Dealing with Taboos of Sexuality in the Radha-Krishna tradition Options

[Kalisurfer]

I don't even know how you pronounce it, kund or kund. . .

It's definitely kund, though people with Boston accents usually say kund! I really love how Northern Europeans say kund though, with that emphasis on kund. I once had a Bengali friend say राधाकुण्ड, but no one knew what the hell he was talking about till he said kund, which of course had to be further corrected ... with the proper English pronunciation ... to ... kund.

Unless I stand to be corrected?

[Ananda]

Ananda is not a personalist. But didn't he want to be? Did he not try hard to not be the way he is? As many of us have, tried to remove this whole way of thinking from his brain the way one might try to burn off a wart? Extreme chanting and forced marches around Radha Kund. Kund. Radha Kund. God you know what that sounds like? Such a beautiful name. I don't even know how you pronounce it, kund or kund. Either way it really does sound like it means it doesn't it? Maybe it actually does. And Ananda will now come on here and tell me. And he is right again.

Perhaps the trick is in the fact that I stopped wanting to be a personalist or an impersonalist, and have since tried to let things be as personal or as impersonal as they are, or as I see them, or as what the hell ever they are, without trying to warp them into something else over concerns of conformance to utopian ideologies.

Darwin I fully understand why the word "kund" might hold a mystic appeal to you, and be something you feel a life-long longing for. In Czech they try to spell and say "kund" as "kunt" instead, because in their language kund means cunt, or so I was told, and to go around boldly preaching how the transcendental autocrat revels in Radha's holy kund all day long would be a bit much for the faithless to digest.

Properly, the word kuNDa means "a bowlshaped vessel , basin , bowl , pitcher , pot , water-pot , a round hole in the ground , pit , well , spring or basin of water (especially consecrated to some holy purpose or person) , an adulterine , son of a woman by another man than her husband while the husband is alive , mutilation" etc. so I'm sure there's enough in there for you to understand it according to your favorite freudian twist.

I once had a Bengali friend say राधाकुण्ड, but no one knew what the hell he was talking about till he said kund, which of course had to be further corrected ... with the proper English pronunciation ... to ... kund.

Of course it's confusing to see Bengali spoken in Devanagari alphabet --- what do you expect...

However I don't think the word "kund" is the problem inasmuch as it is the word "radha" preceding it, it just doesn't sound right when you englishize it and rape the two clear long A's in the process; it shouldn't sound like "rad" in "radish", and the R shouldn't sound like you're starting the engine. The K of the kund also becomes more harsh and sounds rather like a C, like in /kʌnt/ or so.

English is so ill-suited for pronouncing languages with clear long vowels and uniform hardness of consonants. This is also why you Americanos have such a hard time keeping your dipthongs clear and in due order, and that's incidentally why you have a hard time harvesting the fruits of your sublimated Vedic mantras.

[Brainiac]

It's a pity that I can't find a relevant book about Krishna in my collection, that had an extra-long chapter about his love-lilas and less about his later politicking. Hopefully I'll find it soon and will be able to contribute interesting factoids to this discussion.

[ePiTau]

It's a pity that I can't find a relevant book about Krishna in my collection, that had an extra-long chapter about his love-lilas and less about his later politicking. Hopefully I'll find it soon and will be able to contribute interesting factoids to this discussion.

The love-lilas of the SPoG have always inspired the commentators to walk that extra mile.
I wonder whether this obsession with love is something typically human? Perhaps one of nature's tricks to get the girls pregnant. The show must go on.

[Brainiac]

It's a pity that I can't find a relevant book about Krishna in my collection, that had an extra-long chapter about his love-lilas and less about his later politicking. Hopefully I'll find it soon and will be able to contribute interesting factoids to this discussion.

The love-lilas of the SPoG have always inspired the commentators to walk that extra mile.
I wonder whether this obsession with love is something typically human? Perhaps one of nature's tricks to get the girls pregnant. The show must go on.

They dream always of effing the ineffable.

And they tell us he is effable when it suits them, ineffable when it does not.

[Dhyana]

It's a pity that I can't find a relevant book about Krishna in my collection, that had an extra-long chapter about his love-lilas and less about his later politicking. Hopefully I'll find it soon and will be able to contribute interesting factoids to this discussion.

The love-lilas of the SPoG have always inspired the commentators to walk that extra mile.
I wonder whether this obsession with love is something typically human? Perhaps one of nature's tricks to get the girls pregnant. The show must go on.

They dream always of effing the ineffable.

And they tell us he is effable when it suits them, ineffable when it does not.

[Prisni]

Well, westerrn neo-GV got it all wrong. There is nothing wrong or sinful with sex. The celibacy comes from that a GV, who identify as a gopi, ONLY have interest in romantic (or erotic) affairs with Krishna. Those who identifiy as manjaris or gopas are pre-puberty and thereefore naturally have no sexual interest in anyone.

Now, those who want to play gopis or manjaris have a big problem there, in that their erotic desires are both developed and is not oriented towards Krishna.

In the Indian society, it is the duty of persons to marry and have children, so therefore even GV form families, have sex and get children. But that is duty, not lusty desires.
Nothing says that duty cannot involve bodily pleasure.

