Tag: love

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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What is suffering?

Verses 9:26-27

If you offer me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I will accept it.

Whatever you do, eat, offer or give away, and whatever hardship you suffer—offer it to me.

In Chapter 9 of Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa shares with Arjuna ever deeper knowledge about himself and the nature of the universe. Then in verses 26-27 Kṛṣṇa describes how best to please and honour him. 

He says that not only should we offer to Kṛṣṇa the things we cherish in life. We should also offer him what we do in life. We should give not only our possessions but our actions. 

Among the many things we do in our lives is to suffer through difficult experiences. To suffer is not to feel something painful or difficult for one moment. It is to live in an experience of pain or difficulty. Suffering is an action—of perseverance, patience, resolve, courage, maybe obstinacy.

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Love your neighbour as yourself

Parakīya-bhāva is a key idea in the tradition of Gaudyia Vaishnavism. It describes Kṛṣṇa’s loving pastimes with the gopīs (in the Rāsa Līlā) and with Rādhā herself (in the Gaura Līlā).

In Sanskrit, parakīya means belonging to an other, another group, another tribe, or another people. Parakīya-bhāva is most often interpreted narrowly to mean love outside of marriage. In modern Hindi, it has come to signify ‘adultery’.

But a more broad interpretation understands it as love with a foreigner, an outsider, or a stranger. What can this teach us about love itself?

When, in Luke 10, Jesus is asked what we should do to obtain eternal life, he replies, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul’, then adding a saying from the Torah, Leviticus 19, ‘and love your neighbour as yourself.’ 

A wise listener then asks him, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ Jesus famously replies with what is know as the parable of the Good Samaritan. 

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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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