As I've been drafting together my notes for the upcoming GeeVees series, if anything has become obvious it's the need to cut it down into smaller chunks for better online digestion. As it stands, the first essay on the drawing board, The Nectar Name, has some dozen subheadings and sub-subs, set into a trilevel structure (e.g. 2.5.2).
I'll be publishing each of the main subsections as individual entries over the days, weeks and months to come. In total, I expect the full series to grow into around a hundred installments. I'll be posting drafts of the chapter structure each time, and feedback from the readers on missing content is welcome.
Monday, January 5, 2009
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4 comments:
Look forward to seeing your current thoughts and where you are at. And where you are going...
Remember, 'be kind to the Name.'
Some things come to mind - Prabhupada said in one of his small books something simple, 'the pure devotee does not care if Krsna is God or not, he just loves Krsna.'
I guess Ananda what I feel about that is, 'Love is like that. Sometimes so simple..'
cya
'kindred'
Hi Ananda,
Here is another writing prompt* for your journal [*idea to expound upon]:
"...So now, let us review all the points we have discussed. Yes, the novel is about concrete living relationships...It is also about loss, about the perishability of dreams once they are transformed into harsh reality.
"It is the longing, its immateriality, that makes the dream pure..."
-- pg 144 "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books" by Azar Nafisi
Here's two ideas I had appropos to this; perhaps you have some similar life experiences?
1. One is that I had many mystical experiences while longing for the Divine. Then I think practically each and every human or religious book I put my faith into disappoint me.
I was wondering if you had similar experience, in which your longing was in fact found to be more pure than the orgs, mentors, religions, texts that you encountered?
2. Second is that this to me put the whole concept of Radhika into a new light for me. As was discussed earlier, in GV there is no room for "literary criticism" or critique of the material,
whereas in Western society the critique is what one is taught to do in college: using supports, evidence, research, interviews, so on: propose a theory of your own and compare and contrast it to what is already out there.
So when I read this passage, to me this put the whole story of R&K into a different spin. When I read the stories of R&K now, I feel that the most pure part of the story is when Radhika was/is longing for Krsna.
Then, when she experience reality with him, her heart was broken in millions of ways. So in one sense her longing is/ was the thing that was immaterial
and the stuff of legends, eternal even as powerful stuff of the collective unconscious. It rises above a morality cautionary tale.
So I was seeing this aspect of longing as something that happens to the religious aspirant on an individual level and also happens in the GV literature.
In fact in the GV lit, this pure stage of longing is so pure that they refer to it as a different Radhika than her later expansions, the Radhika that "never leaves Vrndavana, who is never separated from K [paraphrased]."
So I was wondering if in the future when you write your GV tales, you can address this concept of longing is the most pure stage in religious seeking.
Or we graduate from one type of longing to Reality.
For example: in Shambala Sun, had an interview with a Buddhist teacher and she said that when she first entered the ashram, as young teenager, right away she wanted to know all of the mystical most far-out teachings: the most esoteric.
She said that back in those days, none of her colleagues ever wanted to go to the class of the main precepts!
Then she chuckled and said, but now that she has been a nun for a very long time, she feels that the complex and esoteric teachings are simply there to take up the energy and enthusiasm of the young.
Then when you are a fried old seeker, you realize then that everything you ever really needed to know was already there in the basic, so-called "boring" precepts of be kind, peaceful, simple, good-hearted, non-violent, etc.
But only by living for a very long time she realize this.
************PART TWO **************
One more thing, if I may, I find it distracting to read some the comments by your readers who are not serious. Can you take a poll and see if others feel the same way and some the comments you do not publish?
Because they should get their own blog the amounts of comments, and also on Audarya Discussions people were constantly complaining about this person now trying to hijack your blog.
Ny suggestion to the person is he should join the elder Peace Corps and go and take his vast knowledge to go and help people in the world who need help. Then he won't have time for these long cynical diatribes.
And also is a source of kukarma he is wasting the time of serious people with long attention seeking behaviors. Whereas if he goes somewhere and helps others, then is a source of punya and sukritya.
And if he does not want to join elder Peace Corps, also has places like Teach for America that takes anyone and puts them into an impoverished area of US and can help others.
He is fried on corruption in the world and sentimental about the olden days, then find something to do where he actively is one man army against corruption, apathy, and also he can use sentiments of the past that are positive to "Be the Change You Want to See in the World".
Teach for America has places even close to where he lives so he does not have to leave his house. Or so many NGO places like Americorps is always looking for people [Peace Corps within the US] and many other places.
He is a musician, he can go to the old folks' homes near where he lives and do performance of Indian bhajans daily, if he doesn't need laksmi and can do volunteer work for free. He can go and sing bhajans to Vietnam and Gulf War vets at veterans centers, he can go and sing bhajans at local prisons, etc.
I know inside he is a good person and is just a suggestion, I would prefer to hear those types of rants about how messed up the world is and how at least he is trying to do some small thing to help the world.
Even he wants to do some non-devotional volunteer work, there is Habitat for Humanity needs people to build houses, VISTA needs retirees to help tutor kids.
Well is just a suggestion. Because why pick on a little kid basically which is Ananda? Give the poor kid a break, go and do something constructive with your many talents in a place where people need your help.
If you can tolerate Christianity go and build houses in Swaziland for villages of hundreds of children whose parents all died from AIDs. Heart for Africa is the org that builds houses and plants VEGETARIAN gardens for the orphans.
And if not that, then go to India and teach people how to have safe sex. Then you can talk about peckers, penis, etc to your heart's content to an audience that needs to hear your message.
Do something good with your life and then earn enough punya to have better conditions in your next life, or earn enough sukritya to
become liberated.
Because when you get old, is your duty to be like a kind uncle to everyone and a wise elder, according to Hindu dharma.
You don't need an org to do it, just your own good heart.
Namaste.
hey anonymous...some of your thoughts in part 1 sound good. thx.
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