Of course, anyone coming from ISKCON have a hard time believing any of that.
Too bad for them.

[Aranesque]

Is that it - is that all we can understand from that Lila of Krishna?

The love-lilas of the SPoG have always inspired the commentators to walk that extra mile.
I wonder whether this obsession with love is something typically human? Perhaps one of nature's tricks to get the girls pregnant. The show must go on.

They dream always of effing the ineffable.

And they tell us he is effable when it suits them, ineffable when it does not.

Question answered...

[0Sophia0]

"But Caitanya Mahaprabhu informs us that one can even have sexual engagement with the Lord. This information is Caitanya Mahaprabhu's unique contribution ... No one, however, has conceived that there can be sexual engagement in the spiritual world. There is not a single instance of such theology anywhere in the entire world ... The impersonalists have no idea; they cannot even conceive that God has form. But Caitanya Mahaprabhu says that not only does God have form, but He has sex life also. This is the highest contribution of Caitanya Mahaprabhu."
-ACBSP, Science of Self-Realization, Chap. 8

I recently found this article by an otherwise very decent Catholic scholar:

Is There Sex in Heaven?:


A Heavenly Reading of the Earthly Riddle of Sex

This spiritual intercourse with God is the ecstasy hinted at in all earthly intercourse, physical or spiritual. It is the ultimate reason why sexual passion is so strong, so different from other passions, so heavy with suggestions of profound meanings that just elude our grasp. No mere practical needs account for it. No mere animal drive explains it. No animal falls in love, writes profound romantic poetry, or sees sex as a symbol of the ultimate meaning of life because no animal is made in the image of God. Human sexuality is that image, and human sexuality is a foretaste of that self-giving, that losing and finding the self, that oneness-in-manyness that is the heart of the life and joy of the Trinity. That is what we long for; that is why we tremble to stand outside ourselves in the other, to give our whole selves, body and soul: because we are images of God the sexual being. We love the other sex because God loves God.

And this earthly love is so passionate because Heaven is full of passion, of energy and dynamism. We correctly deny that God has passions in the passive sense, being moved, driven, or conditioned by them, as we are. But to think of the love that made the worlds, the love that became human, suffered alienation from itself and died to save us rebels, the love that gleams through the fanatic joy of Jesus' obedience to the will of His Father and that shines in the eyes and lives of the saints—to think of this love as any less passionate than our temporary and conditioned passions "is a most disastrous fantasy". And that consuming fire of love is our destined Husband, according to His own promise. Sex in Heaven? Indeed, and no pale, abstract, merely mental shadow of it either. Earthly sex is the shadow, and our lives are a process of thickening so that we can share in the substance, becoming Heavenly fire so that we can endure and rejoice in the Heavenly fire.


Quite challenging, isn't it? And Mahaprabhu's contribution doesn't seem so unique anymore either.

[kalki]

Quite challenging, isn't it? And Mahaprabhu's contribution doesn't seem so unique anymore either.

Well maybe unique according to when it was first heard about.

So who was first?

[Prisni]

It is eternal, so who was first?

That the followers of Prabhupada did not understand the message, and are more into drugs, sex, rock'n roll and power games than divine love, does not make the whole thing invalid.

Once love of God hits you, and knocks you over, you are like "in love", and listen as little to reason as a teenager in love takes reason by his/her parents.
It is not something you imagine, by thinking philosophically and rationally.
As little as a teenager "in love", can think rationally about it.
No one can make rules of that, if it is not "vedic", or "bona fide", or whatever. It is what it is, like love is what it is. It follow no rules.

Erotic love of Jesus appears to appear now in the world, here and there.

Love of God has no preferences, that says that only an army clad in orange badsheets are the only ones or the chosen ones. If that army fails, another army comes and takes the battle.

That is what is there, and all those persons just playing games of sex and power, and missing the best part.
And they have built their bastilions of "vedic knowledge", with their royal guards of disciples, about how they are superior, gurus, jagad gurus, or whatever, so no one can even knock on their door and tell them about Krishna. A cowherd boy or girl would be shown off immediately, and could never ever come near the ruler on his throne.

The emperor has no clothes.
And I guess you need to be an unsofisticated village boy or girl to see it.

[Prisni]

Interestingly enough I have found internet sites who deal about an erotic relationship with Jesus, and persons claiming they experience Jesus erotically.

So the idea of an erotic relationship with God is not confined to only Gaudiya Vaisnavism.
Only that GV nowadays denies that, and goes in a more mainstream religious way, with sexual taboo, and all that.

Then we have Jagat, on the net, claiming to be Sahajiya, I think, goes in a more tantric direction, and say that the erotic relationship between humans can lead to a higher experience.
Just don't quote me on this, since I might misrepresent him here. I don't know exactly what he stands for. But it is interesting what he can dig up about past G.V.

Where did the sexual taboos really come from? In India vaisnavas are often married, with a lot of children.
Maybe hinduism is too erotically loaded for the westerner of today, with the Shiva lingam, kama sutra and all that, and hinduism, when it came to the west, adopted the catholic virtues of repression?