Month: January 2024

Inconceivable oneness and difference

acintya-bhedābhe [inconceivable oneness and difference]

‘Realisation’ is the name we give to our understanding of the Divine in the world. Or maybe: our understanding that the world, in all its depth and complexity, is divine. 

When we say we have realised something we mean that we see and feel and grasp the reality that lies behind the facts of the world. We understand the origin and the purpose of what we experience and what we feel. It means that we do not observe the facts as facts alone, but as parts of the divine story. We understand that facts have another purpose, maybe many other purposes, and that the hidden energy behind the facts will lift and carry us to places we do not know, if we surrender to it, like clues in a detective novel we have not yet read to the last page.

Srīla Prabhupāda call this way of seeing: ‘science (vijñāna)’, ‘spiritual knowledge’ or ‘wisdom’. It means the understanding of the divine in the mundane, the reality of God. 

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What is sevā? II

sevā [service, servitude, hommage, devotion]

In mundane experience sevā, or service, is a common notion. In its simplest form it is the name of a transaction. If I do something for you in  exchange for som reward, be it material or immaterial, this called a service. 

In material form this reward could be money or perhaps som object of value, or even another service. sevā is often done under material constraints or coercion. We render service under the power of another pressed to do what we otherwise would not do. 

But in immaterial form the reward might be some form of recognition, a moral reward, or some kind of immediate satisfaction that only the recognition of another can give. 

In the Bhakti tradition sevā is practice. It is service to another at thehighest level. It is the greatest gift the greatest giving of oneself, and therefore the greatest form of spiritual relation. Every spiritual relation is sevā, every sevā is spiritual relation.

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What is a mañjarī?

mañjarī [maidservant, bud, flower]

On the transcendental plane called Goloka Vrindāvan, a mañjarī is a female maidservant of Rādhā. Sheis both a servant of Rādhā but also a friend. She is friend through service and a servant through friendship. She does not serve by obligation or personal gain, but by love. The relation or Rādhā and her mañjarīs is of the most intimate kind, only surpassed by the intimacy of conjugal lovers.  

What is an intimate friend? First, an intimate friend is one who has knowledge of her friend, one who shares experiences, who knows the same feelings, the same desires, one who is curious about the same things, who seeks the same things, who loves the same things, who fears the same things. 

But an intimate friend is something more. An intimate friend shares not only interests and goals, tastes and preferences. She shares a world, a reality. An intimate friend is one who as the same answer to these questions: what is real? what is true? what is beautiful? and most of all, what is love?

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