CHAPTER XI TRUE DEVOTION

1. THE SCOPE OF BHAJANA

Another evening the conversation which was quite general at first gradually turned on to the subject of bhajana, singing of devotional songs to the accompaniment of music. A bhakta who belonged to the party in attendance mentioned that such devotional exercises had an exhilarating and soothing effect on our wayward minds and that it was pleasing to find that bhajana parties were being formed in increasing numbers in every town and village.

H. H.: I am glad to hear this. But I have heard that at the same time the observance of our religious rites is steadily going down. Why is it so ?

B.: It is mainly because the ordinary people lack faith in the efficacy of religious rites that they resort to bhajana for pleasing God.

H.H.: I suppose that many of the persons engaged in bhajana may not care for or may even neglect their ordinary religious duties like the sandhyā worship.

B.: Yes. They say that while engaged in bhajana they can give up the sandhyā worship, because bhajana being a higher kind of worship makes sandhyā unnecessary and redundant.

H. H.: As a general proposition it is quite true that the greater includes the less. But how do we know that bhajana is of greater efficacy than karma in the matter of pleasing God ?

B.: Bhajana is a direct appeal to God while karma is but an indirect appeal through the observance of rituals.

H. H.: I suppose you concede that we have never met God personally.

B.: Certainly, I do.

H. H.: You must also concede that we can never of our own accord find out what will please God and what will not, for we cannot ask him directly nor can He tell us in person.

B.: It may be so, but we can easily ascertain it from the Śruti, which embodies His teachings.

H. H.: You may also add the Smṛitis, especially the Bhagavad Gītā, which record in no unmistakable terms His mind as divulged to those who have had the rare fortune to hold direct communion with Him, both in the spirit and in the flesh.

B.: Certainly.

H. H.: And what do they teach us ?

B.: They certainly do not discount bhakti.

H. H.: Certainly not. But the question is, what is bhakti ? Is it your bhajana or is it karma ?

B.: How can karma be bhakti ?

H. H.: In fact, you will find that karma alone can be bhakti and certainly not the bhajana, if it is inconsistent with or is divorced from karma.

B.: How can that be ?

H. H.: The Lord tells us quite unambiguously ‘Man attains perfection by worshipping God by performing the karma enjoined for him’. He clearly enunciates here the proposition that the way to worship Him is to perform one’s assigned karma.

B.: But such a performance of karma is not the only way in which devotion can be shown to the Lord.

H. H.: It is the only way for those on whom karma is enjoined.

B.: Surely a person who spends his time in prayer and contemplation of the Lord is as much a bhakta as, if not more, the one who busies himself with outward rituals.

H. H.: Leave again comparing. He will not be a bhakta at all if he chooses to neglect the karma enjoined on him in favour of mental prayers and contemplation.

B.: Why so ?

H. H.: Take the ordinary case of a master and his servants. Suppose one of his servants is always standing before him and singing his praises. The master may sometimes ask him to fetch something from another room. Suppose the servant replies, ‘O, Master, I cannot bear the thought of parting from you even for a moment. I cannot forego even for a moment the pleasure and the privilege of looking at your handsome face. I like to be ever with you and to praise you by recounting your inestimable qualities. Don’t ask me to leave your presence.’ Suppose again there is another servant who is always away from the presence of the master, but is carrying out with scrupulous care all the commands of the master, communicated to him either by the master personally or through his deputies. Wherever the master turns, he finds that he has been most loyally obeyed by this servant who nowhere seems to intrude on him. Which do you think is the more devoted of these two servants and with whom in your opinion, will the master be pleased more ?

B.: Certainly the latter.

H. H.: Is a father happy with the child who always prefers to sit on his lap and declines to do anything or with the one who is going out on errands ?

B.: With the latter, I should think.

H. H.: Further, can you grant that the servant or the boy, who refuses to leave the presence of his master or father and does not carry out his orders, is really devoted at all ?

B.: Surely disobedience cannot go hand in hand with devotion.

H. H.: Quite so. The primary test of devotion in any sphere of life is obedience, unquestioning and loving obedience, not inquisitive or grumbling obedience.

B.: Certainly.

H. H.: The Śruti and the Smṛiti are the commands of Myself,’ says the Lord. Can you conceive of a devotion to the Lord side by side with a disobedience of His commands ?

