jabdakhata

When Avataras or special manifestations come to the world to embrace a worldly life they have to behave exactly like ordinary human beings. Otherwise every body will know them and their mission will not be successful. They would play a role knowingly and thus like the best actors they would act so convincingly that it would be difficult to distinguish them from ordinary men. However, their powers will still manifest through their selfless actions and love for humanity and they will reveal their identity to a select few through whom they will leave a message for the mankind. As human beings they too will be subjected to suffering and will have passions like happiness. Rama was grief stricken by the loss of Sita. Krishna too had his moments of weakness. When he left Vrindavana there is no account of how he felt for the loved ones he were leaving behind, knowing fully that he wont be returning to them, that these simple village girls and boys loved him with their everything and he too re

The conquest of Jarsandha had to be done in a way that would not get attention from his allies. They would not have time to react against the Pandavas and Krishna. They would be awestruck by the policy and the swiftness. Also it had to be a just battle so that it did not cause any censureship on Yudhisthira who was conducting his Rajasuya. Jarasandha was notorious for another reason. He was planning to conduct a great nara medha yagna or sacrifice of human beings to become invincible by begetting divine power. He captured eighty four kings and small chieftains and was waiting to capture sixteen more whom he would have sacrificed to Mahadeva to get a boon of invincibility. So he had to be stopped for saving the lives of his hapless victims through his foolishness and fundamentalism. There was no other person who was capable of fighting him, other than Bhima. Bhima was young and powerful. Moreover he had Krishna on his side and Arjuna to back him up. So the three went to Magadha disgui

Now let us come to one of the most important and also controversial episode of Krishna’s life, one which has been maligned by many, understood by few and appreciated by fewer – The Raas Leela or the Autumn Dance festival. Swami Vivekananda had said that one having body consciousness can never understand the true spiritual significance of the Raas Leela. Only people who have achieved transcendental love can understand the Raas Leela and what it meant to a bunch of women who were mad with divine love, divine fervor. The story goes on like this – The Hemant season was the harbinger of the winter. On a lovely day the young maidens, the gopikas took a bath and went to the temple of local goddess Katyayani and almost all of them prayed privately for having Krishna as their husband. On a lovely moonlit autumn night Krishna was desirous of playing with the folks and he started playing on his flute. Hearing that ethereal music, full of bliss and joy, none of the gopikas could remain in the

By killing Jarasandha with the help of Bhima who was equal to him in strength, Krishna secured the safe execution of the Rajasuya for Yudhisthira. There was no further obstacle as most of the other kings were either friendly or indifferent to Pandavas performing Rajasuya. They were also afraid of the strength and power of the Pandavas, esp. of Bhima and Arjuna. So far so good. But then Shishupala played the spoilsport. That cousin of Sri Krishna had a major hatred against Krishna and he never lost on opportunity to display that. There are some myths regarding his birth, that he had extra organs which came off once Krishna took him in his lap and the oracle revealed that he would die in the hands of Krishna. So his mother extracted a promise that Krishna would forgive his sins. Krishna agreed to forgive his ninety nine omissions. However fantastic this tale is, there is probably one shade of truth, that Shishupala knew that Krishna was going to be his nemesis, like that of Kamsa. Ther

What's the purpose of advent of a great incarnation or a person who can significantly steer the course of history and civilization? In Gospel Sri Ramakrishna says that only the power vested and its manifestation is the difference between an incarnation and an ordinary person, and also across different incarnations. They had been vested with varying degrees of power depending on the purpose, the situation and the historical need. In Gita Sri Krishna says that an avatara, or a special incarnation, a divine being who has more power than anybody else appears when dharma or the discriminating faculty (between right and wrong, moral and immoral and the mode of action needed) falls steeply among the larger masses esp. among the leading section (kings, politicians, statesmen, intellectual, leadership) and adharma or the ignorance, or lack of discrimination and associated vices, rises. More the degeneration, more powerful is the incarnation. What is the impact? The power helps in restorin

