Hello! I have two names: Tilak Gröger and Toṣaṇa Kṛṣṇa Dāsa. I am currently a university student studying at The University of Sydney, where I am completing a Bachelor of Arts degree, double-majoring in Studies in Religion and Biblical Studies. I am also an ordained priest in, and practitioner of, the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava bhakti-yoga tradition. It goes then without saying that I am very passionate about religion. This is true regarding both the experience of religion and spirituality from the vantage point of a practitioner, and also from the positionality of academic analysis and research (beginner and amateur as I am in both).
This blog is really just a personal project for getting my thoughts and ideas out of my system and in a place where I can keep them, come back to them later, and maybe even share with friends. I post all sorts of things, regarding a wide span of religious traditions and interests from both aforementioned positionalities: a “detached,” “secular,”1 analysis and the reflections of a practitioner. I am most excited about the content generated from the area in between the two, the exciting grey that deconstructs the false binary. As many people who like to explore both spheres tend to end up, my personal faith is one that has been relatively deconstructed—I am more than happy to embrace that I am hopping on the trendy spiritual-bandwagon here—and so I tend to predominantly occupy that “exciting grey.”
Of my two names, Toṣaṇa Kṛṣṇa Dāsa and Tilak Gröger, the first was given to me by my revered spiritual master, Śrīla Rādhā Govinda Dāsa Gosvāmī Māhārāja, the second was a birthday gift. Both are names that I use frequently, and I use them here on this blog to indicate roughly which sphere I am predominantly engaging with in my writing: Toṣaṇa Kṛṣṇa Dāsa for spiritual reflections, especially from a Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava perspective, and Tilak Gröger for my more “secular”2 or academic posts.
For a lengthier introduction to this blog, see my first post: “What is Gregorian Kirtan?”
I hope you find a lot to enjoy, engage with, and disagree with on this blog. Happy reading!
I should clarify here that my disgust is aimed towards the perpetuation of the “secular/sacred” binary that such language provides, rather than what is often labelled as “secular.” While I dislike the divide and the framework it is inculcated in, I do tend to support and enjoy equally things on either side of the division. ↩︎ ↩︎