Bhakti Yoga
Bhakti means
spontaneous and continuous attraction of the mind to God under all circumstances.
No motivation is involved here and a sense of total surrender to Him with Love
is observed here. Supreme devotion to Lord, Para-Bhakti is the basis of Bhakti
Yoga. This surrender to Lord with Love comes comes from the purification of
soul through renunciation and knowledge. Those who think man is just a body and
has got a soul think that the sole purpose of creation is to enjoy the worldy
things; even their approach to God is to obtain the worldly happiness and a
heavenly life after death. They live a life of sensuousness, slaves of the
senses, animal life indeed! But there are those who think that ‘man is a soul
and has a body’; they think otherwise. They think of obtaining the supreme
bliss by renunciation. They realize that ‘there is an infinite, omniscient
spirit behind, that can do everything, break every bond- and that spirit we
are, and we get that power through love’. Narada
Bhakti Sutra is a source of the ‘secrets of devotion’.
Bhakti proceeds
out of a real want. Ordinarily man wants only food, clothing, wealth, sex satisfaction,
acquisition of power, fulfillment of ambition, etc. When all these lower desires
fall off little by little, man will begin to want God in a real sense. Materialistic
demands cloud the need for God. Renunciation is involved in all types of Yogas.
Giving up the desires of fruits of action is the gist of Karma Yoga. In Raja
Yoga, it is the eternal separation of soul from nature and in Jnyana Yoga, it
is the concept of ‘Maya’or illusion that is the sum and substance.
Universal love is evident in the
perspective developed by the Yogi practicing Bhakti Yoga as also in Raja Yoga.
A sense of fearlessness dawns on him; he perceives all others as creation of the
Lord and sees Lord in them. He experiences no pleasure or pain and feels everything
including his body belongs to Him. “Knowing that Shree Hari, the Lord is in
every being, the wise have thus to manifest unswerving love towards all
beings”. He develops a sense of total surrender, perfect surrender, and the conviction
that nothing that happens is against him. Let things come as they may. “Thy
will be done”. He realizes that fighting, struggling, thinking always has no
meaning and the awakening of attachment of love of God effectively breaks all
other bondage and he is free. The best treatise on Bhakti is ‘Narada Bhakti Sutra’.
Narada Bhakti Sutra is an exhaustive treatise on Bhakti. Sutra 25
states:
“Sa tu
karma-jnyana-yogebhyopyadhikataraa”.
Meaning, that, ‘devotion is
superior to the paths of action (karma), Knowledge (Jnyana), and Yoga (mental exercises)’.
Bhakti is not merely a path to salvation but it is also the goal (of
Realisation). It is not something that is produced
but something which is the very
essence of our being. It is the goal itself; hence it is not something to be
achieved. It is the love of God; it is already there.
It should be noted that, Narada Bhakti Sutra 28 says, that,
‘devotion can be generated through knowledge only’. Sutra 29 says that, ‘knowledge and devotion depend upon one
another’. This seems to be a balanced view. Mainly, however, through the grace
of the great souls or through a little grace of God, can one obtain Bhakti or devotion
[Sutra 38].
Narada
Bhakti Sutra gives the methods of achieving pure Bhakti. Renunciation of
the objects of desire and one’s attachment to objects of desire is the first
prerequisite to obtaining Bhakti or devotion. The second requirement is
undivided devotion to the Lord; and the third requirement is the continuous
remembrance of God. Even when one is pre-occupied with various activities one
should remain engaged in chanting, hearing and singing the glory of the Lord.
This will keep the mind engaged in the thought of God; but, mainly one attains
devotion through a little Grace of The Lord Himself, or the Saints and Seers.
Bhagavad Gita proclaims that the Lord takes full care of those who completely
surrender and erase their ego in the sharanagati (surrender) of pure bhakti.
“Ananyaschintayanto maam, ye janah
paryupasate;
Tesham nityabhiyuktanam yogakshemam
vahamyaham”
Meaning, “Persons who meditate on me in a state of oneness with me, who worship
me, who are constantly in a state of yoga, I carry what they lack and preserve
what they already have, and thus fulfil all their desire” [Gita 9.22].
Practice of Bhakti Yoga is as difficult
as Jnyana Yoga, or for that matter, even the Karma Yoga or the Kriya toga are
not very easy. Of course, nothing is easy in the process of Self-realisation.
Purity of thought, purity of mind and total surrender to Lord are difficult to
come to mortals who are after sensuous life and who are always body-conscious.
It is very interesting to quote Sri Ramakrishna here: ‘the whole world is a
lunatic asylum. Some are mad after worldly love, some after name, some after
fame, some after money, some after salvation and going to heaven. In this big
lunatic asylum, I am also mad- I am mad after God; my madness is after all the
best” said Sri Ramakrishna.
“We all begin as dualists in the religion
of love. God is to us a separate Being. Love comes between in the middle and
man begins to approach God and God also comes nearer and nearer to man in the
form of mother, father, son, friend, master and lover……… and the last point of
progress is reached when the devotee feels that he has become absolutely merged
in the object of his worship”. In the discipline of Bhakti, the practice of renunciation
consists not in destroying any of man’s affections, but in giving them a god-ward turn.
So, the teachers of Bhakti have taught how
to channelize human affections into forms of God-love known as ‘Bhavas” These
Bhavas are: 1. Santa Bhava (placid or philosophical without any human element in
it), 2. Dasya Bahava (attitude of a servant), 3. Apatya (attitude of a son to a
father), 4. Sakhya (friendly or mitra bhava), 5. Vatsalya (parently affection
towards children), 6. Madhura Bhava or sweetness that can take the form of conjugal
love, or a lover’s affection to his/ her sweet-heart. In the highest state of
Para-Bhakti the lover loses himself in the Beloved and attains to the state of
non-duality. And, thus the highest form of knowledge and the highest from of
Bhakti are one and the same in the end, though they may appear to be different
at the initial disciplinary stage. Love and knowledge are thus the obverse and
the reverse of the same coin even as are the personal God, Ishta devatha, and the
Para Brahman.
