The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism (Expanded)

The Place of the Hid­den Moon: Erotic Mys­ti­cism in the Vaishnava-sahajiya Cult of Ben­gal, by Edward C. Dimock, Jr.

SOME EXCERPTS AND COMMENTS

In her 1989 fore­word, Wendy Doniger says:

This is the most reli­able and indeed alto­gether the best book I know on all of the many Indo­log­i­cal sub­jects with which it deals, some of them major top­ics in Indian reli­gion: the life of the saint Chai­tanya, the tra­di­tion of the mad Baul singers, the aes­thetic the­ory of rasa, the bhakti tra­di­tion of the love of God, the doc­trines of Tantrism, the ori­gins of the fig­ure of Radha, and the wor­ship of Krishna. But the ele­gance and humor are there too, and these are the qual­i­ties that make this book the best book I know on spir­i­tual and car­nal love (or sacred and pro­fane love) in gen­eral, on love in union and love in sep­a­ra­tion, on the dif­fer­ence between poetic and doc­tri­nal atti­tudes  to sex­ual love, and between Euro­pean and Indian atti­tudes to sex­ual love, spir­i­tual love, and the love of God.

Edward Dimock explains:

As Elder Olson says, sym­bols ‘cause us to enter­tain ideas remote from, or totally out­side of, ordi­nary expe­ri­ence, by the exten­sion of ideas we already pos­sess.’ The image of human love is, in Olson’s terms, a ‘nat­ural sym­bol’; for what more apt image could there be in all human expe­ri­ence to express tran­scen­dent joy and the silent, unknown place of St. John? Or what more apt image could there be to express the long­ing of the soul for God than that of the long­ing of the human lover for the beloved? Or what more apt image to express reli­gious rap­ture than that of sex­ual plea­sure? (4)

This is the beauty of the sym­bol­ism of Radha-Krishna, the Divine Cou­ple, being the high­est, purest rep­re­sen­ta­tion of God-dess. They rep­re­sent the per­fec­tion of erotic love based on clas­si­cal Indian aes­thet­ics. These aes­thetic prin­ci­ples aid the Indian mind’s entrance into Radha-Krishna’s eter­nal dal­liance. How­ever, many of these prin­ci­ples become stum­bling blocks for the West­ern mind. Besides the for­eign lan­guage, cos­tumes, cus­toms and man­ner­isms, the accep­tance of adul­ter­ous love as bet­ter than mar­ried love is repug­nant, even to most mod­ern Indi­ans. It also leads to unwanted social con­se­quences when devo­tees try to act out this model in their own lives.

The idea of enter­ing into an erotic lov­ing rela­tion­ship with God-dess is most appeal­ing. The fol­low­ers of Chai­tanya cre­ated a com­pelling mythos in this regard. I humbly rework that mythos so that Radha-Krishna may be seen and accepted as a uni­ver­sal sym­bol for God-dess in the 21st century.

In Bernard’s image, the soul “desires” to be united with the Christ, and this state­ment empha­sizes that the two are sep­a­rate. It is this aspect of the image which is most usual to Chris­t­ian, and I might add to ortho­dox Vaish­nava, poets, although the pain of sep­a­ra­tion always sug­gests the joy of union. For love in sep­a­ra­tion is pure love, spir­i­tual love. How this view came to pre­vail in Chris­t­ian poetry is of con­sid­er­able inter­est and relevance.

It is De Rougemont’s opin­ion that, “the con­dem­na­tion of the flesh, which is now viewed by some as char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally Chris­t­ian, is in fact of Manichaean and hereti­cal ori­gin.” (5)

To the ortho­dox Vaish­navas, as to the trou­ba­dours, it is the very long­ing, the intense desire itself, that is the end; the long­ing is an act of wor­ship, plea­sur­able in itself, and giv­ing plea­sure to Krishna.…

But the sex­ual image is dou­ble edged. It may also be read as sug­gest­ing that the ulti­mate expe­ri­ence of the divine is not in long­ing for union, but in union itself, that this ulti­mate expe­ri­ence is the plea­sure, raised to the nth degree, of human sex­ual union. (14)

This long­ing for union with God-dess is also com­mon to Chris­t­ian and Sufi mys­tics. So long as we are in this world, our pri­mary rela­tion­ship to God-dess is mostly one of sep­a­ra­tion based on our exis­ten­tial sit­u­a­tion. But, the long­ing for union is almost as sweet and intense as the union itself, and it is what pro­pels us to that union.