B.: I now see that bhajana can never be a substitute for karma.

H. H.: It can never be.

B.: What then is the function of bhajana? It cannot certainly be all waste.

H. H.: A servant, when he finds leisure after discharging all his duties, may certainly stand in the presence of the master, but not when he has got duties to perform. Similarly a person, who after performing all the karma enjoined on him still finds leisure, can spend it in prayer or in singing the praises of the Lord and thus utilise the leisure to the best advantage. Bhajana is thus intended only for the occasions of leisure in the midst of karmic duties.

B.: I fear if a Brāhmaṇa should be asked to perform properly all the duties enjoined on him by the Vedas and the Smṛitis and then have bhajana at leisure, he may not have time for bhajana at all.

H. H.: It is not quite so. It is only the lazy people that are ever short of time. The busy ones are always able to find leisure.

B.: It seems to me that if bhajana is to be done only at the times not occupied by religious duties, the castes other than the Brāhmanas will have more leisure for it, as they have to perform only very few religious observances. It seems that the non-Brāhmanas are more competent to take up bhajana.

H. H.: Quite so. It is intended more for them than for the Brāhmaṇas.

B.: Is it not an anomaly that the Brāhmaṇas should be denied equal privilege in this matter ?

H. H.: No. They are not denied this ‘privilege’ as you call it, for they can enjoy it in their leisure moments. Further, you forget that carrying out the commands of the Lord is a greater act of devotion than singing His praises. Now you may look at the matter from another point of view also.

B.: What is that ?

H. H.: A servant who loves to look at the face of his master and avoids performance of his duties does so because he derives pleasure from being with the master and fears a cessation of that pleasure if he has to perform his duties.

B.: It may seem to be so.

H. H.: The only consideration therefore which weighs with him in determining his conduct is his own pleasure and not the pleasure of his master.

B.: Strictly analysed, it is so.

H. H.: Can you call such a servant devoted in any sense when he places his own selfish pleasure above his master’s pleasure ?

B.: Certainly not.

H. H.: Similarly, if a so-called bhakta prefers to sing to the accompaniment of enchanting music the praises of the Lord, at the same time ignoring, neglecting and disregarding His divine commands, can you call him a ‘devotee’ at all ?

B.: I fear, not.

H. H.: Again please consider for a moment that that so-called bhakta has a conception of the Lord only as a very attractive object intended for his enjoyment. What can be more absurd than dragging down the All-conscious, Omnipotent Lord to the level of a toy intended for one’s amusements ? To conceive of the Lord as an object of pleasure is sheer profanation, which should never pass off under the name of devotion. Real devotion lies in carrying out His dictates implicitly. To disobey Him in action and to profess allegiance in words is blasphemy. It is not bhakti. By bhakti is meant single-pointed devotion uniformly expressed in mind, speech and body.

2. NAME AND FORM

B.: May I ask one other question which suggests itself to me in relation to bhakti ?

H. H.: Yes. What is it ?

B.: I have seen a number of bhaktas who lead earnest and pious lives, but at the same time indulge in recrimination and invective if any devatā other than their own upāsya deva happens to be praised within their hearing. Is such an attitude of intolerance consistent with true bhakti ?

H. H.: No. It is not. Such an attitude is to be found not in true bhaktas but only in those who have no proper understanding of the meaning of bhakti or of the nature of the Lord to whom they profess to be devoted. The Highest Being, the Supreme Lord, the ruler of the universe, transcends all particular names and forms. Name and form are the attributes of the mute prakriti. God has no name or form of His own until you clothe Him, howsoever slightly, in prakriti. This entire world of name and form is, as it were, only His feet, to adopt the words of the Purusha Sūkta. We cannot have any direct relationship with the higher and larger portion of His divine personality. Only His feet are visible to us and we are asked to worship Him only through service to His feet. It is our proper conduct, as laid down in the Śāstras, with reference to the various portions of the universe (devas, pitris, men, animals, etc.), that goes by the name of karma. This is the service of the feet. When, after steady and continued service at His feet, the Lord, satisfied with our devotion, chooses to raise us up to a height wherefrom we can look directly upon His face, there will be time enough to learn whether His forehead bears the mark of the gopichandana or is adorned with bhasma. Situated as we are at present at the lowest rung of the ladder and even without a gleam of the glory of His feet, why should we choose to waste our time and energy in speculating and wrangling about the nature of His face ? The true bhakta never does that. He is content to know the simple definition of the Lord that He is the Creator, the Sustainer and the Dissolver of the universe. The name or form that you assign to the Lord is of no moment to Him, for He knows that that name or form is not His essence, but is accepted or assumed only temporarily for the sake of a particular bhakta. The true bhakta is also content to know that the Vedas are His divine commands and that a strict performance of the duties enjoined by them is the only way of securing the grace of the Lord and, within the competence of man, the only way of serving Him.

