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New Govardhana Festival

January 8-12

More info contact Gaura Shakti 02 6672 2773

Status report by Dr Madhavananda das, Director of Bhaktivedanta Hospital, Mumbai

Maharaja is recovering and very alert. Most likely Maharaja will be stepped down to another ICU tomorrow which is for patients without ventilator. A speech therapist also taught him exercises to improve his speech and swallowing.

Please continue praying.

RasaRasika: Haribol GD

GD: Haribol. I hope I didn't miss the japa room

RasaRasika: it's OK we are typing today here...my audio won't work properly

RasaRasika: this week is Stage 5, talking about praying to the Lord for assistance

GD: ok

RasaRasika: We can talk about praying to the Lord
RasaRasika: I do this myself everyday

GD: hmm something of your own or
some ready made prayer from acharyas

RasaRasika: I pray to my spiritual master and the Lord to help me overcome the offenses and also to attain good quality attentive Japa
RasaRasika: it's my own prayer
RasaRasika: I find it's a nice way to start Japa understanding that the Lord can help us with this and I also pray to my Deities and chant in front of them....asking Jagannatha to be merciful unto me

AD: I have noticed praying helped me in chanting this week. Increased my efforts to attain offenseless chanting

RasaRasika: OK nice AD
RasaRasika: It's something that we may not be used to doing...praying like this but it is good to do that to recognise within ourselves how we depend on the Lord for everything

GD: I feel that with one's own prayers give a kind of an intimate tinge to the relationship with the Lord although I've heard the recommendation of using the prayers of acharyas

AD: I completely agree prabhu

RasaRasika: yes we can use those also if we feel like that....both can be there
RasaRasika: The mood of the advanced devotees are contained in their prayers

GD: I'd say humility is a big key word in the prayers

RasaRasika: yes it's very true

AD: But in my case I use my own prayers helps me also, because it strenghs my personal relationship with Krsna that needs to be uncovered

AD: I mean they help me also

RasaRasika: I find that when we are reminded of our dependance on the Lord, this gives us a sense of humility
RasaRasika: certainly we need to seek the blessing of the spiritual master and the previous acaryas and that can be personal prayers or reciting the other prayers also. Main thing is to realise our dependance on the Lord for everything

GD: Sri Siksastakam is a good basis

RasaRasika: yes these prayers are very important - it shows us this mood of dependance on the Lord....like in the last sloka

GD: yes and the third

RasaRasika: yes, so this is the mood that we are trying to develop then humility comes....it's nice to know that all we need to do is depend on the Lord completely - also with our chanting, that we depend on the Lord, through the spiritual master, for any advancement and the taste and purification

GD: hmm it reminds me of the 5 factors of action...we do our best but result is dependent on the Lord

RasaRasika: yes good point
RasaRasika: the Lord decides in the end but we can be sure that the result will be good for our advancement whatever that may be that the Lord can test us sometimes directly or through the material energy
RasaRasika: Sometimes a seemingly negative situation materially can actually be a positive one spiritually if we can see the Lord's hand

GD: yes Siksastkam 8

RasaRasika: yes that prayer

RasaRasika: and Srila Prabhupada mentions that the Lord will take away material things in our lives so we can make advancement so it may come like this or otherwise but the point is clear that the Lord can make any arrangement for our advancement via the material energy or directly through the spiritual energy

GD: That verse "...I bless such a person by taking everything away from him..."

RasaRasika: yes this verse
RasaRasika: so if we can see these things in relation to the Lord and not lament on the material platform but it's only possible by proper purification by chanting....chanting as well as we can and the Lord reciprocates

GD: ok

RasaRasika: The relationship that we are developing with the Lord it's very personal and the Lord can give us the vision to see all this going on and it starts with the purifying process of chanting quality Japa

RasaRasika: Hare Krsna MD

RasaRasika: welcome back

MD: Haribol prabhu

RasaRasika: so it's amazing actually when we can see the Lord in our lives like this - how he works in our lives and with a strong sadhana, including quality Japa, this vision can be developed or rather Krsna gives us this according to our efforts

GD: Yes many verses are running in my head about these

RasaRasika: yes Krsna has given us the information to apply in our lives, not that it's an artificial way of thinking- sometimes we can use this as an excuse for our laziness or lack of taking personal responsibility..."The Lord will arrange everything" so therefore we don't have to do much

GD: we should only try to understand the transcendental nature of Krishna's appearance and activities

RasaRasika: Yes and that will be possible with purification by good quality Japa and sadhana, otherwise it will remain theory or just knowledge

GD: in other words dry...

