86: I Am Here

Creative Expression: Found Short Story/Pem (fiction)

This post is in the format of a Found Short Story/Poem; the words in italics are words taken directly from the verse and/or purport. The words in standard font are my own words. 

CHAPTER 7, TEXT 9 

Alone on a Saturday night in the city, a woman sits upon her velvet couch with a book in her hands. She used to fold her palms on Saturday nights like these to talk to God, but the years of silence in return ate away at her palms and she stopped folding them. 

The silence has eaten away at her neck and shoulders and now her face and her tongue. The silence of her apartment squeezes her chest like a vice. Years of chatter with coworkers, years of business proposals with clients, years of laughter at sitcoms on Netflix.

But the silence keeps growing.

No one speaks to her. She speaks to no one. 

Tonight she stares into space. Tonight gravity pulls at her bones. Tonight - away from the subway, away from her office, away from her clients - raw yearning eats away at her gut. She is surrounded by people above, below, and on all sides, and yet she is alone, 

alone, 

alone.

Where are you? she asks into space. She hears a clock tick in the kitchen. 

The woman sips her tea. She flips open the book a man in the subway sold to her - The Bhagavad-gita As It Is.

She pushes the pages through her fingers, the pages flipping by in a cool whisper. She stops the page, somewhere in Chapter 7. 

I am the original fragrance of the earth, the text says. 

Like a whisper in her ear. 

Everything in the material world 

has a certain flavor 

or fragrance, 

as the flavor 

and fragrance 

in a flower, 

or in the earth, 

in water, 

in fire, 

in air.

The uncontaminated flavor,

the original flavor, 

which permeates everything, 

is Kṛṣṇa.

The woman tastes the tea that lingers on the roof of her mouth. Rose. Jasmine. Something else. 

Rose. 

Jasmine. 

I am

Fragrance

in a flower

The whispers fill the air around her like so many hummingbirds. The silence. The silence that had been gnawing at her body for so many years dissipates in the gusts of whispers from the book on her lap. 

I am 

here. 

I am the original flavor, the fragrance in a flower. 

I am here in your tea.  

I am the life of all that lives. 

I am here in your heart. 

Your pulse thrums in your veins, your throat. That is Me. 

I am here. 

The woman, tingling, closes the book, the palms of her hands closing around the front and back cover. She stares at her lap. She notes that her palms are folded, and the book lay between them. 

83: Arjuna's Dilemma

Creative Expression: Graphic Novel / Comic Book Strip

Chapter 1 of the Bhagavad-gita is entitled Arjuna Vishaad Yoga, which translates as "The Yoga of Despair as Displayed by Arjuna." This means that being in despair is actually a way to unite (yoga) with God. We need to get to a place of rock bottom despair, sometimes, in order to turn to God for guidance and shelter. 

(Pssst - I had a lot of fun with this one.) 

Chapter 1.31, 45-46. 

68: Controversial Protection

CHAPTER 16, TEXT 7: Those who are demoniac do not know what is to be done and what is not to be done. Neither cleanliness nor proper behavior nor truth is found in them.

In this purport, Srila Prabhupad writes some very controversial statements about women. Let's jump right to them, shall we?

He writes, "Now, in the Manu-saṁhitā it is clearly stated that a woman should not be given freedom. That does not mean that women are to be kept as slaves, but they are like children."

Whoo boy. 

There are often two ways to go with statements like these: 

1) Reject the statements and declare Srila Prabhupad to be a backwards man who was raised in an archaic India and he is lost in ancient, inapplicable laws and espouses dangerous ideas, 

or

2) Go fire-and-brimstone and declare that women should literally not be given freedom at all and Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a bane on human society. 

So either reject these words or take them like fire. 

There's a third option here: carefully consider these words with an open mind and reflective heart. 

Prabhupad is quoting from an ancient scriptural guidebook, Manu-samhita, on the best ways for human society to function. Let's look for the kernel of truth here, and I find it in the statement "women are like children." Not that women are immature and infantilized. Women are simply more directed by emotions and are prone to make decisions based on those emotions - like children. 

