Hare Krishna, Amorous Sports
The excerpt is from The Ray of Visnu
by HG Rupa Vilasa Prabhu, p.89. Please note that the conversation was originally held in English (as you can see by the language of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta), so in this case there is no reason to suspect any obscurity brought about by an inadequate translation.
Prof. Suthers: How can Your Holiness’s statements [about Gaudiya Vaisnava morality as being by far superior than that of Christianity – Mmd] be reconciled with the descriptions that are found about Krsna’s amorous sports?
Srila Sarasvati Thakura: Krsna’s Amorous Sports are not temporal like the lustful sports of dramatic heroes and heroines like Romeo-Juliet or even ideal spouses. Lust as prevalent in this world is only a mental passion, but the lust of the transcendental world has its own form. Here lust is alsways goaded by the enemy (one of the six passions); whereas in the transcendental region of Krsna, the loveliness of the spiritual Body of Krsna ever drives the Lust for Krsna, which takes form as sublimated love or the desire to gratify the immaculate senses of Krsna Krsna’s Amorous Sports
are not to be called indecency, because it is Krsna Who is the only one unrivalled Enjoyer, Embodiment of the Real Truth and the Spiritual Despot.
Prof. Suthers: I cannot fully appreciate this; please let me understand it a little more clearly.
Srila Sarasvati Thakura: Suppose there are some angles, two right angles, four right angles, etc. There is the contracted character of a corner in the acute, obtuse and right angle. But in the two right angles called the straight angle, even though called an angle, there is no cotractedness or want of straightness, as is the case with angles in general. Such is the case with the Authocrat Krsna. THere is no want or contractedness or despicable character or indecency in the perfect Entity Krsna, like the perfect circle of 360 degrees, though the communities of enjoyers or nrenouncers, championing morality or immorality, may, due to the meagerness of their intellect, wrongly regard the lustfulness of Krsna, the result of His despotism which is only His, as vulgar as like that of common men and other creatures.
* * *
In other words, we may consider, say, mundane immorality to be an acute angle, and mundane morality to be an obtuse or right angle. But although in this terms the “plain surface of 360 degrees” may seem to be a total absence of morality, it is actually just the opposite – the all-encompassing transcendental reality, where immoraity and morality are transcended altogether and where it is the “absence of fullness” which is conspicuous by its absence.
Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati opposed employing the word jayanti for birthdays of eminent national figures, for according to several Sastriya references given in chapter fifteen of Hari-bhakti- vilasa, jayanti indicates the specific time when the star Rohini is conjoined with the moon on the krsna-paksa astami of the month of Bhadra, and thus exclusively refers to the avirbhava-tithi of Krsna. However, Gaura being nondifferent from the original Personality of Godhead, Sri Krsna, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati also approved and employed the term Gaura-jayanti for the avirbhava-tithi of Gaura.
(From Sri Bhaktisiddhanta Vaibhava, Vol 1, Page 335) This clears your question.
However, someone may say: Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati adopted Jayanti for Gaura on the basis that Gaura is nondifferent from Krsna. Then why don’t we adopt to Bhagavad-gita which is also nondifferent from Krsna?
Well. the answer is simple. We are not Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati. And if we adopt that logic, then everything is non-different from Krsna. Better we stick to acharyas rather than finding new terms which they never used.
Your servant
Sri Giridhari Dasa