Guru Wars
Submitted by Harmonist staff on June 11, 2010 – 2:07 am11 Comments
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Philosophical articles on Gaudiya Vaisnavism that focus on the tradition’s scriptural conclusions as well as its feeling for the nature of ultimate reality.
For Gaudiya Vaishnavas, the right reason to worship Narasinghadeva is as Bhaktivinoda prays, “to beg at the lotus feet of Lord Narasingha for the benediction of worshipping Radha and Krishna in Navadvipa, perfectly safe and free from all difficulties.”
These lives we live, surrounded by beauty and horror, profound knowledge and pitiful ignorance, are a mystery to us all. To push that truth away with false certainty, falsely derived from either religion or reason, is to miss our most perfect truth.
In the past decade the number of retraction notices for scientific journals has increased more than 10-fold while the number of journals articles published has only increased by 44%.
“Many have interpreted anatta to be a metaphysical assertion that there is no self, but I argue that this is mistaken.”
Alain de Botton’s attempt to encourage secular society to steal religion’s most fruitful ideas is admirable but ultimately hollow.
Uh, a guru with Isvara-bhava is himself no quite in Vraja, right?
That’s part of the joke. Misconceptions boosted up with arrogance.
Besides, you can fall from Goloka, right?
This is great–totally catches the spirit of much of the sentiment in Gaudiya Vaisnavism these days.
nice…. I especially like the temples made of sand. Sad, but true and somehow simultaneously humurous :/
Maybe they are both deep in sakhya bhava and are expressing the heroic wish that their group leader will conquer the other’s in a forest fight; kick their butt right out of the Vraj!
Wishful thinking? Then maybe the tradition –in its wish to cultivate love for a god whose godhood is concealed– attracts sadhakas who have a propensity for envy? I mean, maybe some sadhakas are less attracted to the intimacy this egalitarianism affords and more motivated by serving a god whose godhood does not have to be confronted. No overt godhood, no need to envy. They then find themselves in a tradition wherein their is hierarchy, power differentials, knowledge differences, and spiritual advancement differences and WHAM! Envious onslaught! Envy is a tough thing to deal with! I lied down on a couch 4 times a week for 4 years to eradicate (or at least significantly lessen) my own!
Very interesting…Jagat Guru,sandcastles etc…
Very interesting too….
http://www.harekrsna.com/sun/editorials/05-10/editorials6139.htm
That’s crazy, I had never seen that article until now!
Don’t worry KB, I didn’t intentionally violate your copy right.
Thanks KB. The issue of the fall of the Jiva does often seem like an ISKCON phenomena and reason for guru-wars, but I would extend that to say it is a Western Gaudiya phenomena (as many Western Gaudiyas take a position in the debate). I think one reason is the blurring or Judeo-Christian theology on original sin and the Fall with Vedantic theology. However, something else also comes to me when I contemplate this.
In the question of, “Did we fall away from God?” I always find a curious undercurrent. That undercurrent is another, emotional question, “Did I do something wrong?” or “Is there something wrong with me?” The alternative to ‘the fall’ would be that we were intended to be distinct and separate in some way from God, possibly to foster some longing. Another possibility is that we have never had direct contact with the divine, having been created as separate entities. Regardless of all of these possibilities, the common denominator is the reality of our separation from God.
The atheists would say we experience separation because we are grasping for contact with an illusion. However, this possibility aside, regardless of the reason for separation, it is the separation that is the dilemma. I wonder if ISKCON members in particular –feeling significantly cut-off from the rest of the Gaudiya community– are feeling extra separation? Or –experiencing themselves as cut-off from the mystical emphasis of Gaudiya Vedanta– feel the separation as too great to manage? As a result of these alienations, there may be an inordinate preoccupation with the reason for the separation, all the while ignoring the ways in which separation might be remedied; separation from the greater community of Vaisnavas and thereby opening the way to Krishna himself.
But then of course Mahaprabhu is known as vipralambha-murti, the embodiment of separation. He shows us that separation itself is the way to Krsna.
There is a difference between separation as an experience of divine sentiment or withdraw of divine contact and the separation based in materialistic, prejudiced, and self-interested motivations.