Sex, Gender, and Devotional Desire: Refiguring Bodily Identities in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Discourse

Abstract

Many of the debates among theorists of the body in feminist and gender studies center on the gendered body and its relation to the sexed body, with the validity of the sex/gender distinction itself a topic of contention. On the one hand, feminist advocates of social constructionism tend to distinguish between sex and gender, in which sex (male or female) is identified with the biological body as a “natural” datum and gender (masculine or feminine) is a second-order sociocultural construction that is superimposed as an ideological superstructure on this “natural” base. On the other hand, feminist advocates of sexual difference such as Judith Butler call into question the sex/gender distinction and insist that the sexed body, like gender, is socially constructed. This article brings these contemporary feminist interlocutors into conversation with sixteenth-century Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava authorities who developed a distinctive discourse of embodiment in which they frame the categories of sex and gender in relation to devotional desire in their ontological theories of bodily identities. The Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment explodes notions of the relationship between embodiment, personhood, materiality, and gender on both the human and divine planes and challenges prevailing body theories by positing bodies beyond matter, personhood beyond matter, and gender beyond sex.

In the past decades theories of the “body” as an analytical category have proliferated in the social sciences and humanities, particularly within the context of cultural studies. The body has been theorized from a diverse range of disciplinary perspectives, which has generated a host of contending categories of the body, such as the lived body, the mindful body, the social body, the body politic, the medical body, the alimentary body, the sexual body, the sexed body, and the gendered body. Among the plethora of theories, as I have discussed at length elsewhere, three areas of scholarship in particular have had a significant influence on studies of the body in religion: the body in philosophy, the body in social theory, and the body in feminist and gender studies.¹

For the purpose of the present analysis, I would like to briefly highlight the contributions of feminist theorists whose critiques of the “phallocentric” discourses of Western culture generally involve a sustained critique of the dualisms fostered by these discourses, with particular attention to the gendered inflection of the mind/body dichotomy. Among the wide-ranging theories of the body in feminist and gender studies, four types of approaches are of particular significance. One approach, consonant with early American feminists’ emphasis on the irreducible reality of women’s experience, centers on experiences of the female body, focusing on those bodily experiences that are unique to women, such as menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, and menopause. A second approach, inspired by French scholars Julia Kristeva (1980, 1982, 1986), Luce Irigaray (1985a, 1985b, 1993), and Hélène Cixous (1976, 1994; Cixous and Clément 1986), focuses on the role of discourse in constructing the female body, emphasizing that the body is a text inscribed by the structures of language and signification, and hence there is no experience of the body apart from discourse. Irigaray and Cixous, exponents of écriture féminine, propose “writing the body” and generating new inscriptions of the female body that are liberated from phallocentric discursive practices and that celebrate the alterity of woman’s sexual difference. The notion of sexual difference has been developed in a variety of distinctive ways by Anglo-American feminists such as Judith Butler (1990, 1993, 2004). A third approach, represented by British and American Marxist feminists and other advocates of social reform, challenges the preoccupation by French feminists and other proponents of sexual difference with the discourse of woman’s body and emphasizes instead the politics of bodily praxis in which the female body is a site of political struggle involving concrete social and material realities, ranging from socioeconomic oppression and violence against women to reproductive rights and female eating disorders.² A fourth approach, espoused by the Black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989, 1991) and other proponents of intersectionality, emphasizes the need to address sex and gender within the interlocking matrix of race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and other identity markers.

Many of the debates among theorists of the body in feminist and gender studies center on the gendered body and its relation to the sexed body, with the validity of the sex/gender distinction itself a topic of contention. On the one hand, feminist advocates of social constructionism tend to distinguish between sex and gender, in which sex (male or female) is identified with the biological body as a “natural” datum and gender (masculine or feminine) is a second-order sociocultural construction that is superimposed as an ideological superstructure on this “natural” base. On the other hand, certain feminist proponents of sexual difference call into question the sex/gender distinction and insist that the sexed body, like gender, is a sociocultural construction.³

Butler, for example, in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), challenges the heteronormative regimes that seek to delimit “intelligible” genders by maintaining relations of continuity among sex, gender, and sexual desire and perpetuating norms that “establish causal or expressive lines of connection among biological sex, culturally constituted genders, and the ‘expression’ or ‘effect’ of both in the manifestation of sexual desire through sexual practice” (17). In Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993), Butler argues further that the binary sex/gender system arises not from nature but from a system of cultural norms grounded in the “heterosexual imperative,” and thus “sex” must be construed not “as a bodily given on which the construct of gender is artificially imposed, but as a cultural norm which governs the materialization of bodies” (2–3). In Butler’s perspective, the construction of sexed bodies is not a once-and-for-all act culminating in a set of firmly fixed effects but is rather an ongoing process of materialization in accordance with regulatory norms.

What I would propose…is a return to the notion of matter, not as site or surface, but as a process of materialization that stabilizes over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface we call matter. That matter is always materialized has, I think, to be thought in relation to the productive and, indeed, materializing effects of regulatory power in the Foucaultian sense. Thus, the question is no longer, How is gender constituted as and through a certain interpretation of sex? (a question that leaves the “matter” of sex untheorized), but rather, Through what regulatory norms is sex itself materialized? (Butler 1993: 9–10; emphasis in the original).

Butler argues that the process of constituting the human subject and materializing the body’s sex begins when an infant emerges from the womb—or when the fetus is first seen in an ultrasound scan—and, through the act of naming, shifts from an “it” to a “she” or a “he.” “[I]n that naming,” Butler asserts, “the girl is ‘girled,’ brought into the domain of language and kinship through the interpellation of gender” (1993: 7). Moreover, this “girling” of the girl does not happen only once, but, on the contrary, the founding interpellation is reiterated over time through the repeated inculcation of cultural norms so that the “naturalized effect” of sex and gender is reinforced and consolidated (Butler 1993: 7–8). Butler (1993: 2) understands gender performativity in this context as the “reiterative” and “citational” practices through which regulatory norms materialize the body’s sex over time and materialize sexual difference in the service of heterosexual hegemony. However, Butler suggests that such reiterative practices can also serve as a means of contesting and destabilizing heterosexual norms by opening up “gaps and fissures” through which the confines of heteronormative constraints can be escaped (1993: 10).

[“Sex”] is not a simple fact or static condition of a body, but a process whereby regulatory norms materialize “sex” and achieve this materialization through a forcible reiteration of those norms. That this reiteration is necessary is a sign that materialization is never quite complete, that bodies never quite comply with the norms by which their materialization is impelled. Indeed, it is the instabilities, the possibilities for rematerialization, opened up by this process that mark one domain in which the force of the regulatory law can be turned against itself to spawn rearticulations that call into question the hegemonic force of that very regulatory law (Butler 1993: 1–2).

Butler’s feminist interventions thus point to the possibility of resignifying the body by “rematerializing sex” and “undoing gender,”⁴ opening up potential avenues for “a reconceptualization of which bodies matter” (1993: 4) and an exploration of bodily identities that transgress the sanctioned limits of heternormative regimes, including queer, transgender, and nonbinary identities.

In this article I will bring these contemporary feminist interlocutors into conversation with sixteenth-century Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava authorities who, in contrast to feminist interrogations of the triad of sex, gender, and sexual desire, developed their own distinctive ontological theories of bodily identities in which they frame the categories of sex and gender in relation to a third term, devotional desire, which in their formulations takes precedence over sexual desire. The Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition is an important Kṛṣṇa bhakti tradition inspired by the Bengali leader Caitanya (ca. 1486–1533). Although Caitanya himself did not leave a legacy of devotional poetry or other literary expression beyond eight verses, termed Śikṣāṣṭaka, that are traditionally ascribed to him, he is represented in hagiographic narratives as charging a group of his disciples, who came to be known as the “six Gosvāmins of Vṛndāvana,” with the task of developing a formal system of theology and practice to perpetuate the bhakti movement inspired by him. The six Gosvāmins are credited with formulating a bhakti-śāstra, formal discourse of bhakti, together with the associated regimen of practices termed sādhana-bhakti that define the distinctive tradition-identity of the Gauḍīya bhakta-saṅgha, the community of Kṛṣṇa bhaktas who follow the path delineated by Caitanya and the Gosvāmins.⁵ The critical feature that distinguishes this Gauḍīya discourse of bhakti from contending discourses in the Indian religiocultural landscape is its function as a discourse of embodiment.⁶

The Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment is elaborated by Rūpa Gosvāmin (ca. 1470–1557) and Jīva Gosvāmin (ca. 1516–1608), the principal architects of the Gauḍīya theological edifice, in their most important Sanskrit works: Rūpa’s Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu,⁷Ujjvalanīlamaṇi, and Laghubhāgavatāmṛta,⁸ and Jīva’s six-volume Bhāgavata Sandarbha.⁹ The key elements of this discourse are encapsulated and expanded on by Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja (ca. 1517–1620), the Gosvāmins’ acclaimed disciple, in the Caitanya Caritāmṛta, his authoritative Bengali hagiography of Caitanya’s life and teachings.¹⁰ This discourse includes a robust discourse of divine embodiment pertaining to the manifold forms of Kṛṣṇa and an equally robust discourse of human embodiment pertaining to the devotional bodies of Kṛṣṇa bhaktas. While the early Gauḍīya authorities ground their discursive representations and practices pertaining to both divine bodies and human bodies in the canonical authority of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, at the same time they invest the Bhāgavata’s teachings with new valences by reframing Kṛṣṇa devotion as what I term an “embodied aesthetics of bhakti.”

As we shall see, the Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment explodes notions of the relationship between embodiment, personhood, materiality, and gender on both the human and divine planes and thereby challenges not only contending Indian discourses of the body but also contemporary theories of the body in the social sciences and humanities. More specifically, the Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment challenges prevailing body theories by positing (1) bodies beyond matter, (2) personhood beyond matter, and (3) gender beyond sex. This is not a call to embrace the Gauḍīyas’ ontological claims but rather, as part of a belated postcolonial gesture, to grant “theory parity”¹¹ to the alternative imaginaries that they propose and to engage them as worthy interlocutors whose theorizing might inspire us to reimagine our own body theories in significant ways.

In a recent essay Michael Radich (2016) argues that contemporary theories of the body in the academy are bound by “materialist” assumptions in which the ordinary material human body—and more specifically, the biophysical body composed of flesh and blood with an anthropomorphic shape—is the default template for what constitutes the body. After briefly surveying the principal currents of contemporary body theories—including Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body, Michel Foucault’s biopolitics of power, Pierre Bourdieu’s logic of practice, and Luce Irigaray’s and Hélène Cixous’s écriture féminine—Radich concludes that “these various theories all assume what I am calling the materialist understanding of body” (2016: 19).

The bodies they imagine, in the final analysis, are ordinary human bodies: subject to birth and death; gendered; composed of flesh and blood; with two arms and two legs and a head and a heart and a stomach; able to move, walk, talk, breathe, ingest food, and excrete waste, but not able to fly, or evanesce, or walk through solid objects. This is true regardless of claims that the body is also inscribed with social meanings or otherwise socially constructed.…It is even true of the most radical claims for the relativity of embodiment to the nonuniversal parameters of culture, gender, class, sexuality, social role, and so on. It is also even true of theories that propose that current modes of embodiment dominant in our societies are repressive, unjust, and the means of our subjugation to alienating powers and therefore agitate for some sort of change in embodiment. Through all these theories one particular body—the ordinary living human body—runs like a relentless idée fixe, and, we might say, the outlines of the ordinary human body demarcate the limits beyond which all such theories will not or cannot think (Radich 2016: 19–20).

With respect to contemporary trends in radical feminist theory, Radich argues that even the liberatory interventions of scholars such as Irigaray and Cixous, who, as exponents of écriture féminine, seek to liberate the female body from phallocentric discursive practices, in the end remain bound to materialist assumptions in which the biophysical body persists as the default template.

