Page 7 – Love in action

Guru-mañjarī: a meditation from the nikunja

Our wish is to regard the world from the nikunja, to experience love and life from the position of mañjarī.

This is the highest goal of devotional service. Every action we take, every word we utter, every thought that crosses or minds, every emotion that traverses our hearts has this goal as its North Star.

But how do we get there?

The appearance of Caitanya Mahaprabhu gives access to a new experience of God. God is no longer a fixed idea of love. God is now the experience of loving. God now takes the form of RādhāMohan, two forms of one and the same divine soul, God as a relation between lover and beloved, God as the constantly changing experience of loving in all its splendour and intensity, all its loneliness and longing.

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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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What is devotion?

Therefore Bhagavad-gītā should be taken up in a spirit of devotion.

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda

Bhagavad-gītā takes the form of a dialogue between Arjuna, a noble prince in spiritual need, and Kṛṣṇa. It is the story of Arjuna’s self-discovery as a soul, and therefore our self-discovery as souls as well. In other words, it is an auto-biography of the soul. It’s the story of a soul realising that it is a soul.

To understand that one is a soul is necessarily a self-discovery. No one can express it to us, no book can explain it to us. Paradoxically, insight into the soul can only be received through the soul. It can only heard through the ‘language’ of the soul, can only be experienced through the ‘senses’ of the soul.

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Doer and viewer

What is consciousness?

Consciousness means ‘self-awareness’, being aware both that we exist and being aware of what is going on around us, both internally and externally.

Consciousness is a both a very modern word and a very Western idea. Consciousness is what asks the question ‘who am I?’… and then arrogantly answers it. The answer is usually something like ‘I am someone who knows‘, ‘I am someone wants‘, or ‘I am someone who does‘.

Our modern, Western consciousness is based on an equally modern, Western idea: the ego. Consciousness is the ego saying: I perceive, I know, I want, I act, I do. It says: The things I make are the product my own creativity; the experiences I have of the world are the result of my own ability to understand it.

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Perfect love

Verses 10.22-10-30

The closing sequence of Bhagavad-gītā Chapter 10 can seem tedious.

After Kṛṣṇa declares his affection for Arjuna in the first lines, his disciple again asks for more detailed knowledge about him. God answers him over the final 19 verses of the chapter in the form of no fewer than 58 comparisons of himself to the greatest phenomena of the universe: ‘Of the rich, I am richest’ (10.23), ‘of the mountains, I am tallest’ (10.25), ‘of the rivers, I am longest’ (10.31), and so on.

But the model used by Kṛṣṇa in these lines never involves just a simple comparison. It is never a simple matter of ‘this’ or ‘that’. Kṛṣṇa’s presentation of himself always takes the form of a progression. It always builds on a quality that can be increased, intensified, or deepened.

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