Tag: love

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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Caitanya Mahāprabhu gave us mañjari-bhāv

Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Ādi 1 Chapter 4, Verse 16

The Lord wanted to taste the sweet essence of the mellows of love of God

Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmi

Throughout the ages Lord Kṛṣṇa is beloved by all. The word ‘kṛṣṇa’ itself means ‘all attractive’.  Nowhere is this more clear than in the rāsa pastime, in which the countless milkmaids (gopīs) of Vrindāvan are irresistibly drawn to him, the local cow-herd boy . According to the legend their eagerness and jealousy is so great that Kṛṣṇa expands into countless embodiments of himself, one for each gopī, so that the dance can go on, each girl delighted that she alone has the privilege of entertaining Kṛṣṇa.

There seems to be no end to the love for Kṛṣṇa. And why not? He is after all everything: all existence (sat), all knowledge (cit) and all bliss (ananda). In other words, whatever exists stems from him, whatever can be the object of consciousness, stems from him, and whoever knows pleasure knows it from him. 

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Love and time

How long will I love you ? As long as stars are above you. And longer, if I can. 

Ellie Goulding

In the quaint 2013 British film, About Time, we meet young Tim from Cornwall, socially awkward and innocent in love. On his 21st birthday his father informs him that, like all males in his family, he possesses the ability to travel back in time. What will he do with this newly discovered gift? He sets out to find love.

Tim quickly discovers that despite his newfound ability, love eludes him. When he does eventually meet and marry an adorable woman, it is not because of, but in spite of, his metaphysical powers. Indeed, after several years of sweet and touching manipulations of time in order to experience the narrow, mundane notion of love he has imagined, he at last resolves to surrender to time, renouncing time travel altogether. He realises that by living every day as though he himself had chosen it among all the possible days available to him, he actually finds peace, and love.  He realises, as we all are realising, each at our own pace, that the meaning of time is not to find the love that we are looking for, but to let love find us.

When does love begin ?  

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Forgiveness

I am the forgiveness of the tolerant and the good qualities of those in the mode of goodness.

Śrīmad Bhāgvatam 11.16.31

Forgiveness has long found success in psychological therapy. And with good reason. The practice has its origins in our deepest spiritual roots. 

What is forgiveness?

In worldly terms forgiveness is a kind of judgement. To forgive is to release someone from some debt, obligation or guilt caused by some previous action. It means to cancel a clash between expectation and reality. By erasing the expectation, it erases the clash. Such expectations require neither a basis in the actual world nor the consent of the person who has disappointed the expectation. 

Forgiveness, in this sense, is a psychological process of giving up the feelings of bitterness attached to disappointed expectation. Psychologists tell us that this method has positive therapeutical effects.  

In spiritual terms another reality appears. Vaishnavism teaches that we are an infinite soul in a finite body. The soul, this mysterious, immaterial expression of who we truly are when we are entirely being ourselves, is untouched by mundane matters.

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Swimming in Rādhā Kuṇḍa

Verse 69

Because the kuṇḍa is endowed with Priyājī’s qualities of dearness it bestows a love equal to Radha’s on one who bathes there even once. 

Śri Ananta dāsā Bābājī

We are natural born lovers. Our deepest and most authentic qualities are realised through the expression of that love. This happens on many levels, in many forms, and towards many different kinds of people.

In the last sentence of his commentary to the final verse of Bhagavad-gītā Śrīla Prabhupad declares that the ‘normal condition’ of every living entity is in the ‘pleasure-giving potency’ of Kṛṣṇa, the divinely loving energy of Rādhā. He means that to love God is our highest aspiration and our most natural state. And yet we all find ourselves so far from that state, so far from being ourselves.

What can it mean to love God?  It does not mean turning our back to our imperfect existence in order to seek God somewhere far away in the desert or high on a mountain top. It must mean to love what is purest in us and what is purest in others. 

To love God does not mean to look elsewhere, but to look in ourselves. To love God does not require us to search for something perfectly loveable beyond us because what we are is somehow not loveable. On the contrary, to love God is to love the divine within us. 

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Who is Rādhā?

On Radhastami we commemorate and celebrate the appearance of Rādhā. Who is Rādhā?

One answer to this question starts by asking a different question : Where is Rādhā?

It is simple to say that Rādhā is everywhere. After all, she is the goddess of love and chief consort of Kṛṣṇa. But in her most immediate, real, concrete, and living form she is in us.  

Every tingle of emotion in our body, every quickening of the heart, every impulse to care, every flash of passion, every timid stirring of love is the presence of Rādhā in our hearts, in our souls. Every moment of tenderness felt, every trace of hope, every moment of melancholy, gentle sadness, missing or longing, of wanting love—not to have it, but to give it—this is Rādhā in our souls.

On our spiritual journey, if we want to ask, why do I exist? why am I here? why do I have a soul? Then I am asking about Kṛṣṇa, creator and controller of the universe. If I want to ask: why do I feel the way I feel, then we are asking about Rādhā.

If Kṛṣṇa is all beauty than it is Rādhā who is living beauty. If Kṛṣṇa is all knowledge then Rādhā is the experience of the knowledge If Kṛṣṇa is all bliss, then Rādhā is the giver of bliss. If Kṛṣṇa is love, then Rādhā is loving.

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