It is instructive…to observe the limits beyond which even these [French feminist] writers will not go in abandoning the archetype of the flesh-and-blood human body. They are famous for proposing that the body—particularly, for their purposes, the body of woman—is only text. The project is therefore to reinscribe this text, to generate new texts free of the phallocentric, phallocratic norms hidden in patriarchal discourse, which will furnish women with new, liberatory modes of embodiment. On the surface of it, this is a radical departure from the idea of the body as physical matter, as biological organism, as living animal, and so on. However, even these new “textual bodies” teem with anatomical details—genitalia, bodily fluids, body cavities, breasts—that reveal the persistence of the biophysical body as a template. The body may well be text, but it turns out that it is always written as palimpsest on the parchment of our given physicality. For all it might be supposed that we can overwrite it, perhaps in a language utterly new, it does not seem to be imagined that we can transform the physical body into, or substitute for it, a different medium altogether. Thus even those theories that appear to present the most radical departure from the materialist premise end up not departing from it very far at all (Radich 2016: 20–21).

The feminist interventions of scholars such as Irigaray, Cixous, and Butler have made important contributions to our understanding of the liberatory potential of resignifying the body by generating new bodily inscriptions and citations freed from the constraints of phallocentric and heternormative regimes. However, I would suggest that the materialist premise that undergirds the theorizing not only of Irigaray and Cixous but also of Butler is not adequate to account for the radically different models of embodiment found in premodern religious traditions such as the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition. In contrast to the materialist understanding of ordinary human bodies that delimits contemporary body theories, Radich notes that even though most religious traditions may take as their starting point ordinary modes of human embodiment, at the same time they posit a range of extraordinary modes of embodiment, which are primarily ascribed to two classes of beings: (1) divine beings or other beings who are invested with the status of ultimate reality; and (2) human beings who have undergone some form of bodily transformation, which may entail realization of an ideal or perfected form of embodiment (2016: 21–23).

Radich’s critique of the materialist assumptions that constrain contemporary body theories in the social sciences and humanities brings into sharp relief two critical points regarding constructions of embodiment in premodern religious traditions that are amply illustrated by the Gauḍīya case. First, as we shall see, while the Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment takes as its starting point the notion of an ordinary material human body, the entire Gauḍīya project is aimed at transforming bodily identities and attaining realization of a perfected form of embodiment that is nonmaterial and eternally gendered. In this context the early Gauḍīya authorities introduce important distinctions between “body” and “matter” and between “sex” and “gender” that transgress the materialist limits of contemporary body theories. Second, the Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment not only challenges the privileging of material bodies; it also challenges the privileging of human bodies as the default template by positing a multiform array of divine bodies beyond the human realm and giving precedence to the nonmaterial absolute body of Kṛṣṇa, the supreme Godhead, as the paradigmatic body in relation to which all other bodies—divine as well as human—are classified and ranked.

Divine Bodies beyond Matter

In contrast to contemporary body theories that are predicated on the ordinary human body made of matter, in the Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment the bodies that matter most on both the human and divine planes are those that are beyond matter. The Gauḍīya discourse pertaining to human bodies is constructed as a second-level discourse that is founded upon a first-level discourse pertaining to the divine bodies of Kṛṣṇa, for the entire Gauḍīya project is aimed at fashioning perfected embodied persons with nonmaterial devotional bodies that are modeled after the paradigmatic nonmaterial body—the vigraha, absolute body, of Kṛṣṇa—and whose raison d’être is to revel in eternal relationship with the supreme Godhead embodied in his vigraha in his transcendent abode beyond the material realm of prakṛti.

The Absolute Body of Bhagavān

The Gauḍīya discourse of divine embodiment celebrates the deity Kṛṣṇa as ananta-rūpa, “he who has endless forms,” his limitless forms encompassing and interweaving the transcosmic, macrocosmic, and microcosmic planes of existence. The early Gauḍīya authorities construct a number of hierarchical taxonomies that classify and rank the multifarious divine forms of Kṛṣṇa, the most important of which involves a hierarchical assessment of the three aspects of the supreme Godhead, from lowest to highest: Brahman, Paramātman, and Bhagavān. In allotting the highest place in their ontological hierarchy to Bhagavān, who is represented as a personal Godhead endowed with an absolute body, infinite qualities, and innumerable śaktis (energies), the early Gauḍīya authorities engage in a polemic that challenges the contending ontologies of two rival philosophical schools: the monistic ontology of Advaita Vedānta, which identifies the ultimate reality with the impersonal, formless Brahman, and the dualistic ontology of Pātañjala Yoga, which posits a plurality of nonchanging, formless puruṣas as the highest reality.¹²

To provide a scriptural basis for this hierarchical assessment, the early Gauḍīya authorities invoke Bhāgavata Purāṇa 1.2.11 and interpret the order of terms in the verse as indicating increasing ontological importance: “The knowers of reality declare the ultimate reality to be that which is nondual knowledge. It is called Brahman, Paramātman, and Bhagavān.”¹³ In Gauḍīya formulations these three aspects of the Godhead are associated with different dimensions of embodiment. Brahman, the lowest aspect of the Godhead, is the impersonal, formless, attributeless, and undifferentiated ground of existence that is beyond prakṛti, primordial matter, and is the radiant effulgence of the absolute body of Bhagavān. Paramātman, the intermediary aspect of the Godhead, is the indwelling Self, who on the macrocosmic level animates the innumerable universes, or cosmos bodies,¹⁴ and on the microcosmic level resides in the hearts of all jīvas, embodied beings. Bhagavān, the highest aspect of the Godhead, is transcosmic—beyond both the macrocosmos and the microcosmos—and is personal, endowed with an absolute body (vigraha), replete with infinite qualities (guṇas), and possessed of innumerable śaktis. Bhagavān is ascribed the status of the Godhead in his complete fullness (pūrṇa), who encompasses within himself Brahman and Paramātman and is at the same time beyond both.¹⁵ The early Gauḍīya authorities invoke the declaration in Bhāgavata Purāṇa 1.3.28 that “Kṛṣṇa is Bhagavān himself (Bhagavān svayam)” as the mahā-vākya, authoritative scriptural utterance, that establishes Kṛṣṇa’s supreme status as pūrṇa Bhagavān, the full and complete Godhead.¹⁶

One of the most striking claims of the Gauḍīya discourse of divine embodiment is its insistence that—contrary to the ontologies of competing philosophical schools that claim that the ultimate reality in its essential nature is formless—the highest aspect of the Godhead, Bhagavān, is not without form (nirākāra) but rather is endowed with an absolute body with distinctive bodily features that is at the same time nonmaterial (aprākṛta), unmanifest (avyakta), eternal (nitya), and self-luminous (svaprakāśa). This absolute body is designated by the term vigraha. The early Gauḍīya authorities emphasize that Bhagavān’s vigraha, absolute body, like his svarūpa, essential nature, consists of being (sat), consciousness (cit), and bliss (ānanda). Thus in Bhagavān there is no distinction between body and essence, vigraha and svarūpa, for the deha, body, and the dehin, possessor of the body, are nondifferent.¹⁷ At the level of the sat-cit-ānanda-vigraha, the absolute body of Bhagavān consisting of being, consciousness, and bliss, the sex/gender distinction breaks down and gender alone remains, for sexed material bodies composed of flesh and blood have no place in the transcendent domain of the nonmaterial absolute body. The integrated personal-cum-bodily identity of the dehin-deha of Bhagavān is gendered as male/masculine, as reflected in his svarūpa, essential nature, and svayaṃ-rūpa, essential form, which are in the final analysis considered identical.¹⁸

The Gauḍīyas assert the paradoxical notion that Bhagavān’s absolute body, in its svayaṃ-rūpa, essential form, is the two-armed male form of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa, who is extolled in the tenth book of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa as descending to earth in Dvāpara Yuga and carrying out his līlā, divine play, in the form of a gopa, cowherd boy, in the area of Vraja in North India. It is the beautiful youthful form (kiśora-mūrti) of the cowherd Kṛṣṇa—with its distinctive blue-black color, lotus-like eyes, body marks, dress, ornaments, and characteristic emblems such as the flute—that is celebrated by the Gauḍīyas as the svayaṃ-rūpa, essential form, of Kṛṣṇa’s absolute body that exists eternally in his transcendent abode, the transcendent Vraja-dhāman, beyond the material realm of prakṛti and beyond Brahman. Rūpa Gosvāmin gives the following description of Kṛṣṇa’s svayaṃ-rūpa:

The sweet form (mūrti) of [Kṛṣṇa]…brings me intense joy. His neck has three lines like a conch, his clever eyes are charming like lotuses, his blue-black limbs are more resplendent than the tamāla tree,…his chest displays the Śrīvatsa mark, and his hands are marked with the discus, conch, and other emblems.…This lover has a beautiful body (aṅga) and is endowed with all auspicious marks, radiant, luminous, powerful, eternally young (Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu 2.1.22–23).¹⁹

The early Gauḍīya authorities maintain that the personhood of the supreme Bhagavān is characterized above all by mādhurya, pure sweetness, which is reflected in the svayaṃ-rūpa, essential form, of his sat-cit-ānanda-vigraha in which he appears in a human-like shape (narākāra or narākṛti), and more specifically in the youthful form of a ravishingly beautiful gopa, cowherd boy. In articulating their hierarchical taxonomy of divine forms, the Gauḍīyas are concerned to establish that, out of the multifarious array of corporeal shapes, features, colors, and ages that the polymorphous, polychromatic Godhead assumes in his manifold bodily manifestations as ananta-rūpa, the highly particularized form that he displays in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman as a youthful cowherd boy most perfectly embodies his mādhurya nature and is his svayaṃ-rūpa, essential form.²⁰ Jīva Gosvāmin marshals a series of arguments to establish that the svayaṃ-rūpa in its most full and complete (pūrṇa) expression is the two-armed (dvi-bhuja) gopa form of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa in Vraja and that all other divine bodies are secondary manifestations of this essential form, including the four-armed (catur-bhuja) form of the princely Vāsudeva through which Kṛṣṇa expresses his aiśvarya, divine majesty, in Mathurā and Dvārakā, and the thousand-armed (sahasra-bhuja) cosmic form of viśva-rūpa that he manifests to the warrior Arjuna on the battlefield during the Mahābhārata war.²¹

Having established the supreme (para) status of the two-armed gopa form as Kṛṣṇa’s svayaṃ-rūpa, Jīva advances another critical component of his argument: although the form in which Kṛṣṇa appears during his sojourn on earth has a human-like shape, narākāra, as a male gopa, it is not an ordinary material human body (prākṛta-mānuṣa) composed of flesh (māṃsa) and material elements (bhūta-maya)²² but is rather an eternal (nitya or sanātana), nonmaterial (aprākṛta) absolute body consisting of sat-cit-ānanda, being, consciousness, and bliss.²³ According to Jīva, when Kṛṣṇa descends from the transcendent Vraja-dhāman to earth in Dvāpara Yuga, he manifests his eternal vigraha on the material plane for the duration of his earthly sojourn, after which he withdraws the manifestation of his vigraha from the earth. Jīva insists that, unlike ordinary mortals, Kṛṣṇa does not assume a temporary material body and then cast it off at the end of his sojourn. Rather he “appears” (root bhū + prādur, root bhū + āvir, or root as + āvir) on earth, making his imperishable absolute body visible (root dṛś) on the material plane for a period of time, and then he “disappears” (root dhā + antar), concealing his vigraha.²⁴

Jīva maintains that although the svayaṃ-rūpa of the vigraha, the two-armed narākāra form of the gopa of Vraja, is no longer visible to those whose vision is bound by materiality (prākṛta-dṛṣṭi), Kṛṣṇa’s absolute body can be “seen” (root dṛś) by those sages who are endowed with divine vision (divya-dṛṣṭi) that is invested with the śakti of Bhagavān.²⁵ Jīva claims more specifically that Vyāsa, the acclaimed ṛṣi (seer), while immersed in samādhi in the depths of meditation, “saw” (root dṛś) the absolute body of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman beyond the material realm of prakṛti and then recorded his cognitions in the form of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the śruti pertaining to Kṛṣṇa.²⁶ He invokes a passage from the Padma Purāṇa in which Vyāsa describes his cognition of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa’s eternal vigraha:

I was thrilled with intense rapture upon seeing (root dṛś) Gopāla, adorned with all his ornaments, rejoicing in the embrace of the [cowherd] women, playing on his flute. Then svayaṃ Bhagavān, as he roamed about Vṛndāvana, said to me: “That which is seen by you is my eternal (sanātana) divine form (divya rūpa), my vigraha consisting of sat-cit-ānanda, which is undivided (niṣkala), nonactive (niṣkriya), and tranquil (śānta). There is nothing greater than this perfect (pūrṇa) lotus-eyed form of mine. The Vedas declare this to be the cause of all causes.”²⁷

The Eternally Perfect Associates of Bhagavān

The Gauḍīya discourse of divine embodiment provides an extended analysis not only of Bhagavān’s vigraha, absolute body, and svarūpa, essential nature, but also of the other constitutive elements of the Godhead, including his nature as śaktimat, the possessor of innumerable śaktis; his transcendent abode, dhāman; his divine play, līlā; and his eternal associates, parikaras or pārṣadas.

