madhuvac

Yes, we have our own gurus. And you have but faith in yours as we have in ours. As for Govinda Maharaja, he acknowledges that Prabhupada is in sakhya rasa. And your attempt to say that Narayana Maharaja has given no clear opinion of Prabhupada's rasa is does not match up with many statements he has made that Prabhupada is in manjari bahva that are all over the internet, some of which have already been posted on this thread. You are fudging the facts on this. Just leave it at this, the opinion in the book differs from that of Narayana Maharaja and that is not offensive but rather merits some consideration. To many it is heartening.

If I understand it correctly, what you are saying here is that Narayana Maharaja is the senior most guru today and that his realized opinion should take precedence over that of others. Indeed if others disregard his opinion this is tantamount to buying into the ritvik philosophy because those who disregard his opinion are disregarding the living guru and merely accepting the opinions of previous gurus who are no longer present. This is not a good argument. First of all there is no definitive way to prove that Narayana Maharaja is the most advanced gurus on earth. This is merely your subjective opinion. And there is nothing ritvik about accepting one’s own guru’s opinion on the topic when it differs from NM’s opinion, especially when NM’s opinion differs from the opinion of the gurus of one’s own guru who also happen to be the the gurus of Narayana Maharaja. In other words NM says that Sridhara Maharaja. Puri Maharaja, and Bon Maharaja, all disciples of Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, are his siksa gurus. They have told us that Prabhupada is in sakhya rasa and so has Prabhupada himself as the book demonstrates. So the real question is why does NM not follow the senior gurus? As a side note, remember also that there are living gurus outside of the lineage of Bhaktisiddhanta who also say that Prabhupada is in sakhya rasa. The evidence presented is objective and the conclusion that Prabhupda is in sakhya is reached by accepting the evidence as it is, the direct meaning. If you insist upon interpreting it subjectively to get a different, indirect meaning out of it, you can of course try to do so. But all you are saying is that a guru whom you consider to be perfectly realized and who is among us today has a different opinion from what the evidence directly indicates. But as far as I am aware, neither he nor you nor any of his followers have demonstrated how an indirect interpretation of the evidence is more feasible and furthermore why your choice of guru on this matter contradicts the opinions of his own siksa gurus, one of whom is Prabhupada himself. If you want to take the alternate suggestion of Sridhara Maharaja’s “maybe” as definitive, you must demonstrate its plausibility in relation to the wealth of evidence in the book that supports Sridhara Maharaja’s personal opinion. Without doing this it will be hard to convince objective readers, and much less so if you merely accuse them of having an agenda, being ritviks, lacking realization, etc.

I have never experienced such lack of interest in arriving at the truth as I have experienced on this thread. Great article Babrhu! I am afraid it has been wasted on this thread on those objecting to it and its conclusions. The thread reads like this: Objections raised, objections answered, answers ignored; more objections raised many of them silly and when answered conclusively the objectors ignore them and bring up their previous objections again and again ad nauseam without an ounce of shame or realization that their objections have been defeated; all of those in favor of the article are polite, thoughtful; objectors lean more in another direction at times (all of them recently) and one of them is in his own words a monkey's uncle. Pathetic. And the recent denigration of sakhya rasa is disgusting.

The Vrajamandala parikrama of BSST did not include bathing at Radha Kunda. There, I said it. According to Prabhupada it involved sober lectures that did not even discuss Radha Krsna lila to the extent the the local babajis wondered if the group was from a different sampradaya!

It is not a "Prabhupada said." It's a fact. He never bathed at Radha Kunda. You are ridiculous. Quoting a purport about the glories of Radha Kunda does not prove that he bathed there, especially when there are hundreds of devotees who were instructed by him on bathing at Radha Kunda during the early Mayapura Vrindavan festivals.

Actually Prabhupada never bathed at Radha Kunda, at least not from the time he manifested Isckon onward. He also discouraged his disciples from doing so. Instead he taught us to pay respect to Radha Kunda. The popular midnight bath at Radha Kund once a year was never part of Prabupada's Iskcon. Participation in this began after he left the world.

Are you telling us that you received second initiation from Prabhupada? Hippie Iskcon as you refer to it was much more intimate and close to Prabhupada personally. You dismiss it to readily. It is also disrespectful to dismiss so easily this era, an era that generated the kind of service to Prabhupada that made the larger Iskcon you joined possible. You might want to rethink that because it has much to do with how spiritual life works. But that aside, you most definitely are a monkey's uncle and I think Prabupada would be proud of you for disproving Darwins theory--kind of. Where is it stated that whoever does their bhajana at Radha Damodara is in madhurya rasa? Prabhupada did bhajan there, but what we hear from him about it is how he was inspired by Rupa Goswami to write his Bhgavatam, to preach that is. We are inspired by it as the place where he wrote the first three volumes of the Bhagavatam and envisioned world wide preaching. It was his base from which he would go into Delhi to get his BTG printed. Yes, he lives there forever in his eternally perfected sadhaka-deha. However, he retired from preaching and entered samadhi in Raman-reti. He is there in his siddha deha in Krsna lila, and it is a place of sakhya rasa. Now I am not related to any monkeys, either backwards, forwards, or sideways in my family line, so I acknowledge that we could be speaking different languages.

Fortunately its supported by about three different devotees on three different occasions and the fact that Prabhupada asked that a poem about him being a cowherd boy be printed in the BTG, which it was. Earlier you said evidence from his books was most important to you. How about his flagship magazine in which nothing was printed without his direct approval in those days? I am afraid "I am a cowherd boy" is not something three or so different devotees are imagining when you combine this will all the other evidence. It is one thing to reveal the details another the basic sentiment. It's clear to me that he did the latter. For you to be right everything stated by his early disciples has to be rejected. And every other piece of evidence has to be twisted into something else. You are going against the grain, upstream. It's unnatural. As you yourself have said you are just playing the antiparty. Better at this point to join the party and flow with the current of nectar.

I read this book and it is quite good--honest and straightforward. It follows guru (Prabhupada's own words on the subject), sadhu (the beautiful commentary/opinion of Sridhara Maharaja/Tripurari Maharaja), and sastra ( explains the sastric support for its conclusions: sakhya rasa in Gaudiya sampradaya is feasible and having a rasa different from one's guru is no fault). Perfect. However, in this in this discussion I find so much speculation, to use Prabhupada's term, and some of it is wild. When it is all said and done I like this quote the most. Prabhupada: "I am a cowherd boy." The story ends here for any honest person. And if it is supported by sadhu and sastra, as it is in this book, all the better. All this twisting and turning to make something else out of this clear statement is just plain suspect.