Another song about love in separation. As I was reading the book: John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff, eds. The Divine Consort: Radha and the Goddesses of India, Boston, Beacon Press, 1982, in which the love of Radha with Krishna and more the love of Krishna with Radha which are explained with viraha bhakti (love in separation) genre, particularly the chapter: Radha: The Play and Perfection of Rasa . Shrivatsa Goswami. Pp. 72-88, in which he says:
…Love is by nature a mutual satisfaction that is possible only when one negates oneself totally for the sake of other. This self-negation involves the negation of sensuality and constitutes the height of spirituality. Its other-directed delight both includes and transcends personal and subjective pleasure. Krishna seeks pleasure in heightening the bhava of Radha and she is delighted in his delight.—p. 83
And commenting on such viraha-bhakti John B. Carman says,
Intellectuals have paid a high price, however, for turning away from bhakti. Neo-Vedantic and “post-liberal” Protestant theology draw on earlier theologies of incarnation—or at least of intermittent divine presence in our degenerate world—but they tend to be bloodless, unable to do justice to either the awesomeness or the mysterious sweetness of the divine-human encounter.—ibid. Comments: The Reversal and Rejection of Bhakti. John B. Carman. Pp. 125-128, p. 128
In her book: Michelle Voss Roberts, Tastes of the Divine, New York, Fordham University Press, 2014, Roberts has done a wonderful comparison about this kind of love of Gaudiya Vaisnava, particularly that of Rupa Gosvamin with that of medieval Christian theologian Bernard of Clairvaus (1990-1153) a celibate monk and abbot, is worth reading (The Rasa of Love Incarnate, pp. 57 to 84; A Dilemma of Feeling pp. 85 to92 and Love, Bodies and Others pp. 97-116). It is beyond the scope of this comment on Bhakti Theology to either quote all of them or to study on it. However it is worth nothing that,
Like Rupa Gosvamin, the medieval Christian theologian Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) elevates love over all other emotions in the devotional life. He finds ample material for the devotional sentiment of love in the biblical Song of Songs. He writes no fewer than eight-six sermons on the first chapters of this short book of Hebrew wisdom literature, which consists of a series of poetic exchanges between two lovers….God’s emotions are not ordinarily met in kind—the proper response to God’s anger, for example, is fear and repentance—but “When God loves, he desires nothing but to be loved, since he loves us for no other reason than to be loved” (Serman. 83.4). In these preliminary features—love’s mutuality and its superiority to reverence and familial love—this Christian love of God invites comparison with the Vaisnava love of Krisha….In Bernard’s symbolic, the deity is male, and the lover o fGod, like the lover in the Song he designates the “Briide,” is imagined as female….—p.85
Notes
&…love requires two, because sweetness needs “another” to taste it.— A Sanskrit Portrait: Radha in the Plays of Rupa Gosvami. Donna Marie Wulff. Pp. 27-41 p. 41, in The Divine Consort….
The love of Radha and Krishna is a subtle interplay of freedom and commitment, spontaneity and constancy. If we envision these poles as opposite ends of a continuum, we may place Krishna nearer to the freedom end and Radha nearer to that of commitment. Yet each partakes to some degree of the other’s predominant quality….
Krishna, on the other hand, exhibits almost total freedom. Although his irresistible attraction to Radha leads to uncharacteristic single-mindedness, his love for her is never wholly exclusive. This perpetual fickleness on his part represents both the universality of divine love, which is as diffuse and varied as the many degrees and ways in which he is loved, and his transcendence of all conventional boundaries.
