108 words for Gurudev – Love in action

What is abhisāra?

abhisāra [the passionate pursuit by the secret lover of the beloved]

A term borrowed from classical Indian poetry and drama, abhisāra refers to the quest of a heroine to meet against all obstacles, both social and material, her beloved.

Abhi is a prefix meaning ‘toward’, ’to’, or ‘near’ (we think of abhidheya, the process of devotional service that leads to the ultimate goal, dheya, of loving service to RādhāMohan.) Sāra means journey, but also movement or approach.

It is easy to understand that in the tradition of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, abhisāra refers to the journey to the secret, loving meetings of Rādhā and Mohan. Rādhā overcomes all odds to leave her home in search of her lover. Then, with the help of her mañjarīs she must confront the twists and turns of desire that finally unite her with her lover. Love-in-separation (vipralambha), the painful longing that grows in the absence of the beloved, is the fuel of this abhisāra.

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What is śraddhā?

śraddhā [faith, faith in goodness, respect, devotion]

Faith is a common idea for most of us. It’s at the center of all religious and spiritual practices because religious and spiritual practices invite us to think and act on the basis of things we cannot be sure of.

Faith is typically about knowledge, about we know and don’t know. But it also invites us to make assumptions about what knowledge is, and to assume that the having this knowledge is better than not having it.

Faith in our modern sense means setting aside rational scepticism or doubt about what we know until a later time when that knowledge can be tested scientifically. Faith in this sense means knowledge that is only meaningful if it can be verified by science.

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What is ānanda?

ānanda [pleasure, happiness, ecstasy, joy, bliss, transcendental bliss]

In classical Indian thought the word ānanda appears quite commonly to describe the blissful qualities of the demi-gods in a way that resembles our own mundane happiness.

But in the writings of the Gaudiya Vaishnavas ānanda has an entirely different flavour and purpose. It is not a quality that is had, but the result of an action, not a property but a movement, not a gift, but a giving. It is the experience of pleasure that comes alive the through the energy and action of devotional love and service.

In the Śrī brahma-saṁhitā, so revered by Śrīman Mahāprabhu, ānanda is described as the extraordinary, transcendental bliss enjoyed by God when all the emotional and spiritual experiences of the world are concentrated into one experience.

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What is audārya?

audārya [generosity, magnanimity, benevolence, compassion, nobility]

In Western society we learn that generosity is a virtue. We consider it praiseworthy to give: to give gifts, to give food, or to give money. And yet, what are we giving when we give these material things?

What is it we have that can be given? We enter this material world with nothing, and we leave it with nothing. We have nothing and therefore we have nothing to give.

This is because to ‘have’ anything at all means to live in the knowledge that we will will one day not have it, and that we once in the past did not have it. To have is to understanding that having is temporary. Paradoxically, to have is to not have. How can we give what we don’t have?

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What is ruci?

ruci [desire, interest, pleasure, relish, taste, wish]

In the Gaudiya tradition we meet the term ruci in Rūpa Gosvāmī’s famous explanation of the nine stages of Bhakti.

The process begins with faith (śraddhā). Faith grows through association with other devotees (sādhu-saṅga), and through patient devotional practice (bhajana-kriyā). This then leads to decreasing material attachments (anartha nivṛtti) and increasing steadiness (niṣṭhā). These experiences then awaken taste for bhakti (ruci). By means of this taste we can then increase or attachment to divine sentiments (āsakti), increase our mood of loving, and finally reach pure love of God (prema), the highest stage of Bhakti Yoga.

In this way ruci corresponds to the moment when our experience of flavour turns from external experience and becomes more internal, more directed toward the heart and toward our feelings. It’s the moment when our basic faith in the truth of Bhakti, and in the value of good association and bhajan open a door to our first experience of the spiritual pleasure of Bhakti. We feel the attraction and the energy of Bhakti through the pleasure it brings to our hearts.

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What is hlādinī-śakti?

hlādinī-śakti [energy, ability, strength, effort, power that brings pleasure, bliss, happiness]

The Upaniśads tell us that the divine, the soul, the self (ātma) existed even before the universe. Cosmic creation took place when that divine substance expanded into matter in order to create all existing things. The vehicle for that expansion—which is still going on everywhere and at every moment—is energy (śakti).

Energy is not soul, but without energy the soul has no being, no life, no relation, no attraction, no longing, no desire, no zeal. In short: no love. Energy is not the divine itself; it is what brings the divine into being through potency of love.

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What is anurāga?

anurāga [affection, attraction, attachement, feeling, pleasure]

Feeling flows. This is the simplest thing we can say about it.

Feeling is not like like still water in an urn. Feeling moves or it is not feeling.

And where does it flow? It flows from something capable of producing feeling to something capable of receiving feeling: from a heart to a heart, from a soul to a soul.

The essence of feeling is to be of a soul and for a soul. If there is feeling it is because there are (at least) two souls, one to give and one to receive.

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What is bhāva?

bhāva [mood, sentiment, spiritual emotion, way of being]

Attention to bhāva is the miracle of Bhakti Yoga. It is both mystery and perfect clarity.

From the ego point of view it is nothing: trivial, superficial, meaningless: a passing mood, a fickle feeling. But from the soul point of view it means a way of being, a way of living, an attitude, an understanding of, well, everything.

For the soul-being bhāva is the calm of the heart, the sigh of the soul, the feelingless feeling that brings us, without effort, without strife, without pain, closer to ourselves, which is to say, closer to the divine.

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