The three principal types of śakti of Bhagavān, as śaktimat, are the svarūpa-śakti, māyā-śakti, and jīva-śakti. The svarūpa-śakti, operating on the transcosmic level, is intrinsic (antar-aṅga) to Bhagavān’s svarūpa, essential nature, comprising three aspects: saṃdhinī-śakti, the power of sat, being; saṃvit-śakti, the power of cit, consciousness; and hlādinī-śakti, the power of ānanda, bliss. The māyā-śakti, operating on the macrocosmic level, is extrinsic (bahir-aṅga) to Bhagavān and is responsible for manifesting and regulating the material realm of prakṛti and for subjecting jīvas, individual living beings, to the bondage of saṃsāra, the cycle of birth and death. The jīva-śakti, operating on the microcosmic level, is the intermediary (taṭasthā, literally, “standing on the border”) śakti that constitutes jīvas as, on the one hand, aṃśas, or parts, of Bhagavān in the svarūpa-śakti and, on the other hand, subject to the binding influence of the māyā-śakti.²⁸

The Gauḍīya discourse of divine embodiment, as explicated by Jīva Gosvāmin, is concerned in particular with the structures and dynamics of the svarūpa-śakti. The svarūpa-śakti assumes two forms: the svarūpa, which is Bhagavān himself in his essential nature and absolute body; and the svarūpa-vaibhava, which includes his dhāman, transcendent abode, and his parikaras, eternal associates. The svarūpa-śakti also includes Kṛṣṇa’s līlā, divine play, as svayaṃ Bhagavān, which is represented as the spontaneous expression of the hlādinī-śakti, the bliss that is intrinsic to Bhagavān’s essential nature. The transcendent dhāman, called Kṛṣṇaloka, is the domain where Kṛṣna engages eternally in his līlā. The innermost dhāman of Kṛṣṇaloka is the transcendent Vraja-dhāman, which is the transcosmic prototype of the earthly region of Vraja in North India.²⁹

Jīva, building on the formulations of Rūpa Gosvāmin, seeks to establish that Kṛṣṇa’s līlā, which is recorded in narrative form in the tenth book of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, occurs on both the manifest (prakaṭa) and unmanifest (aprakaṭa) levels. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa portrays Kṛṣṇa as descending to the material realm and unfolding his līlā on earth at a particular time and place in history: in the terrestrial region of Vraja in North India at the end of Dvāpara Yuga in approximately 3,000 BCE. In a hermeneutical turn that is critical to the Gauḍīya discourse of divine embodiment, Jīva interprets this earthly līlā as the manifest counterpart of the aprakaṭa līlā, unmanifest līlā, that goes on eternally within Bhagavān in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman, beyond the material realm of prakṛti and beyond Brahman. He also ascribes an eternal status to the cowherds, cowmaidens, and other companions of Kṛṣṇa who are the key characters in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa’s literary account of the divine drama in Vraja. Kṛṣṇa’s foster parents, Nanda and Yaśodā, and other elders; the gopas, Kṛṣṇa’s cowherd friends; the gopīs, Kṛṣṇa’s cowmaiden lovers; and the attendants of Kṛṣṇa are invested with the status of parikaras, eternal associates of Bhagavān, who reside with him in his transcendent abode, the transcendent Vraja-dhāman.

The parikaras are portrayed as nitya siddhas, eternally perfect beings, who participate in Kṛṣṇa’s essential nature as part of the svarūpa-śakti and who possess nonmaterial (aprākṛta) bodies consisting of śuddha-sattva, pure luminous being, and have therefore never been subject to the bondage of the māyā-śakti in the material realm of prakṛti. The eternally perfect associates who reside with Kṛṣṇa in the transcendent Vraja and engage with him perpetually in the unmanifest līlā are called rāgātmikā bhaktas because their very essence (ātman) is spontaneously absorbed in rāga, passionate, all-consuming love for Bhagavān.³⁰ As the perfect vessels (āśrayas) of rāga, they relish the ambrosial nectar of prema-rasa, supreme love for Kṛṣṇa, in distinct rasas, flavors of devotion, that are considered intrinsic to their eternally gendered devotional subjectivities in relation to the male Godhead—whether as female gopī lovers who relish mādhurya-rasa, the lover-beloved rasa; maternal or paternal elders who savor vātsalya-rasa, the rasa of parental love; male gopa friends who relish sakhya-rasa, the rasa of friendship; or male attendants who savor dāsya-rasa, the rasa of service.

Jīva is concerned to illumine more specifically the relationship between Kṛṣṇa and the gopīs, the cowmaidens of Vraja, portrayed in the rāsa-pañcādhyāyī, chapters 29 to 33 of the tenth book of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, which celebrates in lavish detail Kṛṣṇa’s love-play with the gopīs, culminating in the rāsa-līlā, the circle dance of Kṛṣṇa with his cowmaiden lovers.³¹ Jīva argues that the gopīs are the eternal expressions of the hlādinī-śakti, the blissful aspect of the svarūpa-śakti. Among the gopīs, he identifies Rādhā with the anonymous gopī who is singled out for Kṛṣṇa’s special attention in Bhāgavata Purāṇa 10.30.24–44, and he invests her with the highest ontological status as Kṛṣṇa’s eternal consort who is the quintessential expression of the hlādinī-śakti and consummate embodiment of Kṛṣṇa’s bliss, from whom the other gopīs emanate as manifestations of that bliss. The unmanifest līlā of Kṛṣṇa with Rādhā and the gopīs is thus interpreted in terms of the gendered dynamics of the Godhead as a self-referral dalliance within Bhagavān in which he revels eternally with the blissful impulses of his own nature.

Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, in expanding on the formulations of Rūpa and Jīva in the Caitanya Caritāmṛta, his hagiography of Caitanya’s life and teachings, allots a critical role to Rādhā, the consummate embodiment of the hlādinī-śakti, whom he portrays as the female counterpart of Kṛṣṇa who participates in his essential nature in a relationship of identity-in-nonidentity as the pūrṇa śakti of the pūrṇa śaktimat.

Rādhā is the full śakti, Kṛṣṇa is the full container of śakti; they are two principles, but they are not divided. To this the śāstras are witness. As musk and its scent are not divided, as fire and flame are not divided, so Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa are always one in true form [svarūpa]. It is for the purpose of tasting līlā-rasa that they hold two forms [rūpas] (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 1.4.83–85).³²

Bhagavān, while remaining one in his svarūpa, bifurcates himself and appears as two nonmaterial rūpas, as the male gopa Kṛṣṇa and the female gopī Rādhā, in order to savor the exhilarating rasa, nectar, of his own blissful līlā. According to Kṛṣṇadāsa, Rādhā’s mind (citta), senses (indriyas), and bodily form (kāya) are made of Kṛṣṇa-preman (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 1.4.61), and it is thus by manifesting himself as Rādhā that Kṛṣṇa is able to revel in bliss as both the subject (āśraya) and the object (viṣaya) of his self-referral dalliance.

The singular Godhead, male and female halves intertwining as one whole, splits into two and issues forth in two complementary streams: a stream of male forms issues forth from Kṛṣṇa’s gopa body, the svayaṃ-rūpa, as manifestations of the paradigmatic nonmaterial male body, and a stream of female forms issues forth from Rādhā’s gopī body as manifestations of the paradigmatic nonmaterial female body. Among the śaktis that issue forth from Rādhā, the mahā-śakti, Kṛṣṇadāsa invests the gopīs with the status of kāya-vyūhas, direct emanations of the body (kāya) of Rādhā, who are variegated expressions of the hlādinī-śakti that Kṛṣṇa relishes as manifold flavors of the ambrosial rasa of preman.³³

When Kṛṣṇa descends to the material realm at the end of Dvāpara Yuga and manifests his svayaṃ-rūpa as a two-armed cowherd boy in the region of Vraja in North India, Rādhā and the gopīs, his mahā-śakti and her emanations, are represented as descending with him and appearing in the form of earthly cowmaidens who engage with their cowherd lover in the manifest līlā in the groves of Vraja. While in Dvāpara Yuga Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā descend to the material realm and engage in their love-play in two separate bodies, Kṛṣṇadāsa asserts that in Kali Yuga Kṛṣṇa descends and manifests himself together with Rādhā in one body—the radiant golden form of the Kali Yuga avatāra, Caitanya.

Rādhā is the manifested form of pure love for Kṛṣṇa; she is his hlādinī-śakti. Because of this they had previously assumed different bodies on earth, although really one, but now they have become manifest under the name of Caitanya in order to attain to non-duality and oneness: I praise the true form of Kṛṣṇa enveloped in the radiance of the bhāva of Rādhā (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 1.1.śloka 5).

Kṛṣṇadāsa’s reflections about the gendered nature of the Godhead thus culminate in his own distinctive vision of Caitanya as the Kali Yuga avatāra in whom svayaṃ Bhagavān appears as Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā, male-and-female, together in a single body and who is simultaneously the supreme object (viṣaya) of devotion in his essential nature as Kṛṣṇa and the supreme vessel (āśraya) of devotion in his bhāva as Rādhā.³⁴

Refiguring Human Bodily Identities within and beyond Matter

The Gauḍīya discourse of divine embodiment has its counterpart in a discourse of human embodiment that is concerned with fashioning devotional bodies by means of sādhana-bhakti, an elaborate regimen of embodied practices that comprises two forms of devotional discipline: vaidhī-bhakti and rāgānugā-bhakti. In vaidhī-bhakti the sādhaka, practitioner, performs external bodily practices with the sādhaka-rūpa, which in Gauḍīya formulations is the sexed material body composed of flesh and blood that the jīva, individual soul, enters before birth and that is constructed not by sociocultural forces but by the residual karmic impressions (saṃskāras) accumulated from the jīva’s previous births. The regimen of vaidhī-bhakti is guided by vidhis, scriptural injunctions, and is designed to purify and transform the psychophysiology, reconstituting the karmically constructed body of bondage as a body of devotion in which the mental faculties, sense organs, and organs of action are all oriented towards one-pointed worship of Kṛṣṇa. In rāgānugā-bhakti, an advanced form of sādhana-bhakti characterized by passionate love (rāga), the sādhaka engages in a regimen of internal meditative practices in order to attain an embodied state of realization as a samprāpta-siddha, a perfected mahā-bhāgavata. While continuing to perform external devotional practices with the sādhaka-rūpa, material body, the sādhaka ceases to identify with the karmically constructed biological body and awakens to the reality of their siddha-rūpa, perfected devotional body, which in Gauḍīya formulations is a nonmaterial body that consists of cit and ānanda, consciousness and bliss, and is eternally gendered in relation to the male Godhead, Kṛṣṇa.³⁵

I will provide an analysis of the Gauḍīya path of sādhana-bhakti in terms of the progressive transformation of the bhakta’s bodily identities: from (1) the ascribed identity associated with the karmically constructed biological body to (2) the inscribed identity in which the biological body is reconstituted as a devotional body to (3) the remembered identity in which the jīva awakens from the sleep of ignorance and realizes its eternally gendered nonmaterial body. I will conclude my analysis with a brief consideration of Gauḍīya debates in which they grappled historically with the existential dilemma posed by contending bodily identities in the state of realization.

