The Hindu Ideal of Devotion

By H. G. Narahari, M.A. M.Litt.

ORTHODOX Hinduism offers at least three alternatives for the aspiring Soul seeking the supreme aim of existence. These are the path of works (karma), the path of knowledge (jnana), and the path of devotion (bhakti); the first of these consists in kindness and charity and in the performance of rituals and sacrifices which lead the aspirant to salvation, and the second is of those who strive after true knowledge. It is the claim of the followers of the latter path that theirs is better than the former which leads only to rebirth in accordance with the well-known law that action is followed by reaction. The path of knowledge, on the other hand, leads the seeker to liberation from which there is no set-. To the follower of the third path, the path of devotion, the worship of the Supreme Lord is the only means whereby to achieve the chief goal of life. The Sanskrit word bhakti comes from the root bhaj ‘to adore,’ and the follower of bhakti is one who adores the Supreme Lord. Bhakti is not knowledge, though it may be the result of knowledge. It is not work, though surrendered to the Lord and thus made pure, work can be a means to bhakti. Knowledge may produce bhakti but bhakti in its turn, is not a means to any higher end. It is itself the terminus and, by its very nature, implies previous knowledge of the object adored. We thus cannot know by bhakti, but can only recognize by it.’

In the view of the upholders of the path of devotion the path of works is certainly not the best for attaining the highest. They are not satisfied even with the path of knowledge, which also they believe leads the aspirant nowhere. However much knowledge may satisfy the intellect, it cannot answer the needs of the heart, cannot heal the wounded soul, which are so often achieved only by devotion. Occasions indeed are plentiful when we use our knowledge to the utmost, when we put forth our endeavours to their limit, and yet fail to achieve our ambition. A Soul in such sore straits can find solace only in seeking refuge in his All-powerful and All-compassionate Maker Whose mercy and kindness only incidental to His generous nature and who has “at sundry times and in divers manners” spoken to man.

All these doctrines are equally old and begin with the Vedas. It is incorrect to posit a chronological sequence for these paths. As early as the Rigveda, ritualism and intellectualism appear to have existed side by side without any mutual conflict. The ritualistic portion of the Samhitas was mainly developed by the Brahmanas as was their intellectual part by the Upanishads. Even the idea of bhakti is as old as the Rigveda, from which time down till the present day it has had an unbroken and continuous history.

The highest God of the later Bhagavatas is also the highest God in the Rigveda. It is true that five whole hymns and a few stray verses are all that are devoted to the glorification of Vishnu in the Rigveda. But he is really the highest God in the Veda. His importance lies in the fact that he is not a sacrificial deity. While almost all the other gods receive sacrificial offerings, this is the God who is content with mere prayer. “Like the God of the Puritans, he cares for piety rather than sacrifice, for devotion rather than offerings...In the later age of Epics and Puranas Vishnu occupies the high place of one among the trinity, and even forms to his sectaries the highest God. But the Puranic Vishnu is only a logical development of the God of the Vedic period. His history is the history of one regular and normal development. There are no traces here of breaks and stop-gaps, of sudden elevations and recognitions. From the Vedic age down to the age of the Epics and Puranas, Vishnu is primarily revered for being the saviour and asylum of departed Souls.”

About the twelfth century A.D., the bhakti cult became fully stereotyped. Its followers were called the Bhagavatas. These people reject the maya doctrine and all its corollaries. The Supreme to them is Bhagavan, a personal God. The Soul is also personal and individual. Among those who hold such doctrines there are four chief schools (sampradaya), the schools of Ramanuja, Madhva, Vishnusvamin and Nimbarka.

In the school of Ramanuja (b. 1017 A.D.), the Supreme Self is a personal Pantheos who is endowed with every conceivable auspicious quality, who is immanent in all transient things and who transcends all that exists. For the individual Soul to attain beatitude what is necessary is devotion for this Supreme Lord, to reach whom the truest way is devotion. This consists, not only in cultivating an active desire in things divine and an unqualified apathy towards those that are not, but also in meditation on the Lord with the full knowledge of the relation that exists between Him and man. The system also recognizes an alternative and less difficult path, the path of wholesale and resolute surrender of the will (prapatti) to the Lord Protector. This is the doctrine advocated to Arjuna in the Bhagavadgita (XVIII. 66)

“Leave thou all thy duties and seek my protection; I shall release thee from all thy sins; be not anxious (on that account).”

“In the Ramayana (VI. 18. 33) Rama accepts Vibhishana who surrenders to him saying:

“It is always my creed to offer protection to whatever being see refuge in me but once and implores saying, ‘I am yours.’”

