Nityananda! Gauranga! Hare Krsna!
Dear Swami Gaurangapada and assembled devotees,
please accept my simple obiesances.
Here is a beautiful slideshow presentation of Janmasthami in Melbourne Australia 2008. Sri Sri Gaura-Nitaai in it were installed by Srila Prabhupada in 1975. They are some of the finest deities of this type in the world.
aspiring service...Nava.
Nityananda ! Gauraanga ! Hare Krishna !
We are in one of the most fortunate Kaliyugs. Lord Nityananda and Lord Gauraanga descend once in 1000 Kaliyugs. ( i.e 1000*4320000 years). Since Kaliyug is a part of the day of Lord Brahma, considering His equal nights also comes upto 2000*4320000=8,640,000,000 years.
Thus they descend once in 864 crore years. We are very fortunate to take their Holy Names and must try out best to give these merciful names to the entire world.
Sincerely,
Mihir.
Dear Swamiji and Devotees,
Nityananda ! Gauraanga ! Hare Krishna !
I came across two queries while reading the book Nityananda Gauraanga Naam and would be very grateful for someone to help me with the same.
1- It says that the acharyas have directly descended from the spiritual world so we must not imitate them.
Here it says the acharyas descended directly from the spiritual world. Does this mean that Bhaktivinod Thankur, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati and Shrila Prabhupada all had descended directly from the spiritual world ?
2- It also says that ' if the sadhaka who is full of offenses, gives up his sense of false pride of thinking himself on the perfected stage, and thus approaches the Names of the two Jagadgurus Lords Nityananda and Gauranga, worships Them and accepts Their instructions, Their Pastimes and Their devotees, They will quickly deliver him from all offenses and reward him with the realization of Their own forms (svarupas) of Svayam-Rupa (Lord Gauranga) and Svayam-Prakasa (Lord Nityananda). Then the soul realizes one own constitutional position in relation with the two Lords and thus achieves the supreme perfection.'
Here it says that They reward us with the realization of their own forms. Can someone please explain this in more detail. I am not being able to understand this.
Sincerely,
Mihir.
Nityananda! Gauranga! Hare Krishna!
Dandavats and obeissances.
Dear Swami Gaurangapada,
To me it is amazing how thoroughly people’s bodies and minds are controlled by planetary forces. I was wondering just how much one can get away from these planetary influences if one takes to devotional service? I am assuming that the more one is sincere and receives mercy from pure Vaisnvas, the more the negative aspects of these influences cease to act. Can someone who has a somewhat bleak and overall inauspicious astrological birth chart still override that by devotional service to the degree that he pleases the Lord and the Vaisnavas? Maybe someone isn’t supposed to live long as per his birth chart, with the Lord’s help can he live to be 120, or is there always some inherent truth in the astrological birth chart of a soul?
These planetary effects are extremely strong and implement our karma, God is the only one strong enough to nullify their effects for us if he so chooses, but would he completely alter things and why wouldn’t that be reflected in one’s chart when one is born since the Lord ultimately knows what is going to happen? Let's say per one's birth reading, one is predicted to be reborn as a human being, can he take to devotional service and go to the spiritual world immediately after his death?
Sorry for so many questions.
Sincerely
Jagannatha Gauranga dasa
Respected Swamiji and all Vaisnavas,
Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna!
Jai Visnupada Srila Prabhupada!
Jai Swami Gaurangapada!
All glories to our Guru Parampara!
Please accept my respectful obeisances!
I would personally like to thank the author of this translation for his commendable job in maintaing to the real, purely devotional spirit of the Govinda Bhashya in the translation of its verse and purports and for having taken up a large undertaking so as to translate a commentary on the Vedanta.
This is the first time that a complete edition of the Govinda Bhashya translation is available online and in paperback. This has fulfilled one of my long term desires, that is to see the Govinda Bhashya completely translated and published so that its glories are spread all over the world.
Long back I had posted my own realisations on the Govinda Bhashya. I have read the translation and I have realised that Vedanta Sutra is completely not different from Bhagavad Gita or Srimad Bhagavatam. We can say with full confidence that Lord Krishna spoke the Vedanta Sutra to Arjuna personally through the Bhagavad Gita. The commentary is so natural and free flowing that it makes perfect sense of the highest and most esoteric and one of the perhaps least understood portion of the Vedic tree of knowledge -- the Vedanta.
The Govinda Bhashya is so simple that anyone who can read English and understand it can, at the very least, understand that the Vedanta is actually purely devotional without any trace of Mayavada or any other deviant and duplicitious doctrines. Reading is the surface part of it I know, but that's enough to convince anyone. This is a commentary spoken by the Lord Himself -- so who can stand before it?