Ascribed Identity: The Body of Bondage

According to the Gauḍīyas’ analysis of the human condition, jīvas are consigned to a betwixt-and-between status in which, on the one hand, they are aṃśas, parts, of Kṛṣṇa, the supreme Bhagavān, and participate in his essential nature in the svarūpa-śakti, and, on the other hand, they are separated from Bhagavān because they are subject to the bondage of the māyā-śakti that governs the material realm of prakṛti. Enslaved by the binding influence of the māyā-śakti, the jīva becomes deluded by ignorance (avidyā) and, forgetting its true identity as an aṃśa of Bhagavān, assumes a false sense of atomistic personal identity in which it mistakenly identifies with the material psychophysical complex, which includes not only the physical body but also the mental faculties—mind, intellect, and ego—that are subtle forms of materiality.

The early Gauḍīya authorities, in reflecting on the nature of bondage and the mechanisms of refiguring bodily identities, appropriate traditional formulations of karma in which the law of karma is held to determine the circumstances of an individual’s birth in each lifetime, including the species, sex, ethnocultural community, and family in which the jīva is born. In this perspective, an individual jīva’s ascribed identity is determined at birth by the law of karma and is circumscribed by the biological body that is constructed by the residual karmic impressions (saṃskāras) accumulated from previous births. This karmically constructed biological body is sexually marked as male or female and may be further classified as part of a varṇa, social class, and jāti, caste, in accordance with Brahmanical norms of varṇāśrama-dharma elaborated in the Dharmaśāstras, Brahmanical legal codes.³⁶

In the Brahmanical discourse of dharma, the differential norms of varṇāśrama-dharma distinguish seven separate groups, which are ranked hierarchically with respect to their purity status and their degree of participation in varṇa-dharma, the duties of the four varṇas, social classes,³⁷ and āśrama-dharma, the duties of the four āśramas, stages of life:³⁸ (1) male members of the “twice-born” varṇas—brahmins, kṣatriyas, and vaiśyas—who are participants in both varṇa-dharma and āśrama-dharma;³⁹ (2) male śūdras, the lowest of the four varṇas, who are relegated to the status of the “once-born”⁴⁰ and participate in varṇa-dharma but are excluded from the āśramas; (3) women, who, like śūdras, are deemed to be “once-born”⁴¹ and are similarly excluded from the āśramas but participate in certain aspects of varṇa-dharma and also have their own distinct set of duties; (4) members of “low-born” mixed castes generated through permissible anuloma unions between a man of a higher varṇa and a woman of a lower varṇa (hypergamy); (5) members of “debased” mixed castes generated through unsanctioned pratiloma unions between a woman of a higher varṇa and a man of a lower varṇa (hypogamy), who are deemed to be of impure origin and are relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy; (6) outcastes, who are beyond the pale of both the varṇa system and the āśrama system but whose status is nevertheless defined in relation to the broader socioreligious hierarchy; and (7) non-Āryans, designated as mlecchas (babbling barbarians) or yavanas (foreigners), to whom the regulations of dharma do not apply. Among these seven groups, it is the exclusive purview of the first group—male members of the twice-born varṇas—to learn and recite the Vedas, to sponsor Vedic yajñas, sacrificial rituals, and to participate in the full complex of sociocultural practices defined by varṇāśrama-dharma. Members of the other six groups are excluded from learning or reciting the Vedic mantras and from sponsoring yajñas.⁴²

Over against this socially circumscribed Brahmanical model, the early Gauḍīya authorities formed a new type of social body constituted not by the differential norms of varṇāśrama-dharma but by the socially open practices of the bhakta-saṅgha, the community of Kṛṣṇa bhaktas who follow the Gauḍīya path of sādhana-bhakti. The Gauḍīya path of Kṛṣṇa bhakti is represented as in principle open to all people, irrespective of their ascribed identities as defined by sex, gender, social class, caste, and ethnicity.

Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, in his hagiographic narrative in the Caitanya Caritāmṛta, emphasizes Caitanya’s unique status as the yuga-avatāra of Kali Yuga in whom svayaṃ Bhagavān appears as Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā together in one body. He provides an extended treatment of Caitanya’s role, as the Kali Yuga avatāra, in establishing nāma-saṃkīrtana, communal singing of the divine names of Kṛṣṇa, as the yuga-dharma of Kali Yuga. Expanding on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa’s image of saṃkīrtana as yajña, he emphasizes that the “yajña of saṃkīrtana” supersedes Vedic yajñas as the preeminent practice of Kali Yuga, for the “yajña of the Kṛṣṇa-name” is the essence (sāra) of all yajñas and one Kṛṣṇa-name is worth more than ten million (one crore) aśvamedha sacrifices.⁴³ Moreover, in contrast to the circumscribed social world of Vedic yajñas, which is closed to everyone but male members of the twice-born varṇas, Caitanya is represented as creating an open social body with permeable boundaries in which the yajña of nāma-saṃkīrtana is extended in principle to all people. “Women, children, old men, even caṇḍālas [outcastes] and Yavanas [foreigners]” are invited to take up the name of Kṛṣṇa and join the bhakta-saṅgha.⁴⁴ “He carried the saṃkīrtana even to the caṇḍālas, and in this way wove and threaded a garland of nāma and prema to be worn throughout the world” (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 1.4.36). Caitanya is represented as insisting, in accordance with the teaching of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, that “there is no consideration of caste [jāti], family [kula], and such, in Kṛṣṇa-worship,” and therefore an outcaste dog-eater (śva-paca) whose mind and heart are devoted to Kṛṣṇa is more fit for the yajña of nāma-saṃkīrtana than a proud brahmin of pure family who has turned away from Bhagavān.⁴⁵

Inscribed Identity: Fashioning a Body of Devotion

The early Gauḍīya authorities emphasize the efficacy of the path of sādhana-bhakti in purifying the material psychophysical complex and attenuating the residual karmic impressions (saṃskāras) that are the root cause of bondage and serve to perpetuate saṃsāra, the endless cycle of birth and death. In vaidhī-bhakti, the initial phase of sādhana-bhakti, the bhakta engages in a regimen of external bodily practices with the sādhaka-rūpa in order to refigure the karmically bound biological body as a body of devotion, transforming all aspects of the material psychophysical complex—mental faculties, sense organs, and organs of action—into instruments of devotion to Kṛṣṇa. The defective material body born through biological reproduction and delimited by Brahmanical markers of ascribed identity—sex, gender, social class (varṇa), caste (jāti), and ethnicity—is born anew out of the ritual womb of vaidhī-bhakti and reconstituted as a “devotionally informed body” that—evoking Bourdieu’s notion of a “socially informed body” (habitus)—is inscribed with the socioreligious taxonomies and devotional norms of the bhakta-saṅgha, the Gauḍīya community of Kṛṣṇa bhaktas.⁴⁶

Rūpa Gosvāmin, in his discussion of sādhana-bhakti in the Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu, repeatedly emphasizes the embodied nature of devotional practices. He defines bhakti as “service with the senses (hṛṣīka) to the Lord of the senses (Hṛṣīkeśa)” (Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu 1.1.12), and he characterizes the sixty-four practices of vaidhī-bhakti as “forms of worship (upāsanas) for the physical body (kāya), senses (hṛṣīka), and mental faculties (antaḥ-karaṇa)” (1.2.94).⁴⁷ Through these practices the bhakta refigures the psychophysiology by focusing all aspects of the sādhaka-rūpa, the material psychophysical complex, on Bhagavān, including the mind, the sense organs (ears, sense of touch, eyes, tongue, and nose), and the organs of action (mouth, hands, feet, limbs, and so on). Rūpa and Kṛṣṇadāsa both invoke the Bhāgavata Purāṇa’s description of the embodied practices of the paradigmatic bhakta:

He engaged his mind on the lotus-feet of Kṛṣṇa, his words in recounting the virtues of Vaikuṇṭha, his hands in cleaning the temple of Hari, his ears in hearing glorious stories about Acyuta, his eyes in seeing the images and temples of Mukunda, his sense of touch in touching the bodies of his servants, his nose in smelling the fragrance of the tulasī leaves placed at his lotus-feet, his tongue in tasting the food that had been offered to him, his feet in traveling by foot to the holy places of Hari, his head in bowing to the feet of Hṛṣīkeśa, and his desire in serving him… (Bhāgavata Purāṇa 9.4.18–20).⁴⁸

Among the sixty-four practices of vaidhī-bhakti, five are singled out by Rūpa and Kṛṣṇadāsa as most important for cultivating prema-rasa, the fully mature state of supreme love for Kṛṣṇa: (1) hearing (śravaṇa) the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and savoring its meanings; (2) singing (kīrtana or saṃkīrtana) the names (nāmans) of Kṛṣṇa; (3) residing in Mathurā-maṇḍala, the “circle of Mathurā,” that encompasses the entire region of Vraja; (4) worship of ritual images (mūrtis) of Kṛṣṇa; and (5) association with holy persons (sādhus).⁴⁹ Four of the five fundamental practices—as well as many of the other vaidhī-bhakti practices—involve four forms of Kṛṣṇa that I term “mesocosmic” modes of divine embodiment in that they function in Gauḍīya formulations as mediating forms through which bhaktas can access, engage, and experience the concentrated presence of the deity in localized forms on the gross material plane: (1) śāstra, Kṛṣṇa’s avatāra in the form of a scriptural text, grantha-avatāra, identified as the Bhāgavata Purāṇa; (2) nāman, Kṛṣṇa’s avatāras in the form of names, nāma-avatāras, that are revered as identical with Kṛṣṇa’s essential nature and absolute body; (3) dhāman, Kṛṣṇa’s embodiment in the form of a geographic place, the earthly Vraja-dhāman, that is extolled as the manifest counterpart of the transcendent Vraja-dhāman; and (4) mūrti, Kṛṣṇa’s avatāras in the form of ritual images, arcā-avatāras, that are worshiped as his localized instantiations in temples and shrines.⁵⁰

Rūpa ascribes “inconceivable power” (acintya śakti) to these four mesocosmic forms—Bhāgavata Purāṇa, nāman, Vraja-dhāman, and mūrti—as “transmundane (alaukika) forms” that are in the final analysis nondifferent from Kṛṣṇa and are therefore efficacious not only in arousing Kṛṣṇa-rati, love for Kṛṣṇa, in the hearts of bhaktas but also in manifesting the object of this love—Kṛṣṇa himself—on the gross material plane (Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu 1.2.244).⁵¹ Invoking the semiotic terminology of Charles Sanders Peirce, we could say that in the Gauḍīya hermeneutics of embodiment these mesocosmic forms are not understood as “symbols” that represent the deity, pointing beyond themselves to a transcendent referent, but rather they function as “iconic signs” that manifest the deity, disclosing the deity’s living presence through a localized form—whether the form of a text, a name, a geographic place, or a ritual image.⁵²

Each of these modes of divine embodiment is associated with a distinct sensorium, or perceptual world, in which a particular “ratio of the senses”⁵³ dominates. In two of these mesocosmic forms Kṛṣṇa is embodied in language—as śāstra, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, or as nāman, name—and therefore the principal modes of reception are śravaṇa, hearing; paṭhana, recitation; and kīrtana, singing. These practices are then extended through a variety of cognitive and corporeal modalities. On the one hand, they are internalized through meditative practices such as dhyāna, meditation; smaraṇa, contemplative recollection; or japa, silent repetition. On the other hand, they are externalized through bodily performances such as rāsa-līlās, dramatic performances, or nṛtya, dance. In the other two mesocosmic forms Kṛṣṇa is embodied in place in visible forms—as the sacred geography of Vraja-dhāman, or as the mūrti enshrined in the temple—and in these cases the principal perceptual modalities are darśana, seeing, and sparśana, touching. The associated bodily performances involve ritual negotiation of sacred space through tīrtha-yātra, pilgrimage, or the carefully choreographed postures and gestures of mūrti-sevā, service to the mūrti.