Accord­ing to some texts, man and woman have in them both the divine Krishna and Radha: a woman is female because she has in her a pre­pon­der­ance of Radha; a man is man because he is mostly Krishna. Love between man and woman thus redu­pli­cates in micro­cosm the love of Radha and Krishna, a love that had both phases, sep­a­ra­tion and union. (15)

This makes sense from a num­ber of perspectives–spiritual, psy­cho­log­i­cal, social, famil­ial, per­sonal. When a lov­ing cou­ple unites in love, it man­i­fests the love of God-dess and is a fore­taste of spir­i­tual bliss. God-dess is within us and indeed is our very self. When we unite the male and female parts of our psy­che, we become whole and holy, another taste of bliss. Grant­ing equal sta­tus to men and women as par­tial man­i­fes­ta­tions of God-dess could help alle­vi­ate gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion and dom­i­nance. See­ing every­one as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of God-dess, whom we are in a lov­ing rela­tion­ship with, could go a long way toward increas­ing peace and jus­tice in the world.

Sep­a­ra­tion of lovers and the long­ing involved in it are called viraha in both Saha­jiya and ortho­dox tra­di­tions, and to both, viraha is the way of sal­va­tion. For the more intense is viraha, the greater is prema. (17)

Though Radha was a sym­bol, the poets found in her a real woman also, and their poetry about her love is warm and per­sonal. On the basis of the sim­ple sto­ries of the Bha­ga­vata, the poets built the story of a com­pli­cated affair, with all the jeal­ousies and pain, the pique and joy, the angers and sat­is­fac­tions of human love. (p 20)

The char­ac­ter of Radha was devel­oped accord­ing to the aes­thetic prin­ci­ples of medieval drama and poetry. They did an excel­lent job; how­ever, today it is a bit dated and cul­tur­ally bound. I hate to say it, but much of it seems overly melo­dra­matic and not the kind of rela­tion­ship I want to be in with God-dess. Just as Shake­speare wrote won­der­ful plays, still I often pre­fer a con­tem­po­rary movie. I present Radha-Krishna in a con­tem­po­rary West­ern man­ner because this mythos has so much to offer, just as Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted as won­der­ful con­tem­po­rary movies to reach today’s audience.

That Chai­tanya was a reli­gious leader of no ordi­nary power is quite clear. The revival he inspired encom­passed the greater part of the pop­u­la­tions of those areas now known as Ben­gal (both East Pak­istan and West Ben­gal), Orissa, Assam, and Bihar. But the great­est and most inspir­ing of lead­ers is per­haps doomed to fail­ure in a cli­mate hos­tile or indif­fer­ent to his ideas and qual­i­ties. The time in which Chai­tanya lived was ripe. (26)

Very lit­tle can be learned of Chaitanya’s early child­hood from the writ­ings of the time; sto­ries about him are so inter­wo­ven with those of Krishna’s child­hood that it is impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate fact from fancy.… It is claimed by his biog­ra­phers that he was a bril­liant scholar. Whether or not this is pious exag­ger­a­tion will prob­a­bly never be known, for he has left us no writ­ings … (30)

He [Chai­tanya] died in 1533. The man­ner of his death is not known. Some say that he was absorbed into the great image of Jagan­nath, oth­ers that he walked into the sea. The least ortho­dox biog­ra­phy, and prob­a­bly the most fac­tual one, says that he injured his foot dur­ing his fren­zied danc­ing and died from an infec­tion. (31)

The term sahaja lit­er­ally means ‘easy’ or ‘nat­ural’ and in this mean­ing the term is applied to a sys­tem of wor­ship and belief in which the nat­ural qual­i­ties of the senses should be used, not denied or sup­pressed. (35)

This is what attracts me to the phi­los­o­phy, these gen­eral prin­ci­ples. Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism is both easy and nat­ural. Why not model our life here on the eter­nal life we envi­sion for our­selves, and why not envi­sion an eter­nal life that can be a model for the life we live here and now. As Joseph Camp­bell said, eter­nity is a dimen­sion of here and now. Why not sacra­men­tal­ize our life here in a holis­tic, life affirm­ing manner?