One key takeaway from Mahabharata is the message of strength. We find this display of strength everywhere except for the brief moments when mighty characters were deluded by weakness which led birth to great spiritual truths like Bhagavat Gita. This strength is reflected even in the greatest women characters. In Mahabharata man has become greater than Gods in many respects. Indra taking help of Arjuna to tame the Nivatkavachas, Arjuna fighting a dual with Lord Shiva, Karna giving away his Kavacha and Kundala to Indra, Arjuna’s great restraint in the face of temptation by Urvashi, Bheema’s wonderous feats for the sake of his brothers and for Draupadi, Salwa’s decision to fight against his nephews, Abhimanyu’s heroism and great courage in the face of imminent death, Bhishma’s adherence to celibacy in the face of gravest provocations and temptations, even the evil king Duryadhana’s courage to fight till his death, all make humans much greater than the so called gods, who repeatedly fai

Next time when the leadership tells us how hard we have worked and how much sacrifices we have made and thank us for the same we need to remind them that, actually we have not made any sacrifices. We are merely chasing dreams, aspirations and ambitions of name, fame, power, promotions or authority, money – in short our own selfish motives & desires. It is actually our family that does the most sacrifice when we work too hard and chase those dreams. We are merely being selfish and self-deluded (as we attach too much importance to ourselves, our own puny ego that gets all puffed up by the appreciations which are like the pats at the back of a dog when it has brought back its bone successfully after a long run). It is our daughters & sons, our wives & husbands and parents who are making all the sacrifices because they are getting deprived of our associations, the valuable time that we could spend with them, day after day, year after year, until we grow tired of this game of

Vivekananda is worshiped nowadays as a patriot prophet. But was he truly concerned about India as a patriot would? Also did Vivekananda stood for Hinduism only? Was he himself sectarian, a term that he despised strongly and criticized vehemently? If we buy into the opinion of today's politicians and the so called secular liberals and some off the other detractors of Vivekananda these seem to be the case. They portray him as the champion of Brahminical Hinduism, militant Hinduism and aggressive Nationalism. He is given at best the status of a social reformer and a militant nationalist. He is also clubbed in the same bracket as a humanitarian. So how much true are these assessments? Let me make a bold claim here. Only Vivekananda's disciples and ardent devotees who follow his principles know him truly, rest are mere blind men seeing a part of the elephant and mistaking it as a whole. Two stories come to our mind, both narrated by Vivekananda as part of his lectures, one bei

Therefore Shiva Linga is possibly contemporary to Vedic rituals, or even earlier than that. It is likely that the worship of Shiva which needs minimum of paraphernalia, was developed to suit the needs of the poor who could not perform costly Vedic rituals as performed by Kshatriya princes and therefore needed a low cost alternative. This is the reason why Shiva worship is so easy. it just needs some local flowers, some water etc as offering in contrast with Vedic sacrifices. In place of altars we have the lingams and the Yoni on which the Lingam is placed - depicting the eternal reunion between Shiva, the Brahman and the shakti, its power. This was possibly prevalent even among the so called non Vedic tribes like Kiratas, Chandalas, Nishadas and Yavanas. We have read in Mahabharata several examples of how Shiva or Mahadeva was the prefered God of all the so called non Aryan tribes including Rakshasas. This is because He was easy to worship, did not need any elaborate rituals and coul

Swami Vivekananda attended Paris Congress in Aug-Sep 1900 as a delegate. Even though Paris Congress was merely a session of the scholars who were involved with several topic and themes like history of religion, it was important for two reasons - 1) It formed a platform for the scholars to come together and exchange ideas on a host of  issues and topics relevant for the modern age, possibly for the first time 2) It had a good visibility among all the leading intellectuals and formed one of the basis for further academic research of the later period into various aspects of the religious history. However it was neither as critical nor as important as the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, nor it enjoyed visibility. In his words in a letter written to Udbodhan -  Congress of the History of Religions recently sat for several days together. At the Congress, there was no room allowed for the discussions on the doctrines and spiritual views of any religion; its purpose was only to inquire i

