Narada’s Bhakti Sutras constitute the classical authority on the philosophy of Bhakti. Its clarity of thought coupled with simplicity of language is exceptional. Narada, the son of Creator Brahma Himself, is not only the divine resident of the divine world but the friend, philosopher and guide for all the devas as well as most of the asuras. Bhakti is ‘parama-prema’ (Supreme Love): so defines Narada in the very second Sutra of his total of 84. And he goes on: It is not to be confused with emotional excitement or eroticism. It is not fanaticism or credulousness or blind faith. It is not also mere scriptural knowledge. It is an experience of all devotees and not a rare hallucination. It is a transcendental experience of bliss and so is different from ordinary love. There are three reasons why it is supremely distinguishable from ordinary love – it is not based upon selfishness or egoism and as such is untainted by any motive, it prevents any other worldly love in the mind of the devotee; and thirdly there is complete self-forgetfulness on the part of the lover. Intrinsically this Supreme Love is nothing but the immortal bliss of freedom itself (amRta-svarUpA – 3rd Sutra) which comes unsolicited by the grace of God and self-effacement. The use of the word ‘amRta’ to define bhakti indicates the sense of freedom from all misery and a sense of eternal Bliss and is therefore comparable to the JIvan-mukti (Mukti even while alive) of advaita philosophy. ‘amRta’ also means unsolicited alms. The ideal devotee does not even crave for Mukti; he is quite satisfied to enjoy the love of God for love’s sake.
‘yAn pOy indiralokam Alum accuvai perinum vENDen’
says one of the Alvars (in Tamil), meaning: even if I am sent to heavens to rule the pleasures there I would not prefer it (to the pleasure of reciting God’s names here). This thought that Bhakti, instead of being a means to Mukti, may be the end itself goes back to as early a time as Dhruva of the SvAyambhuva-manu period, the very early period of BrahmA’s creation. The boy Dhruva’s pinnacle of praise of the Lord in the form of twelve stanzas recorded in the Bhagavatam, has the following as one of its shlokas (Bhagavatam IV – 9 – 10):
The bliss that can be had by contemplating on Thee and hearing the recital of Thy glories by Thy devotees cannot be had even by dwelling in the impersonal infinite Being, Brahman, who is the self of all, not to speak then of the joys of heavenly life, which are ever threatened by the sword of Time!
The advanced stage of bhakti is called para-bhakti (the word to be distinguished from parA-bhakti, of the Gita). This para-bhakti, supreme bhakti, is a form of renunciation, namely the consecration of all activities, religious or secular, as worship of God. Shankara’s famous shloka (No.27) in Soundaryalahari, comes to our memory here.
‘Whatever action it is of mine, may be taken as intended for Thy worship: my prattle as muttering Thy prayer; the manifold forms of my manual work, as the mudras (gestures) employed in Thy worship; my loitering as going round Thee in the form of a pradakshina; my taking nourishment, as offering oblations to Thee; my lying down, as prostrating before Thee; and my attending to all other comforts, as dedicating my entire self to Thee’.
In this sense every natural act and function without exception is construed by the ideal devotee as an act of worship of the Supreme. Not only there is this consecration by complete self-surrender, but there will be (for the ideal devotee) extreme anguish if He were to be forgotten – ‘tad-vismaraNe paramavyAkulatA’ (Sutra #19). Such indeed was the Bhakti of the Gopis.
‘The really blessed people in all the worlds are these Gopikas’ says the Bhagavatam (X-44-15) ‘ who, ever absorbed in love for Krishna, always sing about him with their minds fixed on him – whether they be milking, husking, churning, cleaning the floor, attending to children or working in the garden’.
The Vaishnavite saints got their inspiration from this love of the Gopis. Nimbarka, Jayadeva, Chaitanya and Vallabha all founded their theology on this Brindavana Lila of Krishna with the Gopis. The repetition of God’s names has been emphasized by all these great devotees of the Divine. Not only have they emphasized it in their teachings but they have been exceptional role models of the actual practice of such repetition. Accordingly, Narada in the third chapter of his work, where he lists the means of self-realization, clearly specifies ‘avyAvRta-bhajanaM’ (Sutra #36) and ‘lokepi bhagavad-guNa-shravaNa-kIrtanaM’ (Sutra #37) as two such means. The first one means ‘uninterrupted loving-worship’ and the second one means ‘hearing and singing the glories of the Lord even while engaged in the ordinary activities of life’.
