Letters to the editor

The meeting was attended by the international reference of the Vaisnava tradition, Professor Huber Robinson (Hanumatpresaka Swami), who shared a table with the candidate for Mayor Santiago Bonifatti, and the candidates of Federal Consensus Pablo Zelaya Blanco, Sofía Ardusso, Hugo Juárez and Paula Hourcades as community leaders who work in collective contexts and participate in different political spaces.

Bonifatti highlighted this meeting as “a unique opportunity to share experiences and opinions with people who work with young people, with children, in other political parties and mainly with people from other religions such as Catholic, Evangelical and Hinduism. Politics must meet the spiritual gaze, it is a necessity because it is something that crosses us beyond the religion that each one professes. I celebrate that we can reflect on Education and the Sacred in an election year where the priorities that each candidate has are precisely manifested. For us this is very important. ”

Professor Huber Robinson also said: “Understanding the sacred capturing the sacred is the ultimate purpose of education. From the point of view of the Vedic culture, a traditional Asian culture, this world is a madhouse, and this is also commented by other religions. So religion means "religare," like the ligament of one hand, to reconnect; Yoga is the same, reconnect. So education, Socrates said the same thing, means waking up to our sacred nature, where things really have a personal and also cosmic meaning. ”

This event was covered by media and shared in social media.

https://elretratodehoy.com.ar 

https://twitter.com/lbonifatti/status/1152051428170567680?s=12

There was also prasadam and book distribution.

Conversatorio con lideres políticos y sociales.

En el encuentro estuvo presente el referente internacional de la tradición Vaisnava, Profesor Huber Robinson (Hanumatpresaka Swami), quien compartió una mesa con el candidato a Intendente Santiago Bonifatti, y los candidatos de Consenso Federal Pablo Zelaya Blanco, Sofía Ardusso, Hugo Juárez y Paula Hourcades como líderes comunitarios que trabajan en contextos colectivos y participan de distintos espacios políticos.

Bonifatti destacó este encuentro como “una oportunidad única para compartir experiencias y pareceres con personas que trabajan con jóvenes, con niños, en otros partidos políticos y principalmente con personas de otras religiones como la católica, evangélica y el hinduismo. La política debe encontrarse con la mirada espiritual, es una necesidad porque es algo que nos atraviesa más allá de la religión que cada uno profesa. Celebro que podamos reflexionar sobre la Educación y lo Sagrado en un año electoral donde justamente se manifiestan las prioridades que cada candidato tiene. Para nosotros esto es muy importante”.

También el Profesor Huber Robinson dijo: “Entender lo sagrado capturar lo sagrado es el último propósito de la educación. Desde el punto de vista de la cultura védica, una cultura asiática tradicional, este mundo es un manicomio, y esto lo comentan otras religiones también. Entonces religión significa “religare”, como el ligamento de una mano, reconectar; el Yoga es lo mismo, reconectar. Entonces la educación, Sócrates dijo lo mismo, significa despertar hacia nuestra naturaleza sagrada, donde las cosas realmente tienen un significado, personal y también cósmico”.

El evento fue cubierto en la prensa y tb compartido en redes sociales.

Tambien hubo prasadam y distribución de libros.

In this conference Professor Huber Robinson (His Holiness Hanumatpresaka Swami) was in a conversation with Susana Violante, PhD in philosophy and Carlos Hudson, history professor, member of the intercultural and health chair of the Higher School of Medicine. The same was a success since at least thirty people attended, very much due to the moment the year before the winter break and the sociopolitical university environment, reluctant to address spiritual issues.

Professor Huber Robinson made a presentation about Science, a new direction, citing great scientists, Nobel prizes, about his approach to the sacred as an inescapable path, in the search for knowledge. His debate partners greatly appreciated it.

Dr. Violante made a presentation based on the invitation to talk about how the current paradigm leads the world to different types of chaos, social, economic, ecological, etc. Professor Husdon made his contributions from history, greatly appreciating the possibility of discussing these issues at the University level.

The event concluded with a snack of prasadam and informal discussions in the anteroom of the event hall.

En esta conferencia El profesor Huber Robinson (Su Santidad Hanumatpresaka Swami) estuvo en un conversatorio junto a Susana Violante, Doctora en filosofía y Carlos Hudson, profesor de historia, miembro de la cátedra de interculturalidad y salud de la Escuela Superior de Medicina. LA misma fue un éxito ya que concurrieron al menos treinta personas, muchísimo debido al momento el año previo al receso invernal y a el ambiente sociopolítico universitario, reticente a abordar temáticas espirituales.

