Bhakti - According to Shankara ?: Advaita Bhakti - Part 1

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May I request the indulgence of Fellow advaitins to permit me to

write a long essay in answer to this question? It is one of the

most important concepts in the understanding of Sankara. I

call it Advaita Bhakti. I shall, however divide it into two

parts, for reading convenience. Those who are familiar with my

book: The Ten Commandments of Hinduism, will recognize

that much of the matter below has been extracted from that

book.

 

My father was a renowned advaitin and he was also a confirmed

devotee of the Lord. Therefore what I write has the conviction

of 'svAnubhava' (own experience) in the case of my father

and 'pratyakshAnubhava' (experience by watching - my

father, that is) in my case.

 

What perplexes common understanding is how the concept of

bhakti can be consistent with the advaitic conclusion that

the Self of each individual is the same as the Supreme Self.

If God or the Supreme Reality does not have a separate

status other than our Selves, then who is to worship whom? Does

not Bhakti imply a certain duality, namely the worshipper

and the worshipped? The difference from the dualist

philsophies is only in the attitude and not in the details of the

action. When Sankara says that only Knowledge , not an

integration of Knowledge and Works, nor an integration of

Knowledge and Devotion, that leads to the Ultimate Release,

he refers to the final stage of the attainment of Moksha. In that

sense, it is Knowledge and Knowledge alone. There is no

mixture of Knowledge with anything else, according to

Sankara. But to get to that stage of Knowledge Sankara

recommends the doing of Works in a desireless, unattached

way (nishmAma-karma) and an one-pointed devotion. These

are the only sure means to take you to that stage. Sankara

does not ask you to throw away Works or Devotion. These

will drop off, if at all, by themselves. The very consciousness

that one is doing Works is enough to make it obligatory on you

to do Works. It is the same thing with Devotion. In the

ultimate analysis Devotion has to take one to that stage

where one is no more conscious of the difference between

oneself and the worshipped. When this duality disappears

between the worshipper and the worshipped, nothing more is

desired. What remains is only the Subject, the 'worshipper',

in whom has merged the objective world of duality. Thus

those who want to follow Sankara have to develop the attitude

all through their life of a jnAna-based karma or a jnAna-

motivated bhakti. This attitude is just the awareness of the

One Ultimate Reality which is changelsess, unmanifested

and without attributes and which is also the Innermost Self

within us which nothing can tarnish. Every time we pray to

God or worship Him it should be with the conscious step of

accepting a duality for the sake of worldly worship while in

reality there is no duality. The sixteen formalities that are built

into a ritual worship are all expressions of this coming down,

namely, a confession: Oh God! I cannot but worship you as

someone separate from me but let this worship strengthen the

realisation in me of the identity between You and my Inner

Self! This undercurrent of an attitude of identity as the ultimate

goal and the attitude of temporariness during the period of the

worship, of a certain apparent duality fior the purpose of the

worship is the characteristic of a true follower of advaita. This

is confirmed by the tradition (which goes back to Sankara) of a

panchAyatana-pUjA, wherein one offers worship to different

stones and special earthly configurations picked up from

specific locations of certain rivers. One of the purposes of this

tradition is to instil into our minds that the Ultimate is formless

and in order to worship Him (It, Her) one does not need the

anthropomorphic figures of an idol or a picture; any concrete

symbolism, particularly the ones which come from Mother

Earth, the most concrete expression of the Lord's Power,

prakRti, are enough.

As already quoted by Vidyasankarji and explained by Sadanandaji

in these postings, Sankara defines bhakti in specific terms as:

Contemplative living in one's natural state, that is, the divine

state is bhakti. 'sva-svarUpa- anusandhAnaM', says he. This

natural state is the state of being brahman. Any slipping from

this state is called 'pramAda' - the great Fall - by sanat-sujAta in

the mahA- bhArata, and that was branded as death by him. It is a

balanced state of blissful experience of the Absolute. It does

not come out of studies or scholarship. It is a state to be

enjoyed internally, not bey the external apoparatus. It

blossoms when one is no more alive to any worldly distraction or

glamour. I have watched my father get into that state sometimes

during the pUjA. )

 

 

 

Once, for example, I was reciting the names in the standard

archana form from lalita-triSati. My father would have me read

the archana and he would be physically offering the flowers or

the kumkum to the Goddess. That day it was the lthree

hundred names of lalitA. As each name was pronounced by me

with the the compound of magic syllables Aum-Aim-hrIm-SrIM

prefixed to the name and the word namaH suffixed to the

name, he would offer the kumkum or the flower. I had just

come to the name etat- tad-ity-anirdeSyAyai namah (meaning:

She cannot be indicated as 'this' or 'that'). His hand which had

started the motion of the backward swing in order to offer the

flower, stopped suddenly, as a motion picture would stop --

and there it was, for the next one to two minutes, with his eyes

closed, and I dared not disturb the silence by going on to the

next name in the Archana. This divine perception, which sprouts

forth intuitively, is the perception of those enlightened persons

who do not see this world, but who only see the godliness of

Infinite Love and the loveliness of Omnipresent God. It is the

Contemplative Living, in the divine state: sva- svarUpa-

anusandhAnaM.

Sankara waxes eloquent about such a state of supreme bhakti in

glowing terms that are poetic as well as precise. In one classic

description that occurs in Verse No.61 of Sivananda-lahari, he

gives five analogies for Devotion to Divinity. We shall take this up

in Part 2 of this posting, where we shall also explain the

esoteric significance of the fifth analogy here, for which Sankara

quotes Kannappar as the role model, in verse No.63 of the same

work.

 

 

 

praNAms to all advaitins,

profvk

 

Prof.V. Krishnamurthy

My two books, one on Science and Spirituality

and the other on Gems from the Ocean of Hindu Thought, Vision and Practice,

can both be accessed at the address:

http://www.geocities.com/profvk/

 

 

 

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