About

Welcome. Namaskāra.

Dedication

Anuśīlana.in is to dedicated to the ideal of uttama-bhakti taught by Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī in accord with the wish of Bhagavān Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu.

Purpose (prayojana)

The purpose of Anuśīlana.in is to support the cultivation of uttama-bhakti.

Title

The Sanskrit word anuśīlana is generally defined as “(1) constant practice or study; and (2) repeated and devoted service.” Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī uses the word anuśīlana to define uttama-bhakti at the outset of Śrī Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu. To indicate that supporting study and practice of uttama-bhakti is the ideal to which this site is dedicated, the word anuśīlana has been chosen as the title.

Content (viṣaya)

The content on Anuśīlana.in is focused on Gauḍīya–Vaiṣṇava-darśana as presented by the gosvāmīs of Vraja on the basis of Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, the prasthāna-trayī [i.e., the Upaniṣads, Śrīmad Bhagavad-gītā, and the Vedānta-sūtra], and other śāstras—the Purāṇas, Itihāsas, Smṛtis, and so forth.

Content from the works of other luminaries within the Gauḍīya sampradāya, ācāryas of other sampradāyas, kavis from assorted genres of Sanskrit literature, exponents of the ṣaḍ-darśanas, and various vaiyākaraṇas, as well as miscellaneous subhāṣitas, are also included supplementarily.

Effort has been made to present the aforementioned content in a manner that is readily accessible and searchable, to translate it consistently according to an openly stated set of principles, and to include citations to its sources as far as possible.

Primary offerings

Sūkti-sudhākara

A compendium of categorically organized sūktis [i.e., quotations, lit., “fine statements”] from the works of the gosvāmīs, śāstras led by Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, and others genres of Sanskrit literature compiled for the purpose of making content from the aforementioned works readily accessible to those seeking knowledge related to particular concepts, themes, authors, and textual sources.

Stotra-stavaka

A compendium of stotras from the works of the gosvāmīs, various śāstras, and other ācāryas.

Gīti-guñja

A compendium of songs by various Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava kavis.

Audience (adhikārī)

The readership of Anuśīlana.in ideally has

• Śāstrīya-śraddhā,
• Resolve to cultivate the ideal of uttama-bhakti as taught by Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī and his retinue, and
• Basic knowledge of Sanskrit and a fondness for the Sanskrit terminology employed and developed by the Gauḍīya ācāryas.

These prerequisites have been formulated on the basis of the adhikāra (eligibility) stipulated in śāstras and commentaries such as Śrīmad Bhagavad-gītā, Bhāgavat Sandarbha, and the Govinda-bhāṣya. This site contains content from these texts, as well as numerous other śāstras and treatises like them, and the adhikāra stipulated in these texts thus also applies to the content on this site.

If a reader doesn’t have the aforementioned qualifications but is nevertheless inclined to acquiring these qualifications and fosters a general disposition of respect towards the content and its sources, they are also welcome to study the site’s content.¹

Those who don’t have these qualifications are kindly asked to browse elsewhere.

Translation

As stated above, the content on this site is translated by its author (unless otherwise noted) according to an openly stated set of principles.

Authorship

The author of this site has been a student of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava thought since 2004. He is a disciple, within the Gadādhara Dāsa Gosvāmī parivāra, of Śrīmad Gaurāṅga Dāsa Bābājī Mahārāja of Śrī Vṛndāvana Dhāma, and a grand-disciple of Śrīmad Mādhava Dāsa Bābājī Mahārāja, an erstwhile mahānta (1962–2002) of Śrī Sanātana Gosvāmīpāda’s Madana Mohana Mandira.²

The author has also had the good fortune to learn from numerous sādhus throughout Śrī Vraja Dhāma, Śrī Gauḍa Maṇḍala, and elsewhere, whose wisdom and conduct have directly and indirectly contributed to the content shared on this site. It’s not possible to express acknowledgement of them all in this brief summary. Especially noteworthy, however, is Śrī Satyanārāyaṇa Dāsa Bābājī Mahārāja of Sheetal Chaya in Śrī Vṛndāvana Dhāma, from whom the author has had the privilege of studying the Bhāgavata Sandarbha, Hari-nāmāmṛta-vyākaraṇa, and various other works.

