WAVE 4: ESSENTIALS OF BHAKTI:
AN ADVANCED LESSON FOR THE
FAITHFUL
Page 2
When
Divinity appears as a physical manifestation for a specific purpose, for that
context, for that moment, that manifestation is considered to be Supreme. Hinduism therefore gives the privilege to
each individual to choose an ishTa-devatA (favourite deity) and
worship as if it were the exclusive ultimate. In this mode of ishTa-devata worship,
Hinduism recognizes six traditions, which may be listed as the worship of
1.
Aditya, the Sun-God;
ambikA, the Mother Goddess, in her three forms of durgA, lakshmi and saraswati ;
3.
vishNu, belonging to the classic
Trinity and His concrete manifestations (avatAras) in the forms of Rama,
4.
ganeSa, the elephant-faced deity,
considered as the primal God of all worship;
5.
maheSvara or
Siva,
the third God of the classic Trinity; and
6.
subrahmaNya, the six-faced deity known
also as murugan
or kumaran
to the Tamil world.
All these are nothing but expressions with name and form of the
nameless and formless Absolute. All variations of ishTa-devatA worship in the Hindu
world can easily be pigeon-holed into one or other of these six traditions. In
addition, the choice of ishTa-devatA,
instead of being an academic exercise, became, over the centuries, a choice of
one among the thousands of temples scattered throughout the country and the
deity chosen may very well be the particular deity enshrined in that specific
temple, though certainly belonging to one of the six major streams listed
above. It is this variety that gives richness to
Hinduism. It is this possibility of ‘to each according to his needs and
capabilities’ that brings together under one banner of Hinduism people with
varying practices, attitudes and states of evolution. Accordingly carving of images of gods both
for worship at home and in the temples became one of the most highly developed art
and profession in
Let us now come to the concept of Bhakti
in action. Bhakti is built on the plank of faith that
there exists a supreme power, in the form of an ultimate godhead, without whose
Will there is not even a swing of a little leaf but who is represented by all
the different deities of gods and goddesses. There are three
stages of Bhakti:
bAhya bhakti: This is external devotion. It
assumes that God is external to us. He is in the temples, in bathing ghats, in banyan trees. One feels ‘I must go there and
worship’. This is a tAmasic
bhakti or unenlightened bhakti.
Even this has a place in all religions because it is this popular fact of
religion that is visible to the outsider and it is here that faith starts. It
is this which gets expressed in processions, festivals and melas.
ananya bhakti: This, categorised
as rAjasic bhakti, is
the exclusive devotion of a deity irrespective of anything else. The classic
example is that of Tulsidas, the author of rAmcarita-mAnas. In every lin e of this monumental work we
find the ananya bhakti of Tulsi reverberating. Not only this. In every line we also
see the exclusive Godhood of Ram as the Ultimate Godhead of Hinduism. To the
credit of this type of bhakti, however, it must be
said that never did such bhakti
in India lead to intolerance though the dividing line was and is rather thin
between this type of exclusive passionate devotion and religious bigotry. This is
because such devotees are so fully convinced of the all-pervading nature of
their God and they are more fully convinced of the One-God foundation of the
Hindu religion that they really believe that any other god that anybody else
worships is only a different manifestation of their own ishTa-devatA.
This is the most welcome spin-off (particularly in view of the modern
upsurges of religious fundamentalism all around the world) of the philosophical
foundations on which bhakti in Hinduism stands. A
Rama bhakta like Tulsi would sincerely believe that a Jesus or a Buddha is
nothing but an avatAr of his Rama
and therefore there is no question of any intolerance.
ekAnta bhakti: This is the third stage,
the noblest stage. It is sAtvic bhakti. It is
devotion done purely as a duty to God, expecting nothing in return, in the
fullness of God’s love and living in that Love completely, totally merged in that Love of God. It is a
divine ever-flowing love; it is the love of the Gopis
to God. It is a self-effacing love, unmatched by any other love or devotion
that we know of.
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© V. Krishnamurthy