Author: Peter Burgess

Rādhā is the source of beauty

I walk on the beach in the setting sun. The air is soft. The sand under my feet is warm. The rush of the surf quiets, as the calm of the evening falls. I feel happiness, a soft and blissful feeling covers me, touches my material senses and my spiritual body.

What causes this feeling of happiness? What does it mean? Where will it take me? What does it ask of me? 

My first and most natural reflex is to think that I have come to the beach seeking this experience, that I know when and where and how to enjoy it. The sunrise is a fact, the beach is a fact, the heat and the light, and all the beauty I experience are part of this world. It is a world that I can experience at my pleasure, at my convenience, on my terms, according to my needs. 

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What is rasa?

rasa [juice, nectar, transcendental taste] 

Bhakti Yoga begins and ends with feelings. There is no other pure source of meaning and guidance. The path of Bhakti, through teaching of guru or others is always to find and follow the narrow path of pure feeling. 

Therefore the guiding question is not ‘what should I feel?’ It is rather ‘what is this that I feel and where does it lead me?’ Thought will never lead to feeling, feeling will lead to thought and then transcend it. 

In the ‘Southern Section’ of Bhakti Rasāmṛta Sindhu, Rūpa Gosvāmi defines rasa as ‘the indescribable wonderful relish that is beyond the power of human thinking and arises in the pure heart brightened by goodness’ (2.5.132).

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Having love and being love

Soul-consciousness means the awareness that we have a soul, that we are soul-beings, and that the soul is divine. 

Since the soul is not material we cannot achieve soul-consciousness through our material senses. We will never find the soul by simply gazing out of our window. It is true that the hints and clues of our material world—beauty and charm, sweetness and attraction—touch our hearts and lift our souls. But the moment of soul-consciousness will come spontaneously, surprisingly, mercifully. 

Soul consciousness comes as a revelation. It is not the creation of new knowledge. It is the discovery of everything we already knew but did not realise. It comes not as a discovery of all the wonders that were unknown to us. It comes as the discovery that everything is familiar, has always already been so close by that we could touch it.  

Soul consciousness arrives not through the familiar experiences of our material experience, but through the mystery and charm of our spiritual life. The soul is playful, light and sweet. It is neither shy nor timid. While the mind is cautious about the dangers of the material world, the soul is open and naive, curious and searching, eager and affirming.

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What is a līla?

līla [divine activity, sports, play, pastime] 

We cannot know God by his words, only by witnessing his activities. Līla is the name of the activities of God done in order to be understood—and realised—by jīvas 

In Vedic philosophy, God’s līla is the way that the truth about the universe can be communicated, not through high and mighty talk, but by frolicking, loving play. The Truth of the universe is a not a word, it is a feeling: love. It cannot, should not, must not be left to cold and hollow words, it must be seen in action, put into play. That is why stories are told of the pastimes of God. 

Līlas can be found in religious and spiritual traditions throughout the Indian Sub-continent. The Vedas are filled with tales of divine līlas, from the Ramayana to the Puranas. 

Wherever there are līlas, there is a lightness, playfulness, effortless movement, and natural emotion. Līlas are always graceful, joyous, and whimsical. They embody the way that God, the Absolute, effortlessly governs the universe, and the pleasure and happiness he takes in doing so. 

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What is śaktī?

śaktī [power, energy, potency] 

There is nothing without energy. 

There is no heat in the fire, no movement of the water, no light, no sound. Nothing.

Without energy, there is no life in nature, no flowers that grow or trees that reach to the sky, no insects that creep, no animals that roam, no human hearts that pump warm blood through the veins.   

Without energy there are no sensations, nothing to smell or taste or touch or see.   

Without energy there is no feeling, no tremors of emotion, no sensations of the heart, no sensations that surprise with their appearance, and astonish through their vanishing. 

And so without energy there is no soul, there is no life, there is no love.

Love is the name of energy in its highest form. It is energy that is equal to God. The desires we experience, the attractions that seize our senses are the expressions of this love, this divine love, this divinity. 

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Through dying flames, the moonlight

All glories to the congregational chanting of Ṡri Kṛṣṇa’s holy name, which cleanses the mirror of the heart and mind, which extinguishes the forest fire of material existence, which spreads moonlight on the white lotus of good fortune, which is the life of the bride named transcendental knowledge, which increases the ocean of transcendental bliss, which makes us relish full nectar at every step and which thus showers the whole self? 

Śrī Śikṣāṣṭakam, verse 1 

The first verse of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s Śrī Śikṣāṣṭakam embodies all of Bhakti. In it, thought becomes feeling, then feeling becomes reality itself.

The stirrings of the first verse are a call to the self, to the soul. Our better self, our purer self, awaits us behind the mask of our egoism. Reaching it, reaching ourselves, is possible through sankirtan, the power and pleasure of congregational chanting. 

But to fully enjoy sankirtan, we must first remember how Caitanya Mahāprabhu made it a gift to humanity. 

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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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