Holi/Gaur pūrnimā 2006

(Tulasis in Yadunath's garden)

March 14, 2006
2006 Colour Holi/Gaurpurnima
It's cloudy and windy, so no weather to be soaked by Holi-liquids. So I stay inside and give Giridhārī His abhiṣekh with just raw milk. In the evening there's such a rainstorm that I doubt if I will make it to Rohini's house, but I do reach it.

Rohini supports Jai-kṛṣṇa Dās Bābā's suggestion that a manjari's cloud-coloured dress can be white too, like an autumn cloud. It's not like a widow's dress, because it can have embroidery and ornaments. An apt discussion on a full-moon night, when Rādhikā goes out dressed all in white.

March 15, 2006
Stool-Holi begins early, at 7.45 a.m., when Brijabasis, with bags of powder, begin coloring each other. Rohini's place isn't much safer than the gośālā though - at 11 a.m. scary bands of Brijabasis with black hands (stool or paint?) are roaming around the house. When I cook for Rohini I warn him against my bad cooking. He wisely replies that (Mahāprabhu told Raghunāth Dās Goswāmī) we shouldn't eat nicely. I'll remember that next time I have guests! I suppose that if I didn't bother too much about nice dressing (the other prohibition of Mahāprabhu) I wouldn't be so terrified of stool-Holi anymore!

Sridhara Swami says that forgetting God in the famous 'bhayam dvitīyābhiniveśatah'-verse (11.2.37): bhagavataḥ svarūpāsphūrtis tato viparyayo dehāsmīti means "Not having a vision of God's own form. Hence one thinks: I am the body."

An alternative reading says: īśa vimukhasya tan māyayā'smṛtiḥ svarūpāsphūrtiḥ, 'Forgetfulness of God means that one does not perceive ones own svarūpa..." Nothing about falling from Goloka here....

About the famous 'ye'nye'ravindākṣa' verse (10.2.32) he says tvayi asto nirasto'ta evāsan yo bhāvas tasmāt bhakter abhāvād.... "Having no devotion to You" kṛcchrena bahu janma tapasā paraṁ padaṁ mokṣa sannihitaṁ sat-kula tapaḥ śrutādi."After many births of penance he attains the supreme abode, nearness to liberation, birth in a good family, learning..." 'sannihita' means "close, near, at hand, proximate, prepared to, ready or", so he's not really merged in brahman yet. This shows that no jīva falls down from Brahman, this verse having been the only option that would allow such a theory.