All posts (page 8)

I love therefore I am

One of the most well-known philosophical slogans in the West is ‘I think therefore I am’. 

It originates from the French philosopher Descartes, born in 1586. Descartes was trying to answer some of the fundamental questions that face us today: What is real? What is consciousness? What can I know?

Descartes reasoned that there are many things that we are conscious of, but that are not real (white unicorns, castles that float in the air, and so on), but that our mind is capable of doubting the reality of all of them. In fact, he said, everything we are capable of thinking can be put into question except of one: the fact that we are thinking. Thinking, he concluded is the absolute foundation of our being: I think therefore I am. 

Through the eyes of Bhakti this conclusion makes no sense for at least two reasons.

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Material and spiritual surrender


Surrender is understood as a kind of giving, of giving in, or giving up. When we surrender we give something to another, we yield or renounce it. Something that is ours becomes the possession of someone else. Two actors vie for custody or control of something that cannot be shared, something that must be renounced by one, to the advantage of the other. 

Our most immediate experience of surrender is a material one. We voluntarily agree to surrender a material possession to an other who claims a right to it. We recognise this right and surrender the possession. This right might be legal, political, social, moral, or demands it by threat or actual violence to give them. A similar act of surrender sometimes takes place a without our consent. Threatened with violence or other forms of coercion we may surrender our possessions to others against our will.  
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We too have always been in love

Rādhā has always been in love with Mohan. There has never been a time when her entire being was not driven by a love for him. There has never been a world in which this love was not burning. There has never been a reality where divine love was not the living force.

Rādhā’s love for Mohan is not just an important event in the history of events. It is reality itself.

It’s not something that exists in the world; it is the world. It’s not something that fills our heart; it is our heart. It’s not a simple pleasure for the satisfaction of God; it is divine pleasure itself.

Rādhā’s love is time itself. Rādhā’s love is space itself. It is always and everywhere. Rādhā’s love is reality, truth, beauty and goodness There is nothing more real. There is nothing more true. There is nothing more beautiful, nothing more good. Rādhā’s love is desire that is everywhere desired. 

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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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