शाश्वतो नायकः परमात्मा रसदाता +इति रूपगोस्वाम्य्-आदयः। नाट्यरङ्गाद् बहिर् अपि रसम् उद्भावयति। कृष्णे पुरुषार्थचतुष्टयम् अपि निहितम् इति रूपगोस्वाम्य्-आदयः।
Bridging mundane, aesthetic, and spiritual experiences through Bhakti.
- Can mundane life be viewed as an on-going drama?
- For that to happen, we require a hero who transcends time and space.
- Such a hero in our tradition is Krishna.
- If everyday life can be conceptualized as an on-going divine drama, everyday objects must become objects in that drama.
- Since the hero of this drama transcends space and time, the objects in this drama transcend space and time too.
- And since everyone of us is part of life, one cannot engage with this drama as a passive spectator but actively don a role in it.
- In doing so, one oneself transcends the barrier of time and space - one becomes a Gopi, for example.
- This is the transformation of an everyday individual into a भक्त. The भक्त is a सहृदय who does not merely watch the play but participates in it. He is the true aesthete. For him/her, everyday objects appear aesthetic, losing their limited, personal meanings since he/she has himself/herself transformed into someone else - a character that transcends boundaries of time/space.
- An episode from Bhagavatam that explicates this - brahma steals away cows and cowherds from gokula. For an entire year, kRShNa transformed himself into them. That period was said to be filled with joy. Mundane happiness transformed into spiritual and aesthetic happiness.