Be Whole and Holy

I am 22 pages into Sri Vrin­da­van Mahi­mam­rita by Pra­bod­hananda Saras­vati (it’s a 640 page book that I paid a good amount for), and I really can’t stand to go on read­ing it. It is the last and largest of sev­eral books I bought at the same time. It looked like it had a lot of poten­tial and I saved it for last.

It’s full of things like: “Dear friends, do not fear to trans­gress Vedic injunc­tions, do not fear to dis­obey the instruc­tions of your par­ents, do not bother to fol­low worldly cus­toms, do not show com­pas­sion to your poor rel­a­tives any­more, and do not be repeat­edly bound by affec­tion in this mate­r­ial world any­more. Just imme­di­ately start for the abode of Vrind­a­ban!” (Text 52)

And, “A sin­ful per­son who comes to Vrin­da­van and then sud­denly leaves for another place is like a per­son who has attained the plat­form of lib­er­a­tion yet runs towards hell. Such a per­son, even after obtain­ing a touch­stone in his hand, throws it away in the ocean. More­over, such a per­son, hav­ing been able to con­trol the Supreme Lord, becomes as abom­inable as a dog.” (Text 60) That’s where I stopped.

I can’t take such a neg­a­tive, judge­men­tal approach to life in the mate­r­ial world. Sure, it isn’t the spir­i­tual world, but I think we are here for a pur­pose that is more than just escap­ing from a prison. We are here to learn to love and live in such a way that we become qual­i­fied to live in the spir­i­tual world. We should look for Radha Krishna and Vrind­a­ban every­where and act in lov­ing ways like we would there.

I agree with Osho when he says, “In the East peo­ple have con­demned the body, con­demned mat­ter, called mat­ter ‘illu­sory’, maya–it does not really exist, it only appears to exist; it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. They denied the world, and that is the rea­son for the East remain­ing poor, sick, in star­va­tion. Half of human­ity has been accept­ing the inner world but deny­ing the outer world. The other half of human­ity has been accept­ing the mate­r­ial world and deny­ing the inner world. Both are half, and no man who is half can be contented.

“You have to be whole: rich in the body, rich in sci­ence; rich in med­i­ta­tion, rich in con­scious­ness. Only a whole per­son is a holy per­son, accord­ing to me.”

The good news is that I am 38 pages into Krish­nah­nika Kau­mudi by Srila Kavi-karnapur. It is a delight­ful short (66 pages) descrip­tion of Radha Krishna’s pas­times through the 24 hours. A lit­tle lack­ing in Radha’s pas­times when she’s not with Krishna, but good none-the-less.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 09:19 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.