whatever the teacher says must conform to the saintly people and sacred teachers in the tradition to which he or she belongs.
  6. A bona fide teacher is non-envious and non-possessive. If the student finds someone legitimate who inspires them, the teacher blesses the student to develop that connection.

 

The vehicle of bhakti moves forward on the tracks of faith. It is therefore so important to take refuge in those who know and embody truth. The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam warns, however, that people today are so unlucky that even though they may have a strong desire for spiritual guidance, they can easily be misguided by people willing to exploit their faith for their own personal benefit. [1] Although we are doomed if as a result of this we become skeptical and faithless, still it is wise to be cautious of the perils of faith.

 


[1] See Bhag. 1.1.10 translation and commentary by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Monday Morning Greetings 2022 #12 – Thus Spoke Me

March 21st, 2022

In my years of teaching the path of bhakti, I have come up with a few hopefully quotable sayings that perhaps are worthy to share. Well, here they are:

 

Destiny is the language of God.

God as Viṣṇu, the all-pervading one, witnesses all our activities. He then manifests as kāla, or time, to move the world around us according to the ignorance He has observed in our past activities to teach us the relevant lessons required to rectify those misconceptions. One’s destiny or karma is thus one of the main ways God speaks to enlighten us. As we are generally ignorant of exactly what God is telling us by our karma, He provides a dictionary of archetype karmic experiences to decipher His karmic language called śāstra. Still, as that language may be foreign to us, He further provides for our edification a teacher who knows śāstra and is thus proficient in understanding destiny, the language of God.

 

Rationalization is intelligence in the service of the false ego.

More than anything else the false ego is the desire for superiority—more than even the desire for sensual stimulation, which is why even the wealthiest people with full opportunity for sense gratification often still vie for high political positions. One of the greatest affronts to this desire for superiority is the acknowledgement of having been wrong, something most of us resist by the mechanism of rationalization, where the intelligence is used in the service of the false ego by creatively making excuses even for the most blatant of our mistakes.

 

Krishna is God with His guard down.

Letting one’s guard down is an English idiom meaning to become less guarded about potential danger. In terms of personal relationships, to let one’s guard down has the sense of making oneself vulnerable by not hiding one’s intimate self. God, or anyone else in a position of superiority for that matter, naturally guards His full or intimate nature from those who are subordinate, whether that nature is as a friend or a lover, out of consideration for the dependent’s desire for a formal or reverent relationship. God’s fullest manifestation is Krishna, where He is akhila-rasāmṛta-mūrti, the full embodiment of all intimate loving relationships. For those who have a more intimate relationship with Him, He thus sheds the guard of majesty and manifests His original form of a cowherd boy where He can reveal His intimate side. In other words, Krishna is God with His guard down.

 

Position covers personality. 

As mentioned above, the fullest manifestation of any person is not the height of their position, however great that may be, which in fact covers their fullest being as a lover, parent, or friend. Therefore, for God to fully manifest Himself in His original form as Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, He does not overtly display Himself as the Supreme Controller, for position covers personality.

 

Happiness is a heart filled with devotion.

Years ago, while walking near the Yamuna, I met a simple gardener in Vrindavan. Unfortunately, his field of roses had been wiped out that year by the flooding of the Yamuna. He therefore started to share his woes with me, like how he lost almost 200,000 rupees, which was particularly difficult for him as he had four daughters and needed to provide money for their dowry.  As he was complaining, however, I noticed something a bit unusual considering what he was telling me. His eyes and many of his facial features were sparkling with a type of joy. I therefore inquired from him how, despite all his travails, he could be so happy. His answer was profound, almost mantra-like, and I have since quoted it numerous times: “Happiness is a heart filled with devotion!”

 

Thus spoke me!

 

 

 

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2022 #11 – The Seer, the Seen, and the Path of Bhakti

March 14th, 2022

Every morning Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura would step outside of his room, which was adjacent to the far wall of the temple room, and immediately take off his glasses before taking darshan of his Lordships from forty feet away, although he could hardly see without them.  A disciple who witnessed this made a humble inquiry as to why. Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta’s answer was instructive: “I am not here to see Krishna, but to be seen by Krishna,” expressing the essence of how one in devotion views the world.

