Bhakti

John (to finish off the thread hijack), I think you're probably right, it's just an unfortunate bending of the one-way-2-God ideal, and probably approach's Xianty's "Our God is The Only God" way more than it seems on the surface, but I guess to be really sure one would have to read the originial writings (are there any? many?) of, say, Chaintanya Mahaprabhu from around 5 centuries ago. Unfortunate, because, well, out of all paths, you woulda think that bhakti - the most EMO path!!!! to put it one way - would be the most tolerant, wouldn't you? Contemporary how-to Hinduism guides try to bury all this, saying ideally a Vaishnavite does/should not have any problem with a Shaivite (something I obviously agree with).

trnad api sunicena
taror api sahnisnuna
amanina manadena
kirtaniyah sada harih

The translation I've got reads: "One should chant the holy name of the Lord in a humble state of mind, thinking oneself lower than the straw in the street; one should be more tolerant than a tree, devoid of all sense of false prestige, and should be ready to offer all respect to otherss. In such a state of mind one can chant the holy name of the Lord constantly."

The previous verse had stated that 1) there weren't really any hard and fast rules for chanting the names and 2) that chanting the names "renders all benediction to living beings" (and sastra again & again makes the point that the chanting of the harinama brings all joy to chanter & hearer alike). So obviously one thing that this verse means is: "To achieve the end of being able to chat the holy name of the Lord constantly (which condition is clearly desireable), one should first cultivate the following inner qualities." Which qualities include tolerance above all: "more tolerant than a tree" is a wonderful phrase.

One thing that's very interesting about Vaisnavas is how harsh the teachings can sound ("this way only! this way only!") vs. what the great Vaisnavas actually do in practice: to which teachings to the most renounced Vaisnavas seem, by the their behavior, to ascribe greatest import? I have lots to say on this but this long posting ought to open up a few lines of thought I hope.

I liked your examples and thank you for posting that about Chaitanya, I really don't know anything about him. Bhakti, geez, where to begin ? The irony really is too much to put into words, which is why in my above posting I alluded to Xianity, as I think they share the same pitfalls. The tolerance-they-preached vs. the intolerance that is practiced by the students really seems to mirror Jesus' position, in my mind.

I hardly know anything at all about Chaintanya Mahaprabhu, but based on what extremely little I have read I can only speculate on two things: 1) he was probably a kick-ass dancer with mad SKILLZ, if he really got all those people to dance with him in the streets during his frenzied, rapturous forays into ecstasy that he fell into via chanting (I'm sure you've seen the pictures of him standing radiantly with his arms outstretched, in those saffron robes), and 2) I do not think he would like the post-Prabhupada direction, theology, and structuring of the Hare Krishna movement if he were alive to see it today. At all.

That tree quote really is nice. It's strange, though. I mean, I suppose that all the great bhakts - Meera, Chaintanya, Tulsidas, Tukaram, Ayyapan, Ravidas, even Ramakrishna Paramahansa
et. al, were just so enamored of the deities who spiritually made love to them, so overwhelmed with devotion to ther indiviudually idealized forms of Spirit - that in their drunken-love state of Unity (which breached the divisiveness of duality, Maya, what-have-you), their teachings inexorably came across as "if you want to get enlightened, you must know MY God...since s/he is the best, he rules, s/he is the kindest, just look at the oh! oh! oh internal orgasms s/he's giving me HOT DAMN!!!!" Wouldn't it be predictable for someone in love to speak this way? I have the movie Meera which quotes her as being actually "jealous" of Radha, in regards to her feelings for Krishna. That's insane, and yet insanely beautiful, at the same time. It's almost strange to assume that the disciples couldn't see that all this was due to a genuine love-affair going on, so that the level of devotion expressed towards one being, one deity, whether it's Krishna (as with Meera, Chaintanya), Rama (Tulsidas), Vishnu (Tukaram), Shiva (Ayyapan), or Kali (Ramakrishna Paramahansa), did not necessaily preclude devotion towards another deity. These bhakts were just swept of their feet by their favorite gods, it was not meant as a diss towards anyone else's favs, you know? It's just that the disciples, mired as they were in dualitistic Maya, came to see it that way, which is why you get the modern HKs saying "only ONE way to 'Godhead' = Krishna," and it's even more shameful that they quote the Gita to strenthen their claims, which is why I think it totally parallels the way some modern Xtians use Jesus' quote of there being none-other-way-to-Our-Father-but-through-me in an attempt to nullify pantheism. It's more ironic in such a polytheistic society such as india, though, 'cause it's just antithetical to the embedded ethos within the masses of there being multiple dieties, of there being both Vishnu and Shiva, and that it doesn't matter who you choose to pray to, as long as you pray or have some sadhana to start with - that should be the only essential thing, in my opinion.