That said, I would also like to express a tinge of dissatisfaction with the introduction to the book. In my opinion if this book has to be read by devotees and added to Nitaai Veda, then the introductory part regarding the comparison of Vedanta to Quantum Mechanics must be completely avoided. I have checked up the book and found the translations of the commentary to be perfectly in accordance with devotional conclusions. But the comparisons of Vedanta to modern science is an issue that really bites and I think devotees would do well to skip those portions in the book.
So devotees may be satisfied with reading the translations, but not the other portions comparing Vedanta to material science. The Vedanta Sutra was actually compared to the modern day theory of quantum mechanics and the following terminology was used which I personally consider to be tinged with some amount of Mayavada philosophy.The scientific translations of Vedanta terms as given in the introduction fall far short of the actual standard and are actually way off the mark in many cases.
And also in the following lines :
The great value of Vedānta philosophy is that it also posits an immanent, unobservable Absolute Reality—Brahman—but also asserts that it is possible to establish a channel of communication with Brahman. Vedānta refers to ancient histories, the Purāṇas, that recount occasions when Brahman chose to appear as a person, the better to communicate with humans. These personifications of Brahman are communication terminals called avatāras that make it possible to communicate with Brahman directly, even today. A vast assortment of mental disciplines, collectively known as yoga (linking) details the practice of transcendental communication with the immanent Brahman, or the Universal Quantum Wave Function.
Someone may object, “Come now. How is it possible to communicate with the Universal Quantum Wave Function? Even if it were possible, certainly some scientists would have noticed by now.” I reply: “We are constantly immersed in, and penetrated by, the Universal Quantum Wave Function. Can a fish communicate with the ocean? A better question might be to ask, ‘How is it possible that anyone could avoid communication with the Universal Quantum Wave Function?’ ”
Although the modern day scientifically educated people may need to relate Vedanta with their scientific background in order to atleast reach the preliminary stage of developing faith in it, still in a fully devotional literature like the Govinda Bhashya, it wouldn't be proper to include statements like this in the introduction. I will just explain as far as my limited capacity allows. Already this post has reached a large length, I just request the reader for his patience and his forgiveness for having taken him through such an elaborate affair.
Other than the problem of consciousness which is what the Quantum Wave Function lacks, there are many more problems in that sort of idea that make a comparison of the Ultimate Wavefunction to the Lord very inappropriate.
* The scientific translation of the word avatara as personification of the Absolute implies that the Absolute truth is an impersonal object in its ultimate sense. Especially when words like "...Universal Quantum Wave Function to facilitate communication with humans." are used. The Govinda Bhashya clearly established the Absolute Truth to be the Personal Godhead. So where is the question of personification? Actually the word avatara means 'descending' and is used to describe the absolute Truth descending to the material world unchanged and in His orignal nature and personal form (svarupa).
* The word Bhagavan is defined by the scientist as personality of Brahman. "The personal form of Brahman preferred by the practicing Vedantist to communicate with, and influence the decoherence of, the Universal Quantum Wave Function". Excuse me, but no follower of Bhagavan has any such goal as to decode something so abstract and impersonal as a wave function, which is only the subtle form of this material creation.
* Modern day Quantum Mechanics goes into very subtle levels the material creation that are extremely abstract concepts and essentially impersonal. The concept of the original wave function is itself impersonal and inconceivable by any language other than the language of mathematics used in Quantum calculations. The statement implies that just as the subtler material reality transforms to form the gross reality conceivable to the intelligence, the Absolute truth also transforms or accepts some forms or takes up some form and personality in order to communicate with humans. This is really 100% Mayavada. The Supreme Lord doesn't transform for anything. He can communicate as he is.
* The Supreme Lord is sat-chit-ananda and he is eternal, full of knowledge, and infinite bliss and the six types of opulences. The Quantum Wave function is completely inadequate to express this extremely concrete and personal nature of the Absolute truth.
* That which is described as the Universal Quantum Wave Function can only AT BEST, go up to the level of the subtler form of material existence known as the pradhana. I mean the quantum wave function is very subtle, but its just a description of pradhana at best. If one wants to know why, I say that just as Quantum Mechanics describes the material world as a gross manifestation of the Universal wavefunction which progresses from subtle and abstract levels to concrete and gross levels encountered in macroscopic reality is exactly the same thing which is mentioned in scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagavatam as the transformation of the material creation from the subtle and unmanifest state of pradhana to the gross physical universe.
* One can see the description of pradhana in Srimad Bhagavatam : SB 12.4.20-21: In the unmanifest stage of material nature, called pradhana, there is no expression of words, no mind and no manifestation of the subtle elements beginning from the mahat, nor are there the modes of goodness, passion and ignorance. There is no life air or intelligence, nor any senses or demigods. There is no definite arrangement of planetary systems, nor are there present the different stages of consciousness -- sleep, wakefulness and deep sleep. There is no ether, water, earth, air, fire or sun. The situation is just like that of complete sleep, or of voidness. Indeed, it is indescribable. Authorities in spiritual science explain, however, that since pradhana is the original substance, it is the actual basis of material creation. (Do we see the similarity now?)