The bhakta thus fashions a devotional body by engaging—through invoking, hearing, seeing, touching, smelling, and tasting—the various mesocosmic forms in which Kṛṣṇa is embodied on the gross material plane. Through engaging and partaking of Kṛṣṇa’s mesocosmic forms, the bhakta’s own psychophysiology is gradually suffused with the qualities and substance of Kṛṣṇa’s vigraha, absolute body, which consists of sat-cit-ānanda, being, consciousness, and bliss.⁵⁴

Among the various practices of vaidhī-bhakti, I would like to examine the role of the public performance of nāma-saṃkīrtana, as a public spectacle of bodies on display, in shaping the social body of the bhakta-saṅgha through inscribing the socioreligious taxonomies and devotional norms of the community in the bodies of the individual performers while at the same time establishing the boundaries that differentiate the bhakta-saṅgha from the hierarchy of publics who witness the performance. I would suggest that the public performance of nāma-saṃkīrtana, as represented in Kṛṣṇadāsa’s hagiographic narrative in the Caitanya Caritāmṛta, serves as both an instrument of social formation and an instrument of psychophysical transformation through which the material bodies of the performers are transformed into “devotionally informed bodies” that have internalized the socioreligious taxonomies and devotional norms of the bhakta-saṅgha.

In order to illustrate the discursive strategies through which Kṛṣṇadāsa represents the mechanisms of social formation and psychophysical transformation involved in the public performance of nāma-saṃkīrtana, I will cite his account of a nāma-saṃkīrtana performance by Caitanya and his followers at the Jagannātha temple in Purī, Orissa, and then will provide an extended analysis of the account.

Then Prabhu [Caitanya] went, with all of them [the Vaiṣṇavas], to the temple of Jagannātha, and there began the kīrtana. Seeing the sandhyā-dhūpa [incense offering], they began the saṃkīrtana, and the temple servant brought and gave garlands and sandalwood to them all. Four groups sang saṃkīrtana on all four sides while Prabhu Śacīnandana [Caitanya, the son of Śacī] danced in the center. Eight mṛdaṅga drums played, and thirty-two karatāla cymbals; the sound of “Hari” arose, and the Vaiṣṇavas said, “Excellent!” That most auspicious sound of kīrtana which arose filled the fourteen worlds and pervaded the universe. The people who dwelt at Puruṣottama came to see, and when they saw the kīrtana the Oḍiyā people were dumbfounded.

Then Prabhu circumambulated the temple; and as he circumambulated it he danced. Before and behind him sang the four groups.…Prabhu danced about [the temple] for some time; stopping in back of the temple he performed kīrtana. In all four directions the four groups sang in loud voices, and amongst them Gaura Rāya [Caitanya] danced like Śiva. Having danced for a long time, Prabhu became quiet, and commanded the four mahāntas to dance. Advaita Ācārya danced in one group, and in another one Nityānanda Rāya. Paṇḍita Vakreśvara danced in another one, and Śrīvāsa within the next. Mahāprabhu remained watching in their midst, and there one of his divine powers [aiśvarya] became manifest. Many people danced and sang all around, and all saw that “Prabhu is looking at me.” Prabhu wanted to see the dance of all four, and because of that desire he manifested his divine power [aiśvarya]. Each one thought that he was looking only at him, absorbed in his gaze [darśana]; how he could look in all directions cannot be known. It was as when Kṛṣṇa was in the center, at the pulinabhojana [riverside meal], and all around his companions said—“He is looking towards me.” Whoever came nearby while dancing, Mahāprabhu gave him a deep embrace. Seeing this great dance, great prema, great saṃkīrtana, the people of Nīlācala [Purī] floated in the joy of prema. Gajapati Rājā [King Pratāparudra], having heard the kīrtana, climbed to the roof of his palace with his people and watched. Seeing the saṃkīrtana, the rājā was astonished, and his desire to meet Prabhu grew infinitely. When the kīrtana was finished, Prabhu watched the offering of flowers, and then with all the Vaiṣṇavas came to his dwelling place. The temple servant brought and gave them much prasāda; dividing it, Īśvara distributed it to all. He bade farewell to them all, telling them to go to bed; such was the līlā of Śacī’s son. As many days as they were all with Mahāprabhu, they performed the delight of kīrtana. So the kīrtana-vilāsa [divine play of kīrtana] has been related; and he who hears it becomes the servant of Caitanya (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 2.11.197–225).

In his account of this public performance of nāma-saṃkīrtana, in which Caitanya and his followers circumambulate the Jagannātha temple, Kṛṣṇadāsa deploys a number of discursive strategies to recast this performance as a cosmic event with resounding power that reverberates throughout creation. The key strategy involves re-presenting the choreography of the performance as a moving maṇḍala that reflects more specifically the architectonics of the lotus-maṇḍala that is used as a meditation device in the advanced meditative practices of rāgānugā-bhakti. An extensive description of the lotus-maṇḍala is given in the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya of the Padma Purāṇa, which extols the glories of Vṛndāvana as both a geographic place and a transcendent domain. As a transcendent domain, Vṛndāvana, which is also called Vraja, is represented in the Māhātmya as a thousand-petaled lotus-maṇḍala arranged in seven concentric rings, which functions as a cosmographic maṇḍala that presents a hierarchized vision of the realms and retinues that together constitute Kṛṣṇa’s transcendent abode.⁵⁵ Kṛṣṇa is seated together with Rādhā on a gem-laden throne on an octagonal yoga-pīṭha in the pericarp (karṇikā or varāṭaka), the seed-vessel at the center of the lotus.⁵⁶ Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā are encircled by the eight most beloved gopīs, Kṛṣṇa’s cowmaiden lovers, who are seated in the eight corners of the octagonal yoga-pīṭha and are surrounded by two additional rings of gopīs. The gopīs are encircled by four gopas who are Kṛṣṇa’s close friends among the cowherd boys and who are represented as the guardians of the four directions. The four gopas are surrounded in turn by myriads of gopas.⁵⁷ Although Kṛṣṇadāsa does not explicitly make reference to the yoga-pīṭha in his account of the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance at Jagannātha temple, I would suggest that he re-presents the choreography to evoke the structure of the yoga-pīṭha at the center of the lotus-maṇḍala. Kṛṣṇadāsa refers to the yoga-pīṭha elsewhere in the Caitanya Caritāmṛta, where he describes Kṛṣṇa seated along with Rādhā “on the yoga-pīṭha in Vṛndāvana…on a throne all made of jewels” and surrounded by Rādhā’s sakhīs, gopī companions (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 1.5.195–197).⁵⁸

Kṛṣṇadāsa’s evocation of the image of the lotus-maṇḍala, with its concentric rings, serves as a means of marking the socioreligious hierarchies involved in the performance. The maṇḍala incorporates and circumscribes the bhakta-saṅgha as a distinct social body composed of the kīrtanīyās, nāma-saṃkīrtana performers, that is set apart from the hierarchy of publics who witness the performance. The concentric rings of the maṇḍala demarcate the internal divisions within the social body of the bhakta-saṅgha and establish the hierarchy of performers. Caitanya sings and dances in the center of the moving maṇḍala. As the Kali Yuga avatāra who is revered as Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā together in a single body, his presence marks the site of the yoga-pīṭha. The four mahāntas—Nityānanda, Advaita Ācārya, Śrīvāsa Paṇḍita, and Vakreśvara Paṇḍita—surround Caitanya in the four directions, singing and dancing as the heads of the four groups of kīrtanīyās. As the close companions of Caitanya who are leaders of the bhakta-saṅgha, the four mahāntas take their place in the inner circle as the gopas who are the guardians of the four directions in the maṇḍala. The four groups of kīrtanīyās in turn surround the four mahāntas in the four directions. As “the Vaiṣṇavas” who are members of the bhakta-saṅgha, these anonymous kīrtanīyās form the outer circle as representatives of the myriads of gopas who encircle the four guardian gopas in the maṇḍala.

Kṛṣṇadāsa’s account of the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance explicitly invokes the līlā episode related in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa about the pulina-bhojana, riverside meal, in which Kṛṣṇa enjoys a picnic with the gopas on the bank of the Yamunā River. Kṛṣṇa is portrayed as sitting in the center while his cowherd friends surround him in concentric rings like the petals encircling the pericarp (karṇikā) of a lotus (Bhāgavata Purāṇa 10.13.4–11). Just as each of the gopas encircling Kṛṣṇa thinks that Kṛṣṇa is looking only at him, so each of the dancing kīrtanīyās encircling Caitanya thinks that Caitanya is looking only at him. The kīrtanīyās in the moving maṇḍala thus assume the role of gopas who are the exemplars of sakhya-rasa, the devotional mode of friendship.

The image of the dancing kīrtanīyās encircling Caitanya also recalls the image of the rāsa-līlā, circle dance, recounted in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa in which the gopīs array themselves in a circle around Kṛṣṇa. When the circle dance commences, Kṛṣṇa multiplies himself by means of his inconceivable power and assumes a separate form for each gopī so that each gopī thinks that Kṛṣṇa is dancing with her alone (Bhāgavata Purāṇa 10.33.2–6, 10.33.20). The allusion to the rāsa-līlā suggests that the kīrtanīyās assume the role not only of gopas, Kṛṣṇa’s cowherd friends, but also of gopīs, Kṛṣṇa’s cowmaiden lovers, who are the paradigms of mādhurya-rasa, the lover-beloved mode of devotion, which is celebrated as the most intimate and sublime expression of preman. Kṛṣṇadāsa’s account of a subsequent nāma-saṃkīrtana performance by Caitanya and his followers at the Jagannātha Ratha Yātrā, the annual temple cart festival in Purī, similarly suggests a parallel between the kīrtanīyās and the gopīs by relating how through his inconceivable power (acintya-śakti) Caitanya manifested himself so that he sported with seven different groups of kīrtanīyās at the same time, and each group—like the gopīs in the rāsa-līlā—thought that he was sporting with them alone (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 2.13.51–53).

The configuration of the moving maṇḍala, with the inner and outer circles of kīrtanīyās surrounding Caitanya in the center, thus defines the boundaries of the social body of the bhakta-saṅgha as Caitanya’s own bhakta-gaṇa, troop of devotees, who join with him in ecstatic singing and dancing in the līlā of nāma-saṃkīrtana.⁵⁹ By delimiting the social body, the moving maṇḍala distinguishes the bhakta-saṅgha from the hierarchy of publics who encircle the maṇḍala and witness from a distance the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance as passive observers.

First in the hierarchy of publics who witness the performance are the Vaiṣṇava priests and other temple servants at the Jagannātha temple who are alluded to in the account. The priests provide a ritual frame for the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance by offering incense to the mūrti of Lord Jagannātha prior to the performance and offering flowers to the mūrti after the saṃkīrtana is finished. The connection between the priests and the kīrtanīyās is mediated through the temple servant who gives the performers flower garlands and sandalwood paste at the beginning of the performance and brings them prasāda at its conclusion. Although the temple priests are not included in the moving maṇḍala of nāma-saṃkīrtana performers, they are first in the hierarchy of publics who witness the performance, for as the servants of Lord Jagannātha, Kṛṣṇa’s embodied form as an arcā-avatāra, image-avatāra, they exemplify dāsya-rasa, the devotional mode of service.