Look, I'm a woman and I have a Master's Degree and graduated with honors. I have job experience in education from various parts of the world and in several prestigious institutions. I could list quite a few other experiences on my resume that demonstrate that I am an intelligent, driven, successful woman. 

And I speak with 100% understanding that yes, I resonate with the statement that "women are like children." How come? I am often overpowered by emotion. While I do not speak for all women, I know that there are women who resonate with this experience. I sometimes - oftentimes - want to make a [life] decision based on an emotion, but only when I check in with my husband does he get me to come to reason. As a whole, the masculine is driven by reason and logic, and this is what makes men - traditionally - more able to lead a household. 

That said, for the Manu-samhita to state that women should not be given freedom is controversial indeed; surely millennia of abuse in the name of scripture has transpired in India based on this lawbook's verse. 

Let's see what Prabhupad continues to say. He writes, "The demons have now neglected such injunctions, and they think that women should be given as much freedom as men. However, this has not improved the social condition of the world." Fascinating point. Ruth Bader Ginsberg championed for women to have all the same rights as men, from buying a home in her own name to having a credit card in her own name. Surely this is a step forward for society, right? That women have greater freedom?

But what was the goal of increasing a woman's capacity for freedom? To improve the social condition of the world. Prabhupad states here, though, that these increased freedoms have not improved the social condition of the world. This seems to go against modern understanding of the evolution of society. On objective scales, women are gradually getting paid just as much as men (census.gov), women are given positions to lead companies and organizations and women are even increasingly become religious leaders. How is this not an improvement on social conditions of the world? 

Those points of improvement, though, are not actually social improvement, because proper social behavior, according to the Manu-samhita, is the healthy functioning of the family - marriage, children, and old age. How do we deal with these social conditions? Are we improving? 

For the improvement of the family, the statistics show that we are not (census.gov). Households lead by women are double the rate of poverty compared to those lead by men or married-couple households. Almost a third of people on government assistance are women and children (lexingtonlaw.com) and almost two thirds of people on government assistance (Medicaid) are the elderly. This means that women, children, and elderly people are not being taken care of by their families, so the government must step in. If the government must step in, then according to the Manu-samhita, the family and social conditions are not improving. 

What is interesting, though, is the ideal that Prabhupad points out: "Actually, a woman should be given protection at every stage of life. She should be given protection by the father in her younger days, by the husband in her youth, and by the grownup sons in her old age. This is proper social behavior according to the Manu-saṁhitā." The emphasis here is that a woman is given protection. If a woman is not given protection, she must a) be her own protection, which calls upon women to imbibe more masculine qualities in order to not be taken advantage of or b) if she is put into a vulnerable situation, such as getting pregnant or getting old, and a man is not there to protect her, the government must protect her. Government housing, government food stamps, government services. 

The bigger problem, then, is that there seem to be a lack of men - fathers, husbands, or sons - to actually protect women. Women in society nowadays often grow up without a father or he's in and out. Often women don't get married or have a domestic partner, or maybe they get married and then get a divorce; either way, a steady, reliable husband isn't really there. And if a woman has a son, he often grows up without a father to model after, or even if the father is there and there's a nice family, there's little cultural support or expectation that he help his mother in her old age - hence the massive amount of elderly people on government assistance.

In this way, women are in a tough spot. They're supposed to be protected by men all their lives, but those men are not stepping up to the plate. What's a woman to do? 

This confusion, this "not knowing of what is to be done or what is not to be done" is a trademark of "demoniac" civilization. Although Prabhupad is talking  about women here, he is also talking about men. He is indirectly given men an instruction:

Be a protector. 

Be the father, the husband, or the son that your daughter, wife, or mother needs. Be a man and protect her. She needs you, even though it may not seem so. 

Full purport here: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/16/7/

U.S. Census: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/09/payday-poverty-and-women.html#:~:text=Poverty%20Rate%20Declines%20for%20Women,not%20statistically%20different%20from%202017.

Welfare Statistics: https://www.lexingtonlaw.com/blog/finance/welfare-statistics.html

60: Syamasundar-Shaped Hole

FORMAT: This post is in the format of a Found Poem - the words in italics are words taken directly from the verse and/or purport. The words in standard font are my own words. 

