We don’t see what we see; we see what we remember we see. And you can replace this phrase with smell, taste, hear, sense, and perhaps even think. When it comes to spirituality, it’s the same: people expect it to follow their pre-conceptions and clichés.
I want to run, I want to hide, I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside. I want to reach out and touch the flame where the streets have no name.
We live in an overpopulated and over-consumed world, facing an inevitable result of all our actions. But as with every other equation that involves life and its multiple, interdependent variables, the solution to our problem is already inside it.
Oftentimes I’ve been asked to describe what a natural devotion is compared to practice found in institutionalised forms of Chaitanya Vaishnavism and their branches. In other words, I needed a good story people can imagine, take roles and identify with. I finally got one, and that was — through karate.
There’s an old parable: one has become many. It comes from the old scriptures and wants to illustrate an idea of how God created cosmos and beings like us. But it doesn’t explain why exactly. We’re left with only some religious and pre-rational assumptions about it that don’t convince anymore. Today we may ask rightfully: what’s wrong in being just one?
Although endowed with a culturally rich palette, devotional art of Gaudiya Vaisnavism has almost always been a servant maid of its philosophical oeuvre and a wider preaching mission. How it can move on?
Natural devotion can indeed be practiced within Protestantism, Catholicism, Paganism, New Age, Islam, Judaism, etc. The environment itself is not a decisive factor as much as it is our inner sentiment, or emotional rapture.
The idea with devotional meditation and remembrance is similar to one practised by great artists…
How does an artist, or say a philosopher, apply for a job? What would be his-her resume?