In the system of Madhva (b. 1199 A.D.) also stress is laid on the cultivation of the feeling that God is infinitely superior to man in strength, intellect or measurement, but is always gracious and merciful when man in his utter helplessness seeks His succour. The duty of devotee is to subordinate his will to the Divine and to serve ceaselessly his Protector and all those who follow Him. But the process is difficult, and the path is beset with numerous difficulties, snares and pitfalls. The heart, this system lays down, requires a careful education to brave all these and to be fit for consecration to the Supreme Being. The study of the sacred texts which only can dispel all doubt and hesitation is the first step. Egotism must go next and the individual should be able to place himself on a footing of equality with others: He must be able to serve all looking upon himself as the “lowest of the low,” and “as humble as the grass beneath the feet of God’s lovers.” The Christian doctrine “Do unto others as you would that they should do to you,” occurs in Hindu literature in its negative and more powerful form. Says the Mahabharata, “Do not do unto others as you would that they should not do to you.” In the next stage (upasana), the individual renounces the world and is indifferent to all worldly relationships. ‘Reverie is his chief pastime,’ meditation almost his only activity. Vision of God (aparoksa) is the next step, and the intensity pf this vision is only proportional to the capacity of the individual who experiences it. When this takes place, the devotee feels the flash of an image of light before his inner gaze. It is not some form of God, some incarnation of His, that is visualized on the occasion, but God Himself reaches the vision of the mind which is trained and educated suitably. When the Lord thus appears He takes no form likely to awe and threaten His devotee. The suppliant sees Him smiling and encouraging, and is quite capable of raising up his hands in thankfulness, overpowered by the kindness of his Maker, his Father. The Mundaka Upanishad (II. 2.8) describes this stage thus:

“The knot of the heart is loosened,
All doubts are cut off,
And one’s deeds cease
When He is seen–both the higher and the lower.”¹

Such a vision is no reward that can be claimed by the Soul for any merit it may possess. It is only a matter of Divine Grace, pure and simple. The Lord favours only those whom he chooses. He answers no demands made on Him.

The man who has had so glorious a vision enjoys perfect peace thereafter. His mind is ever fixed upon the Supreme, and he no longer belongs to this world. He is always calm and silent, but sometimes he laughs or weeps, sings or dances, or exhibits similar tendencies which usually associated with madness of the mind. His final liberation has yet to come; and when this comes the devotee reaches the highest heaven, known as Vaikuntha, from which there is no return. The Soul is not absorbed in this stage into the Supreme being, but retains still its individuality and enjoys bliss in Divine Presence and Fellowship. On one point in the conception of liberation Ramanuja and Madhva are at variance. While, according to the former teacher, all released Souls enjoy an equal measure of bliss in this heavenly region, and this bliss is equal to that of God Himself, the latter holds, not only that the bliss of the individual is inferior to that enjoyed by the Supreme Lord, but also that no two Souls enjoy the same amount of bliss and that the degree of enjoyment of the individual depends essentially upon the standard of his worth.

It is not at all easy to describe how a devotee looks and to state how he can be distinguished from others who do not belong to his class. It may be more fruitful to study the characteristics of a few individual devotees, and this may give some idea of the requirements of one who would follow the path of devotion. In the Bhagavata (VII. 5. 23 f.) Prahlada speaks of how a devotee spends his time. A confirmed devotee is one, according to this text, who is engaged in listening to sacred stories, in hearing God’s praise sung, in uttering His name or singing hymns in praise of Him, in stocking his mind with Divine episodes, or in recollecting those he knows already, in worshipping and serving Him through an image or similar medium, and finally in offering up his Soul in utter devotional surrender. The other example of a devotee is Radha described in works like the Devibhagavata.

According to the teaching ² of Vishnusvamin (15th cent. A.D.) the released Soul is non-different from the Supreme Being and possesses all the three great attributes known of Him, existence (sat), consciousness (cit) and bliss (ananda). These attributes are all suppressed when the Soul is in bondage.

Nimbarka whose teachings were popular even in the 11th century A.D., holds ³ that the relation between the Supreme Being and the individual is that which exists between a serpent and its coils, or between the sea and its waves.

The follower of the path of devotion is against looking upon Religion as intellectual gymnastics, as essentially an affair of the head. To him it is a much livelier phenomenon and is the fine product of the heart. His emphasis is on the quality of love innate in every individual. Directed towards ephemeral objects this faculty is wasted; but turned towards God, the Highest, it meets with a “stimulus responsive of its highest aspirations.” It is for the wise aspirant, any way, to choose whether he will be a devotee or an intellectual, “a warm gurgling fountain of love,” or a “block of ice frozen by intellectualism.”

¹ I adopt here R. E. Hume’s (“Thirteen Principal Upanishads,” Oxford, 1931, p. 373) translation of the passage.
² “Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics” (Ed. by James Hastings), Edinburgh, 1909, II. 545.
³ Ibid.