Why should commitment in love be preferred over freedom? For the Vaisnava, the highest religious ideal is the sweetness of perpetual relatedness in bhakti, rather than the release from all bondage that is represented by the goal of moksa.….—p. 41
…The moments when he {Krishna} comes to her with the humility of one who would place his head in her dust at her feet or wash those feet and even drink the water left over as a substance of grace (Prasad) are greeted by their spectators first with hushed awe and then with shouts of excitement.—ibid. A Vernacular Portrait: Radha in the Sur Sagar. John Stratton Hawley. Pp. 42-56, p. 42
Mathigiri, 7-7-2017
Another song [BT Song 682] about love in separation. As I was reading the book: John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff, eds. The Divine Consort: Radha and the Goddesses of India, Boston, Beacon Press, 1982, in which the love of Radha with Krishna and more the love of Krishna with Radha which are explained with viraha bhakti (love in separation) genre, particularly the chapter: Radha: The Play and Perfection of Rasa . Shrivatsa Goswami. Pp. 72-88, in which he says:
…Love is by nature a mutual satisfaction that is possible only when one negates oneself totally for the sake of other. This self-negation involves the negation of sensuality and constitutes the height of spirituality. Its other-directed delight both includes and transcends personal and subjective pleasure. Krishna seeks pleasure in heightening the bhava of Radha and she is delighted in his delight.—p. 83
And commenting on such viraha-bhakti John B. Carman says,
Intellectuals have paid a high price, however, for turning away from bhakti. Neo-Vedantic and “post-liberal” Protestant theology draw on earlier theologies of incarnation—or at least of intermittent divine presence in our degenerate world—but they tend to be bloodless, unable to do justice to either the awesomeness or the mysterious sweetness of the divine-human encounter.—ibid. Comments: The Reversal and Rejection of Bhakti. John B. Carman. Pp. 125-128, p. 128
In her book: Michelle Voss Roberts, Tastes of the Divine, New York, Fordham University Press, 2014, Roberts has done a wonderful comparison about this kind of love of Gaudiya Vaisnava, particularly that of Rupa Gosvamin with that of medieval Christian theologian Bernard of Clairvaus (1990-1153) a celibate monk and abbot, is worth reading (The Rasa of Love Incarnate, pp. 57 to 84; A Dilemma of Feeling pp. 85 to92 and Love, Bodies and Others pp. 97-116). It is beyond the scope of this comment on Bhakti Theology to either quote all of them or to study on it. However it is worth nothing that,
Like Rupa Gosvamin, the medieval Christian theologian Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) elevates love over all other emotions in the devotional life. He finds ample material for the devotional sentiment of love in the biblical Song of Songs. He writes no fewer than eight-six sermons on the first chapters of this short book of Hebrew wisdom literature, which consists of a series of poetic exchanges between two lovers….God’s emotions are not ordinarily met in kind—the proper response to God’s anger, for example, is fear and repentance—but “When God loves, he desires nothing but to be loved, since he loves us for no other reason than to be loved” (Serman. 83.4). In these preliminary features—love’s mutuality and its superiority to reverence and familial love—this Christian love of God invites comparison with the Vaisnava love of Krisha….In Bernard’s symbolic, the deity is male, and the lover o fGod, like the lover in the Song he designates the “Briide,” is imagined as female….—p.85
Notes
&…love requires two, because sweetness needs “another” to taste it.— A Sanskrit Portrait: Radha in the Plays of Rupa Gosvami. Donna Marie Wulff. Pp. 27-41 p. 41, in The Divine Consort….
The love of Radha and Krishna is a subtle interplay of freedom and commitment, spontaneity and constancy. If we envision these poles as opposite ends of a continuum, we may place Krishna nearer to the freedom end and Radha nearer to that of commitment. Yet each partakes to some degree of the other’s predominant quality….
Krishna, on the other hand, exhibits almost total freedom. Although his irresistible attraction to Radha leads to uncharacteristic single-mindedness, his love for her is never wholly exclusive. This perpetual fickleness on his part represents both the universality of divine love, which is as diffuse and varied as the many degrees and ways in which he is loved, and his transcendence of all conventional boundaries.
Why should commitment in love be preferred over freedom? For the Vaisnava, the highest religious ideal is the sweetness of perpetual relatedness in bhakti, rather than the release from all bondage that is represented by the goal of moksa.….—p. 41
…The moments when he {Krishna} comes to her with the humility of one who would place his head in her dust at her feet or wash those feet and even drink the water left over as a substance of grace (Prasad) are greeted by their spectators first with hushed awe and then with shouts of excitement.—ibid. A Vernacular Portrait: Radha in the Sur Sagar. John Stratton Hawley. Pp. 42-56, p. 42
Mathigiri, 7-7-2017
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