On Bhakti yoga

[Guest guest]

On Bhakti Yoga

 

After reading my notes on Karma yoga vs. Jnaana yoga, some one requested me to

compare

Bhakti yoga or yoga of devotion also.

 

Actually, Krishna lists only two yogas in sloka Ch. III-3. There are two paths –

one is

karma yoga for those whose mind-set is in yoga of action and the other is jnaana

yoga for

those whose mind set in yoga of knowledge. Bhakti yoga is not separately

mentioned. The

reason is very simple – both have common theme and that is yoga. Yoga means

whose mind is

yoked to the higher nature of reality. That demands commitment towards the

higher which

is nothing but Bhakti or devotion towards the goal. Hence karma yoga means

Bhakti

through action and jnaana yoga means Bhakti through knowledge. Thus, although

Lord

Krishna does not consider Bhakti as separate yoga since it is the bottom line

for both

karma and jnaana, Bhakti is emphasized through out Gita. For example, Krishna

says in

Ch.9-29:

samoham sarva bhUtEShu na mE dvEShyOsti na priyaH|

yE bhajantitu mAm bhaktyA mayi tE tEShu cApyahaM||

 

I maintain equanimity to all – I do not favor anybody or disfavor anybody.

However,

those who worship me with devotion, they are in me and I am in them.

 

Karma yoga involves IswrArpita buddhi that is offering the action as the prayer

to the

Lord. When action itself becomes a prayer, then we have to make sure what we

offer is the

best that we can offer; therefore dexterity in action is essential for a karma

yogi –

yogaH karmasu koushalam-says Krishna.

 

The whole of 12th chapter is called Bhatiyoga but in that the emphasis is

Etu sarvaaNi karmAni mayi sanyasya matparAH|

ananyE naiva yogEna mAm dhyAyhanta upAsatE||

tEShAmaham samudharthA mRityusamsAra sAgarAt|

bhavAmi na cirAtpArthA mayyAvEshita cEtasAm|

Those who surrender all their actions in me, and meditate on me without any

other

thoughts, and those who have surrendered everything and whose minds are fully

abiding in

me, I shall err long uplift them from the thralldom of cycle of birth and

deaths.

 

Shankara defines Bhakti in VivEkachUDAmaNi as

moksha kAraNa samArgryAM bhaktiH Eva garIyasI|

swaswarUpanusandhAnaM bhaktirtyabhidIyatE|

swAtmatatvAnusandhAnaM bhaktirityaparE jaguH||

Of all the paths for liberation Bhakti is the supreme. That bhakti is continuous

contemplation on one’s own essential nature. Others say that continuous

contemplation of

the truth of one’s own Atma is bhakti. Atma jnAna vichAra is therefore supreme

bhakti as

per Shankara.

 

Krishna says while classifying all the devotees into four groups, ArthaH (One

who thinks

of me when they are in despair), arthArthii (One who prays for things, artha) ,

jignAsu

(one who has desire to know Me) and jnAni(one who knows Me), JnAni is the

highest bhakta

since he loves me the most and I love him the most.

Hence Bhakti is not a choice here but is the essence in all sAdhanas. To

understand

Bhakti how a karma yogi perceives bhakti in relation to jnaana yogi, and why

Krishna says

jnAni is the highest Bhakta, we should examine what is involved in Bhakti or

devotion.

 

Let us look first at devotion. The difference between devotion and love (word

used in

common parlance) is love towards higher is devotion and love towards lower is

actually

lust but mistakenly called love. Hence one rises in devotion while one falls in

love. Now

what is higher and what is lower? Higher is that wherein the mind becomes calm,

quiet and

surrenders itself. The surrendering implies all mental agitations are sublimated

at that

alter of love. This is also called prapatti – a term which has a special

significance in

VishiShTAdvaita. In Gita we find that until Arjuna surrendered, Krishna did not

start

teaching – shiShyatvOham sAdhimAm tvam prapannam – I am your disciple (prapanna)

that I

am ready to subject myself to your discipline. That should be the attitude of a

student

as Krishna himself enumerates that one should approach a teacher with that

attitude of

surrender – tat viddhi praNipAtEna praripraShNEna sEvayA – That is devotion

towards the

teacher and the teaching is essential for knowledge– Only in that attitude of

devotion

the mind becomes free from agitations and ready to learn. In contrast, lower is

that

wherein the mind gets more and more agitated – one cannot sleep or eat or do

anything

constructively since mind is always pre-occupied – that is what happens when one

is

falling in love.

 

Love or devotion can be classified into three types: 1) Means Love 2) End-Love

and 3)

Self-Love – (the terms are based on Swami Paramarthanandaji’s talks on Bhakti).

Means

love means love of the means to achieve some goal in mind – that is the path to

achieve

the goal in mind. Some are so obsessed with the means that they forget the goal

and

fanatically fight for the means. We can remind ourselves the story in Gulliver’s

travels

where the two Lilliputian countries fight among them selves – the cause is how

to break

the egg – One country says Egg should be broken from the fat end while the other

insists

on breaking from the thin end. The Means became more important than the end.

Religions

try to survive in fighting that theirs is the only means to reach the goal while

the

other means will take you to eternal hell. Some are ready to kill others in

support of

their cause to save life of the unborn babies. Since I love the end or the

goal so much

that I tend to love the means too. That is one kind of love. But some love only

the

means so that they can get the goal they want. Once the goal is reached there is

no more

love for the means since the mission is accomplished. I love my uncle so much

since I

like to have the wealth that he has; but once I got that wealth, uncle is of no

importance; in fact he is considered more a nuisance to me.

 

How is this related to Bhakti? For the most of the people, God’s love is only a

means-love. That is God is considered as a means to achieve some goal in mind.