B.: But is it not a fact that a Śiva bhakta claims that. Śiva is the Creator, the Sustainer and the Dissolver of the universe, and a Vishnu bhakta claims the same thing for Vishnu ?

H. H.: No doubt·at first sight it may seem to be so. In the view of the Śiva bhakta, his Lord Śiva is the only Creator, Sustainer and Dissolver of the universe ; he does not grant that any other entity, Vishnu or another, has the characteristics of being the Creator, Sustainer and Dissolver of the universe. He does not say that there are more than one entities which can claim those characteristics or that his Lord Śiva is supreme over all others. What he means and what he does believe is that the Lord Śiva is the only Creator, Sustainer and Dissolver of the universe. He does not postulate plurality of Gods, but emphatically says that there is but one God who is the Creator, Sustainer and Dissolver of the universe and that His name is Śiva.

B.: Certainly it is so. But the Vishnu bhakta says the same thing of Vishnu. The devotee of Ganeśa, Subrahmanya or Devi also says the same thing of his upāsya. Which of these has to be taken as right ? All of them surely cannot be right.

H. H.: You agree with me that none of these bhaktas postulate plurality of Gods ?

B.: I do.

H. H.: ˙You agree with me that they all postulate the existence of only one God ?

B.: Certainly.

H. H.: You also note that they all agree in the definition of that God as the Creator, the Sustainer and the Dissolver of the Universe ?

B.: Yes.

H. H.: But they happen to differ as regards the name or the form to be attributed to that God ?

B.: Quite so.

H. H.: This shows that their conception of God is not at all faulty.

B.: Yes.

H. H.: Suppose you have a grain of rice before you and you satisfy yourself that it has got all the characteristics which are peculiar to rice and that therefore it is rice ; does it matter the least to you if a Tamilian gives it the name of arisi, a Canarese calls it akki or a Sanskrit Pandit prefers to call it taṇḍula ?

B.: No, it does not matter.

H. H.: Don't you then realise that all names are external to and not of the essence of things, though such names have great practical utility in the world of names and forms ? Similarly, if the characteristics of being the Creator, Sustainer and Dissolver of the universe are there, what does it matter if He is called Śiva, Vishnu or Devī ? The entity denoted is the same though the names may differ. A Tamilian who does not know Canarese or Sanskrit will be vehement in saying that rice is called only as arisi and never as akki or taṇḍula. He is quite correct so far as he goes, for no such names are to be found in the Tamil language with which alone he is familiar. As long as, by a process of analysis, he does not learn to dissociate the name from the thing, the name is the thing for him ; and if you deny that name, he will take it that you deny the thing itself. Only that bhakta will be quarrelsome who cannot dissociate a particular name or a particular form from his conception of God. He is correct so far as his mentality goes. But his bhakti is far below that real bhakti which realises that God is above all names and above all forms, that particular names are but convenient denominations for trying to express the essentially inexpressible and that particular forms are only limited aspects of the essentially limitless God.

3. THE PURĀṆAS EXPLAINED

B.: It seems to me that Śrī Vyāsa is himself responsible for these unseemly squabbles. He wrote a large number of Purāṇas devoted to many different devatās ; and in every one of them he calls the devatā dealt with there as the Highest Being, so that even a sincere reader is unable to understand which is really the Highest Being in Śrī Vyāsa's view.

H. H.: I suppose we can start with the presumption that Śrī Vyasa was neither an ignorant person nor was he deliberately out to mislead people ?

B.: Certainly.