 

We can’t imitate Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta’s elevated mood. We shouldn’t therefore blind ourselves before the deity. Rather we need to open our eyes to the beauty of the deity to redirect our desires from looking at beauty for selfish enjoyment to relishing beauty in a devotional mood as an offering of the best to Krishna. What Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta was therefore demonstrating, more than a particular action, was the general principle of adjusting our view of the world, even towards the deities, from seeing the world as an object for our enjoyment from the standpoint of the enjoyer and controller (the seer), to seeing ourselves as objects of God’s pleasure from the position of a humble servant (the seen). Let’s briefly unpack his message to understand its importance. First, I will introduce a basic philosophical principle and give a personal example in an attempt to put this issue in a clearer context.

 

When, by dint of one’s constitution, what one desires cannot be fulfilled in reality, one’s desire can only be fulfilled in Illusion. When thinking on how to illustrate this principle an example came to mind from when I went to high school. David Siegal was exceptionally squat and overweight. Somehow, he desperately wanted to make the high school basketball team. We watched as he practiced day and night, but obviously he couldn’t make the team and his aspirations failed.  Shortly afterwards, we would see him, even in the winter, carrying a basketball and wearing the uniform of the New York Knicks, the city’s professional basketball team. When approached, he would only talk in all seriousness about the great game he played the night before at Madison Square Garden. Sadly, he had gone mad in trying to fulfill his constitutionally unobtainable wishes. Similarly, we desperately want to be the enjoyer and controller, a position we cannot have by our constitution. That unattainable wish attracts the illusory potency of Krishna (maya) to fulfill our desire by covering us from the reality of God’s immanence, a view of God’s all-pervasive presence that would obliterate the false ego or our desire for and sense of superiority. Maya literally means “not this” or illusion. In other words, to satisfy our impossible wish for a sense of dominance and control, maya puts us in the illusion that Krishna’s energy is not His, but instead separate from Him and meant for our enjoyment.

 

Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta’s example was illustrating this exact same point. We are in reality “the seen”, the servant of God, but our false ego wants to be “the seer”, the center. Krishna fulfills this unreachable desire by putting us in the illusion that we are indeed primary, and that the world revolves around us to control and exploit. All devotional practices are meant to move us in consciousness from this deceptive centered self-identity by developing an attraction for Krishna, which puts God back in the center of the world and ourselves at the periphery in service as the seen. Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta was indicating something more—that not only can we engage in devotional service to accomplish this, but we can also make a direct conscious effort to make this shift. So, I tried something.

 

My sitting place in Govardhan directly faces the hill a hundred yards way. As usual, I see the world, including the sacred mount, rotating around this little speck of consciousness garbed in a man’s body with saffron robes. I closed my eyes and instead envisioned Giriraja as the seer and my seat somewhere on the periphery begging for service. I prayed: “I am not here to see You my Lord, but to be seen by You.” I then lamented my lack of devotion.

 

 

 

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2022 #10 – The Tale of Shlomo, The Greatest Yogi

March 7th, 2022

Shlomo was one of my favorites. I met him 1982. He was an older Jewish man from Israel. He wasn’t a hippy, or one of the throngs of young cool Israelis who rushed to India after finishing the pressure cooker of their compulsory military service from eighteen to twenty years of age, or any of the kind of typical alternative Western pilgrim that would occasionally trek to India at the time. When I first met him, I just couldn’t place him in India. He was a simple, squat, balding, over-weight Jewish family man who was suffering, like most people, on the daily grind of work and family. It seems in that anxiety, and a thirst for some adventure, he got a sudden itch to follow some of his younger compatriots to India. According to him, he had no idea what Vrindavan was, or why he particularly came there on his pilgrimage. As he recalled, he was just mysteriously directed to Vrindavan and to our temple where something inexplicable happened.  When he got to the altar of Śrī Śrī Rādhā Śyāmasundara and gazed upon Their beautiful forms, he became overwhelmed with an intense joy. He broke down in uncontrollable tears and surrendered right then and there to Their lotus feet and never wavered in that conviction for nearly forty years. Strange? Not really, if you understand the way of faith.

