Purushottama Vrata Blog, Day 13: Vadatu Samskr̥tam.

 Well, as you have probably guessed, my vrata collapsed. I don't feel too bad about it because I have too many things going that I just cannot give up for bhajan at this time.

I know that sounds like an excuse. I still want to increase my japa, but I am really in a work like crazy state.

It happened from the tea. On the saptami I took tea late in the afternoon and so couldn't sleep. I was already starting to feel knee-joint pain and lower back pain from the long hours of sitting. I tried to counter it by doing yoga and went through the old Shivananda routine with a lot of variants. I felt amazing that I could still do a lot of these asanas, with a fair amount of flexibility, though I was never one of these really athletic yoga practitioners. As with most things in my life, it has always been intermittent.

And so, of course, the next morning my body was exhausted and sore from top to bottom, especially all those unpracticed muscles that had been getting strained and now pummeled. I spent half the day lying in shavasana on my bed. I thought I must resemble Bhakti Vikasa Swami, who is giving Youtube videos from very much the same position. Covered in garlands he looks like he's about to be carried off to the Ganga and is giving his last words from a position of grave insight. 

I suddenly found it impossible to sit for hardly any time at all. I suddenly started eating twice as much. I suddenly started working on the computer day and night. Without the internet distraction, I was putting hours into the Sanskrit manual and Br̥had Bhāgavatāmr̥ta. Officially, Jiva Tirtha Session 5 begins on October 15th. I still don't know how many students I will have, but currently I have two, who are in different places, but they are helping me tremendously in terms of improving the manual. It is bulking up. 

I am actually having a lot of fun. Each section requires rewriting which requires research usually. Also examples and then practice sentences for translation. They need to be progressive in each exercise, going from easier to more difficult. Also they have to be progressive in the sense that you don't want stuff from future chapters cluttering up the stuff that you want the student to learn now. There will be plenty of contexts for them to encounter unknown material.

My students are for all intents and purposes Babaji's students, so they also go to his classes. So they are also trying to follow along in the texts that Babaji happens to be reading, whether it is Bhāgavata commentaries or some other text, like Rāga-vartma-candrikā.

The fact is that my course is designed for serious students. It is a six month commitment every day for one hour of class and you really need to put in some time outside of class. Those who are following Jiva Tirtha but are not putting in the effort to study Sanskrit right on the ground level are really not availing themselves of what is on offer. 

Yesterday I started the section on vidhi-liṅ with Annapurna and I could see that it was rather poorly organized and written and that the examples were not particularly good. So I spent a day working on that. But at the same time I have been editing Br̥had Bhāgavatāmr̥ta, because I am supposed to be giving a reading course in that. Last year there were five or six coming to the class here and I don't know how many following the recordings. But this year, Zoom is taking over and we will be having students on line and very few actually present here. We still haven't arranged a schedule for either course. 

Doing things this way is part of the way the world has been transformed by Covid-19 and by technology. 

I have been wanting to make an ad, even at this late date, to encourage people to become students in this program. Babaji has been recording stuff for years now, which is a huge body of recorded material. But those students who are here right now in person are really in a state of yoga. It is a particular state or ambience that reflects Babaji's own mood, but he has created a "mind-field" as Swami Veda used to call it, in which his listeners participate.

It is a small group of 10 or so people give or take a few. But Babaji puts his disciples into samadhi with his learned Harikathā. He is a teacher in the traditional manner. He takes a book and reads it through with his students and explains it thoroughly. 