Even in the myths (which are treated as history, remember), this one-way thing was explicity addressed, and for good measure, ridiculed: when Shiva's marriage process came to Himavat and Mena's doorstep since he was to marry ttheir daughter Uma, Mena fainted as she saw the unkempty, unruly, unsmooth god of long locks before her. Awakening, she said that her daughter would never marry such a messy wild god (the snakes-as-garlands thing surely didn't help, imo), and out loud expressed her disdain for Mahadev, lamenting that it was a pity that Parvati was not wedding handsome Vishnu instead. Brahma, who of course was something like the best man and probably wanted to get the show on the Himalayan road and over with, told her to take a closer look at Shiva, just one last time.

When Mena did, she saw Vishnu.

When she looked back at Vishnu, she saw Shiva. Perplexed, she was asked by Brahma: "do you think there's ANY difference" ? Instantenously she realized her folly, and never forgot either how interchangable all forms of matter/Spirit are, or how special her cemetery-haunting son-in-law really was. Realizing how all forms of god lead to the same One consciousness, she happily married her daughter off to the badassed blue-throated lord of ascetics without any further reservation. (For good measure, I don't think Shiva minded waiting just a littlewhile longer, since he had been wifeless for sometime).

If the notion of which-one-is-the-best-one was so blatantly addressed in the myths/historical records (Puranas, which literally means old times) by the PEOPLE INVOLVED themselves, it seems so so so silly for it to even still be an issue. But it is. Why ?

I guess my previous comment on names and forms is relevant,since it brings up the whole question of personal vs. Impersonal Deity, bhakti vs. jnana, devotion vs. knowledge, love vs. wisdom. One cannort take precedence over another; the real yogis and tantrics know this, which is why they extol both. It depends on the person, what's best for him or her, know what I mean? I didn't mean to imply in my list above, however, that ALL bhakts are mad over personal, individualized deities, since while it seems easy to even define bhakti this way, we shouldn't forget the really special people like Kabir, who was a "bhakt," but who refused to champion any One over Another either. I was unaware of this, until I saw this cool link:

http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/events/kabir.html

Check it out. The K-man also gets big bonus points for uniting Hindus & Muslims, which makes the Shaivite vs. Vaishnavite rivalries look like playground shite.

procession, more like it!

I cannot type tonite

I can never type on here. Every single post I've made contains at least one typo. I'm not bad at spelling, I swear!

i don't have much time to argue, vic, but I would strongly disagree with this: it DOES matter who you pray to if you are hindu and most hindus DO accept a fundamental hierarchy. different gods represent different things: you might pray to laxmi for good fortune/better financial future, you might pray to durga for strength/power, saraswati for intelligence, etc. polytheism is central to hinduism but many hindu families practice something approximating the more monotheistic approach the HK's advocate partly for the simple reason that it is V. HARD TO PRAY TO 10,000 GODS AT ONCE and also due to regional differences, cultural differences, guru differences, a history/tradition of yr family always worshiping god [x]....HK is not advocating hinduism per se but a particular sect of hinduism -- vaisnavism, itself an ancient tradition. HK is pretty above-ground about this. they believe in the authority of vaisnavism (the philos. of vishnu uber alles), cuz central to the idea of bhakti is the idea that you are praying to god [x] not cuz you want stuff from god [x] (crazy super-powers, a brand-new batmobile, etc) but because you are super-psyched for god [x] and you are doing it for selfless reasons -- devotion, etc. many ppl who pray to other gods like shiva do it for those ostensible reasons of bhakti too and not for reasons like 'i am praying cuz i want to be a better dancer' etc, and that's cool too

hindus of all stripes establish precedence of one god over another: some households worship ganesh, say, as the favorite god or main god -- or perhaps krishna, shiva, whatever. there is a very well-established hierarchy that is rooted in the ancient vedic texts, as with every old-school polytheistic religion -- it would be difficult to argue for instance that hermes (as much demigod-cred as he might have) is as 'major' of a god as zeus. the HKs i have talked to all hold a great deal of respect for other gods that are not krishna, and do observe various holidays relating to other gods, etc. but they establish the precedence of one god over another, which is not wildly different from what many hindus do anyhow.

