I am interested in Chaitanya Vaishnavism. This site is inspired by the teachings of Sri Satyanarayana dasa Babaji, scholar and practitioner.
Question: My friend says that lying to one’s parents is fine if it is for devotion to Kṛṣṇa. She cites the examples of gopis to justify this. I find this unethical. Answer: Scripture contains prescriptions and descriptions. The descriptions of Kṛṣṇa’s lilas with the gopis are meant to […]
Limbs sixteen to twenty are as follows:
Limbs eleven to twenty are prohibitions or the dont’s of bhakti. They are as important 1 as the previous ten prescriptions. Here are the first five with comments. saṅga-tyāgo vidūreṇa bhagavad-vimukhair janaiḥ – giving up from far the company of those who are turned away from Bhagavān. This […]
‘Life comes from Life’ is posed by some modern bhakti sects as a key challenge to science. However, Louis Pasteur, the father of microbiology, summarized his scientific experiments in the phrase “Omne vivum ex vivo“, which means ‘Life [is] from Life’. Here is a bit from wikipedia: Biogenesis is […]
We now examine the rest of the limbs of bhakti. Rupa Goswami writes about these: eṣām atra daśāṅgānāṁ bhavet prārambha-rupatā: these ten limbs are the beginning of bhakti. We list them below (starting from the fourth limb as the first three limbs are discussed elsewhere). guru-pādāśraya tasmāt = taking […]
Before we dive into this topic, lets start with the meaning of the word ‘Science’ from wikipedia: “Science (from Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.” In modern India, the word vijñāna is the […]
Of the 64 limbs of bhakti ennumerated by Rupa Goswami, Jiva Goswami comments that the first twenty are doors that give entry into bhakti (अस्याः भक्तौ प्रवेशाय विंशति-अंगानाम् द्वारत्वेSपि), but of these, the first three are most important, i.e. they are the doors that open to the next […]
Rupa Goswami lists 64 limbs of bhakti in the Bhakti rasamrta sindhu. We will examine these limbs one by one. This preamble examines the significance of the limbs of bhakti. Where the Bhagavad Gita deals with psychology of the material mind, the Bhakti rasamrta sindhu deals with the […]
The word anartha means anything that is not artha- or that which is not the goal. Anything which is undesirable for bhakti to Kṛṣṇa is anartha, even though it may fall under dharma, artha, kāma or mokṣa. There are five types of anarthas which progress from the first to […]
Rupa and Jiva Goswami take great pains to clearly distinguish between karma, jñāna and the bhakti mārga. Not understanding these distinctions can cause problems in the practice of uttama bhakti. Here we examine Jiva Goswami’s commentary on this point. We begin with Rupa Goswami’s writing in the Bhakti […]
I recently met a young smart Indian girl studying in the tenth grade who grew up in America. I started to talk to her about science. When I inquired about the theory of evolution, she replied: “the theory of evolution is a conspiracy by scientists to reject God. […]
An example where the primary meaning of scripture can be misleading is Kṛṣṇa’s rāsa līlā described in the Bhāgavatam. Here, there are references to intimate interactions between Kṛṣṇa and the gopīs, which appear sexual in nature in their primary meaning, no different from an ordinary book of romance. And yet, at the end […]