Sadhu-sanga Sadhu-sanga Sarva-sastre Kaya - But of which type?

Sadhu-sanga is indeed a most powerful factor in one's practice of bhakti. This is true even in material affairs; hanging out with a certain "crowd" will lead you to develop similar personality and cultural traits.

Over the years I have found the same to be true even in my own personal experience. Whenever you read a piece of religious or spiritual literature you tend to fee some sort of affinity for it until you finally find something that "fits" you. Before such a fit, one who may read the literatures of other sampradayas may be attracted to the path outlined therein, their texts, their particular aspirations for that bhava, and so on. We have seen that those who were previously connected in some way to the Gaudiya sampradaya subsequently went on to join the Madhva, Sri or Nimbarki sampradayas. The reverse may also hold true.
Who knows why this takes place? Who knows what has been achieved in any state? It seems that the common factor in these conversions involves sadhu-sanga in some way or other.

This brings us to the subject of faith. One is supposed to develop a certain kind of faith upon being introduced to a certain set of ideas, and then proceed to associate with those of like-mind. Due to such association, the initial faith becomes stronger in such company and one tends to openly advocate those ideas. In the case of a conversion of some sort taking place, this leads me to believe that the "faith" was never very strong in the first place, was it?

What kind of "faith" is being described? How fragile is it and how else can it be described?

Faith is something remarkable, and something very important for Gaudiya Vaisnava bhakti. Our whole life is built upon faith. We can't live without faith. We have faith that our heart will beat and not fail, that our digestion will work, that certain kinds of foodstuff will not poison us. We also have faith that the ground is solid enough to hold us up, even though we probably learned in school science that matter is more than 99% nothing. We have faith that the stars will not fall on our heads, and also that the ceilings of our houses will not. Our whole existence is built upon faith. We don't even think about it. People who loose that faith, go insane.

And all those solid "facts", or faiths, since nothing is really a fact, what is remarkable is what we don't have faith in. We don't have faith in the existence of God. Some celebrated western philosophers don't even know if they exist themselves.

So we have faith in material things. This is since those faiths belong to the body, to the false ego of the body, and we don't even think about it. But spiritually we don't have faith, since such faith is not part of the material ego and as conditioned souls we have not developed our spiritual ego. What we have to do is to develop our own real faith, our spiritual faith. Faith that is not dictated by the false ego of the body, but by our real ego. And that is the problem with spiritual faith. We have to build it up, it does not come automatically.
The tools to build this spiritual faith, from actually practically nothing, is our material body, our material mind and intelligence. We can also listen to others who have faith, and try to develop the same way as them. They might be happy to explain spiritual faith.

The material faiths can be examined and understood, by our material senses, outer and inner, and by that we can learn to understand the nature of faith. That understanding can then be used to bootstrap real spiritual faith.

Without faith, there cannot be any spiritual development. We can learn a lot of books, learn what others have said and quote it whenever we need. We can become big scholars. But all that is just material understanding, in the brain cells (or whatever) of our body. It is of no value by itself. We need to develop our spiritual body, knowledge in our spiritual body and spiritual faith. The learned book knowledge is meant to be utilized to develop our spiritual body, our spiritual intelligence and faith.

Spiritual faith, in our spiritual body, is not fragile. It is rock solid. This is because it is real (to ourselves). Faith that has not developed properly, that is mostly what you have heard or read, is fragile. Anyone can make you change your mind about it, by giving another idea. Real faith is like a shining light that guides you through life. If you have faith, nothing really bad can happen spiritually, even if everything material around you gets destroyed. Real faith is not destroyed at the time of death, but something you carry with you to the next lifetime.

If you find a devotee with real faith, associate with him. He can give you the most precious gift, if he wants to. That is sadhu sanga. This is since a spiritually advanced devotee will associate with you on the spiritual level, directly with your spiritual body. Even though you might not have developed your spiritual body much, by spiritual association, you will feel something through your spiritual senses. And by doing that you gain faith that you actually have spiritual senses, and also gain taste to develop those. That is most favourable to spiritual progress. This is not a material process, but a spiritual process. Something very rare in this place of the universe.


The beginning of spiritual processes are quite similar. It is about purification from the grossest of material attachment and to develop our more subtle understanding. By focusing less and less on the gross material and more and more on the subtle and then on the spiritual, we advance spiritually. This we can do in gaudiya vaisnava movement like ISKCON, in any sampradaya, as a yogi, Christian, and any religious system. But when we advance spiritually, we develop more and more of a particular spiritual taste, and that's when we might find that the movement we are engaged in, does not match that taste exactly. So then we change to another movement, or teaching, that is more to our taste.

Gaudiya Vaisnavism is about developing a very particular taste. The taste for direct association with Radha-Krishna in Goloka. Not every person have a desire for that, but might for example more desire to associate with Visnu in awe and reverence, or even with Jesus Christ or whatever. So when advance from the very first spiritual steps and purify us materially, we might realize that we rather want to do something else than being females in an erotic relationship with Krishna, so we switch to a spritual movement more to our taste. As we advance further, we might realise or develop our own taste better, and might switch spiritual path again. This might go on lifetime after lifetime until our taste and faith gets firm. Coming to the raganuga bhakti platform particularly means that we have developed firm taste and faith. We don't deviate anymore since we know what we want and have developed our spiritual form sufficiently.

According to Swami B.H. Bon's translation of BRS, faith that flits about all over the place is largely a characteristic of the kanistha-adhikari (1.2.19 - yo bhavet komalazraddah, etc). Bon includes the commentaries of the Acharyas in his translations and these are interesting; Jiva Gosvami points out that sraddha here means faith in the Scriptures. It is interesting how the main differences between the kanistha, madhyama and uttama seems to rest nicely on the strength of their faith combined with their knowledge of sastra. A madhyama-adhikari may not have complete knowledge of the sastra in order to tackle opposing arguments but his faith will not deviate. The uttama-adhikari has expert knowledge of sastra and is also able to hold his ground against opposing arguments, and the kanistha-adhikari is liable to be won over by arguments that he is unable to refute due to his meagre knowledge of sastra.

The comments about sastra are also interesting: Commenting on BRS 1.2.17, Visvanatha defines 'sarvatha' as not just firm faith in the tattva-vicara and sadhana-vicara of the scriptures (as per Jiva Gosvami's interpretation), but also in the teachings of the scriptures about purusartha-vicara also. Interesting. I wonder what types of scripture those would be, the various dharma-sastras perhaps? Kautilya's artha-sastra? Kama-sutra?!

Mukundadasa Gosvami also has a particular opinion. Can anyone tell me a little about his history also? I know nothing about him, I looked in the 'Pastimes and Biography' section of this forum and found nothing.

Mukunda Das is a disciple of Krishnadas Kaviraja. Beyond that, I can't recall ever reading anything about him.