With Śrī Sanātana Gosvāmīpāda’s stern forewarning in mind, the author prefers to omit his name from this site, as his aim in publishing the site is simply providing resources for persons who value the ideal to which the site is dedicated. It has to be acknowledged, however, that as soon as one publishes anything even anonymously it is impossible to completely avoid at least some degree of roundabout self-promotion. The author thus prays to the Vaiṣṇavas that his heart may be purified of the taint produced by this.

Be that as it may, the author also values transparency and personal responsibility, and thus will communicate with readers of the site personally upon request. He is also ready to accept responsibility for all errors on the site and welcomes corrections and constructive critiques.

Non-affiliation

This is site and its author bear no affiliation to any particular maṭha, āśrama, temple, gaddi, trust, mission, society, organization, school, saṅgha, business, or other social entity.

Funding

This site is self-funded and runs on an average annual budget of less than $100. It seeks no financial support from readers, makes no sponsored promotions of any kind, contains no links or prompts for donations, and has no interest in procuring financial gain from its offerings.

Hosting

This site uses a provider that claims to adhere to a number of relatively environmentally responsible business practices.

Design

This site’s design springs from an ethic of minimalism with the aim of facilitating focus and reflection. It reads in Charis SIL, a serif face optimized for high readability in long documents and less than ideal display environments that contains all the diacritic characters needed to display IAST standard transliterated Sanskrit. The complete exclusion of imagery seeks to create a sāttvika atmosphere and sense of relief from the barrage of rājasika and tāmasika photo and video content that dominates today’s internet.

Licensing

The content on this website is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. This means, in simple terms, that readers are welcome to quote or reuse the content on this site without consulting the author provided (1) they present a citation in their work to the page where the content originates as per common standards (e.g., those of the CMOS, MLA, AP, or APA), (2) they do not use the content for commercial purposes, and (3) they too allow the same privileges to readers of the work they create. Please review the license’s full terms of use if you plan to cite or reuse any of the content offered on this site. Outstanding queries regarding reuse or citation can be submitted on the contact page.

User privacy

This site conducts no tracking, runs no analytics, and includes no integration with other sites that do. Any information a reader electively shares with the site will not be shared with any third-party unless the administrator should somehow be compelled to do so by law. For a full explanation of the privacy practices employed on this site, please read the privacy policy.

Exclusions

The import of any composition, artwork, system of thought, and so forth is appreciated not only by consideration of its content but also consideration of what is intentionally excluded from it. Thus, to further clarify the character of the pursuit of Anuśīlana.in’s purpose, a brief list of elements excluded from it by design include:

• Counters of views, subscribers, etc.,
• Buttons and appeals to like, share, subscribe, etc.,
• Gimmicks to acquire the email addresses and other data of readers,
• Integration with social media platforms,
• Incentivized endorsements,
• Posturing as being “official,” “authorized,” etc., and
• Clickbait and eye candy.

The primary aim of these exclusions is to honor readers’ dignity, respect readers’ privacy, facilitate readers’ freethinking, constructively defy the norms of the addictive design schemes employed by the media platforms that dominate today’s internet, and minimize fortification of cognitive biases, like groupthink and in-group favoritism, as well as fallacies in reasoning like the bandwagon effect and the genetic fallacy.

If anyone would like to receive notifications of new postings on the site, they can do so with complete privacy and convenience by simply adding this link to their preferred RSS feed reader, be it a browser extension, mobile app, or otherwise.

Non-intent

In addition to the aforementioned exclusions in design, the following are noteworthy exclusions in intent.