GD: I think the verse from namamrita applies to this topic also...I mean the one I meantioned last time...nama sankirtana...

RasaRasika: Yes please quote it

GD: "ei chay gosai kori carana vandana yaha hoite krsna nam abhista purana yaha hoite vighna nama"
GD: By offering my obeisances to these six goswamis all obstacles to devotion are destroyed and all spiritual desires are fulfilled

RasaRasika: Nice thank you

AD: Quality chanting, means offenseless chanting, chanting with feeling with the heart, no only a mechanical process, how can we hanker for it naturally and not try to immitate previous acharyas

RasaRasika: OK thanks AD
RasaRasika: this natural hankering for the Holy names comes from this reciprocation that we were discussing, when the Lord gives us a taste for the chanting, then we naturally hanker for that more - if we feel the purifying effects of our chanting then we hanker for tha....so it comes down to our own effort....the Lord reciprocates with our effort - the Lord awards us according to this effort, then we develop this hankering for the Holy names and we look forward to chanting, it's not just a process anymore...or a ritual that we do every day because we HAVE to do it....we chant because we WANT to chant and this can only come from feeling the purifying effects by the Lord's grace

AD: thank you

MD: reminds me from the point that the process is not static, you always have to surrender again or have to have that desire

RasaRasika: yes it's definitely dynamic
RasaRasika: we need to go beyond a mechanical process, like a ritualistic act everyday that we do mechanically without much thought or feeling
RasaRasika: here is a nice quote

RasaRasika: "....Practically we see that as we sincerely try to improve our chanting for the pleasure of Krishna, Krishna reciprocates and we feel our greatest pleasure which is devotional service to the Lord. So, you may continue with this method, it is very nice and approved by me."
Letter to Syamasundara - November 24, 1968

RasaRasika: this is nice because Srila Prabhupada talks about our efforts to improve our chanting for the pleasure of the Lord then we feel the effects because the Lord reciprocates

GD: Yes

RasaRasika: which is actual devotional service....service done with devotion

GD: One point also...If you don't feel like chanting then you can excuse your mind for doing it for somebody else good trick for the mind

RasaRasika: yes good trick

MD: this dynamic...maybe there are different levels, I mean some newcomers maybe doing seva and chating very dynamically, but efforts are maybe not that steady, elders maybe very steady, but not externally very dynamic...

RasaRasika: Thanks M good point
RasaRasika: there are different levels...and you notice that when our enthusiasm is strong, like when we see this in the beginning stages, the Lord will give us this reciprocation- like the first time you feel the taste....I remember that in the early stages...then as time goes on we can become familiar with the process and that enthusiasm and taste may fade
- so we end up with mechanical following like a ritual, so we may be steady but mechanical...so we need to remain steady but also make an effort to absorb ourselves in the sound vibration - for each mantra we need to do this

MD: it was mentioned yesterdays class that external execution of bhakti is sambandha, actual experience of bhakti is on the level of abhideya

RasaRasika: yes so that sambhandha is developed through our efforts to develop our relationship with the Lord, then the reciprocation from the Lord will come and He may give us the vision to see how He is working in our lives and our bhakti grows more from this vision...but it starts with our efforts...like if Krsna was in the room with us, and we ignore Him and do other things then where is the question of a relationship?

MD: yes

GD: Main symptom of being mechanical is inattentive chanting I guess

RasaRasika: yes, so if we ignore the Holy names by not hearing them properly, then how can we expect the Lord to reciprocate? We are not taking a step towards Him, we are moving away with our inattention - like music in the background, our Japa can be like this and the mind is wandering all over the universe and it's hard to bring the mind back from that state - but it can be done if we simply hear properly

GD: Satsvarupa Maharaja gave one analogy about this in one BTG

RasaRasika: yes please tell us and then we will break and then the Gita room

GD: ..."You are in a recording studio with 24 track recorder - every track has some sounds going on, talking, music etc. on one track there is chanting japa...you just pull the volume down from the other tracks and leave the japa track on