Second in the hierarchy of publics are King Pratāparudra, the last great Gajapati Mahārājā of Orissa (r. 1497–1540), and his associates who watch the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance from the roof of the palace. Kṛṣṇadāsa’s account of this particular nāma-saṃkīrtana performance occurs at a point in his hagiography when King Pratāparudra has not yet met Caitanya—although he is eager to do so—and thus he remains outside of the moving maṇḍala as a passive witness to the performance. At this point, the king, like the Jagannātha temple priests, is an exemplar of dāsya-rasa, for in his role as Mahārājā he is the protector of the Jagannātha temple. Later in the hagiography, when the king is accepted by Caitanya as a disciple, his incorporation into the bhakta-saṅgha is marked by his inclusion in the troop of gopa-garbed bhaktas who join with Caitanya in dance at the festival of Nanda.⁶⁰

Third in the hierarchy of publics are the “people of Nīlācala [Purī],” the anonymous “people” (jana or loka) who reside in Purī and witness the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance from a distance. Finally, Kṛṣṇadāsa’s account suggests that the reverberating power of the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance extends beyond even the anonymous people of Purī to the most encompassing of publics: the denizens of the fourteen worlds that are contained in each of the innumerable universes.⁶¹ Elsewhere in the Caitanya Caritāmṛta he elaborates on this notion, claiming that through the cumulative effect of Caitanya’s propagation of nāma-saṃkīrtana the entire cosmos reverberates with saṃkīrtana and all beings, moving and nonmoving, in all of the innumerable universes dance in the ecstasy of preman (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 3.3.63–71, 3.3.79).

The public performance of nāma-saṃkīrtana, as represented in the image of the moving maṇḍala, thus serves as an instrument of social formation that delimits the social body of the bhakta-saṅgha and distinguishes it from the hierarchy of publics who witness the performance. The socioreligious hierarchies delineated in Kṛṣṇadāsa’s account are further emphasized through a second discursive strategy in which he establishes a stark contrast between the multiple modes of reception through which the kīrtanīyās engage in the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance and the more limited modes of engagement on the part of the various publics.

For the kīrtanīyās, their performance of nāma-saṃkīrtana with Caitanya at the Jagannātha temple serves as an instrument of psychophysical transformation through which they refashion their material bodies as bodies of devotion by engaging three different embodied forms of Kṛṣṇa with the mind, senses, and organs of action: Kṛṣṇa’s sound-embodiment as a nāma-avatāra, his human embodiment as a yuga-avatāra, and his image-embodiment as an arcā-avatāra. The kīrtanīyās engage the nāma-avatāra through saṃkīrtana, singing, and śravaṇa, hearing, giving vocalized expression through the vehicle of their speech to the vibrating sound-embodiments of Kṛṣṇa. Their tongues and ears pulsate with the reverberations of the divine name, which overflow from the speech into the limbs, inspiring them to whirl and dance in ecstatic celebration of the Kṛṣṇa-nāman. As they savor the ambrosial nectar of the nāman, they revel in the intoxicating streams of preman. The kīrtanīyās engage the yuga-avatāra through darśana, seeing, and sparśana, touching. They behold the manifestation of divine power (aiśvarya) through which Caitanya casts his gaze in all directions simultaneously so that each dancer is absorbed in his darśana and both sees and is seen by him individually. The dancers are enveloped by Caitanya’s deep embraces as well as by his encompassing gaze. While the primary focus of the kīrtanīyās during the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance is on engaging Kṛṣṇa’s embodied forms as nāma-avatāra and yuga-avatāra, they also engage his arcā-avatāra at the beginning and end of the performance. They receive darśana of the mūrti of Lord Jagannātha and partake of his blessings through smelling the sweet fragrance of the incense and flowers offered to him, adorning their own bodies with the flower garlands and sandalwood paste touched by his form, and relishing the food (prasāda) offered to him.

In contrast to the kīrtanīyās, who actively engage in the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance with all their mental and physical faculties, the various publics are represented in Kṛṣṇadāsa’s account as observers who passively witness the performance. Although they hear the auspicious sounds of nāma-saṃkīrtana that reverberate throughout the fourteen worlds, the principal emphasis in the account is on their gazing at the spectacle from a distance. King Pratāparudra, accompanied by his associates, watches the performance from his palace roof and is astonished by what he sees. The people of Purī float in the bliss of preman as a result of “seeing this great dance, great prema, great saṃkīrtana.” But the gaze of the king and of the people is one-sided. They do not participate in the reciprocal gaze of Caitanya’s darśana, which is a privilege reserved for the kīrtanīyās who are members of the bhakta-saṅgha.

Before concluding my analysis of Kṛṣṇadāsa’s account of the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance at the Jagannātha temple in Purī, I would like to briefly consider the gender dynamics involved in refashioning the bodily identities of the nāma-saṃkīrtana performers. With respect to the ascribed identities of the four mahāntas who are identified by name in Kṛṣṇadāsa’s account, their ascribed sex is male, and the caste status of three of them—Advaita Ācārya, Śrīvāsa Paṇḍita, and Vakreśvara Paṇḍita—is brahmin, while the fourth, Nityānanda, is a casteless avadhūta ascetic. In Kṛṣṇadāsa’s hagiography, as well as in earlier hagiographies of the life of Caitanya, three of these four historical figures—Nityānanda, Advaita Ācārya, and Śrīvāsa Paṇḍita—are allotted key roles as chief disciples of Caitanya and, in the case of Nityānanda and Advaita Ācārya, as leaders of influential guru lineages in the formative years of the bhakta-saṅgha.⁶² With respect to the other kīrtanīyās who participate as unnamed Vaiṣṇavas in Kṛṣṇadāsa’s account, their ascribed sex is also male. In a discussion that appears prior to his account of the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance, Kṛṣṇadāsa describes “two hundred Vaiṣṇavas…all great bhāgavatas, bhaktas of Mahāprabhu” who had come from Bengal to Purī to join with Caitanya in the performance, and he identifies many of them by name (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 2.11.55–85). On the level of their sexed bodies, then, all the Vaiṣṇava kīrtanīyās who participate in the nāma-saṃkīrtana performance at the Jagannātha temple are male. On the level of their gendered devotional subjectivities, the imagery of the pulina-bhojana suggests that they may assume a masculine role as gopas in a devotional mode of friendship with Kṛṣṇa, or, alternatively, the allusion to the rāsa-līlā suggests that they may assume a feminine role as gopīs in a lover-beloved devotional relationship with Kṛṣṇa.

When engaging in the external bodily practices of vaidhī-bhakti, the bhakta may adopt the persona of a gopa or a gopī on the level of performance, but in the advanced meditative practices of rāgānugā-bhakti the focus shifts from engaging in external performances to catalyzing an internal state of realization in which the jīva awakens to the eternally gendered devotional subjectivity that is intrinsic to its svarūpa, essential nature, and the particularized form of its siddha-rūpa, eternal, nonmaterial body.

Remembered Identity: Realizing an Eternally Gendered Nonmaterial Body

In the Gauḍīya discourse of human embodiment the process of refiguring bodily identities is brought to fruition in rāgānugā-bhakti, the advanced phase of sādhana-bhakti, in which the bhakta engages in a regimen of meditative practices that is designed to catalyze the final shift from the inscribed identity of a devotionally informed material body to the remembered identity of a siddha-rūpa, a perfected nonmaterial devotional body that is eternally gendered in relation to the male Godhead, Kṛṣṇa. The siddha-rūpa, perfected devotional body, is described as eternal (nitya), nonmaterial (aprākṛta), and consisting of cit and ānanda, consciousness and bliss.⁶³

The Gauḍīyas’ hierarchized vision of the bhakta-saṅgha as a socioreligious maṇḍala comprising rings of bhaktas mirrors its hierarchized vision of Kṛṣṇa’s transcendent abode, the transcendent Vraja-dhāman, as a cosmographic thousand-petaled lotus-maṇḍala arranged in concentric rings. Kṛṣṇa is enthroned with Rādhā in the pericarp of the thousand-petaled lotus-maṇḍala and is encircled by his parikaras, his eternally perfect associates, who have never been subject to the bondage of the māyā-śakti and possess nonmaterial bodies consisting of śuddha-sattva, pure luminous being. In rāgānugā-bhakti the advanced sādhaka enters into an intimate relationship with Kṛṣṇa characterized by passionate love (rāga), which is achieved through emulating the eternally perfect associates of Kṛṣṇa and cultivating one of the four principal rasas, devotional modes of relationship with Kṛṣṇa, that are embodied by these paradigmatic rāgātmikā bhaktas of the transcendent Vraja.⁶⁴ The cosmographic lotus-maṇḍala can be reimagined in this context as comprising four concentric rings that radiate outward from the pericarp of the lotus where Kṛṣṇa is enthroned with Rādhā, presenting a hierarchized vision, from the most intimate to the least intimate, of the modes of devotion: from mādhurya-rasa, the lover-beloved mode of devotion exemplified by the gopīs, Kṛṣṇa’s cowmaiden lovers, in the innermost ring; to vātsalya-rasa, the devotional mode of parental love exemplified by Kṛṣṇa’s foster parents, Nanda and Yaśodā, and other elders, in the second ring; to sakhya-rasa, the devotional mode of friendship exemplified by the gopas, Kṛṣṇa’s cowherd friends, in the third ring; to dāsya-rasa, the devotional mode of service exemplified by the attendants of Kṛṣṇa, in the outermost ring.

Rūpa Gosvāmin suggests that the rāgānugā sādhaka should seek to realize the rasa, devotional mode, that accords with their svarūpa, inherent nature—whether that of a lover, elder, friend, or servant—by emulating a corresponding rāgātmikā bhakta of the transcendent Vraja “with both the sādhaka-rūpa and the siddha-rūpa.”

One should dwell (vāsa) continually in Vraja, absorbed in various stories (kathā) about it, remembering (root smṛ) Kṛṣṇa and his beloved associates whose devotional mode accords with one’s own. One who wishes to realize a particular devotional mode (bhāva) should perform devotional service (sevā) emulating the residents of Vraja with both the sādhaka-rūpa and the siddha-rūpa (Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu 1.2.294–295).

Although Rūpa himself does not elaborate on the nature of these two bodies, in his commentary Jīva Gosvāmin renders the term rūpa as deha, “body,” and glosses sādhaka-rūpa as the “body as it is” (yathāvastitha-deha) and siddha-rūpa as an “internal meditative body (antaś-cintita-deha) that is suitable for one’s intended devotional service (sevā) to Kṛṣṇa” (Jīva Gosvāmin’s commentary on Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu 1.2.295). Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja suggests that the sādhaka’s emulation of the rāgātmikā bhaktas with both the sādhaka-rūpa and the siddha-rūpa—which he terms the sādhaka-deha and the siddha-deha—entails becoming identified with the chosen rāgātmikā bhakta on two levels: first, by emulating the chosen rāgātmikā bhakta through performing with the sādhaka-rūpa external bodily practices such as śravaṇa and kīrtana that engage Kṛṣṇa and his līlā; and, second, by cultivating a state of inner absorption in the aprakaṭa līlā, unmanifest līlā, of the transcendent Vraja through internal meditative practices such as dhyāna and smaraṇa, which culminates in the realization of a perfected devotional body, siddha-rūpa.