"This material world is temporary, whereas the individual living entities who try to enjoy matter are eternal and superior to it. The Supreme Cause is superior to both the temporary material energy and the eternal living entities[emphasis mine]. Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu is this Supreme Person, the Absolute Truth, the original Cause of all Causes."

This looks toward personalism. HOWEVER, the previously quote sloka regarding tolerance is to be taken as seriously as anything. Prabhupada whatever his faults was quite unequivocal about showing respected to "all the self-realized spiritual masters" (Jesus, Mohammed, Lord Buddha, et al) and would often ask priests with whom he met to just take up the chanting of the mahamantra in addition to their other forms of worship, a quite remarkable request when you think about it. A lot of western ISKCON converts, coming from a fiercely monotheistic background to begin with (because this is what's weird about the Bhakti cult: monotheism as novelty), get all caught up in "This God Only!" as the central point of the whole thing which it isn't. It's more like extra sweetness for the smitten devotee, "topmost secret knowledge" etc.

Countdown to someone coming in here and calling us cockfarmers: 5...

What I (probably weakly) tried to express up there was that I think that it shouldn't matter. Atman is one and yet contains a multitude of forms; yes, a paradox.

That's why I gave the example of what happened at Uma's marriage: it was directly addressed in the Puranas that Shiva and Vishnu are not at odds with each other, but equivalent to one another. No HK would ever agree to that, in theory.

My mom is a good example of what you're saying though. She was brought up to love and worship Krishna, but thinks Kali is whack (I think the violent aspects repel her), and for some reason her family considered the worship of Shiva idolatry (the whole phallic symbol lingam thing, I bet). I definitely agree that regional and casteist differences come into play too: some groups of Kshatriyas are less likely to worship prosperity-giving Ganesh due to idealization of agrarian values and enmity with more cosmopolitan, mercantile castes; Bengalis and Biharis in the east revere all forms of the Divine Mother the most, and southerners typically don't include idols of both Vishnu and Shiva in the same temple, and etc.

As far as "very-well established hierarchies" from the Vedas, well, I think there's only been only one consistent hierarchical structure in all of Indian religion: the triad. In the vedas, it was first Surya, Vayu, and Agni, which was replaced by Surya, Indra and Agni, which eventually was replaced by the triad that still exists today: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Just like Rudra ("the howler," Death), the early form of Shiva, did with Agni (fire), Vishnu pretty much wholly usurped Indra's supreme Vedic status, and came to embody all of his magnificent and regal attributes over time. Vaishnavism isn't really that much of an "ancient tradition" but is relatively recent: around since the Christian era or so, but I'm splitting hairs there, that's still "ancient," and besides, no one can say with any certainty which god rose to prominence when. I fully acknowledge that I may just be unconsciously (and certainly unintentionally) regurgitating imperalist/colonialist extra-textual timelines here, which have been superimposed onto Indian history, via the "Aryan invasion' theory.

It's just that most people forget that Vishnu only had only one really famous exploit in the Vedas: the three steps story, which came to be incorporated in the later tale of his Vamana (dwarf) avatar; all the rest of the Vaishnavite myths come from the Puranas and the Brahmanas, which were presumably written much later than the Vedas. As far as the comparison to Greek myths go, I think there was a much more consistent hierarchy in that Western mythological tradition, which did not change over time as much as the roles of the Indian gods did. For example, in the Vedas, Varuna is a glorious god of the Cosmic Law (the mysterious rta) and knowledge and power and the heavenly atmospheres and Infinity, and in later Hinduism, he got demoted to only being the master and embodiment of the Ocean! Perhaps still an extended metaphor for Infinity, but it's a significant drop, nonetheless. I couldn't imagine Athena's status declining in a comparable fashion, or any other Hellinistic deity's.