Although most of the Hindu scriptures cry from the housetops that a single utterance of God’s name is sufficient to take one to the spiritual goal, it is safer to remember that it is only an exaggeration to create faith in the efficacy of Japa. Japa itself means repetition. The claim of the Bhakti school that one utterance is enough is like the claim of Adi Shankara that the mahAvAkya need be heard only once in the case of highly qualified aspirants. But He himself qualifies his own claim in his Bhashya on Brahma Sutra 4-1-1 & 2:
“Repetition will be unnecessary for one who can realise the Self as Brahman after hearing ‘That Thou Art’ once only. But for one who cannot do so, repetition is a necessity”.
Thus it is noticed in the Chandogya Upanishad where Uddalaka teaches his son Svetaketu, he is requested by his son again and again for a further explanation and he removes the respective causes of the son’s misconceptions and teaches that very fact ‘tat tvam asi’ repeatedly. Thus Japa and Sankirtana must be done repeatedly and zealously, for it is only repetition of words that can support repetition of ideas continuously. That is why Narada includes the two above in his list.
Question: Should the Japa be done consciously and intelligently with full knowledge of the meaning of the Mantras?
Some devotees do not believe so. The story of Ajamila (cf. Section 12) is quoted in support of this view. But the real purpose of the Ajamila story, according to Bhagavatam 6-1-20, is only an illustration of the principle enunciated Bhagavatam 6-1-19:
sakRn-manaH kRshNa-padAravindayoH niveshitam tad-guNarAgi yairiha /
na te yamaM pAsha-bhRtashca tad-bhaTAn svapne’pi pashyanti hi cIrNa-nishkRtAH //
Meaning: If a man, with a feeling of passionate attachment, unites his mind with Krishna’s feet even once, he will not see Yama or his emissaries with noose in hand, even in dream.
This verse therefore speaks of the efficacy of the remembrance of the Lord, and not of an unintelligen t utterance of a mere word. What happened in Ajamila’s case is that he was reminded of God and His Grace asa result of a casual utterance of the name of the Lord, and that it was the devotion engendered by this remembrance that saved him. It is worth noting that according to Bhagavatam itself Ajamila performed intense tapas after this and realized God. If a casual utterance could have saved him there would have been no necessity for his subsequent sAdhanA.
Still the question remains whether the knowledge of the meaning of the mantras is necessary for the consummation of the japa. Chandogya Upanishad in dealing with the japa of ‘Aum’, says: (1-1-10) He who knows this Aum and he who does not know this aum both perform rites with that Aum. But knowledge and ignorance are different. Only that which is done with knowledge, faith and meditation, that alone becomes more powerful. Svetasvatara Upanishad 4-8 says :
Of what avail are the Vedas to him who does not know the idestructible highest Eternal Being in whom the Gods and the Vedas reside?
All this does not mean that one should be aware of the complete meaning of all the words of the mantra before one can be benefited. It is enough if one has the notion that these mantras are intended to remind you of God’s omnipresence. It is the meditation of that omnipresence that really matters and not the words that help you do it. This is why even people who repeat Sanskrit mantras without understanding their etymological and grammatical nuances are still benefited. When the japa is done without any expectation , or attachment to, the reward associated with it, all the restrictions and strictures regarding its actual performance pale into insignificance. When the objective of reaching to God is kept in mind as the only objective, the Lord Himself takes care of the worthiness of the performance. “It is the Lord alone” says Sutra 79, “Who is the repository of all the blessed qualities, that is to be worshipped always by one free from all cares and worries, in every aspect of his life”.