El profesor Huber Robinson hizo una presentación Acerca de la Ciencia, una nueva dirección, citando a grandes científicos, premios nobel, acerca de su aproximación a lo sagrado como camino ineludible, en la búsqueda del conocimiento. Sus compañeros de debate apreciaron mucho la misma.

La Dra Violante hizo una presentación basada en la invitación convocatoria que hablaba de cómo el paradigma actual lleva al mundo a diferentes tipos de caos, sociales, económicos, ecológicos, etc. El Profesor Husdon hizo sus aportes desde la historia, apreciando enormemente la posibilidad de debatir estos temas en el ámbito Universitario.

El evento concluyo con un refrigerio de prasadam y discusiones informales en la antesala del salón del evento.

Hare Krishna beloved Gurudev,

Please accept my humble obeisances,

All glories to Srila Prabhupada,

Here it goes, a series of letters reporting your sankirtan activities at Mar del Plata Yatra.

Thank you for coming and visit us. It was enlivening and utsaha booster for our spiritual life.

Your lectures were so so great, many realizations.

Thank you, Varnasrama is perfect path to suddha bhakti.

At your lotus feet,

Nikunja Bihari das.

Hare Krishna querido Gurudev,

Por favor acepte mis humildes reverencias,

Todas las glorias a Srila Prabhupada,

Aquí va una serie de cartas que informan sobre sus actividades de sankirtan en Mar del Plata Yatra.

Gracias por venir y visitarnos. Fue un avivamiento y un impulso para nuestra vida espiritual.

Sus conferencias fueron tan grandes, muchas realizaciones.

Gracias, Varnasrama es el camino perfecto para suddha bhakti.

A sus pies de loto,

Nikunja Bihari das.

Hare Krsna.

AGTSP.

Paoho.

We are old and our brains don't work but we will try for one more year.

How is everyone?

We have completely lost conact with our Leader, Sesa Das Prabhu, and almost completely with our Under-Leader, Tapan misra Das, but we are not easily discouraged.

Righ now we are in South America and having roaring results. We have two new Zonal Representatives to introduce to TMD Prabhu. We also promoted the devotees to have regional conferences on educaion. We are rolling with Atuk krsna Das and the BOEX etc.

When is our next EC meeting?

We want Viplavah on the Agenda!   It is going well. We suggest that all EC members post a word or more about their projects in each issue. That would serve as a quarterly report. Also a financial report for each issue. Regional representative report from the Executive Secretary and Bi-annual words from the Minister?

We have not heard about anybodies projects!  We registered as teachers and one of our institutions on the web page, but couldn't get the second one to load?

What has happened to the book on philosophy?

Publishing the results of the last international symposium each month?

O.K. Running to fly to Peru. Please chant Hare Krsna and make everyone happy!!!

Thank you. HpSwami

Dear Maharaja,

Pamho agtsp

Thank you for you reply to my previous letter. At the time of sending, I didn't realise that you were still in South America mid-sankirtan trip. I have made note to myself to be more aware of that. I apologise for any disturbance cause.

HpS - No problem. We talked with The Atul Krsna Das yesterday and both agreed that you are an interesting fellow, a little odd, but interesting, potential to make people laugh and forget their problems. Wake back up!

Education and the Sacred

Dr Mabbett has agreed to meet with me for an interview. We have scheduled an interview for the 9th of August 2019, close to his home in Victoria.

India visit October

Yes, Maharaja, really I just need your association – guidance, mercy – so, I am considering the first half of October, and I would love to be able to assist you in some way with the hope of collecting some dust from your wake (speedboat). Maybe I could present an idea which might get bhakti-shastri into the palms of thousands. 

HpS - Our calendar is in the Kapi dhvaja Calendar link. See what you think of that. Basically Govardhana Eco village and Noida temple. You can contact them for a hole in the wall to stuff your sack. Others are coming so maybe we can work out two sacks in each room.

Māyāvād Tendencies

It is often difficult to find devotees to speak to about challenging philosophical concepts. Many devotees who arrive at Sri Caitanya’s movement have already lived lifetimes as jnanis and yogis, and now they simply want to engage in seva. Your holiness, through your body of work, has helped me understand and overcome many roadblocks on my path to Krsna. For that, I am eternally in debt. I apologise for the times when my queries lengthen towards showboating. Your replies allow me to stop and think more deeply.