This sādhana has two parts: external and internal. External is the performance of śravaṇa and kīrtana with the body of the sādhaka [sādhaka-deha]. In their minds [these sādhakas] mentally construct their own perfected bodies [siddha-dehas], and day and night they serve Kṛṣṇa in Vraja.…Following after one who is beloved of Kṛṣṇa,…in their inner minds they serve him eternally (Caitanya Caritāmṛta 2.22.89–91).⁶⁵

This passage presents the difference between the sādhaka-rūpa and the siddha-rūpa in terms of different forms of practice: the physical body utilized in external bodily practices, and the meditative body constructed through internal mental practices. However, in other contexts the distinction between the sādhaka-rūpa and the siddha-rūpa is presented as an ontological distinction between two categories of embodiment: the material (prākṛta) psychophysical complex that is subject to the binding influence of Kṛṣṇa’s māyā-śakti in the material realm of prakṛti, and the eternal, nonmaterial (aprākṛta) body that participates in Kṛṣṇa’s essential nature as part of the svarūpa-śakti in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman. In this perspective every jīva possesses a siddha-rūpa, an eternal, nonmaterial body, which is an aṃśa of the self-luminous effulgence (jyotir) of Bhagavān and, like the vigraha, the absolute body of Kṛṣṇa, consists of cit and ānanda, consciousness and bliss.⁶⁶ Due to the binding influence of the māyā-śakti, the jīva becomes deluded by ignorance (avidyā) and mistakenly identifies with the sādhaka-rūpa, the material psychophysical complex, and forgets its true identity as an aṃśa of Bhagavān. Moreover, the jīva forgets its svarūpa, inherent nature, and the corresponding form of its siddha-rūpa, which determine its distinctive role as an eternal protagonist in the aprakaṭa līlā in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman.

In the Gauḍīya perspective the material body into which the jīva enters before birth is sexually marked as male or female as determined by the jīva’s particular karmic heritage in any given lifetime, but this sexed body is simply one in a series of karmically constructed bodies that the jīva is destined to inhabit in the course of its journey in saṃsāra, and its ascribed identity as male or female has nothing to do with the jīva’s svarūpa, essential nature. Indeed, as long as the jīva mistakenly identifies with the sexed body, it remains enslaved by the binding influence of the māyā-śakti in the endless cycle of birth and death. The goal of rāgānugā-bhakti is to awaken the jīva from the sleep of ignorance so that it casts off this false sense of atomistic personal identity and awakens to the reality of its svarūpa, essential nature, and the particularized form of its siddha-rūpa, nonmaterial body, which is eternally gendered as female/feminine or male/masculine in relation to the supreme Bhagavān, whose absolute body is eternally gendered as male.

In contrast to contemporary gender theories that interrogate the relationship between sex, gender, and sexual desire, the Gauḍīyas frame sex and gender in relation to devotional desire, which is understood in terms of the rasa, devotional mode of relationship, that the jīva seeks with Kṛṣṇa and that is ultimately considered intrinsic to the jīva’s svarūpa, essential nature. At the meta-physical level of the siddha-rūpa, sex is left behind as an epiphenomenon of the flesh-and-blood physical body and gender alone remains. At this level the gendered identity of the realized jīva as female/feminine or male/masculine is reflected in an integrated nonmaterial state of personal-cum-bodily identity in which the jīva’s svarūpa, essential nature, is simultaneously manifested in its rasa, devotional mode, and in its siddha-rūpa, bodily form. The rasa is the correlative of gender as the gendered devotional subjectivity that is intrinsic to the jīva’s svarūpa and that is embodied in the particularized form of the siddha-rūpa appropriate to the devotional mode through which the jīva engages the male Godhead. In accordance with its rasa, the jīva’s siddha-rūpa may be in the form of either a female lover who embodies mādhurya-rasa, a maternal elder or paternal elder who embodies vātsalya-rasa, a male friend who embodies sakhya-rasa, or a male attendant who embodies dāsya-rasa.

The Gauḍīya discourse of human embodiment emphasizes the role of the guru and of meditative practices as two critical components in the rāgānugā sādhaka’s realization of the siddha-rūpa. The realized guru, who has attained the status of a samprāpta-siddha, perfected bhakta, and whose awareness is established in the aprakaṭa līlā of the transcendent Vraja-dhāman, is ascribed a role in revealing or confirming to the sādhaka the identity of their siddha-rūpa.⁶⁷ An advanced regimen of meditative practices—including dhyāna, meditation; smaraṇa, contemplative recollection; and mantropāsana, meditation by means of a mantra on a particular līlā of Kṛṣṇa—then serves as the means to catalyze a state of realization in which the jīva awakens to its eternally gendered siddha-rūpa and reclaims its distinctive role as an eternal protagonist in the aprakaṭa līlā.⁶⁸

Rūpa provides the basis for a specific form of smaraṇa called līlā-smaraṇa—contemplative recollection of the līlā of Kṛṣṇa—by instructing practitioners of rāgānugā-bhakti to dwell continually in Vraja by remembering (root smṛ) Kṛṣṇa and his beloved companions (Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu 1.2.294).⁶⁹ In the Bhakti Sandarbha Jīva elaborates on Rūpa’s instruction by providing an extended analysis of smaraṇa, which he defines as contemplative recollection of the names (nāmans), forms (rūpas), qualities (guṇas), eternal associates (parikaras), service (sevā), and playful activities (līlās) of Kṛṣṇa. He distinguishes five stages of smaraṇa: (1) smaraṇa, thinking about Kṛṣṇa in any manner; (2) dhāraṇā, withdrawal of the attention from external sense objects and focusing the mind on Kṛṣṇa; (3) dhyāna, meditation on the forms and other aspects of Kṛṣṇa; (4) dhruvānusmṛti, a more advanced stage of meditation in which consciousness flows in an unbroken stream towards Kṛṣṇa; and (5) samādhi, the most advanced stage of meditation in which the sādhaka attains a state of complete absorption that culminates in a direct cognition of Kṛṣṇa’s self-luminous absolute body and his aprakaṭa līlā (Bhakti Sandarbha 275 to 279).⁷⁰

In the Kṛṣṇa Sandarbha Jīva recommends a specific form of meditation, termed mantropāsanā, that involves meditating on a particular līlā in a particular place (sthāna) in Vraja-dhāman by means of a mantra. He introduces this meditation technique as part of his discussion of the two aspects of the aprakaṭa līlā: mantropāsanā-mayī līlā, which is a specific līlā that is mentally constructed by means of meditation utilizing mantras; and svārasikī līlā, the continuous stream of līlā that is spontaneously relished as the natural flow of rasa (Kṛṣṇa Sandarbha 153). Jīva defines mantropāsanā-mayī līlā more specifically as a particular līlā that is constructed by meditation (dhyāna) utilizing a particular mantra and whose distinctive identity is delimited by the particular place (sthāna) associated with that līlā. He cites examples of mantras from a number of authoritative śāstras that can be used in the practice of mantropāsanā. Verses from the Gopālatāpanī Upaniṣad are considered particularly efficacious mantras because the Gauḍīyas invest this post-Vedic Vaiṣṇava Upaniṣad with the transcendent authority of śruti as the record of the ancient ṛṣis’ direct cognitions of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa in his transcendent dhāman. Jīva cites the following passage from the Gopālatāpanī Upaniṣad in which Brahmā the creator responds to a question by the primordial sages about the nature of Kṛṣṇa’s form (rūpa) and recommends meditation on a series of ślokas that describe the gopa form of Kṛṣṇa engaged in a specific līlā in which he rests with his gopa and gopī companions beneath a wish-fulfilling tree near the Yamunā River in Vraja-dhāman.

The golden one [Brahmā] said: [Kṛṣṇa’s form] is in the garb of a cowherd (gopa-veśa), is the color of a rain-cloud, is youthful, and is resting under a wish-fulfilling tree. Here are the ślokas [for meditation]: The Lord’s eyes are like lotuses, his color is that of a rain-cloud, and his garments are dazzling like lightning. He has two arms (dvi-bhuja), his hands are positioned in the jñāna-mudrā (knowledge gesture), and he wears a garland of forest flowers. He is surrounded by gopas, gopīs, and cows, is adorned with divine ornaments, and rests beneath a wish-fulfilling tree in the center of a jeweled lotus. He is fanned by breezes that mingle with the waves of the Kālindī [Yamunā]. Anyone who contemplates (root cint) Kṛṣṇa in his heart (cetas) in this way will be liberated (mukta) from the cycle of birth and death (Gopālatāpanī Upaniṣad 1.8–11, cited in Kṛṣṇa Sandarbha 153).

Although Jīva does not explicitly describe the specific method through which ślokas such as these are utilized as mantras in meditation, he does indicate that during the practice of mantropāsanā the sādhaka engages the particular līlā that is the focus of the meditation through “hearing” (root śru), implying that the sādhaka mentally vocalizes the mantra that describes the līlā while visualizing the discursive content of the mantra. Thus, for example, the sādhaka mentally vocalizes the ślokas from the Gopālatāpanī Upaniṣad quoted above while visualizing the particularities of Kṛṣṇa’s gopa form engaging in this particular “resting” (śayana) līlā with the gopas, gopīs, and cows in a particular locale in Vraja-dhāman: under a wish-fulfilling tree on a jeweled lotus near the Yamunā River.

Through regular practice of mantropāsanā involving mental vocalization of ślokas and visualization of the corresponding līlā tableaux, the sādhaka penetrates more and more deeply into the unmanifest structures of the līlā in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman and becomes increasingly immersed in the flow of rasa. In the advanced phases of rāgānugā-bhakti, the sādhaka awakens to the constantly flowing dynamism of the svārasikī līlā in which the constructed world of līlā tableaux gives way to a spontaneous stream of rasa-filled līlā. According to Jīva, the svārasikī aspect of the aprakaṭa līlā, in which the sādhaka relishes through direct experience a continuous stream of līlā flowing with rasa, is like the Gaṅgā River, whereas the mantropāsanā-mayī aspect of the līlā, in which the sādhaka mentally constructs one līlā after another, is like a series of pools (hradas) arising from that river. Moreover, Jīva suggests that when the practice of mantropāsanā finds fruition in the unbroken flow of the svārasikī līlā, then the process of “hearing” (root śru) gives way to true “seeing” (root dṛś) in which Kṛṣṇa himself directly appears before the sādhaka in the depths of samādhi.

“O Lord, who are greatly praised, you become seated in the lotus of the heart absorbed in bhāva-yoga. Your devotees’ path to you is by hearing and seeing. In whatever form they contemplate (root bhū + vi) you in meditation (dhī), in that form (vapus) you manifest out of your graciousness” [Bhāgavata Purāṇa 3.9.11]. In accordance with this statement, when the mantropāsanā-mayītva finds fruition in svārasikī, then even today he [Kṛṣṇa] at times manifests (root sphur) as if immediately in the hearts of sādhakas (Kṛṣṇa Sandarbha 153).

In the culminating stage of realization in rāgānugā-bhakti, as represented by Jīva, the sādhaka goes beyond the role of a witness enjoying the continual play and display of Kṛṣṇa’s unmanifest līlā. In the final stage of realization the jīva awakens to its eternally gendered devotional subjectivity embodied in the nonmaterial form of the siddha-rūpa and reclaims its distinctive role in the aprakaṭa līlā as an active participant and established resident of the transcendent Vraja-dhāman. I would suggest that Jīva’s analysis of the connection between the two aspects of the aprakaṭa līlā—the discrete līlā tableaux that are mentally constructed through mantropāsanā, and the continuous stream of svārasikī līlā that is a spontaneous expression of Kṛṣṇa’s blissful nature—can help to illuminate the connection between the two aspects of the siddha-rūpa: the meditative body that is mentally constructed through meditation,⁷¹ and the eternal, nonmaterial body that is an aṃśa of the self-luminous effulgence of Kṛṣṇa.⁷² With respect to the first aspect, as mentioned earlier, the rāgānugā sādhaka constructs in meditation the siddha-rūpa as an “internal meditative body (antaś-cintita-deha) that is suitable for one’s intended devotional service (sevā) to Kṛṣṇa” (Jīva Gosvāmin’s commentary on Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu 1.2.295). Under the guidance of the guru, the sādhaka visualizes a meditative body that accords with the devotional rasa that is intrinsic to their svarūpa, essential nature, and the particularized form of the siddha-rūpa, eternal, nonmaterial body. The process of visualization involves identifying with those parikaras, eternally perfect associates of Kṛṣṇa in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman, who are the perfect embodiments of this particular flavor of rasa—whether Kṛṣṇa’s cowmaiden lovers, who embody mādhurya-rasa; Nanda and Yaśodā and other elders, who embody vātsalya-rasa; Kṛṣṇa’s cowherd friends, who embody sakhya-rasa; or the attendants of Kṛṣṇa, who embody dāsya-rasa (Bhakti Sandarbha 312, 286). The sādhaka then visualizes their meditative body in a series of līlā tableaux and through the agency of this body envisions directly engaging with Kṛṣṇa and his eternal associates in Vraja-dhāman: “I am personally (sākṣāt) a particular resident of Vraja,…I am personally (sākṣāt) attending Vrajendranandana, the son of Nanda the lord of Vraja” (Bhakti Sandarbha 312). The implication of Jīva’s analysis is that the reiterative practice of meditation involving visualization of the mentally constructed siddha-rūpa serves to catalyze the final stage of realization in which the jīva remembers (smaraṇa) its eternal siddha-rūpa and reclaims its distinctive role as an eternal protagonist in Kṛṣṇa’s aprakaṭa līlā in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman.

