Jagabandhu das: I am most grateful to a good friend for the recent reminder of Sri Chaitanya-caritamrta, Sri Ramananada Raya and his conversation with Mahaprabhu. For several decades the first verse of Sri Chaitanya-caritamrta has been the Sri Guru pranam mantra which I use to pay respects to Sri Gurun (the plurality of gurus), all others and God Himself. I often think of Sri Ramananda Raya’s transcendental indifference to mundane sensuality. Especially because our 18 year old autistic daughter now often requires help getting clothed. Thinking of Sri Raya Ji helps me to turn my senses off. As if they were momentarily deadened. In order to steel myself to act as an impartial caregiver to our daughter.<\/p>\n
Recently, Sri Guru has caused me to reflect deeply much upon the penetrating notion of finding innate goodness everywhere inspite of apparent external malific incongruities. I am caused to ponder that Mahaprabhu’s true lineage is a paramahamsa succession. And how true devotion and and inner development caused many of His saintly successors to contemplate that the only deficiency was within themselves. It’s a wonderful thing to experience (without being neurotic): that if I examine the world I can find no fault—but if I examine myself I can find nothing of value. This was the mood of Mahaprabhu and Sri Rupa. Which emphasizes the unequivical irrevocable reality that true positive and progressive life eternal is introspective in spite of all exoteric inclinations to turn spirituality into an extrospective process consumed by the spiritually unhealthy pre-occupation of making critical observations about others’ ostensible, aspirant spirituality.<\/p>\n
Lately, I’ve been spending considerably less time online and more time with our garden. Gardens are such nice metaphors for spiritual life. How green is my garden? Is it getting sufficient water and nutrients (or too much)? Are weeds troubling the fledgling creepers? Are there other pests or predators which might injure the creepers? How healthy is is the soil? Is it fertile for growth? Do the roots go deep? Or are they rotting, thereby resulting in inevitable inherent decay of the hopefully healthy plants? And as I struggle to cultivate my own fledgling garden (as a beginner gardener) why should I concern myself with possible flaws in my neighbor’s garden?<\/p>\n
Contemplating in this way I feel myself becoming much more introspective than ever before and I can find no fault with the world, but many faults within myself. As if my primary spiritual concern was the thorn tree in my garden. And that the thorn tree was me. With the only personally resolvable problem of aspirant spiritual development being within myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jagabandhu das: Recently, Sri Guru has caused me to reflect deeply much upon the penetrating notion of finding innate goodness everywhere inspite of apparent external malific incongruities. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}