Monday, June 05, 2006

Madhura Milana on the Arizona Freeway

Today this appeared on jyotidham.com, written by Subal Das:

"I am looking for some devotee scholars and poets who would like to collaborate with me to update the Radha Krishna devotional literature. The GV corpus was put together based on 16th century Indian asthetic theory. What would it look like with 21st century, Western asthetics? How can the philosophy be developed in such a way that post-modern critical thinkers and seekers can be devotees without having to compromise their intelligence? How can we take and adapt the best and leave the rest? This is a major undertaking."

Subal Das takes Jagat’s mission of ‘rationalizing’ and ‘modernizing’ the Gosvāmīs books even a step further. ‘without having to compromise their intelligence’ means what, that Rūpa, Sanātan, Jīva, Jayadeva, Viśvanātha and all the other nitya siddha ācāryas don’t have any intelligence? Or perhaps they fail to cater to people who have ‘intelligence’? Now we will see what Subal means with ‘intelligence’:

"One thing I think is needed is to make Radha Krishna and their friends older--like Radha is 20 and Krishna 21. We don't have 12 year old married women here. What's with this obcession with illicit love being higher than married love anyway? I'm talking about a major reimagining of the myth to make it more relevant today and in the future."

This is my proposal: Rādhā Kṛṣṇa meet on the Arizona Freeway, after making an appointment on MSN messenger or by cellphone. Kṛṣṇa is now called Blacky and wears blue jeans and a T shirt and Rādhā is now called Starry and wears a miniskirt. She is the cheerleader in the local high school of course, 20 years old and had a score of boyfriends before meeting up with Blacky, anxiously hiding from him that she already scored an STD from one of them. Subal (renamed Muscles)’s Manjari Svarūpa (bud-body) is now 17 years old, to adjust to modern times, and she had scores of boyfriends too, yeah from her high school of course.

BUT SERIOUSLY FOLKS –“The GV corpus was put together based on 16th century Indian asthetic theory.”

Well. for starters the GV corpus was not ‘put together’ but revealed from within the heart by Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu (hṛdi yasya preraṇayā, BRS 1.1.2). But then Śrī Caitanya is just a 16th century Indian sādhu I suppose. Subal seems to forget that Rādhā-kṛṣṇa Līlā appeared in Purāṇas like the Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, (Rāsa līlā in Bhāgavata Purana), if not 5000 years old then at least a lot older than 16th century, and even that is material calculation, since Narottama Dās Thākur says about those unintelligent 6 Gosvamis “rādhā-kṛṣṇa nitya līlā korilen prakāśa” – “They revealed (not ‘put together’) Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa ‘s nitya līlā - that’s right, nitya means eternal – neither 500 nor 5000 years old, just nitya. Perhaps Narottama wasn’t so intelligent either….

3 comments:

  1. Thank you for composing an appopriate refutation to this disturbing post.

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  2. Advaitadas, you are a showing yourself to be a real friend of the innocent people who are just learning about Krishna and Mahaprabhu, when you speak out about the foolishness of what Subala said.

    What he wrote is not just foolish, though. It is offensive. He desires to be successful in promoting a distorted view about Madhura-rasa to the innocent and unknowing people of the world. I for one am hoping he will be very unsuccessful in his endeavour.

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