The third type of hermeneutics is integrative hermeneutics. Here I am again using as an example, the book of Richard Thompson The Mysteries of the Sacred Universe. There he maps the Bhagavata’s 5th Canto description to contemporary geographic and cosmographic accounts. It is both hermeneutics of consent and hermeneutics of suspicion. He also talks about ‘context-sensitive models’ saying: “In the Bhagavatam, the context-sensitive approach was rendered particularly appropriate by the conviction that reality, in the ultimate issue, is avāk-manasam or beyond the reach of the mundane mind or words. This implies that a literal, one-to-one model of reality is unattainable, and so, one may as well pack as much meaning as possible into a necessarily incomplete description of the universe.”

“Pack as much meaning as possible into a necessarily incomplete description of the universe.” He is not putting aside the Bhagavata’s description, he is holding on to those descriptions, and he is also wondering how we can understand it with our limited experience or faulty senses. Still, we want to understand: how can we get some understanding?

Can we extend this further? Yes. The plot thickens with further reflections of the scholar Jessica Frazier. She works with our Oxford Center for Hindu Studies and teaches at Oxford University. She studied philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer quite extensively and wrote her doctoral dissertation on how some of his ideas relate to the ideas of Srila Rupa Goswami. There she thought deeply on the subject of interpretation and out of this reflection she develops what she calls a ‘choral hermeneutics’, which she explains in this way:

“The old model of hermeneutics [by Gadamer and others] assumed that ‘I’ reached out of my cultural assumptions to engage in dialogue and comprehend ‘your’ views, all within a dialectical relation to my tradition that meant I would necessarily transform my cultural inheritance—'fusing’ our horizons, according to the phrase made famous from Gadamer’s work Truth and Method (1960). But this model envisions cultural encounters as the occasional meeting between two cultures, reaching across a border.”

Further, she continues that what Gadamer and his colleagues say is very nice, but limited in terms of ‘I and the text’, and ‘I and another person’, a narrow back and forth. It is a dialogue between two points, and that is not how the real world is. The real world is more complicated. She goes on: “What happens when not two but multiple parties join the conversation when a dialogue develops into a chorus?” At that point one would ask: Is it a chorus or a cacophony? Well, here comes a spoiler: When we keep bhakti in the centre of this hermeneutic circle we can develop wonderful harmony in which nothing is going to be lost and everything is going to be gained.

Let’s go back to the Bhagavatam, and again, thinking about a part and the whole analysis, keep in our mind that the Bhagavatam, as Srila Vyasadeva says, is “the ripened fruit of the tree of Vedic literature.” Does it mean that we can forget about the tree? Well, one could argue that one can forget about the tree. When you are hungry and need only fruit right away, yes. But the tree is still there and it has various purposes. There is a lot to share about Bhagavatam by being aware of the great richness of the Vedic corpus. And don’t forget about the very rich commentarial tradition that begins for us with Srila Prabhupada, who is of course very much connected with the entire guru-parampara. It is even more complicated, because there are also various Vaisnava traditions. And what about all the other traditions, the non-Vedic ones? I like to remind devotees of Joan of Arc, who is also a part of Bhagavatam. Why? Because her story is about God consciousness (as Srila Prabhupada once commented).

What can we, current readers, bring with us from our backgrounds to the process of interpretation? What cultural baggage do we carry with us? Or what do we want to get rid of? As we understand, philosophically, we all are individual servants of Krishna. Every one of us has an individual unique relationship to Him, which we are bringing back to our hearing and reading Bhagavatam and in this way it becomes quite a chorus of choral interpretation, and this can lead to a very rich, deep and ever-deepening relishing of the Bhagavatam and understanding of the Bhagavatam.

Here one may ask, “What about the Jambu-fruit? How does all your big talk about hermeneutics help to understand the Jambu-fruit becoming gold?” Here it is good to go back to Srila Prabhupada’s purport to Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 5.16.20-21. What does Prabhupada mean by saying: “It is understood…”? He says: “Unfortunately, on Earth, there is such scarcity of gold that the governments of the world try to keep it in reserve and issue paper currency.” Further, he speaks on our condition in the age of Kali, quoting Bhagavata Purana, 1st Canto, saying: “Because they have no gold in their possession, they are poverty-stricken and therefore they are considered unfortunate. Sometimes these unfortunate people want to be promoted to the heavenly planets to achieve fortunate positions as described in this verse, but pure devotees of the Lord are not at all interested in such opulence.”

That is Prabhupada’s point. What is it all about the  Jambu-fruit becoming transformed into gold? However it happens, pure devotees are not interested. The humble devotee simply prays to the Lord, “Kindly pick me up from the material world, which is full of varieties of material opulence, and keep me under the shelter of Your lotus feet.” Prabhupada further quotes Narottam Das Thakur, who prays: “O my Lord, O son of Nanda Maharaja, now You are standing before me with Your consort, the daughter of Vrisabhanu, Srimati Radharani. Kindly accept me at the dust of Your lotus feet. Please do not kick me away, for I have no other shelter.”

Srila Prabhupada also refers to Prabodhananda Sarasvati Thakur, who calls this world a ‘phantasmagoria’ for those who have been blessed by the side-long glance of Caitanya Mahaprabhu. It is tri-dasa-pur akasa-puspayate… That is the point! That is the interpretation that takes the whole corpus of Vedic literature together. We can call it integrative. It is the hermeneutics of consent, but also more than that. It is an integrative interpretation because it identifies that particular verse with so much specificity about these fruits that are very big—bigger than an elephant, becoming very ripe and juicy, falling and forming a river, contacting with the rays of the sun, and by that becoming gold, that is later used for ornaments—of what Prabhupada says: “It is all phantasmagoria!” Phantasmagoria… Hare Krishna!

So, this is an attempt to explain a little more about what we do when we read Srimad Bhagavatam, for a little more appreciation. There is a method. It is a process. We can go deeper. We are not rejecting anything. We are seeking the meaning, and of course, Srila Prabhupada helps us.

—From the lecture on Srimad-Bhagavatam 3.3.21-22 and the presentation: "The Map is Not the Territory: Mapping Hermeneutic Approaches to the Bhāgavatam’s Cosmologies” by Krishna Kshetra Swami, ISKCON Alachua, Florida, USA, November 22, 2023