I am unconventional; I do not think it should matter who you pray to - even those statements like these open up further questions of the personal vs. impersonal notion of divinity, and Advaita (there's only One - who doesn't need a specific name or form -
which is presumed in jnana) vs Dvaitya (there are two: the lover and Beloved, a duality which is necessary for bhakti to exist). I believe in the Srimad Bhagvatam (is it a Purana itself? I forget), which is basically the main sourcebook for Vishnu's mythology, there exists that mantra for Krishna which says that no matter which deity you pray to, all prayers travel like rivers to the same one Oceanic god. The confusion comes from the conflation of what that deity is called: the HKs say that He has only one name, Krishna. I think that view misses the point of the mantra, but maybe that's just me.

In regards to deities, of course - otherwise there are tons of hierarchies and structures! Maybe I should have said one, main, primary, overriding hierarchial structure. Sounds safer.

Extremely good lurking. I R a materialist, but it is wise to learn more about such things.

is a monotheistic rendering of a polytheistic religion. In a way that's both its charm and its stumbling-block.

My opinion leans more towards the latter, of course, but you're right. It's just that whenever any group claims a monopolization on Truth or Divinity through the glorification of only one aspect of consciousness, using only one particular name or form, the divisiveness of Maya takes over, creating separation insted of Unity. Separation of atma from Atman, separation of one jiva ("living being") from another, separation of the supposedly learned and loved from the unlearned and unloved. I still think this sort of exclusion of antithetical to the more all-inclusive, tolerant, and egalitarian aspects found in other areas of Indian religion, which would sanction the penance of a forlorn rock or tree or river as a representation of the One, if one desired to do so, since it would be in harmony with the belief that only one substance, the Brahman, only one soul, the Atman, only one energy or shakti, the Adya shakti, pervades all. Which is why littering is a dud, aside from how it's a violation towards Prithvi, the goddess of the earth - but Indians still litter like crazy. Have you ever been to Delhi?

It's more like extra sweetness for the smitten devotee That's precisey what I was (in vain, I guess) trying to express with my example of Meera et al, above: it's unconscious favoritism, but not deliberate exclusionism. They're in LOVE, for crying out loud - why wouldn't they say that their Beloved is the best? Everyone knows that earthly love is madness. Multiple that by a million, and you get divine love - divine madness. Can you image its irrationality? An average human's emotional capacity cannot withstand the scope of such ecstatic furor; it is hard enough for regular humans to practice fidelity towards one earthly lover and ensure loyalty in return, so you can imagine the amount of devotion required for one to inspire interest from an astral being: unbelievable for us to even comprehend. It has been said that to receive such Love, first you must upgrade yourself in the same way that a small bulb cannot contain a vast wattage of electricity or else it will break: you have to ready your mind-body and bring it to the insane level needed to receive devotional bliss in the first place, or else you'll just burst.

Just. Sheer. Madness. For a Hindu woman, Princess Meera was born in utmost wealth and priviledge in the 16th century, into one of the two most powerful Rajput families at the time, and was married off to the other to strengthen the alliance between them against the Moghul Emperor Akbar. She forsook her in-laws' tradition of worshipping Durga (the tough Rajputani tradition of worshipping a fierce, murderous, demon-killing Goddes during a time of strife and warfare was certainly inspirational and logical enough - but not for everyone, since she refused to eat the sacrificial meat as a staunch vegetarian), and forsook just about everything else as well: her wealth, status, position, palace, princessly duties and wifely obligations, all in order to worship and sing the praises of Krishna, whom she claimed was her "real husband" as He came to her every night. Renouncing everything to make pilgrimages to Vrindavan and dance in His temples while singing her love-poems, she legendarily gained the acclaim and recognition of Akbar himself (who supposedly came to see her in disguise, even though she recognized him), which her in-laws thought brought shame to the Rajput's anti-Mughal struggles, influencing them to attempt to kill her. Whether or not she survived due to intuitive ingenuity or "miracles" is not the point - the fact that someone in her position would flip out and consistently put her life in grave danger due to an infatuation with an invisible lover is more significant. That is the insane power of bhakti, an example of the heights of its emotional resonance - if you're not "crazy for You" to start with, though, it just won't work.

