Comments on: Institutionalizing Prema-bhakti http://www.radha-krishnaism.org/2009/07/institutionalizing-prema-bhakti/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed A Spirituality of Liberty, Truth, and Love Fri, 23 Sep 2011 02:41:09 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Zvonimir Tosic http://www.radha-krishnaism.org/2009/07/institutionalizing-prema-bhakti/comment-page-1/#comment-140 Zvonimir Tosic Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:31:26 +0000 http://www.radha-krishnaism.org/?p=365#comment-140 It's interesting to read in the second part of his book excerpt; Joseph O'Connell describes work of six gosvamis from Vrindavan (Braj) as perhaps too successful — in a way that their work seemingly discouraged further development and new creative directions of prema-bhakti. Instead, all successors were writing commentaries on what six gosvamis already outlined. Aesthetics of love suddenly became teachings and philosophy of religion, now carved in stone. This goes hand in hand <a href="http://www.radha-krishnaism.org/2009/06/why-krishna-always-wears-yellow/" rel="nofollow">with my conclusions</a> about shortfall of creative pursuit in aesthetics of prema-bhakti and its wonderful myth. The myth has stopped to develop further, and newer generations were acting as blind followers. Instead of connecting us with a living, beautiful myth -- or an artistic motif -- encouraging to accept it as such and enrich in each successive generation, we were left with a rigid and literal interpretation of it and thousands of strict rules to follow a doctrine. Stagnation took place. No wonder resulting philosophy is outdated, full of flaws. In the history of painting that would mean nothing ever happened since, say, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fra_Angelico" rel="nofollow">Fra Angelico</a> or in music nothing since <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Pierluigi_da_Palestrina" rel="nofollow">Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina</a> ... So, this is a good example of literalism vs symbolism. Renaissance in the West helped us rise above medieval literalism and accept symbolism (thank classic Greeks for the inspiration), but that never happened in the Orient. I should write more about it. — Zvonimir Tosic It’s interesting to read in the second part of his book excerpt; Joseph O’Connell describes work of six gosvamis from Vrindavan (Braj) as perhaps too successful — in a way that their work seemingly discouraged further development and new creative directions of prema-bhakti. Instead, all successors were writing commentaries on what six gosvamis already outlined. Aesthetics of love suddenly became teachings and philosophy of religion, now carved in stone.

This goes hand in hand with my conclusions about shortfall of creative pursuit in aesthetics of prema-bhakti and its wonderful myth. The myth has stopped to develop further, and newer generations were acting as blind followers. Instead of connecting us with a living, beautiful myth — or an artistic motif — encouraging to accept it as such and enrich in each successive generation, we were left with a rigid and literal interpretation of it and thousands of strict rules to follow a doctrine. Stagnation took place.

No wonder resulting philosophy is outdated, full of flaws. In the history of painting that would mean nothing ever happened since, say, Fra Angelico or in music nothing since Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina …

So, this is a good example of literalism vs symbolism. Renaissance in the West helped us rise above medieval literalism and accept symbolism (thank classic Greeks for the inspiration), but that never happened in the Orient. I should write more about it.

— Zvonimir Tosic

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