Steven Rosen - Sri Chaitanya’s Life and Teachings: The Golden Avatara of Divine Love

r Chaitanyas Life and Teachings

Explorations in Indic Traditions:
Theological, Ethical, and Philosophical

Series Editor: Jeffery D. Long, Elizabethtown College

Advisory Board

Purushottama Bilimoria, Christopher Key Chapple, Jonathan Gold, Pankaj Jain, Nathan Katz, Kusumita Pedersen, and Rita D. Sherma

The region historically known as the Indian subcontinent (and more recently as South Asia) is rich with ancient and sophisticated traditions of intellectual and contemplative investigation. This includes both indigenous traditions (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh) and traditions that have found a home in this region (Islamic, Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian). This series is devoted to studies rooted in critical and constructive methodologies (such as ethics, philosophy, and theology) that show how these traditions can illuminate universal human questions: questions about the meaning of life, the nature of knowledge, good and evil, and the broader metaphysical context of human existence. A particular focus of this series is the relevance of these traditions to urgent issues that face humanity todaysuch as the ecological crisis, gender relations, poverty and social inequality, and religiously motivated violenceon the assumption that these traditions, far from being of merely historical interest, have the potential to enrich contemporary conversations and advance human understanding.

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Gurumaa : 21st Century Innovation in a Woman - Led Spiritual Community , by Angela Rudert

r Chaitanya s Life and Teachings : The Golden Avat ra of Divine Love , by Steven J. Rosen

r Chaitanyas Life and Teachings

The Golden Avatra of Divine Love

Steven J. Rosen

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham Boulder New York London

Frontispiece courtesy of Drdha Vrata Gorrick www.divyakala.com.

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ISBN 978-1-4985-5833-4 (cloth : alk. paper)

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Printed in the United States of America

For Vrin and Prati

k nu vin g ta n

If there is no Krishna, there is no song.

sumekhala he parirambhan gaura

m ve aya hi na kad cin muca

O charming belt that embraces Gaura! Hug me tightly and never let me go.

Contents

Jeffery D. Long

Jeffery D. Long

Series Editor

When I was first approached by Sarah Craig, the acquisitions editor for religion at Lexington Books, about the possibility of developing a series focused on Indian religious traditions, I saw it as a wonderful opportunity to develop a series with a constructive focus. The result has been the series of which I am delighted to say this volume is a member. Explorations in Indic Traditions: Ethical, Philosophical, and Theological arose from the very strong desire of a growing number of scholars of Indic traditions for venues in which to pursue constructive work of the kind we see many scholars pursuing under the rubric of Christianity: work which pursues questions of an ethical, philosophical, and theological nature as such , rather than simply describing the work that others have done in this regard from a more detached, historical perspective. Like many of our students, the work of a growing number of people who study Indic traditions is fueled by questions of this kind. We are not only interested, for example, in the fact that there are people who believe in reincarnation. We are ourselves interested in whether there really is such a thing as reincarnation and how one might argue for (or against) this idea. We are interested in ethical questions: questions of right and wrong. We are interested in questions about the ultimate meaning of existence. And many of us inhabit traditions that have a good many interesting things to say about these issues, and we would like the freedom to allow our work to be informed by these traditional conversations.

Many in the academy of religion of course have legitimate concerns about openly and unabashedly theological (and other kinds of constructive) standpoints operating as part of scholarly discourse, being far more comfortable keeping such standpoints at arms length, as objects of study rather than as perspectives with which it might be desirable to engage substantively. It took a good deal of effort for the academic study of religion to free itself from the constraints of Christian theology: a project that is, arguably, even yet incomplete. The aim, though, is not for constructive thought to reassert a hegemonic space in the academy. Certainly, that is not the aim of those of us who are involved in this series. It is, rather, to open up a space in which constructive work can occur alongside, in dialogue, and even in collaboration, with what has come to be the more conventional social scientific approach of academic scholarship on religionespecially religions originating or widely practiced in India/South Asia.

In opening up such a space in an environment where scholars are often suspicious of constructive work, the burden of proof, fairly or not, is on those of us who advocate such work to show that it can be done in a rigorous fashion, which meets the academys standards of logical argumentation and empirical evidence. We need to show, in short, that the perspectives of the practitioners of traditions are not merely confessionalnot resulting merely in statements of beliefbut are capable of producing substantive knowledge that contributes not only to a particular tradition, but to the wider academic discourse as well.

If one were looking for a representative of an Indic tradition whose work was capable of meeting this high standardof embodying the values underlying this seriesone of the first names which would come to mind would be Steven J. Rosen.

Steven has done outstanding work through the years, with books designed primarily with a popular audience in mind; as editor of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies (which has served as a venue for excellent work from some of the top scholars in the study of Vaishnava traditions); and with academically oriented books such as his Essential Hinduism and Krishnas Other Song: A New Look at the Uddhava Gita (both published by Praeger/Greenwood), which have been recognized and accepted by the academy and have long been used as textbooks for college courses in English-speaking countries. As an author of popular works, his writing has the virtue of being clear and accessible. Yet his knowledge of the traditions about which he writes is so great that he does not oversimplify the material he presents. His work has depth without obscurantism, clarity without superficiality.

As one might imagine, I was delighted to learn that Steven was interested in contributing a work to this series. And not just any work: it could well be argued that this volume is his magnum opus. While it is written with the clarity of his earlier work, there is scholarly depth here that makes this particular volume a substantial contribution to academic knowledge of the important, but under-studied figure of r Chaitanya Mahprabhu.