Month: March 2023

Love has no rules

Verses 1.19-1.20

Parakīya means ‘belonging to another, to a stranger, to a hostile’. A parakīyā is thus the wife of another. Parakīyā-bhāv is love for the wife of another, forbidden love. 

Parakīyā-bhāv is traditionally denounced as a violation of traditional Vedic dharma. But in the Gaudya tradition it is venerated.

Rūpa Gosvāmī writes in Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi:

The supreme position of śṛngārara-rasa [loving feeling] is established in upapati [parakīyā-bhāv] or paramour love (1.19).

At first glance this notion may seem scandalous to us. Monogamous marriage is regarded as one of the pillars of society.

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To relish

Verse 1

In his auspicious invocation to Rādhā rāsā sudhānidhi, Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī does not waste a moment before glorifying Caitanya Mahāprabhu as an embodiment of nearly unimaginable emotion. His body is described as studded with goose pimples of ecstasy as he dances and sings, tears running down his face.

Mahāprabhu’s emotion is nearly unimaginable, and yet we imagine it. Our minds recognise his emotion as our own, still hidden and unrealised in our hearts. Mahāprabhu’s appearance on earth lets us understand that to realise this emotion, to make it a reality, is the greatest experience we can want. 

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Seeing with spiritual eyes

Verse 11.8

But you cannot see Me with your present eyes. Therefore I give to you divine eyes by which you can behold My mystic opulence.

By Chapter 11 of Bhagavad-gītā Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna have deepened their initial friendship to a relationship of devotional intimacy. Arjuna is moved in a life-changing way by what Kṛṣṇa has told him. Now, the new devotee asks of God the privilege to see his ‘universal form’, his viśvarup.  

Kṛṣṇa agrees, but warns Arjuna that he will not be able to see his universal form with his present, material eyes. Rather he will need to have divine, spiritual eyes (divya cakṣuṣā).  

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Prema datta Nitai Gaura

Nitai Gaura has given us the gift of divine love 

Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s appearance in 1486 changed the way we think about the relation between God and love. 

In Western Semitic religions we are accustomed to thinking of God’s love as a transcendental substance, accessible to saints and priests, passed on to us only by their mercy. In those traditions, God is equated with love, but reserved for those who love God directly or receive it directly from God.

The love of God is understood as an abstraction, a transcendental goal, reached only by the most purified souls, obtained only after long struggle and sacrifice.  

This is not far from the image of Vaishnavism before the appearance of Caitanya Mahaprabhu. 

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