Body consciousness is too
strong in ordinary men and this constitutes a hurdle in the path of knowledge.
For those who pursue the path of worship of personal God, it is easy to offer
all their actions and surrender to Him and live in entire reliance on Him.
Unlike in Jnyana Yoga where there is the danger of self-deception, Bhakti Yoga
is natural, sweet and gentle.
Shuddha (Reverence), love (preeti) and longing of
the soul, surrender to Lord and feeling the meaningless-ness of life without
Him, and a sense of belonging to Him are the essentials of Bhakti Yoga. Universal
love characterizes the Bhakti Yoga.The true bhakta or the true devotee does not care for the
philosophical details. He goes beyond these turbulent and hazy regions of
reason to the calmness and clarity of realization. He no more reasons and
believes, he almost perceives. Bhaktas even maintain that serving God in truth
and in spirit is higher than even moksha. This kind of whole-hearetd devotion
to God is also of the highest utility. However, there are a large number of
people who do not care for Bhakti or, may not concede that it is of the highest
value. Such people have to go through many more births and re-incarnation to
learn to feel even the faintest necessity for anything higher than just eating,
drinking and engaging in sexual pursuits.
Jnyana Yoga
Jnyana
Yoga is for the discriminating mind. It is impossible for an ordinary
person with little learning to dwell at length the Vedanta philosophy. It is
through intellectual discerning that one can realize the ultimate reality and
any one who wants to understand this mysterious world shall have to understand
the basics of ‘Maya’. In Svetasvatara Upanishad, the word ‘Maya’ appears with Nature.
It says, “Know Nature to be Maya and the Ruler of Maya to be the Lord Himself”.
‘Maya’ is not illusoriness of the world as commonly believed.
In the 'Rk Veda', it is said that, “Indra, through his Maya, assumed various
forms”. Here, it is the ‘magical’ spell that is ‘Maya’. This is the earliest
one can find about Maya. In a sense, it is the ‘make-believe’ world that is
‘Maya’ and it is not ‘illusory world’. The word ‘illusion’ came with the Buddhist
interpretation; a section of the Buddhist Vijnyana-vadins maintained that
‘ideas alone are there, not the external objects corresponding to them’. They
considered the experience of the world outside as Maya, illusory perception,
the ideas alone being real. However, for the sake of convenience, the word
illusion is used in the text.
As Swami Vivekananda puts it, ‘Vedanta
in ts fully developed form is neither idealism nor realism, nor is it a theory.
It is simply a statement of fact; it is a statement of what we are and what we
see around us’. External Nature that we perceive is very real to us and we try
to explain it in very rational, very scientific way, as the ultimate truth.
Unfortunately, it is not so. First, the Veadanta points out that, ‘our
investigation of Nature is limited by our mind and its associated faculties,
the senses’. Second, mind is limited by space, time, and causation. Third, the
world that we actually experience exists only in relation to the minds that
experience as such. In a way, there are as many worlds as there are minds; and
each Purusha has a mind. Another important thing is that our experience is also
limited due to the limited capacity of the faculties endowed to us. If we had
more sense organs, or tools as such, to perceive or experience this world, we
would see the world in a different way. Thus, the world experienced externally
has therefore no unchangeable and ultimate existence. But, it cannot be called
non-existent, because it is experienced.
This world is full of
contradictions. We feel ‘it is’ there
and at the same time ‘it is not’ there. We do not know anything about this
universe. Also, we cannot say we do not know. We stand between knowledge and
ignorance, light and darkness (twilight), this mingling of truth and falsehood.
It is as if we are walking in dream, half asleep and half awake. We do not know
what is the reality. We try to explain it all in a very rational and scientific
way; we are going in circle coming back to the same starting point. What we
call matter, spirit, space, time, or mind, or anything for that matter, the
fact remains the same that, ‘they are’, and ‘they are not’. This external play
of light and darkness, indiscriminate, indistinguishable, inseparable is always
there. This is a statement of fact. This is what is called Maya. We are born in
Maya, we live in Maya and we think and dream in it. This is the work of name
and form, i.e., nama (name) and roopa (form). Everything that is bound by laws
of space and time and causation is within Maya. The whole of human knowledge is
generalization of Maya, even if you call it infinite knowledge, for it comes
within Maya. It is a contradictory, incomprehensible nature of the world
referred to as “Maya’.
If one realizes this simple truth, that
this world is all ‘Maya’, a make-believe’ world and nothing is permanent in it,
the whole attitude of man, his way of life, his way of thinking, his
acquisitive nature, his selfish motive, his mindless actions, stress and
tension, his miseries, ailments - physical and mental, all disappear in a matter
of moment. Here is a warning! This does not mean that we can be indolent and
need not work; this does not mean that we need not strive for the upliftment of
the other less fortunate brethren. On the contrary, we have to work harder and
strive much better for the welfare of others.
But, there are people who do not
believe in all these; they are the agnostics. They say that, we are living in a
in in-comprehensible, irremediable world, let us take for what it is worth and
enjoy it without any thought of the ultimate nature of things. This is the
‘Theory of Nature’ and accepting it we become slaves of Nature. Our intellect
does not permit it; our ego prevents it. Man can rise above Nature and get out
of its irremediable contradictions. He can be free.
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