"We are our spiritual bodies... see Krsna by learning how to steal butter for Him without getting caught... Just got to get the rocks of your head one mantra at a time... one day it will hit you like a furniture van hits a skunk."

Shortly after receiving your reply I was listening to HG Mother Yamuna’s audiobook while doing some paraphernalia room seva, and she recalls Srila Prabhupada addressing māyāvād philosophy with two very simple yet brilliant examples:

1.  The body is the clothes of the soul. The body has form because the soul has form. 

2.  Consciousness is to the soul what light is to the sun.

Srila Prabhupada is excellent at packaging the purport of the entire Vedas in simple phrases. It is I, totally covered by ignorance, that has to become qualified before I can begin to understand, the depth, the beauty, the truth, delivered through his simplicity.

Through the contemplation of these statements, it occurred to me that māyāvādīs get caught in their experience of their consciousness instead of themselves and that’s why they think that ultimately spirit is formless. If we are to take the example given by Srila Prabhupada, that our consciousness is to the soul what light is to the sun, the māyāvād conception is to consider oneself the light instead of the sun. Another way to describe it would be the with the analogy of the seer and the act of seeing; Seeing can only be done by a seer. In this example, the māyāvādīs seem to be stuck in the act of seeing alone. 

Furthermore, I joined the gotomeeting sanga for the first time live, and it was wonderful! The very scholarly HG Srinivasacharya Prabhu, gave the class. He was able to show how a section of the Srimad Bhagavatam, which some may consider “boring” and tend to skip or speed through, is actually full of gems. One gem that I noticed during his reading of prior verses from the chapter was Sb 9.13.9, where it is said:

“Mahārāja Nimi continued: Māyāvādīs generally want freedom from accepting a material body because they fear to have to give it up again. But devotees whose intelligence is always filled with the service of the Lord are unafraid. Indeed, they take advantage of the body to render transcendental loving service.” https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/9/13/9/

This verse struck me because it reveals why one would have māyāvādīs tendencies. It is a kind of bitterness towards the fact of their existence, and the fact that material pleasure is constantly ending.

Taking to heart Srila Prabhupada's words, the fact is we exist, and in order to have a material form – the body – it must be cloaked upon something integral – the soul. The soul’s constitution is seva to the Supreme Person. Because many jivas in the material condition (me) are envious of Him, they (I) don’t want to serve Krsna. But we also don’t our material "pleasures" to end, and we don't want to suffer, so we seek to hide in that transparent layer of consciousness emanating from our soul. It is the ultimately sour grapes archetype playing out. We then conclude that ultimately spirit has no form. Our arrogance gives us the confidence to claim that if we are formless, and ultimately spirit is qualitatively one, then God must also formless. Furthermore, if God and I are qualitative the same, with no forms to separate us as boundaries, then… “I must be God.” This, I suppose, is that last snare of illusion that we are warned about. 

So, it appears to me that māyāvād tendencies are a result of trying to avoid material suffering and service to God. Devotees accept that they are the soul which exists eternally as a servant of Krsna, and that their personhood manifests in different dresses depending on their qualifications and seva; their relationships. For the devotees, whatever clothes they have wrapped on the body of the soul – their body – they simply dance for the Lord, in whichever way that pleases Him. 

Are you pleased with my progress on this, Maharaja?

Your servant

Dhruvānanda Das

(Dhruva) 

"Crikey"

HpS - I do meet Mayavadi professors with some education in Vedanta but it does not seem that they contact with any real Sampradaya considerations. Citing lots of Sastic evidence.

Citing Sastra is done by a person.

Preaching a philosophy is done by a person.

I was trying to understand their philosophy and then read that Srila Prabhupada said that it is incomprehensible. Oof. That is what I was experiencing! If you really are a Mayavadi then you should commit suicide of your body, words, mind. We don}t see that, no?

Give 'em all Prasadam!

Dear Maharaja,

Please accept my humble(?) obeisances. 

All glories to your service. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

Dr Mabbett Education and the Sacred

I have sent an email to Dr. Mabbett inviting him for an interview for Education and the Sacred. More to come soon...