 

Faith is trust by experience. We move and commit ourselves where we experience some happiness, but faith is not a trust in just some temporary stimulation or ego boost, but true sublimity in relation to God. Those on a legitimate spiritual path often come by an experience of divinity so profound, so transcendent, so undeniable that the maturity of that experience becomes their goal for the rest of their life. I don’t remember all the details, but at least for some time he stayed in our temple and had the fortune to serve in the deity kitchen under its head cook, Śrī Vibhu Caitanya, who was universally recognized in our community as its greatest saint. I was sometimes amused by the letters Shlomo got from his family. While some of us were getting letters from parents imploring their children not to commit ourselves to Krishna consciousness, his letters were from a new angle we hadn’t seen before. This time it was a parent that was being warned by their children. I remember one from his daughters: “Daddy, Daddy don’t join the cults!” But Shlomo was neither deterred in his faith, nor irresponsible to his family responsibilities.

 

After his short time in India was up, he went back and took care of his family, but remained unflinchingly dedicated to his spiritual path, eventually retiring to serve in the temple there. One learned friend shared his realization with me that our taste in Krishna consciousness, what activities in devotional life we have a passion for, are our doors to spiritual world. Shlomo was a grandfatherly presence to the younger devotees, especially the young girls that came, as he had daughters himself whom he cared for when they were younger. He liked to do that, but mostly his passion was prasādam. He loved to cook for the devotees. I remember when visiting Israel, he passionately shared with me his deep appreciation for Gauranga potatoes, a buttered, sour cream and sauteed potato prasādam. Yes, he was anything but an archetypical yogi. He just loved Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī and to distribute and taste the prasādam from the deities.

 

Last week in Vrndavan, when I was walking from my room in the Russian Building, I saw my friend Shlomo, now in his eighties and initiated as Vibhisana das, sitting on the stoop in front of the simple guesthouse, which has been his residence for many years. He loves to sit there in the winter chanting and basking in the sun and his fortune. He goes to the temple every morning without fail on crutches, which is fifty meters down from his door. It takes forever, but he tells me how he relishes every step. He needs a chair when he gets there, so he sits in the back in one provided for him. Although he can’t see the deities over to the packed temple crowd standing in front of him, he can see the video screen on the wall. When Śrī Rādhā’s form comes into view, he cries out of joy for the whole ārati and then slowly shuffles off to his room. He loves Vrindavan, and by Krishna’s blessing he will meet his vow to never leave there for the rest of his life.

 

I sat next to him for a short while, as I often do when passing him, to feel his affection and show my own. That day he looked up at me and with deep gratitude said, “I could never imagine such an old age!” Imagine such an old age? He lives in the simplest of rooms and in a rundown guesthouse, can barely walk, but is the happiest man in the world. In his final years he has the blessings of Śrī Vrindavan with the association of the devotees, but most importantly he has Śrī Rādhā in his heart. He sometimes gently pounds his heart and talks about Śrī Rādhā’s mercy in utter disbelief that he has earned a drop: “I wake of up in the morning, and I am still here. And look where I am!”

 

When you talk to Vibhisana, he seems to be filled with gratitude for every breath in the land of Śrī Rādhā. I remember him years ago expressing to me the suffering he had experienced in life before Krishna consciousness, but whatever that difficulty was, rather than making him bitter, had simply increased his feelings of appreciation for the peace and joy that Śrī Rādhā has offered this humble soul.

 

Shlomo can’t touch his toes or even sit with his legs crossed. He never could, nor does he seem to possess, any other feature of the classic or modern fit yogi, but somehow by Śrī Rādhā’s grace he has become the greatest yogi, for he lives focused in a heart welling with gratitude for the unfathomable mercy of his spiritual master and Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī. And that is the tale of Shlomo, the greatest yogi!

