A recent detour to different corners of the cyberspace has yet again brought before my eyes things long absent from my horizon. The intense online debates between devotees. You know, those with friends and enemies, pharisees and heresies, yes, and the apostate and the witch too for a full cavalcade. My eyes and heart have grown since the days of my last encounters with the such, and a reflection or two are in place.

To give way to hatred and ill feeling is to pave way to one's own perishness. Negative thoughts born of a material psyche consume the soul and haunt the mind at the time of bhajana. Most of us share a basic sense of their unworthiness, yet for our attachment to our lower nature we seek justified avenues for their expression in the guise of religion and idealism. sAdhu sAvadhAna! — "Saints! Be wary!" Assess your motives, assess the advantages and the disadvantages of such engagements.

In the Bhagavata, we read of the character and acts of a madhyama-bhakta as fourfold:



There is enough content in this world to be filed under dveSa that one can spend the rest of his days running with the krodha bhakta-dveSI-jane license, if one so wishes. To each his own. While there is a time and a place for apt words in defense of Gaudiya Vaisnavism proper, there are a great many times when such diatribes would be better shunned. The expression of anger or indignation is there with an aim to rectify the perceived offender, not to alienate or to destroy him. If a person has no capacity to uplift or to at least influence another, offering harsh critique, especially in public, is unbecoming and leads to aparadha. Of course, some may do it as a matter of educating others on right and wrong — but those who just vent out without a clear aim are doing nothing but swinging an axe at their own lotus foot.

In this vein, from Sri Ananta Das Babaji Maharaja’s vyakhya on the 22th tripadi of Thakura Mahasaya’s Prema-bhakti-candrika, of which the gloves off permission for verbal abuse is drawn.


And truly so, for how could one tolerate the blasphemy or viciousness towards one’s loved. Then, how is the anger duly manifest? Does the above stanza now give us a license to beat the blasphemers into a bloody pulp, or at least a license to hurl a volley of verbal abuse their way? The vyakhya continues:


Observing this to the letter would indeed create some bloody pulp. The statement is conditional however, “if one is able to”. This does not only refer to a physical possibility of an assault, but also to having a justified position for acts of corporal punishment — a privilege reserved to the ksatriyas of the yore. The Vaisnavas should, therefore, act differently:


The commentator has twice spoken of the great destroying power of anger, and speaks at great length on the dangers of anger in his vyakhya on text 24. How careful should one be, then, in engaging this fire of anger so as to not burn oneself in the process? The passage above does not recommend the staging of an all-out confrontation with the bhakta-dvesi. Rather, it recommends indignated withdrawal from the scenario, for confronting another in an angry battle of words is a risky business indeed.

There is a Vaisnava-culture we are taught to follow, and good manners and etiquette that go along with the same. There are Vaisnavas of different grades of age, both material and spiritual, of different levels of maturity, and with different relationships and positions in the society of devotees, and accordingly a great variety of eligibilities for dealing with such situations. Some related thoughts have been featured in an older text at Vilasa Kunja.

Some two Vaisnavas may be of the same generation both by birth and by initiation, and as such share a relationship permitting different levels in frankness of expression than would be suitable for relative newcomers like myself. If I were to speak out with a forté a senior and elderly Vaisnava is acquitted, I would only incur aparadha. For our own spiritual good, we should be very careful in dealing with everyone, and especially with those who have found meaning in devotion to Radha and Krishna.

Observe the power of merely observing conflicts between Vaisnavas! A friend noted, “Yesterday morning after reading all this I could barely sit in front of my altar and chant.” If exchanges of anger and indignation are invested with such a destructive power that even observers are effected, how much greater will the impact be on those amidst the conflict itself? For most purposes and for most people, the indignated exit is the safe and certain path that incurs neither the fault of inaction nor the adverse effects of aparadha.

sAdhu sAvadhAna! sAdhu sAvadhAna! sAdhu sAvadhAna!