Descent of Grace is the culmination of bhakti yoga. The theory of Grace is more complicated in the Hindu religion than in the semitic religions. Because the karma theory is so central to Hinduism, its view of God's Grace is much more subtle than the naïve argument that if God is pleased with your devotion, He immediately gives you what you want. The history of Hindu devotees of the Lord is a long saga of excellent examples of mystical devotion and the acceptance of the Lord as the embodiment of the Supreme Absolute Reality. It includes not only just devoted extraordinary men and women but composers, authors, singers, poets, missionaries, visionaries and common people breathing the spirit of genuine bhakti, sometimes born of a naïve theory of surrender, sometimes born out of the loftiest intellectual conviction, and, very often, of both. Each one of their lives was such that bhakti itself got its definition from what they did and preached. Even before the time of recorded history, as we know it now, the mythological names that had become proverbial in this connection in the Indian subcontinent cannot but be recalled, if nothing else, for paying our homage in this account of bhakti. These names are for instance, (in the alphabetical order of their names transliterated into English, for want of a better order!):
Ajamila, Akrura, Ambarisha, Arjuna, Bhishma, Dhruva, Draupadi, Gajendra, Garuda, the Gopis, Hanuman, Jatayu, Lakshmana, Narada, Parasara, Parikshit, Prahlada, Radha, Rukmangada, Sanandana, Saunaka, Sudhama, Sugriva, Suka, Uddhava, Valmiki, Vibhishana, Vidura, Vyasa, Yasoda and Yudhishtira.
No special treatise on bhakti has to be studied to know about bhakti. It is enough to read the stories about these characters from the tradition. Coming nearer to historical times we have numberless devotees of the Lord on the Indian soil whole devotional lives have been so exemplary that bhakti itself came to be evolved by their unique actions and pronouncements. A study of the life of an Appar, or a Thiagaraja, or a Ramadas, or Mira, or Kabir or a Vedanta Desika or a Prabhupada and scores of others would show how devotion finally ends up with the Grace of God being showered on the devotee. That does not mean, however, that the devotee does not suffer any more in his material life.
There are two views in Hinduism of how one may win God's Grace. One view is that you have to cleave to God as a baby monkey clings to its mother. This view, the markaTa-nyAya -- the monkey theory, considers human effort as essential in obtaining salvation just as a young monkey has to exert itself and cling to its mother while being carried to its destination. The second view is that you don't have to make any positive effort, just surrender yourself to God as a baby cat surrenders to its mother and relaxes. This latter is the mArjAra-nyAya -- the cat theory, which emphasises prapatti, complete resignation to God's will as the most effective means of salvation. In fact the tenkalai ( = Southern Learning) sect of Vaishnavism holds that prapatti is the only means of salvation. It is open to all, the learned as well as the ignorant, the high as well as the low, while the path of bhakti involves a little understanding of jnAna and karma. But anyone who has been initiated by a proper guru, may fling himself on the bosom of God and surrender to Him and thus, taking refuge in the Almighty, the devotee need not exert any further, as, according to the tenkalai school, individuals to be freed are selected by the Grace of God. This school holds that the essence of the gItA is contained in that one verse, the carama Slooka, which says, 'Renounce all dharmas and seek Me, the One, for thy protection and I shall deliver you from all sins.':
sarva dharmAn parityajya mAmekam SaraNam vraja /
aham tvA sarva-pApebhyo mokshayishyAmi mA SucaH //
But according to the advaitic viewpoint, when the Lord says, shed your dharma, He does not mean: abandon your action. Your duties you have to do, certainly. But they must be done in a spirit of detachment. In fact you must surrender the doership itself to God, then God by His Grace will convert all your actions to dhArmic ones. Once this kind of surrender is done to the Lord to the extent of merging one's individuality with the Lord, thereafter one becomes an instrument in the hands of God and nothing more. To all external appearances such a devotee may appear to behave like ordinary people, discharging all his duties scrupulously according to his station in life. But within himself the devotee will not be conscious of doing anything of his own accord or for his own sake. Often he may be seen to override accepted codes of conduct or social custom or propriety but also often he may be so immersed in the bliss of his god-experience that he appears dead to his sourroundings. It is this kind of self-effacement that is the the culmination of a complete surrender to God. And such a surrender has to be done by one's own free will. Man has the free will to obey or to disobey God. The so-called fatalist view in religion is only a fragmentary part of Hinduism. Because of the vAsanAs that one brings along with his birth one is born in a particular environment and this facet of one's personality, mistakenly branded as Fate, reflects mainly in one's tendencies. Fate does not influence anything except the tendencies. Everything else is one's own making. One has the total free will to surrender to God or not.
