Vrindavan, 2018.03.31 (VT): Radhika Swamini or Rishika Devi, artist and author, released her newest book at Jiva on Friday. The book is a poetical rendition of portions of the Gopala Champu by Jiva Goswami. Radhika Devi is a longtime student of Sanskritic culture and poetics. The book can be obtained at the Jiva Institute. We are presenting a few excerpts from the Goloka Vilasa Champu.
Swamini is also an artist and designed the front cover.
Sarvaṁ sarvātmakam
Everything is alive in the dhāman.
All objects so said are in fact but
Actors in the play in the Lord.
How the rivers sport.
How the mountains tremble.
How the sands induce amour.
Now to understand the divine
Place of the Lord’s love-ports we
need but hear with the purest ear
newly tuned to the poet’s
divinely heard words.
Goloka Vṛndāvana Vilāsa
Atha, O king, that place of Nanda Maharaj
Vraj is naturally endowed with all opulence.
Yet as soon as Krishna appears, just see, it
becomes the Palace-of-Grace per se viz.
Hara, the Goddess of Fortune, known as
Amazing Sri Radhika Devi.
What is Vrindavan but the Deity of the Earth?
What is Vrindavan but that place where even
the slightest touches provokes but the winds of bliss
and mirth, to purify – poets say – but by
the lightest ruse of kissing new birds?
Does it not bestow artha, kama and dharma indeed
and does it not confer moksha?
Yet Vrindavan itself, it is said, is not
enamored as it binds the eager souls but to her own ever
unfolding quality in that land of cows, calves, plants and the
Jumma sand-banks of immortality?
Śvetadvīpa also Known as Goloka
In Vrindavan all contradictions are resolved, viz.
Virodhālaṅkāra. Yet Poets fail to explain how
Vrindavan remains the enigma of speech.
Yet again the literati bards never fail to
hail provisions of poetic descriptions
of that art which in fact is beyond
its own reachable
prediiection!
Ah! in Vrindavan we find the eternal ballroom of bliss.
Is it not the son of Nanda who, giving ānanda to all,
appears in the the midst of this forest of Braj,
and is not by his sweet will that all types of folks
are privy to the charm of that vast shyama forest
of pastimes of fulfilling the wants of all?
Where all walking is dancing,
where all talking is song,
where the sound of the flute announces
the coming of the best friend of all,
where all things relishable are meant but for the self
in service to Krishna and his Braja land.
Just hear this: it is said of Vrindavan
that all things revealed are but items-cum-objects
of pure ananda, that is, bliss. Poets say, are you yourself
not included, viz.scriptural ‘so’ ham seeing the self as but his part and parcel?
Shame to hear that only a few devoted folks
wandering this earth have realized the ever
extended bliss, mirth and girth of that Goloka.
A Ground-Map of Gokula
What else can i say: that place, that Goloka sports cows
who give endless flows of milk,
yet time there – all but phased –
is yet conspicuous by its own absence.
Here is visualization for those folks wishing to
compose a blue-template of sorts, viz. Goloka.
Gokula is the center of a thousand-petalled lotus
sustained by the spirituality of Baladev, called Ananta.
It is said Gokula is encircled by an astonishing square
named Śveta-dvīpa or Goloka. Again that domain is quartered
in four lots where the four Gods viz. Visnu forms,
Vasudeva, Sankarsana, Aniruddha and Pradyumna, resort.
That Place is endowed with the four goals of human life;
Ten spears guard the ten directions, including up and down.
The entire town so to speak is endowed with the eight treasures and siddhis.
Ten dikpalas, or protectors in the form of mantras
surround the precincts divine.
Indeed the four Vedas
are part of that
corpus of
guards for
the entire
plateau
of that
heart-
land of
mine.
Atha Para-Deśa
Who would not wish to hear about
the ultimate para-deśa named Vrindavan,
where twelve forests ever remain fresh.
Animals, birds and deer, insects et al,
including the human beings such as ourselves
reside there eternally without death.
Sayeth the Lord, upon dying those folks
who inhabited the divine dhaman
come then to My abode.
Ah! Is not the river Kalindi
the Susumna channel,
leading but to the
eternal nectar-drenched
place designated as paramārtha-deśa-vākya,
the place of ultimate meaning, where objects and sounds
collapse into One Unbroken Whole?
In their divine bodies
the celestial inhabitants serve me continually.
In fact, all the Devas
and the combination of all elements
who or which reside there
in a spiritual form are but myself.
In fact am I not the epitome of those devas?
True, I may appear to come and go
in the world of matter and men,
but I do not, for a movement
leave that pleasurable court par excellence.
Ah, that place divine – impure
to the material eye of so called
seekers – as such is aprakaṭa,
in fact invisible viz. That!
For the blind on this path!
Vismaya Yoga-bhūmikā.
As variegated forms are drawn on reamed slates
so multiple objects of various sorts are depicted
here as pramana, or evidence of the
Endless Portal Court Supreme.
As if seeing in a spotless mirror, the entire Braj,
composed of pristine elements for seeing and hearing,
acts like the chintamani stone, fulfilling the desires
of all who sit as if under the rarest Tree – kalpa-vṛkṣa.
Who can deny seeings the inhabitants of this astonishing
place make the mind unsteady, the heart triple phased.
Essence of Things
The special features of Krishna were revealed and indeed
are considered to be the essence of all things, so to speak.
Dd the Lord not show himself as the ruler of Vaikuntha
when along with his friends, deep in the river Jumna,
that Brahma-hrada place of the greatest mystery,
He appeared as such, none other than the Lord of LOrds,
He, whose glories are sung by the Vedas, but now
appearing in yellow dhotied dramatized silk-cloth?
Palace of Pure Light
That place called Goloka is the supreme manifestation,
indeed the realm of pure light, which very few know
called jyoti herself. Is it not made of knowledge and bliss alone,
since as we know, shakti is non different from
shaktiman, indeed the same as his svarupa-cum-body et al?
Thus, poets say, a felicitous Two-in-One Yugal!
It is that very jyoti indeed that reveals something
we call a bloom of sorts. It is that very feature which
produces, so to speak, the unfolding rose-portals
of the Lord’s human-like pastimes.
Radhika Swamini giving a reading.
Presenting book to Satyanarayana Dasaji.
The post New book release: Darshan, Selected Verses from Gopala Champu appeared first on Vrindavan Today.