RasaRasika: great example...ignore the ramblings of the mind

MD: nice, somewhere he said that if there are 8 tracks you just fill all them with maha-mantra

RasaRasika: yes great example again - keep the mind on the sound of the words and then it won't wander
RasaRasika: OK we will take a break now and I will invite you back into the Gita room
RasaRasika: thanks for all your comments and questions
RasaRasika: see you in 10 mins time

AD: Hare Krsna

Anyone who wishes to preach to Western educated people should read Dr. S.N. Balagangadhara's book The Heathen in His Blindness. Elsewhere, Gangadhara has characterized the social sciences as an embroidering of Christian theology. In other words, he asserts, if you accept the core premises of the Western social sciences, then you must accept the core precepts of Christianity, and vice versa. His observation is that what Western social scientists write about other cultures and religions is not much different from what Christian missionaries used to write about those same cultures.

In any case, as I read the book, I'm going to be posting my notes here about it. Gangadhara is our ally, and the intent of my notes is to identify not only his key insights but also to discover what is fresh that Krishna consciousness brings to the table in the East-West / Spiritual-Material dialog.

So, here are my notes from the introduction. They aren't particularly well structured, but later I hope to distill and refine them:

Balagangadhara - Intro. Falls back on Wittgenstein's concept of family resemblences for recognition. It seems to me that we could also posit a non-trival part of our ability to recognize things for what they are as inconceivable. After all, we don't precisely know how, exactly, we "see" things, either in the empirical sense or the philosophical sense. We may have some limited measure of these things, but the emphasis is on limitation. In other words, there is a part of our ability to apprehend things which is /inconceivable/. That it is inconceivable points to an agency beyond ourselves which grants us this ability to apprehend common, abstract properties in newly encountered objects, just as an agency beyond ourselves grants us the ability of sight and sound. If you are a theist, you would say we can recognize something else as religion because God gives us the ability to leap to that conclusion. If you are an atheist or an agnostic, you might still be able to share that conviction with the theist by saying "something", not necessarily God, grants us that faculty. If you are an atheist, or an existentialist, you might still argue that "existence precedes essence", or that there is something more fundamental behind the ability to abstract, and it is a matter of scientific procedure, or philosophical inquiry, that will eventually allow us to understand (at least understand better) what is our inconceivable ability to apprehend religions as religion despite not being able to indentify non-trivial, common characteristics. Yet it is important to recongize that both the convictions that God grants us the ability to apprehend things or that something else has granted it is still a matter of faith. Faith is common to the theist, the agnostic, and the atheist. And faith arises due to contact with the modes of nature.

Jnana and ajnana are paired terms that may be preferrable to knowledge and ignorance. For example, saying the heathen has no religion may not necessarily be a statement that the heathen is agnostic. Instead, what the missionary means is that the heathen /has/ a religion, but it is the /wrong/ religion. He does not accept our categories, our savior, etc., and hence is destined to have an unpleasant encounter with reality. He has to be compelled to accept our categorizations, otherwise he will go to Hell. There is, after all, Heaven and Hell, even if he has never heard of it. Ignorance is no excuse.

"Ajnana" could mean both absence of knowledge and "anti-knowledge", or something that appears to be knowledge but is not--in other words, a "miscategorization" of reality, or, as we say "maya". We should use the terms jnana and ajnana instead of knowledge and ignorance because, on account of Hindu inclusivism, "ajnana" could accommodate both terms, and hence accommodate the secularist, or nominalist, who believes that all kinds of knowledge have some merit, and the religionist, who disbelieves in nominalism and who believes that some categorizations are illegitimate--even if it can be demonstrated that they are suitable to some purpose. Hindu "inclusivism", specifically with regard to accommodating both the theist, atheist, and agnostic within the same world view on account of Gita verse 17.3. Because different "faiths" arise from different configurations of the three modes of nature, different ways of looking at the world (methodological approaches) also descend from these different faiths. A phenomenologist begins with self-experience, because to him the /only/ way the world can be understood is from one's own vantage point. A theist, however, accepts the categorization of the world as received through his sources of authority (holy books, saintly persons, tradition, etc.). Yet both approaches are necessarily founded on faith, and faith arises from contact with the material modes of nature or, in the case of the transcendental position, the absence of the influence of the modes of nature.

