Tag: love

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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The meaning of life

To love someone is to see the face of God

Victor Hugo

Some truths are so close at hand that we don’t even notice them, so obvious that they are invisible. Some truths are so universally present that they seem to be nowhere at all. Such is the meaning of life:

We are born, we love, and we die.

That’s it. There is literally nothing else but love. The world is merely love’s outer appearance, its playground, the space for its realisation. 

There is nothing else that is happening from the moment we open our eyes at birth, to the moment we close our eyes at death. 

All of life flows from love because love is its inner energy, its inner force, the soul itself. If the soul is who we are, the essence of what we are made of, then surely the soul is love. A body without a soul is not alive. A body without love cannot live. 

Everything we do is derived from love, built upon love, stimulated or inspired by love, energised or motivated by love.  

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Why is there illusion?

Why must we live in a world of illusion? Why would the creator of the universe, perfect in all aspects, create a world in which illusion seems to be everywhere?

In Vedic philosophy we come to understand the meaning of illusion through the concept of māyā.

Māyā is a key to understanding the difference between traditional Western dualist thought, and Eastern non-dualist thought. In the West we are taught to understand the world as consisting of two realities: mind (or soul) and body. In Eastern thought we understand reality as being one. Mind, soul and body are understood as part of one and the same reality. If we perceive the body or any material thing to be real, it is because we are under the grip of māyā: illusion. 

In both the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-gītā, māyā is described as the power of the divine, the power of Kṛṣṇa. But why would the creator want us to suffer in māyā? 

The answer becomes clear when we reflect on the meaning of illusion. 

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Love stories about us

In a poignant scene in Verse 89 of Śrī Vilāpa Kusumāñjali, Rādhā leads her maidservant Tulasi mañjarī to a secret cave in Govardhana Hill to teach her songs about divine love. Whose love? Her own.

Rādhā, the embodiment of divine love, knows and feels every emotion available to our mundane hearts, and more. But she is very shy about teaching songs about these emotions.

The mundane mind can understand this. After all, they are songs about Rādhā’s most intimate and confidential pastimes with her divine lover Mohan. The songs are an intimate history of their divine love affair.

The songs, which Rādhā only shares with her dear maidservants, can be used to revive her dear Mohan in case he should faint in the throes of passion. By singing to him the story of his own love, he is brought back to consciousness.

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Surprised by love

Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta Adī-līlā, Chapter 4 describes the ‘confidential’ reasons, for Kṛṣṇa’s decision to take birth as Caitaniya Mahāprabhu. In verse 4.28 Kṛṣṇa declares that he will appear as a pure devotee and carry out pastimes ‘by which even I am amazed’.

It is difficult for us to imagine that God himself should be amazed by anything at all. Isn’t God by nature all-knowing, all-seeing, all-feeling? What could possibly amaze him? 

The answer is as miraculous as Bhakti itself: Kṛṣṇa is amazed by his own feelings.

Indeed there is much amazement in the forests of Vṛndavan. The written prayers, poems and dramas of the closest associates of CaitanyaMahāhaprabhu recount often how many the actors in the divine pastimes—but most of all Mohan—experience surprise.

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Love and creation

The universe came into being as energy. Physicists and philosophers, theologians and mystics agree. The creator’s energy and the creation are one. Creation takes the form of energy. But what does it mean to create? 

Creation does not mean the simple replacement of nothing by something. Such a creation would be empty and cold, without life, movement or feeling. The universe would be desert before creation, deserted after creation.

This is because the creation of life does not mean the creation of things that live. It means the creation of the energy that causes life to live. A universe full of things without life is no different than a universe with no things at all. 

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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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