We have a guest here, a man who was a devotee in Iskcon most of his life and now at the age of 72, after a rather less than illustrious devotional career finds himself here at Jiva in a state of mental confusion and physical disintegration, with no finances, no pension, no shelter. He has enough money to live in India, but at this age, in his physical and mental shape, he has no taste for it. He confessed to me the source of his mental and spiritual downfall and I told him, 

"The cure for all your ills is the association of devotees. Look at this assembly of devotees, all serious students of the shastra, following this course that is to last 12 years in the direct company of the guru. If you bathe in the pure atmosphere of spiritual knowledge, na hi jñānena sadr̥śaṁ pavitram iha vidyate... all your sins will be burned bhasmasāt kurute. You are 72 years old, you have no time left for moping about your past. You can still change your bad habits, but you need to feel what that pure atmosphere of profound discourses on Hari-kathā is like and let it work on your soul." 

He came to the class then, but today he was absent. His will is extremely weak, even weaker than mine. Still I have become quite regular at going to morning kirtan and evening class, even though the rest of my bhajan has gone the way of my Sanskrit manual and the Br̥had Bhāgavatāmr̥ta. Babaji is very hands off with his disciples, though they are all engaged in some kind of service to the Jiva mission, publishing and study. In actual fact, I am somewhat embarrassed that I don't seem to have the niṣṭhā that some of the others have here. My old neighbor in the ashram building, Pran Govinda Dasji, is as regular as the atomic clock. And of course Babaji himself. And I mentioned Gadadhar Pran before.

I hope I can get into more meditation and japa practice soon. I would like to balance it more, but I am doing all this work on the abovementioned projects, but there is a mountain of work behind me waiting for some finishing touches to put them in a publishable state. I have been talking about these for years. Gopala Champu thesis, Gopala Tapani, Bhaktivinoda Thakur's Jivani, Dāna-keli-kaumudī study. And other stuff as well.

And at the same time I am looking at the mountain of texts on the Grantha Mandir that need editing. Some have even gotten totally messed up in the formatting, but mostly the problem is that we have people using OCR or whatever it is called on printed books, so there has been a great addition of textual material in the last few months, all of which is in need of editing. We are training up Sachinandan Dasji, a nice Bengali sadhu who actually studied here in the less well-known Indian section, and he has been typing text for Babaji for years. He has fairly good Sanskrit knowledge, so he is currently editing according to my ideal standards, but I have to check his work, which is also time consuming. My other Sanskrit student, Braj Mohan, is one of the text-entry people. He has been doing this for a year and is quite good, but he doesn't know Sanskrit. He did the Br̥had Bhāgavatāmr̥ta and so I went to him and said you have to start coming for Sanskrit today. If you are going to do this work, you need to understand better what you are doing. Because it just makes more work for me. I LIKE doing it, mind you. This is the best way to read a book. But I would like to have less of it to do so that I can get into the meaning of the text instead of spending all my time in cosmetics.

Sorry to disappoint all of those who were hoping for me to have some kind of epiphany here in this holy month in the holy Dham. But I will tell you, I AM feeling it. The biggest thing was the no internet rule. If there is nothing else to do, and you are in my situation, I am like the forlorn devotee gentleman I introduced above. I said to him, "How many years do you think you have left? Five? Ten? We always preached about Parikshit who knew he only had seven days. So why do you think you can still waste time? And here you are, Krishna has washed you up in Vrindavan, in the Jiva Institute, where Satya Narayana Das Babaji Maharaj is undoubtedly the best scholar of the traditional Vaishnava literature who at the same time is a practitioner of exceptional standards. A true acharya, one who has learned the shastra, who himself practices its precepts, and who instills them in his students.

ācinoti yaḥ śāstrārtham ācāre sthāpayaty api |  svayam ācarate yasmād ācāryas tena kīrtita ||

So I will conclude with today's verses illustrating the use of the vidhi-liṅ. There are so many it is hard to choose, but I thought these were not too bad. A lot came from vidhis on taking a guru. 