Great souls, the pious and the devout who possess a divine nature -- they know Him as the prime cause of all creation, they know Him as the Imperishable, as permeating everything just as air pervades all space. They know Him as agent-provacateur for even the swing of a little leaf. They constantly chant his names and glories and strive to attain His Grace through worshipping Him with single-minded devotion. They constantly think of Him and nothing else and worship Him for the sake of worship. To such people who are ever immersed in His thought, God promises that 'He will take care of their security and well-being': yogakshemam vahAmyaham. He goes on further to promise:'Whosoever offers to Me with love a leaf, a flower, a fruit or even water, I delightfully partake of the article offered by such a disinterested devotee of purified intellect':
patram pushpam phalam toyam yo me bhaktyA prayacchati /
tadaham bhaktyupahRtam aSnAmi prayatAtmanaH // (bhagavad-gItA: 9 - 26 )
Note that all the things he has listed above are products of nature and nature alone; man does not have to strain himself to get them. God does not calculate the value of the things you offer Him. He only calculates the feeling that prompted your offering. This is the art of Spiritual Love. We have only to purify the feeling behind the act, in order to win His Grace. 'Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer as oblation to the sacred fire, whatever you bestow as a gift, whatever you do by way of penance, offer it to Me', says He:
yat karoshi yad-aSnAsi yaj-juhoshi dadAsi yat /
yat tapasyasi kaunteya tat-kurushva mad-arpaNam // (bhagavad-gItA: 9 - 27)
This is the science of Spiritual Love. Everything is an offering, or dedication, to Him. Hindu religious scriptures are replete with Slokas, depicting these two concepts: the art and the science, of Spiritual Love.
Even if the vilest sinner worships Him with exclusive devotion in this spirit he should be considered noble, says the Lord, for he has taken the first step:
api cet sudurAcAro bhajate mAm ananyabhAk /
sAdhur-eva sa mantavyaH samyag-vyavasito hi saH // (bhagavad-gItA: 9 -30).
And to those who have taken towards the Lord even a single step, the Lord promises to take several steps towards them, so that they can speedily become dharmAtmAs. The simple meaning of this word 'dharmAtmA' is 'a virtuous soul'. To such a devotee the Lord assures us: My devotee never perishes. - na me bhaktaH praNaSyati - (bhagavad-gItA: 9-31).
QUESTION: But this is not true. We see many devotees - some of them really true devotees in every sense of the word - suffer either hunger or poverty or disease or failure in their endeavours. How can this be explained?
The elementary answer is that God tests them to gauge the intensity of their belief and devotion. But how long does God have to test? Very often one finds that there is no end to the suffering one undergoes, in spite of one's devotion. Our teachers explain this with the help of several analogies. One is that of driving a nail into a wall. What does one do? After hitting the head of the nail a few times, one shakes it and checks whether it can be pulled out from the wall. And one does this several times, alternatively hitting and driving the nail into the wall and checking by shaking. This process of intervening by periodical trials of strength goes on in the life of a devotee. This is part of the science of spiritual love. The more one survives each trial, the more intense one's faith becomes. So when God says: My dfevotee never perishes, He means, ultimately. How long is 'ultimately' is the question. It depends on the accumulation of one's pUrva karma (karma of all one's past lives). If the bank balance of karma is too much on the negative side, the only way to wipe out the deficit is to 'suffer' it.