The content on this site is:

• Not for preaching and/or proselytizing,
• Not for academic research,
• Not for criticizing or demeaning any Vaiṣṇava, Vaiṣṇava community, or anyone at all for that matter,
• Not for replacing or de-emphasizing (the crucially necessary practice of) studying śāstra directly under the guidance of a guru (i.e., de-facto promotion of remote self-study),
• Not part of an attempt to create a brand or participate in the trend of integrating forms of brand consumerism into Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava discourse and association,
• Not part of an endeavor to establish or maintain a sect, society, differentiated saṅgha, or institution of any kind, be it a matḥa, āśrama, or otherwise.

Origin

This site and the content on it are an ongoing, peripheral by-product of the author’s personal study and pursuit of the ideal of uttama-bhakti. Content is added to the site at no specified regularity and for the most part is simply an archive of verses, commentaries, and other compositions found to be worthy of note, reflection, and remembrance by the author in the course of his studies with his gurus.

The content is made available in the form of this website with the idea that such resources may be found to be useful to others following the path of uttama-bhakti or seeking to learn about it. The author makes his work available on this site simply for this purpose, and does so with the express blessing of his guru.

Warning

Although careful study and reflection has gone into the translation and representation on this site of the statements of the śāstra and the ācāryas, the content is not necessarily accurate. Readers are requested to read carefully and discerningly. The author is by no means free from susceptibility to human error, and by no means necessarily capable of grasping the subtle import of the śāstra and the ācāryas’ words invariably without fail. The author presents the great majority of the content on the site after having heard and/or discussed it with his gurus, but nevertheless may still well make errors. He begs the forgiveness of the Vaiṣṇava community for any instances of this and humbly requests that any such instances be reported for correction. 

Praṇāma

The author offers his respects to all visitors of the site and his obeisances unto all Vaiṣṇavas:

वाञ्छाकल्पतरुभ्यश्च कृपासिन्धुभ्य एव च ।
पतितानां पावनेभ्यो वैष्णवेभ्यो नमो नमः ॥

vāñchā-kalpa-tarubhyaś ca kṛpā-sindhubhya eva ca |
patitānāṁ pāvanebhyo vaiṣṇavebhyo namo namaḥ ||

Obeisance and obeisance unto the desire-trees, the oceans of grace, the purifiers of the fallen—the Vaiṣṇavas.

Footnotes

1: Three elements of the classical anubandha-catuṣṭaya used to overview a literary work, viz., prayojana, viṣaya, and adhikārī, have been discussed here since the fourth, the sambandha (relation) between a text and its subject, is invariably that of vācya-vācaka-sambandha: the relation of referent (vācya) and referrer (vācaka), or, “that which is to be expressed” (vācya) and “that which expresses [it]” (vācaka). Alternately, and more thoroughly, this relationship consists of (1) the śabda, that is, the words, or, sounds expressive of meaning [i.e., the vācaka], that refer to the object being described in the text, (2) the artha, that is, the cognition of an object that arises in the mind as a result of hearing or reading the words in the text that refer to it, and (3) the padārtha, that is, the object itself [i.e., the vastu] which is being described in the text and cognized in the mind.

2: Śrī Hari-bhakti-vilāsa cites an injunction that one should conceal one’s guru, along with one‘s Iṣṭa-devatā, mantra, and mālā. Since the gosvāmīs in some cases did offer homage to their gurus by name in their writings, this injunction is understood to enjoin not that one ought not ever mention the name of one’s guru in cases where such mentioned is warranted, such as in praying to them at the outset of a composition or honoring their grace and/or contribution in relation to a composition, but rather that one should not mention them by name in circumstances in which there is foreseeable likelihood of disrespect being shown towards them. Moreover, this injunction is understood to convey that one ought not make a concerted endeavor to promote one’s guru in society or persuade others to accept one’s guru as their own. The author’s only intention in mentioning the names of his gurus here on this site is offering acknowledgement and homage to them.