Universalist Radha-Krishnaism » Jungle dispatch

The Rains Came

Steve Bohlert — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:49:40 +0000

After three years of not much rain comparatively, the rains are now back to normal. Average rainfall here is 125 inches a year, making Hilo the rainiest city in the world. As a result the telephone lines I depend on for my dialup internet connection get water in them, and my computer can’t detect a dial-tone, although the telephone works. I haven’t been able to get online since early yesterday morning. Today, I’ll go into town and use wifi.

Another satellite internet provider came to my home Saturday. He also said there are too many tall trees to be able to get a clear signal. Again, my only option for high speed is dashed. Oh well, that’s the price for jungle living. I don’t think I’m missing much.

Meanwhile, I can light a fire in the wood-stove and work on my memoirs, which is now my main writing project. I”m reading a couple of memoir writing books as I prepare to revise and complete the manuscript I’ve been working on for over twenty-five years. This should keep me busy for a while. Aloha.

Gray Panthers of Hawaii, the Big Island Organizing

Steve Bohlert — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:48:10 +0000

In Universalist Radha-Krishnaism’s Essential Teachings, it says:

6. Practitioners live as spiritual beings on Earth, one with Earth and life. God-dess pervades all. Practitioners embrace a lifestyle of simple living and high thinking. They offer all to God-dess as a living sacrifice of love, are vessels of divine love, and live in accord with eternal spiritual values. Devotees live in the present as fully participating members of local and global society, working for the well-being of all, according to their ability.

7. Practitioners work in coalition with those of like mind to address issues of peace, justice, and the environment. They seek commonalities rather than differences so that love may unite all people as the realm of God-dess manifests on Earth. (39–40)

To actualize these teachings, I and several others are founding a local Gray Panthers group.

“We are the risk takers; we are the innovators; we are developers of new models. We are trying on the future for size — that is our role.” — Maggie Kuhn, Founder

Gray Panthers are age and youth in action. Working together across generations, we amplify our voices and strengthen our power to create a just society. Several of us are organizing a Gray Panthers local affiliate. We are just at the beginning stages of letting people know we are here and finding out who is interested. We will hold a potluck, kickoff gathering at a Hilo beach park to bring people together and hear what issues they are most concerned about and how to best address them.

We seek to engage the broader community in struggles for justice. Gray Panthers act on our values, build credibility, and achieve goals. Gray Panthers embrace the intergenerational value of working for justice for people of ALL generations and involving people of ALL ages in our movement. We are NOT AARP that is just looking out for the elderly. (Issues of affordable tuition for students and child care are important too.)

The Gray Panthers include people of all ages organized to fight the injustices of ageism, sexism, and racism everywhere and to promote peace along with social and economic justice.

The basic objectives of the Gray Panthers are:

a. To foster the concept of aging as growth during the individual’s total life span from birth to death, through personal development and social involvement.

b. To advocate fundamental change in areas of multigenerational concern that would eliminate injustices, discrimination and oppression based on age, gender, race, ethnicity and religious, sexual or political preferences.

c. To help create a more humane and socially responsible society, and to heighten opportunities for all people to realize their full potential.

d. To act independently and in coalition with other groups to achieve both short term social and economic changes, and ultimately a democratic society that serves human needs above profits and reduces the concentration of corporate power.

e. To work cooperatively with the United Nations and other international agencies and organizations outside the United States on issues of common interest.

Gray Panthers believe in active engagement. We believe civic participation and responsibility are fundamental to achieving social and economic justice and peace. We work to:

Create a humane society — one that puts the needs of people over profits, responsibility over power and democracy over institutions.

Eliminate injustice, discrimination, oppression, and ageism wherever they exist.

Bring together young and old, women and men of all backgrounds and orientations, to work in unison, with mutual trust and respect.

Make your voice heard! Gray Panthers work together on the issues you believe in.

• Creating a single-payer, universal health care system

• Protecting the environment

• Fighting for civil rights and civil liberties

• Promoting peace and international human rights

• Ensuring jobs and workers’ rights

Our groups across the country work on issues from education to ageism, from political integrity to Social Security. If you want to know where Gray Panthers stand on a variety of issues you can visit the www.graypanthers.org website and click on “Our Issues” where you’ll find an outline of the issues with links to more resolutions. If you would like to be involved, contact Steve Bohlert — sbohlert(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Journal of Vaishnava Studies — Mahabharata

Steve Bohlert — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:20:11 +0000

I want to thank Steven Rosen and others of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies (JVS) for their Spring 2011 issue, which focuses on the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata. It presents articles by seven scholars discussing the impact of the Critical Edition on Mahabharata scholarship. They expose the prejudices of early Orientalists that influence scholarship to the present. Synthetic and analytic approaches to the epic are compared.

