Enchantment 

[…] Yes, I will dare to say I was searching for—and continue today to search for—enchantment, as the antidote to my own and the wider fog of cynicism that increasingly pervades and envelopes the global spheres (blogosphere and the like). It’s a fog that affects me still today as I visit India (for perhaps the thirtieth time), creeping in and shrouding me especially when I visit Vrindavan—more than four decades since I first arrived there—by the explosion of construction mushrooming for ever-increasing numbers of “religious tourists.” So I take refuge from this twenty-first-century din and promise of cultural drought in the Rādhāramaṇa temple, absorb the time-suspending mood of its cooling enclosure, its white marble alcoves inscribed with Brajabhāṣā stanzas telling the story of Śrī-jī’s (Rādhāramaṇa’s) miraculous appearance, its silk-wrapped Bhāgavata Purāṇa positioned on a speaker’s low wooden platform. And of course, there is the main attraction of this stone- and marble-ordered space—the 11-1/2-inch tall, black stone, mildly smiling form of Rādhāramaṇa. Poised delicately yet confidently on his silver throne, raised and recessed, in his celebrated tribhaṅga—triple-bent dancing pose, his disproportionally large, black-pupiled conch eyes gazing back out to all who gather to gaze at him, Rādhāramaṇa sports his radiant yellow, blue, red, or any other colored outfit of the day, accented with seasonal flowers and flower garlands. Singers sitting cross-legged in the alcove at the opposite, back end of the temple courtyard serenade Rādhāramaṇa while I and a few other visitors settle on the stone floor. We gaze and listen, listen and gaze, being present and yielding our fragmented inner worlds to divine Presence.

[…] While doing my research at Rādhāramaṇa temple, residing for several weeks in 2001 in a rented flat just a few steps away from Rādhāramaṇa gheṛa, one day an electrician, a local Brajbāsī, came to repair a light switch. As I watched him, the young man turned and asked me, in a slightly mocking tone and friendly yet condescending glance, “So, have you seen Krishna?” Although I had been daily viewing Krishna in his form as Rādhāramaṇa (and other forms in neighboring temples), I resisted the urge to respond defensively. Our repairman seemed to be saying, “However much you seek, you will not find what you are seeking here. If you had been born here, like me, then you would be always seeing Krishna.” Sure enough, his not-so-subtle question-cum-dismissal caused me to feel twinges of imposter syndrome. But then, upon reflection, I remembered that Gopal Bhatta was not a native of Vrindavan, yet he had, by the intensity of his devotion, attracted Krishna to be manifest here in the form of Rādhāramaṇa. He thereby contributed to the task of making it possible for the likes of me to come there—coming from the farthest and deepest reaches of resistance to enchantment, even drawing on the medium and products of commodity capitalism (such as money and commercial jet transportation) to be instrumental in my coming. Had my mind been clearer at the time, I would have replied to the electrician, “I’m working on it. I’m doing soul work. It takes time and patience. I’m taking inspiration from Vrindavan saints like Gopal Bhatta. Krishna may reveal himself to me any time he wishes.”

—From Soul-Work in Vrindavan, the article by Kenneth Valpey (Krishna Kshetra Swami), published in the literary ejournal Muse India, issue nr. 117, September 2024. The full version of the article: https://museindia.com/Home/ViewContentData?arttype=feature&issid=117&menuid=11243