Going back to which-deities-are-for-who, it also has to do with temparement. Tantra teaches that those who are less emotional, more ascetic, less sentimental and more rational, who have the masculine Sun prominent in their horoscopes or Ayurvedic make-up, should naturally follow the path of wisdom, jnana, and worship Shiva. Those who are more emotional-devotional types, who are more right-brained and have the more feminine Moon prominent in their charts, are said to be better as devotees of Vishnu. Even though he was from the Surya vansha, or Solar dynasty, Rama was still Ramachandra after all, or the Lunar Rama, since by temparement he was Lunar, Cancerian (his ascendant, traditionally), self-effacing and nurturing towards others. Krishna was a bit more cunning and rajaisic, but was from the Chandra vansha or Lunar dynasty, and allegedly had the Moon exalted in Taurus in his ascendant. If you're more of a Lunar type, Vishnu and his incarnations are definitely more for you, since you're just more apt to succeed with a more receptive deity. Shiva is the most austere of all the male gods, after all - not a very accessible guy, him.

Never mind that Shiva wears a moon on his forehead - another contradiction! :P

I meant:... shakti, WHICH pervades all

I believe in the Srimad Bhagvatam (is it a Purana itself? I forget), which is basically the main sourcebook for Vishnu's mythology, there exists that mantra for Krishna which says that no matter which deity you pray to, all prayers travel like rivers to the same one Oceanic god. The confusion comes from the conflation of what that deity is called: the HKs say that He has only one name, Krishna. I think that view misses the point of the mantra, but maybe that's just me.

quick answer: the Srimad Bhagavatam is indeed a Purana -- the mad long Bhagavata-Purana. Krishna's life is not simply described there but also in the Brahma-Vaivarta Purana, Brahma-Purana, and lots of other Puranas besides.
and obv there's lots of neat stuff about him too in that way cool bhagavad-gita text that i was named after

btw, have u ever seen the movie Seeta and Geeta? it totally roxors. i have to see it again, it's been like a decade or something.

this also misses the point -- maya loses out!! by glorifying ONE they believe they are glorifying ALL, right? as in, because vaisnavas believe that vishnu is the source of everything and also that other gods represent various aspects of vishnu's powers, they are not simply glorifying 'one aspect of consciousness' but ALL aspects, bcz the belief is that vishnu is unlimited and omnipresent and can take on any form he pleases and however many trillions of names he wants -- and since vishnu is a total chameleon and can be anything you have plenty of variety. this is also where your comparison of vaisnavism with christianity falls flat: vishnu can be represented as a series of millions of totally different pop icons that don't just LOOK different but also have different accompanying mythologies and histories and personalities and etc ('today i feel like worshipping jesus in his half-man, half-lion incarnation' doesn't really work now does it)

Okay, I get what you're saying totally, but no. That's not what I was trying to say. A very good misunderstanding though, maybe this is just too difficult to put into words.

Or maybe I just suck at putting it into words - it IS a theoretical contradiction, after all, in terms of linear thinking. Argh!! This is what I meant on the French phil thread - this current language is insufficient (since it's ubject to the dualities of Maya too, duh).