What I

love is actually the goal that I want, and means is only a means for what I want

–

Everybody has lots of desires – I want this, this and this and without this I

cannot

live, etc – 'I' includes all mine too -that is my child, my wife, my children,

grand

children, etc. and ‘this’ includes health, wealth, position, power, etc all that

is

included as the goals of my life. I want to be on the good side of God, since I

have

learned that he is the one who is the giver. Hence I go from a temple to a

temple, one

holy place to the other, of course with a big list of what I want from Him. I

will make

sure I do not forget to prostrate all the gods in the temple (nowadays there are

many in

each temple) to make sure that I am not in the black list of any one of the Gods

there.

Whenever we go to a temple, the pujari asks during sankalpa that involves

informing the

God who are we and why are we praying the Lord, etc. - our gotram and our star,

etc, so

that when God sends goodies he has the right address. Pujari has a standard list

for all

that he repeats for every body without even asking what we really want. Thank

God,

Krishna lists us also as one of his Bhaktas under the category of artha arthiis

– that is

all those who are always with begging bowls, however much he has already given.

That is

called Means-Love.

 

The second one is called End-Love not end of love. God itself is the end not

the goodies

that he gives. I do not care for the goodies, what I love is God. This kind of

love is

rather rare and is what is really emphasized in most of the devotional paths.

The nine

modes of Love are the modes of expressing this love towards God. He is the

master and I

am the servant is the one that is mostly emphasized in VishiShTAdviata. The

service

according to them involves serving the forms of God – that includes the daily

puja and

vigra ArAdhana. This bhakti is exemplified by the twelve alwars in the

vishiShTAdviata

tradition. The bhakti includes not only in bhagavat sava but also bhaagavata

save, that

is serving the Bhaktas of the Lord. Serving the Lord is easier like Lakshmana

serving

Rama, but serving the servent of the Lord is more difficult and ShatRighna

personifies

that - He serves Bharata, who serves Rama. Love towards Lord does not involve

any

expectation in return but doing what Lord wants. This was exemplified in

Ramayana when

Bharata went to bring Rama back by his devotion. This was depicted beautifully

in

Ramayana series by Ramanand Sagar. There was a contest between Rama' devotion

to his

dharma and Bharata's love for Rama. Janaka was asked to make a decision - Janaka

says

Bhakti superseeds duty, hence Bharata won, but there is fine print in this says

Janaka -

Bhakta cannot demand the Lord to give but He has to surrender completely and do

what

Lords wants him to do - that is true bhakti. Bharata learns hard way what is

true bhakti

- He bows down to Rama and requests what Rama wants him to do.

 

The third type of love is the self-love that Shankara emphasized in the above

quoted

sloka from VivekacUDAmaNi. This is considered as the supreme love. How can the

self love

is the supreme love? Yajnavalkya says to his wife Maitreyi in Br. Up. –

aatmanstu

kaamaaya sarvam priyam bhavati – essentially we love everything or anything else

because

we love over selves. I love this – this can be anything (means love) or even God

(end

love) – not for the sake of this but for my sake. I love any this so that I

feel that it

gives me happiness. What I love is actually happiness that I want to be than the

thing

for thing sake. Hence even God lovers do not love God for God’s sake but for

their sake.

What they really love is the self that is contended or full. They want to be

complete

without any inadequacies since full and contended mind is the happy mind. A

jnaani is

the one who loves himself – since he revels in himself and he has no desire for

anything

else including God since he has discovered that the God he loves is nothing but

his own

essence. Krishna says I am in everyone’s heart and heart in Vedanta means the

very core

of one’s individuality. Hence Krishna says he is jnaani – the one who realizes

that

sarva bhUtastam AtmAnam sarva bhUtAnicha Atmani – one who realizes he is the

self in all

and all are in himself – he is jnaani and that jnaani is the one Krishna says is

supreme

bhakta. The self realization is also God realization as Krishna himself in the

very next

sloka says – yo mam pasyati sarvatra sarvan ca mayi pasyati – those who sees Me

everywhere and everything in Me.

Hence pure Bhakti should culminate in jnaanam hence Self-love is God-love – not

as a God

separate from him – it is the culmination of Bhakti where lover and loved have

become

one- that is advaita. In advaita, bhakti reaches its pinnacle – and that is

moksha and

that is liberation.

 

Hari Om!

Sadananda

[Guest guest]

Hello Sri Sadananda

 

A beautiful exposition of the path.

I would like to elaborate a bit about DEVOTION.

Devotion -as a word- has many shades of meaning. To me; it is

dedication, in the full sense of the word.

 

The word dedicate from the dictionary means:

To set apart and consecrate to a divine being or a sacred cause.

 

What does this means?

Due to the upbringing and the community of any man; each human has an

inner table of priorities engraved in his heart. This table of

priorities differs from one to another. In one man it will have

gathering wealth at the top, in another prestige and so forth.

A man of the spirit; his inner table of priorities will have only one

item, namely understanding and working to secure a destiny that

transcends death. It is his life time work. He dedicates his life for

one single cause, undestanding life for transcending death. Death can

never be transcended except through understanding this present life we

live. This man never wavers from his purpose and gathers all his

strength, all his attention, all his faculties and become one pointed

like a spear to reach this end. This man is willing to give up

everything he has for this single end, this man has only his life to

offer. This man will sacrifice his wealth, his prestige, everything if

needed for that end. To me this is Bahkti yoga, This is Jnani yoga,

this is karma youga, this is the Royal path to the DIVINE.

 

Thank you Sri Sadananda for your marvellous exposition that offered

the opportunity.

 

hsin