Syamasundar-Shaped Hole

(Chapter 6, Text 30)

I've been so lost

So alone 

So empty

For minutes and hours and days and years 

and eons

If only I could see and hear

Your eternal form of Śyāmasundara, 

situated within my heart

I know You would tell me 

"For one who sees Me everywhere 

and sees everything in Me,

I am never lost, 

nor is he ever lost to Me."

Don't be lost

alone

or empty

I am right here, You tell me.

After all,

Nothing can exist without Kṛṣṇa, 

Kṛṣṇa is the Lord of everything.

If only I would open my heart

to Your eternal form of Śyāmasundara, 

You would become my everything. 

That intimate relationship between the Lord 

and the devotee 

will fill the hole in this heart

the Syamasundar-shaped hole

the hole that echoes to me that I'm 

lost 

alone

empty

If only I would open my heart

You would never disappear from my sight

And I would never lose sight of  You

For you are my dearest Friend. 

***

Full purport here: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/6/30/

34: Make A Choice: IGNORE-ance or KNOW-ledge

CHAPTER 7, TEXT 15: Those miscreants who are grossly foolish, who are lowest among mankind, whose knowledge is stolen by illusion, and who partake of the atheistic nature of demons do not surrender unto Me.

CHAPTER 7, TEXT 16: O best among the Bhāratas, four kinds of pious men begin to render devotional service unto Me – the distressed, the desirer of wealth, the inquisitive, and he who is searching for knowledge of the Absolute.

One evening when I was thirteen years old in Hawaii, I smoked marijuana with a few of my friends at an abandoned hotel. We then went to the beach and laughed and played in the shimmering blue water in the setting sun.

The night set in fast. My friends went home and somehow I ended up at the beach alone. This was an age before cell phones, so I couldn't call my parents. I had no money for a payphone. Besides, I thought nervously, I didn't want my parents to catch whiff of anything I had been doing.

So... I walked home.

In the dark, along roads where headlights blinded me and whizzed by, through quiet streets up the mountain towards my house, I walked. I was coming off the high from the marijuana, and one side effect is to become paranoid. So walking in the dark my mind conjured monsters, ax-murderers, and ferocious beasts. You're just coming down from your high, Bhakti, get a grip, I told myself. But fear flooded my veins.

By the time I got home, the high (and the fear) had worn off. I walked through my front door exhausted to the core of my being - not only by the fear, but by my attempt to have fun. What a shallow, unreliable, and futile method to experience happiness. I had simply become miserable.

That night, I vowed to never smoke marijuana again, or take any other mind-altering substance.

The next morning, I opened up an old songbook, filled with prayers by the saints in the Vaishnava tradition. I wanted to know - what is real happiness? Surely these people had it figured out, and maybe their songs would show me the way.

That fateful evening when I was thirteen was so miserable for me that I decided to turn to God. I could  have just as easily shrugged off the miserable experience as a one-off event and kept on smoking marijuana and stumbling in the metaphorical dark. But somehow, I made a choice.

There must be more to life than this. 

Show me. 

Please. 

That choice set me on a lifelong path for the pursuit of truth and love.

These two verses from the Bhagavad-gita, verses 15 and 16 of Chapter 7, highlight in such piercingly clear ways the types of people who refuse to turn to Krishna and those who do turn to Krishna.

Below I arrayed my analysis of these two verses and the analogous types of people, which is based on the commentary by Baladev Vidyabhusan; I wove in Prabhupad's translation and commentary as well.

Ultimately, the greatest distinction between these types of people is those people who choose to ignore Krishna (and cultivate ignorance) and those who choose to know God (and cultivate true knowledge). I did  not only make the choice to know God when I was thirteen - my relationship with God and the way I turn to Him continues to evolve over time. I am called to choose on a regular basis: turn towards or turn away?

These verses are not meant to condemn, but are meant to give us the clarity to understand our own relationship with God and to ask the question: Which one of these am I?

And then - make a choice.