तद्विज्ञानार्थं स गुरुमेवाभिगच्छेत् समित्पाणिः श्रोत्रियं ब्रह्मनिष्ठम्।

In order to realize that [Brahman] the seeker (स) should approach (अभिगच्छेत्) a guru who is learned in the scripture and fixed in Brahman, with fuel for the sacrificial fire in his hands [as an offering]. (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 1.2.12)

कृष्णदेवस्य कृपया भक्तेर्माहात्म्यमाकर्ण्य सद्गुरुं भजेत् ॥

By the mercy of Lord Krishna, having heard the glories of devotion, one should resort to a genuine spiritual master. (Hari-bhakti-vilāsa 1.28)

(1) Injunctions: The vidhi-liṅ is primarily used for injunctions (vidhi) and can be translated by “should, must, ought, etc.”

 मायां तु प्रकृतिं विद्यान्मायिनं तु महेश्वरम्।

 One should know (विद्यात्, विधिलिङ्) that the illusion is Nature and that the wielder of the illusion is the Great God (महेश्वरम्). (Śve.U. 4.10)

स्थितधीः किं प्रभाषेत किमासीत व्रजेत किम्॥

How would a person of stable wisdom speak (प्रभाषेत)? How would he sit (आसीत)? How would he walk (व्रजेत)? (Gītā 2.55) [See "The Characteristics of One of Steady Wisdom" (स्थितप्रज्ञलक्षणम्), Part III, page 86]

आचार्यं मां विजानीयान्नावमन्येत कर्हिचित्।

न मर्त्यबुद्ध्यासूयेत सर्वदेवमयो गुरुः॥

One should know (विजानीया) the preceptor to be Me and one should never treat him with contempt (न अवमन्येत). One should not be envious of him (न असूयेत), thinking him to be an ordinary person (मर्त्यबुद्ध्या), [for] the guru contains all the gods. (SB 11.17.27)

(2) Hypothesis: The vidhi-liṅ can also be used to express a hypothetical situation (सम्भावना) and can be translated by "would, could, should"):

निहत्य धार्तराष्ट्रान् नः का प्रीतिः स्याज्जनार्दन ।

पापमेवाश्रयेदस्मान् हत्वैतान् आततायिनः॥ 

O Janardana, what pleasure would there be after killing the sons of Dhritarashtra? Sin would take shelter of us if we killed these aggressors. (Gītā 1.36)

स्वजनं हि कथं हत्वा सुखिनः स्याम माधव ?

 O Madhava, how could we be happy after killing our relatives? (Gītā 1.37)

यच्छ्रेयः स्यान्निश्चितं ब्रूहि तन्मे

Tell me that which would be a certain benefit. (Gītā 2.7)

विधिलिङ् is often used in hypothetical situations with "if" (यदि, चेत्) either expressed or implied. In these cases, you usually use तर्हि as the correlative of यदि.

यदि धर्मो रतिं नोत्पादयेत्, तर्हि स श्रम एव हि केवलम् ।

 If the performance of religious duties should not produce (नोत्पादयेत्) love [for Hari kathā], then it is only hard effort for nothing. (SB 1.2.8)

यदि मामप्रतीकारमशस्त्रं शस्त्रपाणयः।

धार्तराष्ट्रा रणे हन्युस्तन्मे क्षेमतरं भवेत्॥ 

If the armed sons of Dhritarashtra should kill me, unresisting and weaponless, on the battlefield that would be better for me. (Gītā 1.46)

उत्सीदेयुरिमे लोका न कुर्यां कर्म चेदहम् ।

संकरस्य च कर्ता स्यामुपहन्यामिमाः प्रजाः ॥

These worlds would be ruined (उत्√सद् उत्सीदति) should I not do work. I would be the cause of miscegenation of the castes (संकर). I would spoil all these people (). (Gītā 3.24)

More Gītā verses than usual. Actually, though, Gītā is the most accessible text, much more so than the Bhāgavatam. But I have been trying to use examples from a variety of texts. It has been interesting looking at different styles and trying to find verses that do not exceed the student's capacity. These sentences are for teaching and explaining in class, in the full expectation that other things will have to be explained besides the use of the vidhi-liṅ, a lot of which they should have learned already.

OK folks. Radhe Radhe.