Both Tantrics and Saha­jiyas believe that man is a micro­cosm, a minia­ture uni­verse, both believe in Unity as the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of this uni­verse, that all dual­ity, even that of the sexes, is false­hood and delu­sion and that cos­mic unity is regained, or rep­re­sented, by man and woman in sex­ual union. Both believe in cer­tain types of men­tal and phys­i­cal con­trol as the means by which man can know his true nature and relate the human and the divine within him­self; both believe that there should be no caste divi­sion among wor­ship­pers; both are human­is­tic, and begin with the analy­sis of the nature of man, and see as the end of man the gain­ing of the “nat­ural state,” the sahaja, the state of ulti­mate and bliss­ful unity. (35–36)

Krishna the supreme God of the Vaish­navas is indwelling in man as the divine prin­ci­ple. The nature of Krishna is love and the giv­ing of joy; it is this in man’s nature that is to be real­ized and expe­ri­enced. (37)

This rea­son­ing offers a sim­ple and ele­gant the­o­log­i­cal ratio­nale. I would reword it as: Radha-Krishna the supreme God-dess indwells in all as the divine prin­ci­ple. The nature of God-dess is love and the giv­ing of joy; it is this in our nature that is to be real­ized and experienced.

Dimock clearly explains,

the Saha­jiyas did not adopt the Vaish­nava the­ol­ogy until after it had been devel­oped by the Gos­vamins of Vrin­da­vana under the inspi­ra­tion of Chai­tanya. The pos­si­bil­ity remains of pre-Chaitanya Saha­jiya doc­trine influ­enc­ing both the thought of the Gos­vamins and Ben­gali thought about Chai­tanya himself.…

Those who have no par­tic­u­lar reli­gious ax to grind can hold to a the­ory of mutual influ­ence: that some of the ideas and con­cepts, like that of the dual incar­na­tion of Chai­tanya, were prob­a­bly shaped by the already long-existing Saha­jiya and re-adopted by the later Vaishnava-sahajiyas after their impli­ca­tions had been worked out by the ortho­dox the­olo­gians; and that, on the other hand, Vaish­nav­ism lent to the Saha­jiya the whole of its the­o­log­i­cal struc­ture … (38–39)

The works of the great and irre­proach­able pil­lars of Vaish­nava ortho­doxy, the Gos­vamins of Vrin­da­vana, are full of allu­sions to and quo­ta­tions from the Tantras and Aga­mas. In short, there is ample evi­dence of con­tact between the Tantric and Vaish­nava schools before and dur­ing the time of Chai­tanya. (43)

That Nityananda was an Avad­huta is unques­tion­able; he is called so in many places through­out the bio­graph­i­cal lit­er­a­ture. The Avad­hutas (the “pure ones”), says Bagchi were a branch grow­ing from the trunk of Mahayana Bud­dhism, oth­ers being the Natha, Saha­jiya, and Baul sects. (47)

Whether because he had affil­i­a­tion with left-hand Tantric or Saha­jiya schools or for some other rea­son, Nityananda was looked upon a lit­tle askance by his com­pan­ions and con­tem­po­raries in Chaitanya’s move­ment. (50)

What is clear is that his­tor­i­cal cir­cum­stances were right for Chai­tanya to have been influ­enced by the Saha­jiya move­ment, though he him­self was not a Saha­jiya. Sec­ondly and more impor­tant, two of his com­pan­ions [Nityanand and Ramanand] were Saha­jiyas and were in a posi­tion to bring together, both socially and doc­tri­nally, the Saha­jiya stream with that of Chaitanya’s Vaish­nav­ism. (67)

Dimock quotes S.K. De,

Each of Chaitanya’s asso­ciates and devo­tees appears to have devel­oped a con­sid­er­able com­mu­nity of dis­ci­ples of his own, and taught the cult of bhakti accord­ing to the light which each had received in his own way from the Mas­ter. (71)

In the early days of the move­ment, there was a diver­sity of views and styles of devo­tion among the var­i­ous groups with no real coor­di­na­tion between them. The Chai­tanya Chari­ta­m­rita is the text that uni­fied the var­i­ous groups, but not as an orga­nized reli­gion. It is unfor­tu­nate that Chai­tanyaism was intro­duced to the West as an orga­nized reli­gion with rigid beliefs and reg­i­mented prac­tices which dis­cour­aged per­sonal inno­va­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion. Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism offers an alter­na­tive which encour­ages personalization.

Dimock offers many other infor­ma­tive insights, but I will leave it to the reader to pur­sue in the book itself. Some of his asser­tions are con­tro­ver­sial, and we may never know just what the his­tor­i­cal truth is. Mean­while, Place of the Hid­den Moon cer­tainly helps broaden our under­stand­ing of Radha-Krishna devotion.

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