Relish the rasa in association – SB 1.1.3 |Bhagavatam Study | Bhakti Vaibhav

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna Welcome back to the study of the first canto of Shreemad Bhagavatam. We are on the third session and we are discussing the third verse of the first chapter of the first canto. Nigam kalpataror galitam phalam shukhamukhadam rathadram samyutam vibhata bhagvatam rasamalayam muhuraho rasikabhuvibhavukaham So vibhata bhagvatam rasamalayam This is like the call for action in this.
Drink, relish the bhagvata rasa. And the concept of rasa is the most important over here. And that will form the substance of our discussion.
So basically there is the the rasa literature have had their own tradition in Indian history. Natya Shastra was the book written by Bharat Muni in which he describes how the devatas approach Brahmaji. And they asked him please share with us a form of entertainment, of recreation that would be appealing and entrancing through all the senses.
And then Brahmaji revealed to him revealed to them Natya. Natya means dramaturgy. That is the way dramas are to be performed.
And now we may wonder what is there to so big about performing dramas. You just go on the stage and start acting. Yeah, that is okay.
But once one starts acting one realises there is so much more in acting that is involved. And one understands that actually acting involves learning how one can move forward in a way that creates the appropriate emotions in the audience. So what was written by Natya Shastra, Bharat Muni that Anand Varadhan and many other writers especially Bhoja they commented on it, elaborated on it and they developed the concept of rasa which was introduced in Bharat Muni Natya Shastra but is elaborated further which talks about how one can relish particular emotions by having particular stimulations.
So those stimulations how they can be produced on the stage by the participants by their expressions by their actions by their setting and by the combination of all this that is the whole science of dramaturgy as it is talked about in the Indian tradition. So rasa in the sense which is talked about by Bhoja and by Bharat Muni it is primarily emotion that is experienced within drama. And within that hierarchy the concept of complete absorption in the drama to the pacification almost like the subordination elimination of all other emotions that is considered the highest.
So in one sense that led to the idea of complete absorption which was considered similar to absorption in the absolute truth and that is impersonal liberation. So shanti which is the goal of impersonal mukti that is considered when this idea of dramaturgy was correlated with religion was considered to be equivalent to mukti. But Bhakti Rasamrith Sundhu which is written in the 16th century by Rupa Goswami brought about brilliant and unprecedented correlation between the rasa tradition and the bhakti tradition.
The bhakti tradition especially which is based on Vedanta. Now the Now we have to understand two things over here. Rasa as authentic inner human experience that has been there since for all time.
Since creation has been there that has been there. So people have been experiencing emotions whether it be because of what they see on the stage or because of what happens in life. We all need rasa and we all experience rasa.
But what we are talking in the case of Rupa Goswami is he explained how Krishna’s pastimes can be seen through the prism of rasa and how bhakti can be understood as a process of relishing progressively pure and deeper and sweeter rasa. So now the Bhagavatam plays a very critical role in this book in this synthesis between the Vedantic tradition and the rasa tradition. How does it play that unifying joining synthesising role? Because we see the first verse in the Bhagavatam is talking about dhimahi meditate on the absolute truth.
Now dhimahi is more of a passive meditation in a mood of awe and reverence. dhimahi meditate meditate but here drink relish so the Bhagavatam is going to start with dhimahi but it is ultimately going to urge us to do relish the rasa and in this sense the Bhagavatam is going to be like a spiritual autobiography of Shukadev Goswami who was doing dhimahi on the impersonal Brahman but when he heard Krishna katha at that time he became attracted and he became attracted to the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna so he moved from dhimahi to pibatha to relish so this is the sweetness of the Bhagavatam and this is what is the unique contribution the Bhagavatam is going to offer so now rasa as explained by Rupa Goswami is not just something that is experienced while observing a drama we are not talking about a generic human experience but we are talking specifically of rasa as a technical category for theological exposition that means within the religious discourse how is rasa to be understood it is not just a secular idea that ok whenever any kind of drama is performed people experience some emotion that drama may be theistic may be atheistic people experience some emotions in relationship with drama now that is not what Rupa Goswami is talking about when he talks about rasa, specifically he talks about when we have a relationship with the Supreme Lord what do we experience in our relationship with him that is the focus, that is the heart of what Rupa Goswami is talking here, now here Rupa Goswami moves forward and explains that this rasa can be experienced in relationship with the absolute truth and different devotees experience it in different ways and he talks about the hierarchy of various rasas so we have the Shantaras, Dasaras, Sakharas, Vatsalaras and Madhuras the five rasas, the hierarchy is there so here what happens is the Bhagavatam will reveal how we all can relish rasa and the Bhagavatam is telling us that when we study this Bhagavatam the purpose is to relish rasa the purpose is