Yes, you could worship Vishnu in a variety of different forms (that you could not worship Jesus), but it's almost like you are "not allowed" to worship him as Shiva, since the fact remains that a proper Shaivaite could never believe that Vishnu could take the form of Shiva, and his attributes, since Shiva is a wholly sovereign power (he is Kala, or Time, personified, itself - and none can trounce on him except for Kali...when your wife gets pissed at you, even if you are God, you lose). Yet at the same time Shiva and Vishnu ARE equal, as I tried to express in that myth about Uma's marriage - a direct contradiction, I know, but as-a-Hindu-who-is-not-either-a-Shaivite-or-Vaishnavite you can accept both as distinct forms of Brahman who form a triad with Brahma, and to glorify one over the other would be to assume that the preservative aspect of divinity is more important than the destructive, or vice versa. One could only make such an erroneous distinction on a relativistic plane such as earth which is vociferously subject to the principle of Maya [[[since this place drowns in dichotomous dualities, remember?? heat/cold, good/bad, day/night, pleasure/pain, male/female, etc. ....mayic duality which will continue for the spiritual aspirant until the drastic dichotomy of inhalation/exhalation is discontinued]]]; even more so is it an error if one is an Advaitist (I'm not saying that you are or aren't, I dunno), who believes there is only one energy/consciousness ("Ishwara") in the universe which is formless and nameless. My comparison with Xianity was only meant to draw the parallel between those who say that "there is only one way to Heaven/salvation - Jesus," with the "Vishnu is everything, Vishnu is Lord, Vishnu is all the gods, the only way to 'godhead' is through him." Maybe it's an imperfect comparison, but the fact that Vishnu has powers to mutate into differing forms doesn't make the approach of Vaisnavites in their this-chanting-is-THE-ONLY-WAY-TO-MOKSHA attitude any less monotheistically fundamentalist than those who say that Christ is the only road to the Kingdom.

but ALL aspects, bcz the belief is that vishnu is unlimited and omnipresent and can take on any form he pleases and however many trillions of names he wants

But again, you're forgetting what Shaivites have been arguing for at least one millennium now: he cannot take on the role of Shiva. He is not omnipresent - since he has a distinct identity and form as a blue-hued man named "Vishnu," he is still subject to: a) birth b) death c) karma - especially c, which is why he was drawn into some of those incarnations in the first place (his shady hospitality offended the Rishi Durvasas, a very, very, very bad thing to do karmically, even if you are "the supreme personality of godhead" or whatever the HKs call him.) Every entity that has a distinct form, identity, personality, separateness from how-do-I-put-this...Light....is still subject to karmic law, and was 'born" at some point (or else that form would not exist!) and must die. In fact, certain Shaivites claim that all the other gods must die first EXCEPT for Shiva who dies last since he is Death himself who kills others - when Time dies, what else exists?? Even though, as a particular form, he must also cease to exist when the Pralaya ("dissolution," on a cosmic scale) occurs, since all forms evaporate into Atman/Shakti/Light, whatever you want to call it. The spiral is complete when Death dies, when Time comes to a screeching halt (ending Karma for everyone, hurrah). Then the cycle begins anew.

as in, because vaisnavas believe that vishnu is the source of everything and also that other gods represent various aspects of vishnu's powers, they are not simply glorifying 'one aspect of consciousness'

But it still is "one aspect' originally - Vishnu - IF you are saying that all the other deities are merely his potential-possible incarnations, then fundamentally you are still saying that one aspect, the blue-hueyed, lotus-eyed, snake-slouching dude with the kinky conch shells and discus rings is sublime, you're still saying there is only one, only one underneath the rest, you're still glorifying only one representation of divinity, glorifying one form of consciousness.

Which goes back to favoritism, and how I think the Vaishnavites and Shavities are both "wrong" (have to be careful since that's a mayic term!) when they preach divinatory exclusivity and the like - and NONE of the Self-realized bhakts originally preached that, none. Most genuine Tantric paths acknowledge this, and make the assessment of which god/path is beneficial to the native based on his temparement, as opposed to the corruption of the paths picking everybody since there is really One God For All, etc.

And all this fancy stuff bcz the belief is that vishnu is unlimited and omnipresent etc. is almost identical to the attributes that Varuna had first in the Vedas, and then Indra, long before Vishnu became the bomb. If my memory is correct he was considered Indra's younger brother in one Vedic account, as they shared Aditi as their common mother - a somewhat secondary role, by any account! This is from long before the Gita was composed, obv.

[ Actually, the "then" should be put into quote marks in that sentence, shouldn't it? I mean, if there is no more Time....another contradiction! There is an explanation for this too somehow, but I think I have to take a break from posting, or at least smoke ganja to continue, something homeless and jobless devotees of Shiva do gleefully enough as an act of worship - score another one for the skull & bones dance man ! ]

I said: you're still saying there is only one

That's the thing. There IS and there ISN'T - at the same time - even though there is no Time, ultimately, either!!!!!!! There is One, but it's not just ONE form, does anyone know what I'm saying? There's just one ....Thing, but at the same time, there are many forms, each of which is related to the Universal Absolute in a dinstict way.

