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Post by ulisesguerrero on Mar 27, 2015 21:27:39 GMT -5
Dear Uttamasloka prabhu,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Śrī Guru and Gaurāṅga!
It is common practice to receive a spiritual name during the diksa initiation. Does this name have any meaning or relation to the factual spiritual body, or is it only meant to be a temporary name used in this world? What is the main reason for this name giving?
With Love,
Ulises Guerrero
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Post by Uttamasloka on Mar 27, 2015 22:43:34 GMT -5
In the material world our identities are defined by our false self-conception, which is based on our place of birth, gender, family, nationality, etc. That identity has a name as well. When one becomes initiated and receives a spiritual name, it serves to create a transitional identity which is based on a spiritual conception of ourselves, ie: I am the servant of my guru, who is the servant of his guru, etc, and we are all eternal servants of Krsna. It helps us disassociate from our temporary and false material identity and reorient ourselves towards our constitutional nature as eternal servants of Krsna. But it is still connected to our physical body, which at that stage is called our sadhaka-deha.
When one becomes qualified for raganuga-bhakti, one develops the seed of their spiritual identity in the context of a personal relationship with Krsna, ie: dasya, sakhya, vatsalya or madhurya. That is where the internal, mentally conceived siddha-deha and its defining ekadasa-bhavas come into play, which is described in detail in chapter 5 of my book. Although our sadhaka name is not directly connected to our eternal name in Vraja lila, it does have some connection to our self-conception. In that chapter I also quoted a reference from Dhyanacandra Gosvami's, Gaura Govindarcana-smarana-paddhati, which describes how our sadhaka name is actually connected to certain aspects of our spiritual self-conception:
She always stays alongside Śrī Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, and she is in the prime of youth. The names of her mother, father and husband are determined in this way: The mother’s name is derived from the first syllable of the sādhaka’s guru-given name. The father’s name is derived from the third syllable, and the husband’s [name] comes from the last [syllable]. Her home is in the village of Yāvaṭa, and she has a very graceful and delicate form. She is decorated with various lovely ornaments, and she assists in the dressing of Śrī Rādhā. GGSP, 78-91
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Post by Uttamasloka on Mar 29, 2015 1:02:26 GMT -5
I just happened to read this tonight in Aindra's book, The Heart of Transcendental Book Distribution, page 56:
It is enjoined in the shastras that the guru, upon giving panca-samskara initiation, bestow a spiritual name upon the disciple to help instrumentally dismantle or at least distance the disciple’s previous falsely designated mundane bodily identity based on material relativities (sarva-upadhi-vinirmuktam) and establish a very basic, non-specific concept of being a servant of the Absolute Godhead (krisnera ’nitya-dasa). The spiritual name conferred at the time of diksa may not directly correspond to the disciple’s eternal spiritual identity and so would not, therefore, necessarily be considered the disciple’s name eternally. Nevertheless, it is spiritually useful in so far as it functions to push the novice disciple’s mind-set in the right direction.
So similarly, it is indeed very useful, from the stage of purified hearing (krama-shuddha-shravana-dasha) after achieving a considerable degree of anartha-nivritti, to culture via artha-pravritti the internally conceived siddha-deha in terms of the ekadasha-bhava under the guidance of Shri Guru or rasika Vaishnavas. Such internal contemplation effectively enables the eligible intermediate devotee to easily overcome various latent false egoisms, by positively fostering a conceptually graspable, unambiguous, cogently personal, spiritual identity, well beyond the external bodily notion of what it supposedly means to be a devotee. Particularly for the madhurya devotee cherishing the mood of being Radha’s dasy-anudasi, even the conception of being dasanudasa would be a false egoism, an upadhi, a matter of external appellation only.
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