 

“And of all yogis, he who always abides in Me with great faith, worshiping Me in transcendental loving service, is most intimately united with Me in yoga and is the highest of all.” (Bg. 6.47)

 

 

Monday Morning Greetings 2022 #9 – I want to be a Vaishnava!

February 28th, 2022

I want to be a Vaishnava! [1]

November 7, 2016

 

Amidst the throngs of seemingly ordinary people here in Vrindavan, just one old Vaishnava sadhu has to smile and greet you in his raspy voice “Jai Ho, Maharaja!” and you realize why you have come to this place. Does that sound sentimental? After living here for more than forty years, that is my strong conviction, that the endearing voices and bountiful smiles of such beautiful people inform us powerfully of the real goal in life: to become simple hearted, happy, and in a mood of service. Yes, the beautiful things in life are simple and sweet, because they are born not from opulence but from the hearts of devotion. And that’s the glory of Vrindavan, the jewels of mādhurya (sweetness) that are hidden in the hearts of the real vraja-vāsīs, those who are born in Vrindavan or who live there and imbibe its mood.

 

Yesterday I mined one.

 

Govinda Kuṇḍa is just a forty-minute walk down the parikramā path from my place near Dana Ghati (the place of the tax pastime). It sits next to the side of Govardhana Hill. It’s where Indra performed the ceremonial bath of Krishna to beg pardon for his offense, and those bath waters formed this beautiful pond. Five of us took a late-morning outing there to visit this small sadhu hamlet.

 

Our visit eventually took us down a small road off the main path on the southern side of the kuṇḍa that ended at a yellow iron gate with a sign above announcing the place as the ashram of the renowned late Vaishnava saint and mystic Manohar Baba. We entered and walked straight alongside the ashram building under an enclosed pavilion to the end of the property, where we faced an old wooden door. We cautiously pushed the door open and entered a dimly light hall and the altar of small Sri Madana-mohana deities. A simple sadhu was sitting there chanting, but he immediately stood up to greet us and beamed, “Prasādam, prasādam,” enthusiastically pointing our way through a corridor to the back of the property, where their kitchen and prasādam hall stood.

 

As we entered the rustic kitchen pavilion of this ancient ashram, Sitanath Baba, the recently installed mahant of the place, was standing over an open fire vigorously stirring a wok of vegetables. When he saw us enter, he turned and also beamed, “Prasādam, prasādam,” pointing to a single-plank table with chairs for our group all facing where Sitanath was cooking as another joyful sadhu fed us a sumptuous meal. Sitanath then suddenly left his cooking to scurry around the ashram to find whatever he could in to please us, from their special stash of sweets for guests to hot cow’s milk at the end.

 

We felt so welcomed. I loved their culture, especially their smiles, worn almost as badges of their faith. And what was their faith? It was the happiness of prīti, or love, their deep conviction that pleasure is not to enjoy or control the world but to genuinely serve God and his devotees. And that’s what Vraja, the holy district of Vrindavan, really is, what I really hanker for—the simple heart of service reflected in the beautiful smiles of its residents.

 

Once, when a faithful disciple of Srila Prabhupada said to him, “You are greatest Vaishnava!” he became grave and replied, “No! Vaishnava is not an ordinary thing!” Of course, part of being of Vaishnava is humility, and in one’s deep hunger for the service of God one naturally feels a lack of devotion. Indeed, Srila Prabhupada was one of the greatest Vaishnavas, but he highlighted the rarity and value of a simple heart and mood of service.

 

Being here in Vraja and being inspired by the Vaishnavas here, I find that my chanting has taken up a singular prayer for this auspicious month of Kartik:

 

“I want to be a Vaishnava!”

 


[1] I wasn’t able to complete this week’s Monday Morning Greetings. I have chosen to publish a reprint about a pilgrimage I took in 2016 here in Govardhan to one of my favorite places. I have chosen this entry because I visited that same place this week and was similarly inspired by the humility and the sweetness of the devotees there.

 

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