Is bhakti as rasa a contemporary presentation at Lord Chaitanya’s times or an eternal truth?
Answer Podcast:
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
As the rasa concepts come across in bhakti, is it only a contemporary way of presentation? Or eternal truth is inseparable from bhakti? Yes, I answer this.
Bhakti is eternal. Bhakti as an emotion in the heart is eternal. But, its presentation in terms of rasa kriya, that is contextual.
For example, Prabhupada used for Krishna, the word, the supreme personality of God. Now, if we try to go backwards and try to see, is there any Sanskrit equivalent of supreme personality of God? You will not find anything like that. The term Godhead is primarily a Christian term which Prabhupada adopted from his Scottish Church college teaching.
It was a Christian college and Prabhupada was an expert. So, he adopted what was suitable from there. And the idea is Godhead.
Christianity emerged in a tradition where there was polytheistic Greek was there. Greece was there before Christianity. And they had the idea that there are many Gods who are competing for supremacy.
And Christianity has one supreme God. So, the Vedic culture also has many Gods. But these Gods are not like the Greek or Roman Gods who are competing supremacy.
All these Gods are subordinate to the supreme. One supreme. So, the point is, if you look at supreme, it is not that the supreme personality of Godhead did not exist before Prabhupada coined the word supreme personality of Godhead.
He always existed. But that word, that terminology was coined at a particular time based on a particular culture. So, of course, Prabhupada not just addressing Christian terminology through the personality, Prabhupada was also addressing the impersonal misconceptions.
So, it’s a very compact term, supreme personality of Godhead. So, God as a truth is eternal. So, the usage of the term supreme personality of Godhead to describe God, that is what we have in Prabhupada.
So, like that, the emotion of the heart of love for Krishna, that is eternal emotion. But its presentation in terms of rasa. In terms of rasa means, in terms of anubhav, abhichari bhav, uddhipan, anamban, that is contextual.
Now, again, in the spiritual world there is anamban, there is uddhipan, that is actually there. But those specific terms may not be used. So, bhakti is an eternal truth, but it is presented according to rasa theory at a particular time by rishis.
So, thank you very much.