India October

My good wife has given me serious instruction to go on pilgrimage to India later this year. If you have some service for me in October I will gladly take it. Otherwise, if you cannot tolerate me, I will go to Radha Kunda and chant and offer dandavats to you when you walk past

A Vaisnava Siddhanta Question

When I take into consideration these five points points...

1. The fact that the jiva is tatashta shakti, never leaving the spiritual world objectively, projected into the material delusion by kshirodakashayi Vishnu to fulfill material desires, in constant generation from Mahavishnu's body, on the border of the material and spiritual realms.
2. That our material bodies are made from Krishna's inferior energy (BG 7.4), and that our spiritual bodies are "furnished with a form that is a special manifestation of His [Krishna's) own splendor" (from Jiva Goswami's definition of Bhagavan found in one of Radhika Ramana Prabhu's books.
3. That shanta rasa is the basis of all other rasas, which is closley linked to steady-state brahman, the anchor point at the base of the mirrored banyan tree — Exploitation on the bottom and Madhurya Rasa on the top.
4. That Srila Prabhupada’s definition of the the statement “Back to Godhead” as given on the cover of Back to Godhead magazine is “Godhead is light. Nescience is darkness. Where there is Godhead there is no nescience.” Godhead is “light” — cit? Yo quiero ananda!!!
5. That I cannot see Krishna's personal form; I can only see Him indirectly.

...Firstly, I can sympathize with the nivirshesha-sunyavadis (impersonalists and mayavadis) — who are so prominent today, especially in the intelectual and the yoga communities, who think that God is a formless, universal, oneness of consciousness, who needs the physical world to express Himself. They are convinced, therefore, that He, the One, brakes up into many — us living entities — and that's all there is. 

Once one realizes the nature of the living entity minus the material body, it is easy to assume that Parabrahman is of the same quality of formless consciousness — consciousness which can attach itself to things, but itself is not a thing. When I learn that when I get a spiritual body, it is made out of Krishna energy — so it is not actually me, its a gift to do seva with in the spiritual world — it makes me contemplate how Krishna's own body could be the same. These mayavadis would say that formless brahman only is truth and Vrindavan is a temporary lila that brahman expresses Himself through, just like materialists express themselves in material life. Indeed, the mayavadis use this technique to try and establish themselves as equal to God and according to our acharyas, this is the greatest offence and the last snare of illusion. 

But I trust the glorious Gaudiya Vaisnavas when they say that actually Krishna and His associates, and His places of pastimes, are the true reality and that what I am experiencing is just a thin layer of consciousness touching the surface of the inferior energies of Krishna (the physical and psychological world provided to us as a kind of virtual reality through which we can imitate Him). The reason I trust them is because they are oozing with Krishna Prema. But I accept what the vaisnavas say on authority alone. It is not something I have experienced. 

My questions are these:

In short, how can I see the real Krishna? 

HpS - By learning how to steal butter for Him without being caught

Is it through hearing — like, do I fall through a portal of sound at the level of atma (ego) and wake up in the border of the Spiritual realm and then get given a suitable body to go be with Him? 

HpS - We are our spiritual body. Just compressed now. Chanting sincerely. Hara, give me some service, and we wake up.

Is it just my material desires keeping me in ignorance, or do I need some special mantra or something to pass through?

HpS - Just gotta take all the rocks off your head. One manta at a time.

How can I experience that Krishna is not just an idea that brings the best out of people if after all these years (lifetimes) I have only seen mental images of Him and the only spirit that I see is the negation of matter. I feel the paramatma, I feel Krishna, my intelligence accepts Their presence and factuality (BG Ch 10), but I cannot see Him. Please, please, please help me, Maharaja.

I know that for a vaisnava, knowing is an unnecessary requirement — the Gopis for example will get upset with you if you talk philosophy all day, telling them how Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and instead they will ask you “why aren’t you making a nice garland today, for when He returns?” — but even though this is the case, it would be lovely to see Him. 

My experience of my relationship with Krishna is that I am serving a friend who is away currently, but He will be back soon — I am doing some little service for Him but cant see Him — but at the level of some kind of low-class sahajiya, of course. 

HpS - You know I've heard of Their romance, but I've never really seen Them dance.

Some day it will just happen. Then you will be as dead as a skunk run over by a furniture van.

Keep praying to be enlightened in your service. Who to squirt when.

Chant mo' rounds bettah.

Thank you for correcting Dr Mabbett. Will www be in the same places in October? Calendar on Kapi Dhvaja...

Your servant

Dhruvānanda Das