not just to do something here and there not just to do dhimahi so we are meant to relish so that is as we discussed earlier, we go from the negative axis to zero and from zero we go to the positive axis, so one of the founding contributions of the Bhagavatam is to explain that love comes from reality and love can take us to reality love is so natural, so innate to our daily experience that’s the driving force of reality, we all want love, whether it is mother’s love for a child or a spouse love for a spouse or whether it is brother’s love for a sister, whatever it is, now love is the driving force of all relationships at least the foundational level and that the Bhagavatam explains is also the crowning reality of existence, the driving force at our level of existence is the crowning reality at the summit of existence and how is that? that will be revealed to the Bhagavatam through its vision of all attractive, all loving supreme person who is Arasaraj, who is Shri Krishna so here Pibata Rasa Pibata Bhagavatam Rasamalayam Rasamalayam so this Bhagavatam will flood our heart with rasa so the previous was described that the lord will manifest in the heart, but what kind of manifestation will that be? will it be an ordinary manifestation in terms of one will meditate on the lord in passive admiration, no this is a meditation that will lead to an active transformation and engagement so one will active, attractive meditation on the supreme lord, Pibata Rasamalayam, we know the alaya refers to home or abode so Himalaya is the place of snow so Rasamalayam, so Bhagavatam is the reservoir of rasa and if we just approach it properly then our heart will become flooded with rasa and now the Bhagavatam brings about the synthesis it has a lot of Vedantic exposition in philosophy where it analyses what is the absolute truth, especially the Shatushloki Bhagavatam does that very systematically and profoundly but after doing that the Bhagavatam moves forward and it comes to the conception of Krishna especially in the 10th canto and in that 10th canto it describes how Krishna is the all attractive supreme lord and how loving Him is the perfection of life and how there are paradigmatic devotees ideal devotees who set the who set the standard the model of excellence, the paragon for everyone else, especially the gopis of Vrindavan, so now Pibata, it’s talking about relish, relish so we can relish how there is pure love between Krishna and the Vrindavan and we can relish as slowly small small drops of that love start entering into our heart permeating our heart purifying our heart and ultimately flooding our heart when that love becomes stronger and stronger so let’s look at the verse from the start this was the heart of the verse so Nigama refers to the Vedic literature they are like a kalpataru they can give us whatever we want so this is Krishna is kalpataru he fulfils our desires so the Vedic literature is also reciprocal depending on how we approach them, they will reveal themselves accordingly so if somebody approaches the Vedic literature for material benefit that means for gaining worldly pleasures then that’s what one will get Krishna talks about in 2.43 in the Bhagavad Gita people go to the lord, people go to the Vedas for kama, their essence is filled with kama, their atma is as if made of kama only swarga para, they think swarga is the ultimate goal of life janma karma phala pradam they say oh I’ll get janma and swarga and then karma then what will I do over there I will enjoy I’ll enjoy with the apsaras I’ll enjoy in the gardens and I’ll just simply enjoy life so think like this and the Vedas will reveal that’s what you want, that’s what you will get but this kalpataru has a so there are various results from the kalpataru Krishna talks in the same section one verse earlier 2.42 he says so dharma, artha, kama are like the pushpa of this tree but now Krishna is telling that there is a phala and there is a galitam phala that is a fully ripened juicy fruit and that is the bhagavatam so if you can see the Vedas to be a tree then the flowers from them are the pushpitam vacham they are the they are the fruits of dharma artha kama, beyond that there is fruit there are various kind of fruit but there is a ripened fruit that ripened fruit is the fruit of pure love which will be revealed in the shramad bhagavatam galitam phalam now if a fruit is very juicy very soft, very succulent then there is also the fear that if that fruit falls then by that fall it may just break and all its juice may get spilled away and it will be difficult to relish that no, that’s why there is a special process, the process of parampara, by which process falls down, so as we practise bhakti our level of consciousness rises, rises, rises and moves upward and upward till it reaches Krishna and when it reaches Krishna then we attain the perfection of our life but we don’t just reject everyone else, when we are relishing Krishna we want to share Krishna with others also, so the great souls who have reached Krishna they form a sort of human ladder, that is the parampara and they pass it down to us so when that fruit comes down in parampara then we can all relish it, we can relish the unbroken the unsullied the sweet fruit, in fact far from getting broken or sullied it is described metaphorically how that fruit will become sweeter shukha mukhaad amritadravyesam yatham shukha mukhaad so shukha is shukhadeva goswami, mukhaad is through his mouth amritadravyesam yatham the bhagavatam is the itself amrita it is the nectar of immortality because it will grant us supreme immortality not just the amritva of heaven but nityatva of Vaikuntha, of Goloka so amritva simply refers to living for a very long time it doesn’t refer to eternal existence so the somaras can give that kind of amritva to us but the nityatva that we get by going to the spiritual world that is actual eternal existence