There are interesting parallels between the classical eightfold Yoga system of Patanjali and the bhakti-yoga system delineated in the Bhagavad-gita and Bhagavata Purana. Yet at least as striking as the similarities are the differences between the two systems.

The world is full of contradictions, but certainly such inconsistencies are left behind when one treads the spiritual path. Or are they?

Godhead’s search for his lost servants is a loving search; it is not ordinary, but from the heart. And his heart is not an ordinary heart. Who can estimate what type of search he is engaged in?

Although the Buddha thinks that the notion of an eternal self generates suffering, if he had he compared notes with a good number of Vedantins, in terms of how much they suffered in their mortal frame, it would have been interesting to speak with him afterwards.

Within the full absorption of love, one’s entire being is permeated with love’s very essence. Here loving and breathing become one.

The graceful Yasoda, austere by nature, began to develop the signs of pregnancy. Her appetite became marked by intense hankering for varieties of milk sweets, and her natural gravity gave way to whimsy.

Ascetics are known for distancing themselves from the world by their austerity, but while ostensibly it is a life of deprivation, asceticism declares just the opposite—”Go within, or go without.”

The Bhagavata’s cosmology is an old one, one that did not even conform with leading secular thinkers’ understanding at the time that our sampradaya’s principle commentaries were written. So shall we simply throw it out?

We should never think, “Under my feet I have firm ground to stand on; I am big. I shall stand erect.” Rather we should think, “Above my consciousness is super consciousness; the vigilant guardian’s eye is always watching me.”

We owe our existence to Balarama. He is the root of the service ego—bhakta abhiman mula balarama—that underlies the entire lila.

Generally, whenever we see beauty, we think that beauty is to be exploited, but actually, beauty is the exploiter, beauty is the master, and beauty is the controlling principle.