I am interested in Chaitanya Vaishnavism. This site is inspired by the teachings of Sri Satyanarayana dasa Babaji, scholar and practitioner.
The ātman, stripped off the mind, body and senses is a formless conscious being consisting of potentialities of thought, desire and action. All ātmans are identical, with the only difference being their existence as individual ātmans. We have seen that the ātmans have been wedded to individual minds […]
Many people are surprised to learn that Kṛṣṇa is Svayaṁ Bhagavān, the original form of Bhagavān and the source of all avataras including Rāma and Visṇu himself. Sri Jiva Goswami in the Kṛṣṇa Sandarbha does an exhaustive analysis to establish Kṛṣṇa as Svayaṁ Bhagavān. Śrī Babaji has recently translated this book (available at the above link) with insightful commentary.
We now examine the remaining qualifiers of bhāva. As we saw before, bhāva is qualified by rucibhiś citta-māsṛṇya-kṛd and prema-sūryāṁśu-sāmya-bhāk. Sri Jiva Goswami explains the meaning of these words, which is reproduced below. The word ruci = prāpti-abhilāṣa, sva-kartṛka ānukulya-abhilāṣa and sauhārda-abhilāṣa. That is, ruci implies three things: […]
Renowned British physicist Roger Penrose and the University of Arizona’s Stuart Hameroff have a theory for consciousness. According to them, consciousness is information stored at the quantum level in microtubules. Microtubules are biopolymers in cells that have varied functions. They are enriched in neurons and are critical for […]
There is the notion in some bhakti sects that the material world is a perverted reflection of the spiritual world.
We examine Sri Rupa Goswami’s definition of bhava further.
Given the topic this blog deals with, and the emotional responses that it appears to elicit among the faithful who find the content not palatable, I am formulating some rules for posting comments.
Maharajji answers questions in Śrī Guru Darśanam, p 87 Question: Is ajñāta-sukṛti a real or only a psychological term? Answer: There is no such thing as ajñāta-sukṛti. Bhakti comes by the mercy of Bhagavān and His devotee. And it is not that you make somebody do something by controlling him […]
Some modern Caitanya bhakti sects emphasize preaching as the most important duty of a devotee. Preaching in this context carries the meaning of proselytizing, that is, attempting to convert people to become followers of the bhakti path. This is typically accomplished by selling books to others, by offering […]
We examine the existence of the ātman in the material world in a question-answer format. Perhaps its easier to grasp concepts this way.
First, here is a definition of free will — Free will is the capacity to make a choice independent of any external influence. If we strip the jīva of the mind, body, senses and prāṇa, what is left is the ātman. The ātman, as we have seen before, […]
We now examine the definition of bhāva by Sri Rupa Goswami. As a reminder, bhāva is the sādhya or goal of sādhanā bhakti. Sri Rupa Goswami defines bhāva as follows:
śuddha-sattva-viśeṣātmā prema-sūryāṁśu-sāmya-bhāk | rucibhiś citta-māsṛṇya-kṛd asau bhāva ucyate ||
The Krishna Bhakti site 