Sh*t happens. God-dess isn’t doing it and our karmic involvement might just be being in the wrong place at the wrong time like a drunk driver having a head on collision with a family on the way home from the temple. Just because bad things happen to people doesn’t mean God willed it or they […]
I have been reading Ananda Vrindaban Champu, by Kavi-karnapur, translated by Bhanu Swami & Subhag Swami with great joy. It is very well written and edited as to be very readable. Still there are things I feel should be changed. I will not go into them now. I am about half way through, having skipped […]
Babaji made me wait about a year before he gave me ekadas bhav. I asked him for it when I first met him, but he wouldn’t do it. He said I should talk to my guru. After going back to the west to preach for nine months, I went back to Babaji prepared to stay […]
I think sadhana (spiritual practice) needs to vary from person to person. I don’t have a one size fits all program. I make my japa chanting requirements minimal–at least one round of each mantra the person in inititated in daily. I like the idea of bhajans (songs) in the native language. I need some poets […]
I have decided that in the spiritual world, my eternal age will be eighteen. When Lalita Prasad initiated me into the eleven moods of a maidservant of Radha, he said I should pick an age between ten and thirteen. I said thirteen. I would have liked it to be older then, but I wasn’t about […]
All glories to Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur, my grand-guru, at whose lotus feet I cling. His songs, books and life are an inspiration to me. He began the process of Westernization of devotional yoga and love of Radha Krishna. He was a revolutionary pioneer, a bridge between East and West, a universalist, the Emerson of Bengal. […]
Why must we be bound by the past? I don’t believe the descriptions in scripture are literal. It’s all symbolic. You can’t contain God/Goddess in a book, statue, nature, mantra or anything else. They’re all symbols pointing to the Divine. In my searching, I have found no more attractive description of the spiritual world than […]
Regarding the leelas (pastimes), it all depends on wether you view them as the absolute literal truth of the one and only way the spiritual world can be described, or is it relative to the Indian context in which they were created. If RKs leelas are infinite and they can assume infinite forms, what is […]
The post-modern way is to look at scripture as writings of different persons at different times addressing their particular circumstances and needs. Disciplines such as source criticism, historical criticism, textual criticism, exegesis and hermenutics are employed in the study of scripture. Scriptures are considered to be relative to their intended audience and need to be […]
I am 22 pages into Sri Vrindavan Mahimamrita by Prabodhananda Sarasvati (it’s a 640 page book that I paid a good amount for), and I really can’t stand to go on reading it. It is the last and largest of several books I bought at the same time. It looked like it had a lot […]