so there are four kinds there is maratya, there is amara there is chiranjeevi and there is nitya so we are all maratya then above those who go to heaven they are amara, they live for a far longer time as compared to us, chiranjeevi they live for as long as a day of Brahma, sometimes even a lifetime of Brahma and beyond that there are the nitya who live forever so drinking the somaras will give us amaratva but drinking the bhagavatam will give us amaratva, not just amaratva but nityatva amritadravasamyutam enriched with special nectar so traditionally it is said that when a fruit is touched by the tip of a by the beak of a parrot then that fruit, because of that small contact with the parrot subsequent exposure to the atmosphere the fruit’s taste becomes sweeter so similarly when this bhagavatam is recited by Shukadeva Goswami its taste becomes sweeter and that’s why it is said that relish this bhagavatam shukamukad amritadravasamyutam relish this bhagavatam pipatabhagavatam rasamalayam relish, relish this bhagavatam and muhuraho rasika bhuvibhavukaha muhur, how should we relish it? constantly, constantly constantly, Vishwanath Chaturthi says that actually one should keep relishing the bhagavatam till one comes to the state of ecstasy and one feigns an ecstasy and then he says okay if one feigns an ecstasy then one will no longer be able to relish the bhagavatam, then what next? they win in that ecstasy which is induced by the intoxication of devotion what happens is that ecstasy is so special, so profound so deep that one simply gets absorbed in that ecstasy and being absorbed in that ecstasy one relishes it so much that one doesn’t desire anything else so even when one is unconscious at that time also one is relishing so one may not be hearing the bhagavatam we have the example of Shetana Mahaprabhu he would fall into trance when he would hear some special words from bhagavatam especially he would hear the words about how merciful Krishna is that he delivered even Putana who had come with a malicious intent to kill him so Shetana Mahaprabhu went into ecstasy and he fell unconscious and in unconsciousness we know that he would get transported to the spiritual level of consciousness, spiritual world and he would participate or observe the intimate pastimes of Radha and Krishna in that trance so even at that time also he was actually relishing so and then afterwards when he came out of trance again he would say please speak the bhagavatam again so that way relish it constantly now we may not be able to relish it constantly for multiple reasons first is we have so many other worldly responsibilities which don’t give us time to hear the bhagavatam and secondly even when we have time often our mind gets distracted by all our worldly responsibilities, engagements and troubles so how can we do this constantly drink and constantly relish that is by purification now as much as we can relish we drink that much as we drink according to our capacity, our capacity will increase because we become purified so the great devotees can relish constantly and when we can’t relish constantly rather than feeling burdened by that rather than feeling disappointed by that we focus on recognising that there is an opportunity to relish it constantly if I just continue practising the process of devotion so let me relish as much as I can and sometimes when we don’t feel like relishing we take it as a medicine then gradually as the medicine becomes sweeter by purification we relish it more and more just like sugar cane juice which initially may not seem sweet for a jaundiced patient but as the patient keeps taking the juice then gradually the sweetness of the sugar cane juice gets revealed and then rasika bhuvibhavukaha so there is a very sweet musical metre in this so rasika one should become a rasika one who relishes rasa and what kind of rasika? bhavukaha so in one sense this seems to be the same words but there are different emphasis to this bhavukaha bhuvi means to on the earth these are very special people bhuvibhavukaha expert, thoughtful Prabhupada translates bhavukaha and rasika he translates those who are full of knowledge of rasa of mellows so mellow was Prabhupada’s translation of rasa rasa means a special sweetness that one experiences when one has a relationship with Krishna that’s what it specifically means in the way it is used in our tradition in generic sense it means emotions so here the idea is one doesn’t have to go into a long process of 90-90 oh not this, not that that’s a process which is followed by some people it’s a laborious process but instead of following that process here the recommendation is follow the process of meditation on the supreme lord if one simply meditates on the supreme lord the result of that will be one will become purified and if one becomes purified then one will relish the bhagavatam more and more and more so rasika and bhavukaha so here that means is it that this bhagavatam is restricted only for those who are rasika and bhavukaha again I said it’s not as I said earlier when the bhagavatam talks about say that this is meant for those who are pure devotees nirmatsaranaam there is no need for other scriptures kimvapareeshwara such calls are not exclusive they are contextualist so same way here the idea is what is talked about is a aspiration it is not necessarily a restriction that means that what is being talked about over here is the aspiration is that we should all become rasika, bhavukaha we all understand rasa relish rasa and we have the depth of the head and the heart to understand and relish rasa now what does it mean to have the depth of the head and the heart just like if a person knows nothing about art and the person sees a very famous painting say Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, now one sees that oh it looks attractive there is a female over there she has an enigmatic