A God Who Dances by Kalakantha dasa
I love this title. It pulls from Nietzche’s statement, “I could only believe in a God who dances.” It is flute-playing Krishna, who, among all the divinities from traditions around the world, dances. This is a book about Krishna and the cover clearly conveys that. It’s a painting of Krishna in his spiritual abode, where he roams the forest groves and plays with his friends.
The format of this book in interesting. It contains two sections.
In the first part the author encourages us to take up Krishna Bhakti.
The next part focuses on summaries of core Bhakti texts.
The author loosely, and quickly, summarizes the Bhagavad Gita and then (equally quickly) summarizes Cantos 1-9 of the Bhagavata Purana. Then the author renders into poetry the entire 10th Canto, which is the longest part of this Purana.
In the summaries of the Gita and Cantos 1-9 we were given “Insights” to help us find our way, but this feature isn’t offered for the 10th Canto section, which represents more than three quarters of the book.
For someone completely new to the philosophy of Bhakti, I’m not sure these quick summaries of the Bhagavad Gita and Cantos 1-9 are enough of an introduction for a reader to understand the significance of the 10th Canto and how to mine the gems from it.
But if you’ve heard about the Bhagavata Purana and are looking for an easy read of the text without commentary this poeticized version is interesting.
You don’t get a solid understanding of the philosophy upon which the Bhagavata is grounded.
Perhaps watching this well-down video would be a good introduction to this book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Ial7pWsJ8