This elementary answer that God tests them to gauge the intensity of their belief and devotion is indeed given by many exponents of Hinduism and is also mentioned in some contexts in the purANAs. But experts in the scriptures do not accept this answer. It was in one of Sri Krishna Premi's lectures that I gathered a more sophisticated answer to this question. The elementary answer only underestimates the omniscience of God. He has no necessity to test us, ordinary mortals. He clearly knows that we will fail in such tests. But then this theory of God testing his devotees is certainly true in the case of confirmed intense devotees of the Lord. In such cases, He tests them just to show to the rest of the world how intense and effective their devotion is and how far a devotee's faith can carry him. He knows that they won't fail His test. In our ordinary cases, the theory that God tests us is not acceptable. We suffer because of our karma. And we have to suffer it. Hinduism is very clear on this point. In fact even in the case of leading devotees they could not avoid the suffering that they had to endure But their lives show how when the Lord's Grace descended on them, the most intense suffering could be either transformed into intense delight or, more often than noty, God's Grace, instead of wiping out their suffering, provided an insulation of faith which enabled them to be oblivious of that suffering underneath.(p.93-94).
QUESTION: If God's Grace is what ultimately decides what is going to happen to me, why does He not give me or grant me that bhakti which I seem to lack and need?
Yes, God grants you that bhakti. But you have to receie it. The rain may pour, but if a vessel is upside down no water will collect in it. Your mind is free; by your own free will you have to decide to receive what God is ready to give you. By your own volition you have to decide to trust in God and surrender to Him. If by supplanting your will, God has to give you what you need, then there need be no creation, no existence of the universe. This is the mystery of God's lIla (sport, play) of creation. Creation is a kind of play where God allows beings to have the feeling of separateness from Him and then waits and waits until the beings that have emerged from Him come back to Him. If they don't want to come back to Him, He allows them to go their own way and take their own time to discover that that is the Want which will finally rid them of all their wants. The 'agony of God' in this great cycle of creation is that beings do not want to get out of this cycle. So sometimes He gives them all the petty things they want, so that in due time they would want what He wants to give them. All our temples, gods and goddesses and the innumerable ways by which we can propitiate the divine in these places of worship, as well as the uncountable methods by which we may offer our private prayers -- all of them have that one objective, that we should ultimately want to go back to where we came from, that is, merge in Him and His Glory.
To understand the glory of divinity, one has to tune one's mind to take time off from one's constant activity in the mundane world. To see darkness, one must have darkness. To understand intelligence the right way, you have to be intelligent. To be conscious, you must have consciousness. So also, to become divine, you must live in the memory of the divine. There is a saying, a favourite of Sri Ramakrishna: 'Just as a dancing girl fixes her attention on the waterpot she bears on her head even when she is dancing to various tunes, so also the true devotee does not give up his attention to the blisfful feet of the Supreme Lord even when he attends to his many and varied concerns'.
So fix your mind on Him and make obeisance to Him by serving Him and humanity at large. Unite yourself to Him and to His cause. Entirely depend on Him and surrender to Him even your feelings of mine and thine. Then, says, bhakti yoga, you shall win His Grace.
Finally it is important to note that the Hindu thought process has always a built-in tendency toward evolution as opposed to revolution. It has continuously shown a flexibility, an adaptability, and a resilience which have undoubtedly been the key to its long survival. It gradually came out of its own partial eclipse that it experienced during the challenge of Buddhism and Jainism. It showed an extraordinary degree of accommodation and adapted itself to face the continued onslaught of Islam in the 2nd millenium. It reacted with similar flexibility to the challenge of scientific rationalism as well as that of Christianity. The really most distinguishing feature of Hinduism is that it has always been a matter of faith, not a policy of diplomacy, with Hindu thought, to consider all religions as true. Since God can be worshipped in several forms and ways, a true Hindu believes that different religions are just so many paths to God. No religion may assume that it is the only true religion. Each is a path to the same one God. So there should be no hate or distrust of another religion or another point of view with respect to God. In this modern world of strife, competition and hatred this tolerance of other religions and other points of view with respect to God is the major lesson that the world may adopt from the Hindu way of life. We shall end this monograph with the clarion call which Swami Vivekananda gave to the whole world at the Parliament of Religions in 1893.:
If there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose Sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for development; which in its catholicity will embrace in infinite arms, and find a place for, every human being from the lowest grovelling savage, not far removed from the brute, to the highest man towering by the virtues of his head and heart almost above humanity, making society stand in awe of him and doubt his human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognise divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centred in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine nature.
Om ShAntiH ShantiH ShantiH.