The ability to apprehend characteristics like "religion" in some other heretofore unencountered culture may also be a function of our transcendental nature. The soul's intrinsic characteristics are eternity, knowledge, and bliss, and the fact that we /can/ apprehend these things means we aren't sticks or stones. We can understand something because we have intrinsic ability to do so--ability that we are not independent in aquiring.

Logocentrism - Jacques Derida's derisive term for knowledge that precedes language. He rejects this idea, of course. But if knowledge does precede language, then that conviction is the gateway to accepting an inconceivable, transcendent nature that is capable of knowledge - say, the "cit" characteristic of the jiva. It would also explain what, to many Hindus, seems inexplicable--conversion, or converting from one religion to another. If the soul is transcendental, then he can accept or reject a world view that was not a product of his cultural conditioning. In other words, the self /can/ step into different configurations of the material energy, just as people take off and put on new clothes, because there is a difference between the self and matter that temporaly identifies him.

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Balagangadhara - the Heathen in His Blindness 26 - 27.

With respect to the Hottentots, Dapper and van Riebeeck were to go further and declare that the former had no religion – organised or otherwise.

Much to the surprise of those who came into contact with the Hottentots, there was no question of a religion among them. Never had “anyone, however diligently (he) researched, been able to detect any sign of religion among them; they worshipped neither God nor the Devil. Not withstanding the fact that they know there is one, whom they call ’s Humma, who makes the rain fall on earth, moves the wind, provides warmth and cold, they do not pray to him. Because, they say, why worship this ’s Humma, who gives a double drought once and double the required rains at another time where they would rather have seen it in moderation and appropriately…” (Dapper)…Abraham van Riebeeck found no ideas about God or the Devil among them. Rain, storm and such like were ancient that came habitually…(In Molsbergen, Ed., 1916: 19, n. 1.)

Some among such travellers were even uplifted by this, because it meant that converting the ‘natives’ into Christianity would be so much more of an easy job. Columbus wrote in the journal of his 1492 voyage about the religion of the people he called “los indios”:

“They should be good servants and very intelligent, for I have observed that they soon repeat everything that is said to them, and I believe that they would easily be made Christians, for they appear to me to have no religion.”

And in a letter he wrote shortly after his journal entry, he referred again to the religion of these people. His single sentence on the subject is preceded by his observations on fish and followed by a detailed description of the trees. He wrote,

“They have no religion and I think that they would be very quickly Christianized, for they have a very ready understanding.” (Gill 1987: 174; my emphases.)

Such descriptions raise an intriguing question. Why did the early explorers and missionaries not see ‘religion’ if it was a ubiquitous phenomenon in all cultures? In this essay, I would like to probe an answer to this question too. I will do this by taking the Indian culture as a point of reference and by examining the arguments for maintaining that India knows of religion and the implications for a comparative study of cultures when the opposite stance is defended.

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“With the arrival of the beautiful autumn season, the waters in the lakes and rivers became as clear as crystal and filled with fragrant lotus flowers, and breezes blew very pleasantly. At that time Krsna entered the forest of Vrndavana with the cows and cowherd boys. Krsna was very much pleased with the atmosphere of the forest, where flowers bloomed and bees and drones hummed very jubilantly. While the birds, trees and plants were all looking very happy, Krsna, tending the cows and accompanied by Sri Balarama and the cowherd boys, began to vibrate His transcendental flute.”

KB 21: The Gopis Attracted by the Flute

“My zen is in the slow swinging tops of sixteen pine trees.

“One long thin pole of a tree fifty feet high swings in a wider arc than all the others and swings even when they are still.

“Hundreds of little elms springing up out of the dry ground under the pines.

“My watch among oak leaves. My T-shirt on the barbed wire fence and the wind sings in the bare wood.”

Thomas Merton. A Search for Solitude. Lawrence S. Cunningham, editor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996: 232.

“Sweet afternoon! Cool breezes and a clear sky!

“This day will not come again.

“The bulls lie under the tree in the corner of their field.

“Quiet afternoon! The blue hills, the day lilies in the wind. This day will not come again.”

Thomas Merton. Turning Toward the World. Victor A. Kramer, editor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997: 128.