Here are some insights I come away with: The Mahabharata was never meant to be a historical narration. Rather it deals in a nonlinear mythic way with the mortal problem of how to live in time. It presents the wisdom of of the Vedas in a manner accessible by non-brahmins. Krishna’s divinity, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Harivamsa are original integral parts of the earliest complete manuscripts rather than later additions. Purvashikaha Brahmins from the Kuru-Panchala wrote the manuscript ca. 3rd BCE, took it with them, and disseminated it when they migrated to the South. Various manuscript traditions branched off from the original and adapted to local languages and traditions through additions and changes.

I have subscribed to the JVS or several years and find it helpful to keep up with current scholarly thought about Vaishnavism. I find that critical scholarly approaches to the teachings are essential for clear their clear understanding and interpretation.

A Review of Universalist Radha-Krishnaism by Daniel Cooper Clark

Steve Bohlert — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:41:31 +0000

Daniel Cooper Clark is one of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami’s original New York disciples. We met at the 26 Second Avenue temple in January 1968 when I visited there from my Santa Fe temple. We later worked together closely at Back to Godhead and the New Age Caucus. I sent him a pdf manuscript of my new book and asked him to write a review. This is what he said:

Steve Bohlert has dared to break the shackles of fundamentalism to deliver a much-needed re-visioning of an ancient religion of India, giving it new life for those of us in a multicultural 21st Century world.

He has extracted the essence of Bengali Vaishnavism, and while staying true to its person-ality, has planted the seed back into the human body,

so we may again receive the Original Blessing.

I do not hesitate to call Steve Bohlert a prophet, not only as one gifted with spiritual insight, but also as one who foretells the future — of a path that must be something like he sees it or not be at all.

That is, without such a re-birthing of Vaishnavism, its soul will never plant roots in the world at large. The orthodox will of course decry it and condemn him. “The dogs may bark, but the caravan will pass.”

Preview Universalist Radha-Krishnaism Dust Jacket

Steve Bohlert — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:48:59 +0000

Here is a preview of the dust jacket for my soon to be released Universalist Radha-Krishnaism: The Way of Natural Devotion; A Practitioner’s Handbook. Thanks to Zvonimir Tosic for his excellent design work. The book will be casebound with a dust jacket for durability in practitioners regular use.

Click to see full size.

Spiritual but Not Religious

Steve Bohlert — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:31:44 +0000

With the upcoming publication of my new book, people have been asking how I plan to institutionalize my teachings. Will I start a community, a church, a temple, … ? No, I am not going to. Universalist Radha-Krishnaism is an individual path that appeals to people who belong to the growing segment of the American population (and presumably elsewhere) that says they are spiritual but not religious, as I do. After being a leader in two religious organizations — ISKCON and the United Church of Christ — I want nothing more to do with religion. I certainly do not want to start one.

I feel a need to share the teachings I received and developed over a lifetime. I do that through my books and other writings. I scatter them to the winds like seeds and hope they will find rich soil in the hearts and minds of readers. I take an anarchist approach and believe people are basically good. The way of natural devotion is for people who possess self-control and are able to live their lives in a healthy balanced manner as part of global society along with contributing to their local community. Those practitioners who desire to be part of a religious community can join existing universalist religious groups to supplement their practice.

Universalist Radha-Krishnaism is a loosely affiliated spiritual-philosophical movement of individual practitioners. Especially while we are few in number and widely scattered, the internet provides a good place to form community for mutual support, encouragement, and sharing. I keep in touch with students who wish contact through my websites and email along with occasional phone calls. Some even come to visit me for more personal teaching.

I have no formal disciples or authorized representatives, yet as I say in the conclusion to the new book,

I was the first westerner of my generation to receive these teachings. I practiced and developed them on my own. Now, I passed them on, and it is the task of succeeding generations to develop and adapt them further. I hope you feel up to the task.

I encourage readers to not only follow my teachings but to make them their own and further the process. Everyone who sincerely accepts my teachings and has a good understanding of them is encouraged to pass them on to others. Therefore, there will be diverse expressions by different people, and their students will need to assess the validity of these teachings for themselves. In this way, as numbers increase, loosely affiliated local cell groups may form. Natural devotion is not a cookie cutter path and will develop according to individual needs.

