Ground Control

This is a reply to Books who made a comment on the Look into my eyes, look into the eyes, not around the eyes… post. Books wrote:

I read a lot of different translations and one thing I appreciate about BBT translations is their transliteration word for word break down.

Even if the transliteration is inaccurate and even if you don’t know Sanskrit, with a Sanskrit to English dictionary and “teach yourself X language” books, you can easily figure out the verse.

Not many other books have this. Gita Press certainly does not.

When I read, I want to see the actually sanskrit words rather than just an english translation alone. It makes it so much easier to determine inaccurasies and come up with a more accurate translation or word meaning if neccessary.

I agree that it’s better to have the Sanskrit and Bengali with the transliteration, but it can also be worse.

Prabhupada presented a perverted version of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, but he did it in a way whereby people think that what he taught was authentic, i.e. original Sanskrit and Bengali with transliteration. That was the purpose of doing it that way — it gives the appearance of scholarly authenticity.

But it’s not so easy to figure out problems with the verses if you have been educated by Prabhupada or people who teach the same or a similar version of Gaudiya theology and philosophy as his.

Mainly because they have been led to believe that Prabhupada was teaching authentic Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Therefore they develop a very set and specific idea of what Gaudiya Vaishnavism is all about.

For example: They are taught to see bhakti-yoga in terms of submissive “devotional service”, that is — to them bhakti-yoga is mostly about submissive volunteer or ‘devotional’ service to Krishna — through a guru — whereby they will become “purified” and than receive some mystical benefit. Rather than the authentic version of seeing bhakti-yoga solely in terms of an introspective method for attaining self-realization — along with bhava and prema-bhakti.

Another example: They are taught to see the world around them (except for holy places) as ‘maya’ — a world of chaos and confusion, devoid of Krishna, and therefore valueless and something to be totally ignored and renounced — except for preaching purposes. Rather than taking to heart the teachings of the Gita and Bhagavatam where we are taught that we should try to see how Krishna is comprising and controlling everything and everyone, and how we should try to be aware of his presence everywhere through that control.

Another example: They are taught to see that the desire for ’sense gratification’, i.e. the desire to do anything but ‘devotional service’ — is the cause of samsara or ‘material bondage’. This is because Krishna doesn’t want us to be ‘enjoyers’. They are taught that the desire to enjoy your senses is what keeps you from ‘going back to Godhead’ — Krishna’s heaven — because only Krishna is allowed the desire to enjoy, everyone else must rid themselves of any and all desires to enjoy their senses — most importantly sex desire — otherwise you are not allowed into Krishna’s heaven and will be punished in the world of birth, disease, old age and death — indefinitely. Whereas the authentic teaching on the renunciation of ’sense gratification’ has nothing whatsoever to do with a sadistic imperative from God, i.e. that supposedly we must desire to exist solely for the purpose of his pleasure and not our own or we are not allowed in heaven. The authentic teaching is that the desire to enjoy is only an impediment towards attaining self-realization if the desire to enjoy stops you from taking up sadhana-bhakti; most importantly sravanam and kirtanam — ‘hearing’ or learning, and kirtan. It is not taught anywhere that the desire to enjoy per se is inherently something that Krishna is against — or the cause of being evicted from God’s heaven.

Therefore if I say — Look at how the meaning and purpose of this verse has been radically altered; the transliteration is wrong; there is embellishment which changes the meaning of the verse; and therefore the true intent of the teaching has been perverted — most of them are unable to see how it matters because at most they will believe it is of minor consequence — because they have a radically perverted vision of what bhakti-yoga and Gaudiya Vaishnavism is really all about. Rather than seeing and believing how they have been misled by bogus translations and purports by a person with an agenda to exploit them, they are more likely to believe that either Prabhupada’s version is better because he is empowered by Krishna to make the teachings more acceptable to modern people (which is the opposite of the truth), or they will deny that his version was in fact different from the intent of the verse because their entire way of looking at Krishna, bhakti and Gaudiya Vaishnava theology is so at odds with the authentic teachings, that they simply cannot see outside of the box of their own misconceptions.