Full Purports by Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad here for Verse 15: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/7/15/
and here for Verse 16: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/7/16/

12: Victim vs. Creator

CHAPTER 2, TEXT 62-63: While contemplating the objects of the senses, a person develops attachment for them, and from such attachment lust develops, and from lust anger arises. From anger, complete delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost one falls down again into the material pool.

In these two verses, Krishna offers a roadmap to how one becomes a victim of this material world:

contemplating objects of the senses >>

attachment >>

lust >>

anger >>

delusion >>

bewilderment of memory >>

intelligence is lost >>

falls down into material pool

As an exercise, take a sense object that you're contemplating in your life right now and insert this object into this path of "falling down" and see what the consequences are. (I just did the exercise contemplating cheesecake, uh oh.) Or maybe take a sense object that has lead to a lot of pain in your life and trace it back all the way to when you started contemplating it (I did the exercise again with an old, painful relationship).

Seriously, give it a whirl.

Did you feel like at any point you were out of control? You were a victim of pain and suffering and your own desires?

In his purport to this verse, Srila Prabhupad uses the phrase "victims of material consciousness" (124) for those who have fallen into  the "material pool."

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a victim is: "one that is acted on and usually adversely affected by a force or agent." In this definition, "one that is acted on" is the key phrase, for it implies that the person in question has no choice.

Now, the reality of this world is that the material world is acting upon us and our loved ones at all times with misery after misery, and we have no choice, such as being cheated out of money or love, physically hurt, emotionally damaged, or even killed.

On a personal level, though, the word victim, implies lack of personal power. Language reflects consciousness, so if I'm using the word victim, this implies that I believe that I lack the power to choose what I truly want. Things happen to me.

Here is a chart of the mention of the word victim over the past 200 years (Merriam-Webster, accessed through Google):

If language reflects consciousness and the word victim indicates an increased belief that bad things are happening to me, one could gather that in society there is an increase in the persistent belief that "I have no power."

Each one of these descriptions in verses 62-63 seem like something out of our power. Bewilderment of memory? Delusion? Anger?

These all seem like lost causes. Why is Krishna even giving us this sequence if there's no hope?

The verses, though, start with dhyayato visayan, or contemplating the objects of the senses. This is where choice comes in. I can choose what I want to contemplate. What's interesting here is that Krishna describes that the act of contemplating the sense objects is what leads to a downfall, not even so much that one actually enjoys the object. Contemplation is far more powerful.

In this sense, what we contemplate are the seeds which we plant that ultimately determine what we create in our lives. The opposite of a victim mindset is a creator mindset, which according to "The Mindsets of Victims and Creators Essay" by Bartleby Research, "A Creator is someone who consistently makes choices that result in the outcome that they want" (bartleby.com).

The word "creator" indicates someone with purpose and choice and power, either someone that we know or someone Divine.

Below we can see the usage of the word creator over the past 200 years (Merriam-Webster, accessed through Google).

Here again is the image for the usage of the word victim:

I am not a social scientist. I do know, though, that on some level, language reflects consciousness. And if I am looking at these two graphs through the lens of these verses from the Gita, I would conclude that in society we can see the trend of an increase of the "victim" mindset and a decrease in the "creator" mindset.

We're falling into the "material pool" at higher and higher rates.

But wait! There is a solution. Prabhupad emphasizes that a person in Krishna consciousness does not become a victim of material consciousness. Prabhupad does not condemn material enjoyment or objects. In fact, he states that "everything has its use in the service of the Lord" (123), even sense enjoyment. He writes that we can never escape this material context by artificially abstaining from pleasure. It is impossible. The soul is hardwired to "enjoy life" (124).

The solution is to use our personal power to offer suitable items to Krishna, and then enjoy. The conclusion is that "Thus everything becomes spiritualized, and there is no danger of downfall" (124). Krishna's touch transforms something mundane - such as enjoying cheesecake! - into something spiritual that liberates the heart and mind.

Thus I can use my tendency to enjoy in the service of God. I'm not squelching or negating my desire to enjoy, only sublimating it for Krishna. Instead of losing my intelligence to the "material pool" I can use my intelligence to make choices that lead me to love and freedom.

Source:
https://www.bartleby.com/essay/The-Mindsets-of-Victims-and-Creators-FKJ75MRSTC