* Modern Day Quantum theory does not state that the universe came from a void, but from a fundamental energy state called the vacuum. The vacuum is essentially dynamic energy. Quantum fluctuations within the vacuum disturb its equilibrium state, leading to a transformation of the vacuum into various forms and are responsible for creation of the fabric of space-time. In other words, the quantum theory accepts energy fluctuations within vacuum as the source of the creation of the universe. Different types of fluctuations produce different universes with different forms of existence. In this way the quantum theory accepts our universe as one originating from an infinity of big bangs in the priemeval vacuum which can lead to an infinite number of outcomes. According to the anthropic Principle, one of these outcomes consists of the right combination of universal factors making life possible.
* In other words modern science as we know it accepts the orignal unmanifest material energy in the form of pradhana as the original creator, if such a word could be used. Comparing the Absolute Truth to the Wave function is only equating the Lord with this unmanifest and most subtle form of pradhana and identifies the Lord as the material energy. However this is the very same idea that is spoken by the atheist sankhya philosophers, who hold pradhana as the ultimate cause of everything.
* The theories of modern science have become increasingly speculative in nature and the theory of parallel universes generated by events is only one such example. In order for such theories to be viable, there must be no acceptance of the individual soul or the Supreme Lord or else these speculative pieces of imagination will just fall apart.
* Thus modern science is nothing but a classic example of old wine in a new bottle. It is the second manifestation of the sankhya philosophy. In trying to establish Vedanta and modern science as having described the same reality in different ways and thus trying to find parallels between the two, the so-called parallels that can be drawn between Vedanta and Quantum Mechanics, is only trying to find a way to make Vedanta compatible with the theories of sankhya. Bringing down the Absolute Reality to the Level of pradhana has already been extensively refuted in the Govinda Bhashya itself.
Therefore, from our purely devotional point of view the comparison of Vedanta to Quantum Mechanics is untenable and only culminates in Mayavada impersonalism. The materialistic endeavour can never possibly reach the transcendental Supreme Lord.
For a student of His Divine Grace Srila A.C.Bhaktivedanta, it would be in accordance if the transcendental literature of the Vedanta is described purely according to the spiritual truth as revealed by the guru parampara. I personally find it unnecessary to make all these scientific arguments and to compare the Vedanta to modern day sankhya philosophy. The original spritual meaning is full of spiritual potency and one has to just surrender to that potency to see it work miracles where other approaches can fail. Other modern translations of Bhagavad Gita by impersonalists, scholars and scientists had not produced a singledevotee of Krishna, but Prabhupada's commentary is continuously making new devotees daily.
I have endeavoured with whatever little capacity I have to give what I feel is a proper review of the materialistically scientific approach to spiritual science regarding the Vedanta. For us, our approach is through the descending process of the parampara whereas the approach of the modern scientists is the ascending process which is imperfect. The modern scientific theories are fully refuted by Baladeva Vidyabhushana in the Govinda Bhashya and so it wouldn't be fair to compare the Vedanta to something material like Quantum science.
I hope that this article is of some use to all those who want to read the Govinda Bhashya and understand the purely devotional conclusions in the Vedanta which are elaborated in the Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagavatam. If anyone has been offended by this, I beg your forgiveness. But I think some light must be shed on this matter as there is a very thin line of difference between the subtlest levels of material philosophy and the extremely compressed, but all-spiritual and transcendental meanings in the Vedic literatures such as the Vedanta Sutra.
Nityananda! Gauranga! Hare Krishna!
Trying to be a humble servant of the Vaisnavas and the Lord,
Srinath
Nityananda ! Gauraanga ! Hare Krishna !
Very interesting quote I came across while reading the book Nityananda Gauraanga Naam which is as follows-
In the Amrita Pravaha Bhashya to the introduction of Chaitanya-Charitamrita (Cc) Adi-lila Chapter 8, Shrila Bhaktivinoda writes:
ihAte bujhite haibe ye, naamparAdhIra sAttvika vikArAdi kevala chalamAtra | yini akapaTe Chaitanya-nityAnandera naam laIyA Ananda prakAza karena, prabhudvaya tAGhAra hRdayake sAkSAt niraparAdha karena |
"We should factually understand that the ecsatic symptoms manifested by an offensive chanter of the Hare Krishna Mahamantra is simply a show or cheating. The Two Lords Nityananda and Gauranga make the heart of only that person pure and free of offenses who chant the Names of Nityananda and Gauranga and manifest great joy in doing it."
Sincerely,
Mihir.