expression on her face almost like a smile and she looks quite attractive so one may give one glance two glances at that but one who is a connoisseur of art that person can understand much better what is going on this expression, his eyes could have been depicted in some other way but they have been depicted in this way so one looks at every single detail in the picture and understands that it has a significance and the combination of all those details have produced a particular effect which would not have been produced without the without that particular if the artist had not taken that much care to depict all those details in that particular way so similarly here what the Bhagavatam talks about is that it’s a process by which we develop rasa our spiritual sensibility our capacity for devotional aesthetic experience increases as we become bhavuka as we become rasika so another example is that a simpler example perhaps a more relevant example is say of cricket somebody say has come from the from say Somalia or somewhere, place where nobody knows about cricket, nobody has played cricket and then somebody, then the person that person sees that these people are so absorbed in cricket you know what is there, there is one person running and there is another person swinging with a stick and there is a big piece of stone, circular stone that is being hurled, what is going on? and then there is somebody running after that circular piece of stone, what is going on? and sometimes the same action is being played and replayed and replayed and then ok this person put a stick over there, but ok was the put stick why is the same stick being seen again and again and again but then one who knows the game of cricket, one understands oh actually there are so many ways in which that ball can be thrown somebody can be off spinner, somebody can be leg spinner somebody can be medium pacer there is a general way in which that person bowls and then within that also specific balls can be bowled different ways, one can be off cutter, another can be a leg cutter and the bat, there is a batsman who is holding a bat, but there are so many different ways in which the bats can be held batsmen have different stances and there are so many different ways in which the bat can be swung and there are so many different shots that can be made and then say there is a runner to be scored and the batsman has to come in time into the crease so then the same thing of the bowler or the fielder throwing the ball and the ball hitting the stumps and then has the batsman come in time or not now that may become a object for microscopic observation for the umpire for say there is going to be a third umpire who is supposed to decide it so just as when one understands the subject more and more then one can relish it more and more so now of course the difference between understanding the material subject and understanding Krishna is that the relish from Krishna stays forever the relish from material subject doesn’t stay forever but the simple point is that the extent of infatuation and consequent absorption that a cricket fan can have in cricket cricket novice can’t have that so same way just as how does a person become a cricket fan one reads about cricket, one talks about cricket one mixes those people who are infatuated with cricket and soon one will also get the infatuation similarly if we associate with those who are intoxicated with Krishna, those who are in love with Krishna and we hear what they are speaking, we talk what they are speaking we contemplate what they are speaking then we will understand so much more we will see sometimes some devotees will recite the same verse dozens of times and initially say if that devotee has a sweet recitation capacity for that verse then we may also like the sweetness of that recitation but then we may say ok now it’s enough, I have heard this verse enough times but sometimes same devotees may hear keep reciting the same verse again and again why? oh this word can mean like this, this word can mean like this and then if we take this word to mean like this and this word to mean like this then this particular import is revealed and then by this glory of Krishna is understood, oh this is so intoxicating and like that as one develops a closer relationship with the Bhagavatam then one can relish the Bhagavatam more and more and we see Sri Jaitanya Mahaprabhu he wanted to hear the past times of Dhruv Maharaj, Prahlad Maharaj hundreds of times again and again why? because he felt that there was so much relish in those past times, why was he feeling like that? he was feeling like that because he was so absorbed in the world of the Bhagavatam that every contact with the verse reveals some newer, deeper, richer facets of that world of the Bhagavatam and of the central hero of that Bhagavatam that is Krishna and his exalted devotees whether they be Dhruva or Prahlad or whoever or the Gopis of Vrindavan and topped by Srimati Radharani so in this way by understanding how the Bhagavatam is something which is meant to be relished we can try to develop a relationship with the Bhagavatam and especially those who are relishing the Bhagavatam deeply if we associate with them and we hear from them then we will also develop a taste for the Bhagavatam and this which comes from hearing the Bhagavatam offers the topmost fulfilment to the heart nothing offers fulfilment to the heart like the fulfilment offered by this Bhagavatam and gaining that fulfilment is our life’s greatest aspiration and by the mercy of Srila Prabhupada he has given us Bhaktivinand Parpots and he has introduced us to a whole tradition which is written, spoken and cherished and relished the Bhagavatam for so long and he has given a community of devotees to us and that association gradually all of us can also become rasika and bhavokaha thank you continue in our next session Hare Krishna