H. H.: He must have known the elementary proposition that there cannot possibly be more than one Highest Being.

B.: Quite so. That is just my difficulty. I cannot understand how he chooses to call every one of the devatās as the Highest Being.

H. H.: Your difficulty is very easily solved if you understand Śrī Vyāsa to say not that every devatā is a highest Being but that the Highest Being is every one of the devatās.

B.: How is that ?

H. H.: The Highest Being having no name or form of His own has to take on some name or form when He is conceived of as an object of worship. Being in His essential nature absolutely formless, in the absolute view He has no form at all ; but in the relative view, all forms are equally His.

B.: I do understand this. But Śrī Vyāsa when he deals with a particular form, say Śiva, chooses to endow it not only with the attributes of the Highest Being but also with the attributes peculiar to other devatās. He does not deal with Śiva as the Dissolver-aspect of the highest Being, but says that He is even Vishnu or Brahmā and sometimes says that Vishnu and Brahmā are but His aspects or offspring.

H. H.: Take a familiar incident in family life. Suppose a gentleman has four children and the birthday of one of them happens to be celebrated. That child is the ‘idol’, the upāsya for the day. He is seated on a raised seat in the central hall of the house ; he is dressed in costly clothes and is decked with jewels. Is it not usual for the mother and the other children to part temporarily with the jewels that they themselves usually wear, so that the ‘idol’ of the day may be better adorned ?

B.: It is so.

H. H.: Do the mother and the other children feel the slightest regret at parting with their jewels or the slightest envy at that child wearing them for the occasion ?

B.: Certainly not.

H. H.: Do not the other children know very well that when their turn of birthday celebrations comes, they will be similarly decked out in finery and jewels including those which that child ordinarily wears ?

B.: Certainly they do.

H. H.: Can anybody accuse that child of depriving its mother and the other children of their jewels on this day ? Further, will anybody accuse the father of partiality towards that child because he gives it prominence for the day and even deprives the others of their jewels to enable that child to shine better ?

B.: Certainly not.

H. H.: Now will you tell me in whom the right of ownership and possession of all this finery and all the jewels really vests ?

B.: Certainly in the father.

H. H.: Quite so. Does he ever wear the jewels himself ?

B.: No.

H. H.: That means, that though all the jewels really belong to him, he never shows himself off in them but finds pleasure in decking out his children in them as and when occasions may arise ?

B.: Quite so.

H. H.: We may therefore say of him that he never wears any jewels though all the jewels are really his ?

B.: Yes.

H. H.: The jewels are his, not only when they are kept in the safe in his custody but even when the child is actually wearing them.

B.: Certainly.

H. H.: The Highest Being, the impersonal Brahman, is like the father. He never wears any attributes but all the attributes, which every one of the devatās has, belong to Him. When a particular devatā is conceived of as the upāsya in a particular Purāṇa for the upliftment of a type of bhakta, that devatā is given the seat of honour, next to none (not even the father, who has to stand aside in the background looking on happily at the child), and has to be decked with all the attributes which ordinarily go with the other devatās also. There is absolutely no room for any charge of partiality if in any particular Purāna certain devatā is given prominence over others, for when their turn comes in the other Purānas they are treated with equal prominence. Such is the attitude of Śrī Vyāsa in every one of his Purānas. He knows that the Highest Being is devoid of any attributes, any name or any form ; but, as a practical teacher, he knows equally well that such an absolute conception is not within the reach of people, a few exceptions apart, and, therefore, he offers for the contemplation of devotees particular devatās who, though mere aspects of the Absolute Brahman, are treated for the moment and for all practical purposes as being identical with the Supreme Being. He has so written the Purāṇas that the bhakta of any particular devatā by intensity of devotional exercise can obtain the fruits of devotion to other devatās also, without the need of worshipping them separately, and finally, by further effort, can attain even a knowledge of the Absolute Brahman, through devotion to his particular devatā.

For practical wisdom, which combines economy of effort with maximum benefit and adapts the doctrine of the Absolute Brahman to the needs of the devotee without impairing in any way the truth of the doctrine, Śrī Vyāsa is inimitable. If we fight among ourselves without understanding Śrī Vyāsa properly, the fault is ours, certainly not his. On the other hand, all our gratitude must go to him.