Really, I think if some of those Rishis had listened to and paid attention to the ending lyrics of "Stairway to Heaven" very deeply, they would have really been proud of those guys, since that's just so close to it man. Like, whoa, profound, dude. Now that I've descended into forced farce, maybe this thread can end! Pralaya!!

two points:

1) when krishna appears to be under the influence of maya, it is because he is allowing it: not because maya has power over him. when other demigods appear to be defeating him he is ALLOWING them to defeat him. the prana argt also does not apply. when vishnu appears as his krishna incarnation, he also has the capacity to be EVERYWHERE ELSE at the same time if he feels like it -- you can't easily apply newtonian mechanics to situations involving non-mortals, and all yr laws of conservation of mass and energy and angular momentum and whatever else go straight out the window. because as the story goes, krishna, tho he might be little and blue, is like harry potter to the max. he can make himself invisible, he can clone himself at will (for evidence of this, read abt the rasa dance in the srimad-bhagavatam, when he instantaneously clones himself several times to dance with all the gopi girls)

2) how many ppl do you know who worship varuna as their one true god? i can count, um, none. why do you think that is?

I spent 8 hours writing a response to the previous thread.

Its completeness is lingering around the 30-35% mark. Projected length of its finalized form overshadows the size of my "Is ILx run by Aquarians" uber-post by a bit.

I am not inspired enough at the moment to finish it. Yet I have saved what I have written.

Regarless of whether anyone cares, I'll finish it some other time and post it here. A mass bhakti revival would be seredipitious for the revival of this thread in the indeterminate future, I believe, but I cannot bank on that happening. : )

I just re-read my last post. I want to clarify that when I said that "regardless of whether anyone cares," I did not mean to sound snotty/defensive, I do care that you or others care, I just feel exhausted thinking about how much more I still have to write, and hope that at least someone will wade through its entire overlength and finish reading it. : )

I am also just hesitant because I have no intetions of arguing with Geeta over what does or does not define Hinduism. It is just antithetical to the all-inclusiveness factor that I've been brought up to believe in; I've honestly never gotten into such an argument in my entire life, and I've known plenty of freaky-insane Hindus, notably including my own brother who was fast approaching the fringes of fanatcism one year in medical school (we all became concerned when his idealization of Gandhian mauna, or silence, inspired him to stop speaking on Sundays - it was bizarre). My post breaches a lot of topics that ,despite my aims of trying to present them in an objective manner, will still be filtered through subjectivist expression and will doubtlessly come across as "opinion," but I can and do not care if one disagrees with me entirely, for it would be vehemently against the all-encompassing spirit of Hindu tolerance to do so. It really does not matter!

Maybe I will just say finish and post it by tommorrow, conquering my fears of getting dragged into debate. John, i wish you could hop on the plane that Gareth or Nordicskillz takes to California, since it would be fun to discuss both bhakti and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in person, with or without vodka!

i am more explaining a different take based on the facts you give, which are for the most part CONSISTENT with the facts you give, but come to difft conclusions. most of the details given thus far in this thread are korrekt when taken as is, but they must be received in context. what you are saying is vic _not_ objective, it is filtered through a series of layers, as is what i say, but in a different way

i await yr uber-response and will do my best to disagree w. that as well!! i've got a bunch of sanskrit slokas up my sleeve! the FITE will be like in the mahabharata movie where we each shoot different cool magic arrows at each other (like pokemon for the ancients!)

V nice thread. I have been getting more and more into Indian Phil through yoga and Patanjali's sutras otoh, and then hearing about non-dual Kashmir Shaivaism, as a yoga teacher I like uses that as his model through which he processes his practice

I have also been going through these lectures by Edwin Bryant. He has just started on the Upanishads.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-n2YhKNtOm-0hWNgPPQZ6kxWfGcMIiMR&si=8w00GG7IKr6s-pnx

This is quite a story and thread. Bryant mentions in a lecture that there are ppl who have memorized all of the Mahabharata.

https://bsky.app/profile/shivambhatt.bsky.social/post/3m6zizfl5jk2z