Vallabhacharya on Nirodha

[suchandra]

 

 

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

 

Vallabhacharya on Nirodha

 

http://brahmajijnasa.blogspot.com/2008/08/vallabhacharya-on-nirodha.html

 

Frederick M. Smith is one of the foremost, if not the best knower of Pushtimarg in the West. He wrote an excellent paper Nirodha and the Nirodhalaksana of Vallabhacarya which was published in volume 26 (1998) of Journal of Indian Philosophy, pages 489–551. I reproduce here a part of "Conlusion". I omitted the diacritics. Reading the paper I have become confirmed in my assumption that Vallabhacharya has some decisive things to say about dasa-lakshana.

 

Vallabhacarya employs the word nirodha to distinguish three different, but related, phenomena: (1) Following the BhP, nirodha is used as a designation of the name and contents of the tenth canto of the BhP, labeling it the nirodhaskandha. (2) It therefore indicates the lilas of Krsna, which are none other than the materialization of the Lord’s own nirodha. Considering both of these together, Purusottama and others in the tradition refer to the tenth canto as the nirodhalila, as it is a display of Krsna’s lilas that are designed to bring about nirodha in the following, third, sense. (3) Nirodha indicates the withdrawal of the bhakta from the domination of the manifest world (prapanca) and a corresponding entrance into the universe of supersensory love, of lila, which is to say into Krsna’s nirodha. Thus Lalu Bhatta, in his subcommentary called Yojana on Vallabhacarya’s Subodhini, explains in his introduction to the tenth canto that through the lilas of Krsna’s infancy and childhood, Bhagavan confers on bhaktas a state of prema. Through the lilas of his adolescence, including the great circle dance with the gopis (rasalila), he endows them with asakti. Finally, through the last lilas of the tenth canto, including his departure to Dvaraka, he endows them with vyasana, the highest state of love and the state that is a prerequisite for nirodha. Thus, in the sastraic idiom of the Pustimarga, perfected by Purusottama and Lalu Bhatta, the lılas are the instrument through which nirodha is achieved (karananirodha), the three stages of divine love (here taken together as asakti) constitute the functioning agents of nirodha (vyaparanirodha), while the final fruit (phalanirodha) arises when the bhakta becomes stripped of all gross aspects of existence (prapancabhava) and is able to abide in a supramundane (alaukika) state of awareness within the lılas of Krsna. Lalu Bhatta sums up by explaining that Bhagavan, availing himself of his potencies (saktis), which can be construed as either his divine powers and attributes or the svaminis of Vraja and other exalted bhaktas, manifests the lilas that produce nirodha. While producing these lilas, which are the instruments in bringing about nirodha, Bhagavan compels the bhakta to forget the created world and become attached instead to the Lord’s own form (svarupa), divine attributes (gunas), and lilas. This, then, is the functional aspect of nirodha (karanarupanirodhatmaka).