Building on the insights of Rūpa and Jīva, Kṛṣṇadāsa and later Gauḍīya authorities developed complex techniques of līlā-smaraṇa visualization in which the rāgānugā sādhaka visualizes in elaborate detail the aṣṭa-kālīya-līlā, the eight periods of Kṛṣṇa’s daily līlā that goes on eternally in the transcendent domain of Vraja. As part of these meditation techniques, the sādhaka visualizes the svayaṃ-rūpa, the beautiful two-armed cowherd form of Kṛṣṇa’s absolute body; the eternal forms of the gopīs, gopas, and other residents of Vraja; the spatial arrangement of the transcendent Vraja-dhāman, including the specific locale of each līlā activity; and the time of day in which the līlā activity occurs. The sādhaka also constructs a mental image of their own siddha-rūpa and visualizes this meditative body interacting with the eternal residents of Vraja in particular līlā activities. For example, if the guru has revealed or confirmed the identity of the siddha-rūpa to be that of a particular gopī, then the sādhaka visualizes their gopī body in all its particularity, including the gopī’s name, age, appearance, dress, place of residence, mode of service, and so on.⁷³ Once again, the implication of the Gauḍīyas’ analysis is that the regular practice of meditation involving visualization of the mentally constructed siddha-rūpa serves to catalyze an awakening in which the jīva remembers (smaraṇa) its eternal siddha-rūpa and reclaims its distinctive role as an eternal participant in the aprakaṭa līlā. Established in the highest state of realization as a member of Kṛṣṇa’s transcendent entourage, the jīva savors the exhilarating sweetness of prema-rasa in an eternal relationship with Bhagavān.

In this final stage of transformation the jīva casts off the last vestiges of atomistic personal identity tied to the material psychophysical organism and awakens to its true identity, true personhood, embodied in the particularized form of its siddha-rūpa, which is ontologically distinct from the sādhaka-rūpa. The early Gauḍīya authorities represent this final stage as an embodied state of realization in which the bhakta becomes a samprāpta-siddha, a perfected mahā-bhāgavata, who inwardly identifies with the siddha-rūpa, the nonmaterial body, while outwardly continuing to perform practices with the sādhaka-rūpa, the material body. Moreover, they claim that although the sādhaka-rūpa ceases at the time of death, the realized jīva continues to maintain its nonmaterial personal and bodily identity in the form of its unique svarūpa and siddha-rūpa, by means of which it revels in an eternal relationship with the divine Person, Kṛṣṇa, embodied in his vigraha.

The Gauḍīya discourse of human embodiment, in its formulations regarding the final state of realization, thus poses a significant challenge to contemporary theories of the body that are predicated on the ordinary human body composed of flesh and blood. In contrast to theories that are founded on the assumption that human bodies are made of matter, this discourse is founded on a distinction between bodies and materiality that challenges us to imagine the possibility of human bodies that are not composed of flesh and blood. The early Gauḍīya authorities posit an innumerable number of human jīvas, each of whom possesses a siddha-rūpa, eternal, nonmaterial body, that is modeled after the paradigmatic vigraha, the absolute body of Kṛṣṇa. Just as the absolute body of the supreme Bhagavān that exists eternally in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman has a human-like shape with two arms and consists of sat-cit-ānanda, being, consciousness, and bliss, in the same way every human jīva has a nonmaterial body that exists eternally in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman and that is like the absolute body of Bhagavān in that it has a human-like shape with two arms and, as an aṃśa of the divine effulgence, consists of cit and ānanda, consciousness and bliss. In Gauḍīya formulations these nonmaterial siddha-rūpas are not subsumed within the absolute body of Kṛṣṇa as a singular, distinctionless totality, but rather they retain their distinct identities as perfected devotional bodies that remain eternally in a relationship of inconceivable difference-in-nondifference, acintya-bhedābheda, with his absolute body. On the one hand, in their status as aṃśas they are nondifferent (abheda) in that they are characterized as partaking of the cit and ānanda aspects of Kṛṣṇa’s absolute body, while, on the other hand, they are different (bheda) in that they are not characterized as partaking of the sat, being, aspect—which I would suggest is a strategic omission on the part of the early Gauḍīya authorities in order to maintain an ontological distinction between Kṛṣṇa’s absolute body in its all-encompassing totality and the siddha-rūpas that are its aṃśas.

Each siddha-rūpa is represented in the Gauḍīya discourse of human embodiment as ontologically distinct not only from the absolute body of Kṛṣṇa but also from all other siddha-rūpas. Just as the svayaṃ-rūpa, essential form, of Kṛṣṇa’s absolute body reflects his svarūpa, essential nature, in the same way the distinctive form of each jīva’s siddha-rūpa, nonmaterial body, reflects its distinctive svarūpa, essential nature. In Gauḍīya formulations each jīva’s siddha-rūpa has a particularized bodily form that, in accordance with the devotional rasa that is intrinsic to its svarūpa, is eternally gendered as female/feminine or male/masculine in relation to the male Godhead and is distinguished by a particular age, complexion, mode of dress, and other bodily features.

Contending Bodily Identities

The Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment thus challenges us to imagine the possibility of embodied divine and human persons beyond the realm of matter. Moreover, in the case of realized human jīvas, it challenges us to imagine the possibility of gender beyond sex.

Contemporary feminist advocates of social constructionsm who distinguish between sex and gender tend to essentialize the sexed material body as a naturally given datum and relegate gender to the secondary status of an ideological construction superimposed on this “natural” base. The Gauḍīya authorities, in contrast, frame the sex/gender distinction in terms of their own distinctive ontological theories of alternative bodily identities and reverse this hierarchical assessment: they relegate the sexed material body, or sādhaka-rūpa, to the secondary status of a karmic construction and essentialize gender as intrinsic to the nonmaterial body, or siddha-rūpa.

The Gauḍīyas’ philosophical reflections concerning alternative bodily identities did not remain on a theoretical level but gave rise to on-the-ground debates in which they grappled historically with the existential dilemma encountered by practitioners who experienced contending bodily identities in the embodied state of realization prior to death. For example, consider the case of a Gauḍīya practitioner whose sādhaka-rūpa, sexed material body, is that of a male brahmin but who claims to have realized his siddha-rūpa, eternally gendered nonmaterial body, which is that of a female gopī. In other words, he/she is male outside but female inside. Does such a person transgress the heterosexual imperative and qualify as “transgendered”? Or would a more appropriate designation be “metagendered,” since we are dealing with an alternative bodily state that is simultaneously physical and meta-physical? How does such a person contend with these competing bodily identities? Does he/she continue to engage in the external devotional practices of sādhana-bhakti as a male brahmin while remaining inwardly identified as a female gopī, or does he/she adopt the dress, speech, and comportment of a gopī on the external plane as well?

Although Rūpa Gosvāmin, Jīva Gosvāmin, and Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja do not directly address such matters, these issues were actively debated by later Gauḍīya authorities between the second half of the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century. As David L. Haberman has discussed, Rūpa Kavirāja and Viśvanātha Cakravartin are the two central protagonists in the debate. Rūpa Kavirāja (seventeenth century), in his Sanskrit works Rāgānugāvivṛtti and Sārasaṃgraha, claims that the sādhaka-rūpa is not the ordinary material body (taṭastha-rūpa), which Jīva glosses as the “body as it is” (yathāvastitha-deha), but rather it is the reconstituted material body that has been ontologically transformed through initiation and therefore is exempt from normative socioreligious injunctions. He interprets Rūpa Gosvāmin’s instruction that the sādhaka should emulate “the residents of Vraja with both the sādhaka-rūpa and the siddha-rūpa” (Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu 1.2.295) to mean that a male practitioner whose siddha-rūpa is a gopī should cease to think of himself as a male and should adopt the identity of a gopī in thought, speech, and behavior on the level of the sādhaka-rūpa as well as on the level of the siddha-rūpa. He insists that the betwixt-and-between state in which “I am a male outside and a gopī inside” must in the end give way to a singular identity in the supreme state of realization: “I am a gopī, outside and inside.” The teachings of Rūpa Kavirāja expounded in his two works were condemned by a Gauḍīya council in Jaipur in 1727.⁷⁴ However, despite this official condemnation by the normative Gauḍīya tradition, the positions articulated by Rūpa Kavirāja have persisted and have found expression up to the present day in the living practices of bābās in contemporary Vraja (Hindi, Braj) who assume the identity of a gopī both internally and externally, adopting dress, ornaments, speech, and comportment appropriate to their gopīhood. There are even reports of bābās who claim that their female siddha-rūpas have gradually transformed their male sādhaka-rūpas from the inside out—for example, by spontaneously manifesting breasts.⁷⁵

The normative Gauḍīya position in the debate over Rūpa Kavirāja’s teachings is represented by Viśvanātha Cakravartin (seventeenth to eighteenth century), an authoritative Gauḍīya theologian in the lineage of Jīva Gosvāmin’s disciple Narottama Dāsa who composed original works as well as influential Sanskrit commentaries on the works of Rūpa Gosvāmin and other early Gauḍīya authorities. He is credited with resolving the debate by positing a two-model solution in which he interprets Rūpa Gosvāmin’s statement that the sādhaka should emulate the residents of Vraja with both the sādhaka-rūpa and the siddha-rūpa as operating on two distinct levels referring to two types of Vraja residents. On the one hand, in the case of a male practitioner whose siddha-rūpa is a gopī, he should construct in meditation a meditative body in the form of a gopī and should identify internally with the devotional mode of the eternally perfect gopīs who reside perpetually with Kṛṣṇa in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman and who are the paradigmatic exemplars of mādhurya-rasa. On the other hand, with the sādhaka-rūpa he should emulate the external devotional practices of Rūpa Gosvāmin, Jīva Gosvāmin, and the other Gosvāmins of Vṛndāvana who resided in the earthly Vraja and who are the paradigmatic exemplars of sādhana-bhakti.⁷⁶ In the final analysis, the Gosvāmins are celebrated by Viśvanātha and his lineage as doubly paradigmatic, for their sādhaka-rūpas are male, while their siddha-rūpas are female gopīs, and they thus possess “bodies that matter”on both the physical and meta-physical planes.

As we have seen, such issues concerning competing bodily identities—as in the case of a practitioner who is sexually marked as male outside on the physical plane but inwardly identifies as female on the meta-physical plane—did not remain on the level of philosophical reflection but were actively debated by leading Gauḍīya authorities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as matters of critical import for the day-to-day practices of the Gauḍīya community. I would suggest that these historical debates continue to have important implications to the present day, not only for the lives of contemporary Gauḍīya practitioners but also for contemporary debates about the sex/gender distinction both within and beyond the academy.