Q: What is taṭasthā śakti? A: The jīvas. Q: Do jīvas have taṭasthā śakti? A: That is like asking if the mind has a mind or color has color or taste has taste. The mind is the mind. Color is color. The jīvas are taṭasthā śakti. Q: But […]
I recently acquired a copy of a Sanskrit commentary on the Sarva-samvādinī, which is a commentary by Śrī Jīva Goswami on his Sandarbhas. It is written by Śrī Ānanda Gopāla Vedānta-tirtha, who is a Gauḍiya-Vedānta scholar currently based in Rādhā-kund. The book was published by the Jīva Institute […]
In a previous article, I showed how Śrīdhar Swami’s commentary contains the words, “na tu jīveṣu” – not in the living beings, which explicitly denies the presence of Bhagavān’s svarūpa śakti in the jīva. There I cited his original commentary from Viṣṇu Purāṇa. In Śrī Jīva Goswami’s quotation […]
The inherent bhakti-vādis hold that bhakti is in the svarūpa of the jīva. Because bhakti is Bhagavān’s svarūpa śakti, this forces them to take the position that Bhagavān’s svarūpa śakti is inside the jīva – in other words, Bhagavān’s svarūpa śakti (i.e. the śakti that constitutes His very […]
Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī uses the term ‘duḥkha-pratiyogi’ as a synonym of the word ‘ānanda’, which is an intrinsic quality of the ātmā. Śrī Babaji has explained that the term ‘pratiyogi’ is used to convey the meaning of an absence of duḥkha or misery in the ātmā. Opponents claim […]
We come across the term ‘mukti’ frequently in the scriptures. The term evokes a final, everlasting destination after death, and is generally translated as ‘liberation’. But what is the precise meaning of this term? A definition of mukti The term mukti is defined in the Bhāgavata purāṇa in […]