A Renegade Perspective

Steve Bohlert — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:13:58 +0000

I just read A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell. It provides a view of America from the perspective of the “bad” people — slaves, prostitutes, Jews, Italians, jazz musicians, beats, gays, hippies and the like. They all made great contributions to our freedom and happiness. I must admit to a lifelong attraction to such people who knew how to enjoy life despite the “good” people who tried stopping them by enforcing conformity. This attraction made me one of them just as attraction makes devotees one of the Braj residents.

As an outsider who became an insider but rejected it, I provide a unique insight into the practice of Radha-Krishna devotion and bring it into the twenty-first century. Based on my non-dualistic life affirming philosophy, I reveal the esoteric amorous pastimes of Radha-Krishna and how to enter them while being active in this world. Universalist Radha-Krishnaism practitioners fully enjoy this life as well as the next.

New Cover Painting

I asked my friend Zvonimir Tosic to paint a picture for the cover that captures the essence of the new book. He gave me this watercolor based on the style and works of Marc Chagall, one of the great modernist painters of the twentieth century. It shows an idealized young couple in harmony with nature and society — the Divine Couple, Radha-Krishna. He freed them from the constraints of traditional Hindu iconography and allowed them to become more universal without concretizing them in a new way. Much is left open to the imagination just as it is in the practice of natural devotion.

Some Musings

Steve Bohlert — Fri, 20 May 2011 21:23:17 +0000

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the cosmologist Stephen Hawking said, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

I have to disagree with Stephen Hawking that my brain may be a computer, but there is a user of that computer who moves on to a new one when this one breaks down. Just like I intentionally moved from a PC to a Mac, Universalist Radha-Krishnaism describes how to upgrade to a meta level. Hawking would do better to restrict his comments to science. However, even there, he and others go beyond science and enter into metaphysics in their speculations about multiple universes based on atheistic origins of the universe such as: “Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.” This is unprovable speculation.

❡

A friend wrote, “I cannot see how this philosophy can escape the charge of being an escape. But everyone has their bhava, and this one sure is sweet.”

I reply: Isn’t escapism big business–movies, fiction, TV, porn, consumerism, etc.? At least Universalist Radha-Krishnaism provides a positive ideal, which I fail to find in most other forms of escapism. I admit it may appeal to a small niche market, but what else is new.

I encourage a balance between the inner and outer life. I’m moving into a more outer phase now myself. I became the Hawaii Liaison for the Gray Panthers and am getting into community organizing again. In word and deed I model the example of an action-reflection, balanced middle way.

❡

Another friend on Facebook wanted me to teach him Sahajiya practices. I informed him that I am not a Sahajiya and reject their sexual practices with the spouses of others. I have been in a monogamous relationship for 24 years and in another for six years before this one. Natural devotion is a tantric Vaishnava practice that provides a unique Western approach to Radha-Krishna devotion. Tantric means it is not world denying but embraces life, which reenforces my previous point.

The Middle Way

Steve Bohlert — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:01:42 +0000

While the natural devotional practice of visualizing life in Braj is traditionally used by recluses, Universalist Radha-Krishnaism makes it clear that this is not necessary. A life of contemplative reflection combined with inspired action in the world is preferable. Practioners seek to live holistic lives as stated in the “Essential Teachings:”

6. Practitioners live as spiritual beings on Earth, one with Earth and life. God-dess pervades all. Practitioners embrace a lifestyle of simple living and high thinking. They offer all to God-dess as a living sacrifice of love, are vessels of divine love, and live in accord with eternal spiritual values. Devotees live in the present as fully participating members of local and global society, working for the well-being of all, according to their ability.

7. Practitioners work in coalition with those of like mind to address issues of peace, justice, and the environment. They seek commonalities rather than differences so that love may unite all people as the realm of God-dess manifests on Earth.

I have been quite reclusive the past couple of years, and now I feel it is time to get active again. While my last book was being designed, I began writting the addititional chapters of my new book. Now that book is being designed, and facing the creative dilema of “What next?” I am reinventing myself yet again and looking for ways to work in my local community on issues of global importance.

Living a balanced life not only means things are balanced in a daily routine, but rather there may be extended periods of reflection followed by extended actions that spring out of reflection. There is no one way that works for everyone, and each practitioner needs to find the balance that works for them.

Big Island Photos

Steve Bohlert — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:56:06 +0000

The Big Island of Hawai’i is wonderfully beautiful. It plays a big part in my formation of Universalist Radha-Krishnaism. I took up photography the past few months and posted albums on Facebook. If you are on Facebook, I invite you to be my friend. Here are public links to the albums that anyone can see.

World Peace Day

Honoka’a Peace Parade

Aloha Saturday 5.21.11

As I See It 8

As I See It 7

Protestors in Paradise

As I See It 6