Let us now try to describe Krishna and analyze his activities in Vrindavan. Unfortunately there isn’t much realistic information available on how Krishna looked like, even though there are a lot of poetic descriptions. So it’s really difficult for us to construct the human Krishna from the poet’s or devotee’s imagination. However there are some pertinent and relevant pieces assimilated from various sources. For instance, he had curly hair, his body colour had a greenish (like that of new born grass) hue and was not exactly blue as depicted in popular imagination, he had large eyes (like petals of a lotus), he was fond of yellow garments, used to wear ornaments possibly of wild flowers and used to carry peacock’s tail plume on his head and carried a flute. His eyebrows were thick but not bushy. Atleast that was his description from Vrindavan days and since we have been discussing the Vrindavan days so far let us focus on these descriptions and their inherent meaning. Krishna is dark i

A word about Devas and their king Indra. In Mahabharata, Ramayana and Puranas there is copious reference to devas and Indra. In fact when we read these scriptures it seems to us that these devas were actually humans with more powers. For instance, they had constant fights with the danavas. The danava king Vrishaparva’s daughter Sarmistha was wife of Yayati. Yayati’s son Nahusha was offered the post of Indra in heaven. Devas were constantly mingling with the humans and even had human sons, like the five Pandavas. Devas and Danavas were inter related as both were sons of sage Kashyapa through his two wives Aditi and Diti. This leads us to naturally assume that these devas were actually a tribe like Nagas, who were more powerful than ordinary men. The same has been claimed by Swami Vivekananda in his East and West. He shows clearly on how the tribes of the Devas and Asuras evolved from human beings an. The word divine came from devas – derived from div or light. So possibly they had som

The most important mysterious incident is however the lifting of the Govardhan hill in order to save Vrindavan residents from a possible deluge owing to incessant rainfall. The story goes like this – The residents of Vrindavan used to worship Indra for having rains at regular intervals when needed, Indra being the god of the rains. This included an elaborate sacrifice aimed at propitiating Indra. Krishna stopped this practice by influencing his people to worship Govardhan hills instead of a costly sacrifice to propitiate Indra because he felt that Govardhan and surrounding areas confer more benefits to a primarily agrarian community such as the Gopas as the hilly region provides the grasslands and forests with streams that help in nourishing the cattle and livestock. People accordingly stopped the sacrifice in honor of Indra and started a custom of Govardhan Puja. This angered Indra so much that he deluged Vrindavan for 7 days and nights. But Krishna protected the Gopas using Govardh

So there is no reason to discard the special feats of Sri Krishna, although we need to be cautious about the possibility of loss of information over time and some exaggeration by ardent devotees and admirers which is quite natural. Gopas migrated to Vrindavan and thought that they were safe but Kamsa was not sitting idle. He had spies everywhere and he had friends who would attempt the assassination of Krishna and Balarama. One of them was Pralamba, who carried Balarama away, to be eventually overpowered and killed by him. Bankim thinks that the incident of Dhenuka involved actual wild asses who were very dangerous and reigned over the palm groves. Dhirendra Nath Pal seems to agree that Krishna possibly got rid of dangerous animals in the Vrindavan and made it safe for the habitat of the Gopas. The logic seems incorrect because mere slaughter of dangerous animals would not have earned Krishna the reputation that he earned. Kings usualy went in Mrigaya or hunting expedition and killed

Here is what Sri Ramakrishna revealed about his vision on Swamiji, as recorded in Sri Sri Ramakrishna Leela Prasanga by Swami Saradananda (Translation - Ramakrishna the Great Master by Swami Jagadananda and Ramakrishna the Divine Play by Swami Chetanananda). He saw him to belong to the realm of akhanda or indivisibility, far above the realm gods and goddesses, a divine sage ever immersed in meditation, one of the seven ever pure, ever blissful souls who are ever immersed in the contemplation of the absolute. He himself of course was the divine child seen in the vision. But who were those seven sages - were they the saptarshis of the Hindu Purana or the four sages Sanaka etc. along with others like Kapila who had occupied a position far above gods and goddesses, i.e. were higher than brahmarshis who belonged to the realm of Brahma, below the realm of indivisibility. We do not know but below is the vision outlined. One day I found my mind was soaring high in  Samadhi  along a lumin