Translating Aristotle into Bhakti

[Guest guest]

Speaking of varnasrama -- I personally find it difficult to remember

Krsna in doing my daily work as department coordinator for a college

theater & dance program. But lately my boss gave me an assignment that

actually does lend itself to Krsna conscious analysis.

 

She's directing a student performance of The Skin of our Teeth, which

was written by Thornton Wilder during World War II (1942). It's a play

that reminds you of one of Prabhupada's descriptions of the misguided

nature of materialistic civilization. It's somewhat abstact and follows

the trials of a family over several thousand years as they face

starvation in the ice age, the devastation of war, concluding with the

degraded enjoyment of the casinos and dance halls of Atlantic City --

only to be wiped out by a devastating hurricane.

 

As a contrast to this whole sequence, the playwright concludes by having

some "random members" of the "produciton staff" personify the great

philosophers of the past. My boss wants me to play Ivy, the maid of one

of the actresses. Ivy has to recite a piece from Aristotle. It's

actually quite an interesting little piece -- and I wondered how

Aristotle could have formulated it.

 

I dusted off my old copy of "Dialectic Spiritualism" and read

Prabhupada's discussion about Aristotle. In it Syamasundar pointed out

that Aristotle said one should live his life in such a way that he is

always contemplating God. Srila Prabhpada praised that, and said that

Aristotle was describing the process of bhakti. However, elsewhere in

that chapter, Srila Prabhupada makes the criticism that Aristotle is

basically an impersonalist. He omits a description of the personality

of Godhead.

 

Of course, this is not surprising, considering that he had no spiritual

master who could guide him along this path.

 

So I was wondering, as Srila Prabhupada's followers -- How would we

express Aristotle's statement -- in terms of bhakti?

 

*********************

 

This good estate of the mind

possessing its object

in energy we call divine. This

we mortals have occasionally

and it is this energy which is pleasantest and best.

But God has it always.

It is wonderful in us;

but in Him how much more wonderful.

 

**********************

 

1. What would we call the good estate of the mind?

2. Who is the proper object of the mind? (especially in terms relating

to cow protection)

3. Who is the Divine Energy?

4. What do we call it when mortals obtain this state?

5. How to we refer to the fact that God has it always?

 

 

Jaya Radha-Damodara!!!

 

your servant,

 

Hare Krsna dasi