Making all things new

“Can you explain how we, in our present lim­ited state of evo­lu­tion and con­scious­ness, can super­im­pose our ideas on Radha Krishna in regards to things like their age? Can you explain from the UCRK’s view­point how rein­ter­pret­ing that in the scrip­tures can be justified.

Many under­stand how teach­ings and worn out ideals of older scrip­tures have a need to be rein­ter­preted for the mod­ern world, whereas changes in the scrip­tural descrip­tions of God and his pas­times them­selves may rat­tle a few feathers.

Can you please speak on this further..?”

First of all, why do you think we are in “a lim­ited state of evo­lu­tion and con­scious­ness?” Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur thought his­tory was pro­gres­sive and evo­lu­tion­ary. He saw West­ern­ers as more advanced than Indi­ans and thought devo­tion to Radha Krishna would evolve when indig­inized in the West.

Regard­ing how we “can super­im­pose our ideas on Radha Krishna in regards to things like their age,” That’s exactly what pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions of their devo­tees did. Why not us?

I’ll “explain from the UCRK’s view­point how rein­ter­pret­ing that in the scrip­tures can be jus­ti­fied.” Being a post-modern church, we see such things from a rel­a­tivis­tic per­spec­tive rather than “as eter­nal, unchangable, infal­li­ble ABSOLUTE TRUTH.” Each gen­er­a­tion has to make the teach­ings rel­e­vant to their time and cir­cum­stance. Also, as a process the­ol­ogy church, we believe every­thing is in process, includ­ing Radha Krishna, The Divine Cou­ple, the Ori­gin of All Processes. Every­thing is being revealed through the grace of Radha Krishna today, just as it was hun­dreds of years ago. Why should God & God­dess sud­denly stop speak­ing? The scrip­tures are not a closed canon but are still expanding.

You say,“changes in the scrip­tural dis­crip­tions of God and his pas­times them­selves may rat­tle a few feath­ers.” That’s OK. Change always ruf­fles feath­ers. If Krishna is All Attrac­tive, what is the harm in mak­ing him more attrac­tive to West­ern­ers? Don’t his ser­vants dress and dec­o­rate him to make him most attrac­tive to those he wishes to meet? Didn’t he say,“How so ever one approaches me, I rec­i­p­ro­cate accord­ingly?” Haven’t such changes been going on constantly?

There’s an inter­est­ing essay in The Divine Con­sort which describes the evo­lu­tion of Radha Krishna in the dif­fer­ent lay­ers of the Sur Sagar, a grow­ing com­pendium of poems attrib­uted to Sur Das. One may see which poems are ear­lier and later by com­par­ing var­i­ous edi­tions. Then study­ing the asthet­ics of each layer, one can see devel­op­men­tal dif­fer­ences in under­stand­ing the Divine Couple.

I think changes are needed to update the myth and keep it alive and attrac­tive for West­ern­ers today and tomorrow.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 5th, 2006 at 14:21 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.