Tag: Probodhānandana Sarasvatī

Seeing with spiritual eyes

Verse 66

The desire of my heart is to see the amorous playful enjoyment of Rādhā and Mohan. The fulfilment of my heart lies in the pure fulfilment of the divine loving relation. The realisation of that loving relation is the goal of any jiva. That is the goal of practice: to deepen and enhance the project of Caitanya Mahaprabhu who appeared in order to full understand and feel what loving relation is, understand by feeling, feeling-understanding. 

We, the ‘villagers’, are ‘fortunate souls’ (puṇyātma) in that we are allowed to observe the couple in this way. This good fortune (puṇya) does not come to us because we deserve it. It is mercy. There is no cause or reason for it. Mercy comes to us only through devotion, through loving relation to God. 

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Neither male nor female

Verse 53

We observe our bodies and we see the physiology of men and women, of male and female. This material confinement of gender and sexuality steers mundane social conflict and political debates about which bodies we are authorised to love. The life of material love, of material desire, is intertwined with the dualism of genders. In our modern experience of sexuality this dualism is sometimes inverted, exchanged or reassigned. But we seem unable to imagine ourselves, to grasp our identities without it. 

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