Waves of Devotion

I had a few thoughts about how bhakti works based on what is arguably the most important verse in bhakti-yoga:

“One should chant the holy name of the Lord in a humble state of mind, thinking himself lower than the straw in the street. One should be more tolerant than a tree, devoid of all sense of false prestige and ready to offer all respects to others. In such a state of mind one can chant the holy name of the Lord constantly.” (Śikṣāṣṭaka 3)

I argue that it is the most important verse because among the eight verses Śrī Caitanya personally wrote to codify His mission, it is this verse that He singled out when instructing Raghunātha dāsa Gosvāmī about the goal of life (prema-bhakti), whom the tradition honors as the prayojana ācārya, the main teacher to exemplify and espouse the intricacies of this goal. In this regard, it is also significant that Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, the main biographer of Śrī Caitanya, elevates this verse to a special status seemingly reserved for no other verse. After describing Śrī Caitanya’s explanation of this verse to Śuklāmbara Brahmacārī, he spontaneously declared:

“Raising my hands, I declare, ‘Everyone please hear me! String this verse on the thread of the holy name and wear it on your neck for continuous remembrance.’” (Cc. Ādi-līlā 17.31)

Before explaining how this verse reveals the essence of how bhakti works, we first need to understand further the nature of two things: prema (pure love of god) and the main obstacle to achieving it. First, a short explanation of the basic nature of prema.

Love is the natural energy of affection between two beings who have a relationship. Whether it’s a mother and a child, two siblings, or even a calf and a cow — any beings naturally related to one another spontaneously feel an energy of love between them. When this energy is transcendental and felt between the soul and God it is called the pinnacle of love, or prema-bhakti.

On face value attaining this shouldn’t seem difficult. After all, nothing is outside of God, and He is immediately accessible in His direct manifestations, like the holy name. Should we not, therefore, feel that all-powerful energy of our eternal relationship with God when in contact with Him, especially when we chant His names?

Unfortunately, no matter how powerful something is, its effect can be blocked from influencing something even insignificant if that thing is shielded or covered, just as the powerful energy of the sun can be thwarted in its influence on us by a small umbrella. Similarly, the powerful energy of our relationship with Krishna can be obscured from our hearts by the obstacle or cloud of the false ego, which more than anything else is the desire for superiority and control. Now back to our original thesis on how the third verse of the Śikṣāṣṭakam reveals the essence of how bhakti works.

The third verse makes a very noteworthy claim that one in a humble state of mind can chant always. There is an interesting connection between the two. As just mentioned, the cloud that covers the soul and blocks the feelings of our relationship with Krishna is pride or false ego. As humility is directly antithetical to the false ego, a person with a humble mind, and therefore uncovered by false ego, can directly experience the energy of prema between the soul and God while chanting His names. As that experience of prema is the topmost love and the highest pleasure, one chanting in a truly humble state of mind never wants to stop. More specifically, the verse outlines the three qualities of a humble mind that open the heart to this direct communion with Krishna in the form of the holy name: deep modesty, tolerance, and respect.

So how does bhakti work? The goal of bhakti is the experience of communion with Krishna. Śrī Caitanya clearly outlined the four-fold process of achieving that: humility, tolerance, respect, and chanting the holy name always. That’s how bhakti works.

“One should chant the holy name of the Lord in a humble state of mind, thinking himself lower than the straw in the street. One should be more tolerant than a tree, devoid of all sense of false prestige and ready to offer all respects to others. In such a state of mind one can chant the holy name of the Lord constantly.”

The Trick of Turning Weakness into Strength: Part 1 [1]

He was trying to be a devotee of Krishna. That didn’t mean his anger was gone. I briefly glanced his way in the hall of the Boston temple. I tried not to stare. He was just standing there, but I could sense the intense anger brewing inside. Growing up in New York, I have seen that type of silent fury before. I kept my distance. He had recently hit rock bottom in life and was desperate enough to seek help for his heroin addiction by enrolling in a twelve-step Narcotics Anonymous program on the urging of a friend. The program touched his soul. Despite his anger and pain, he was a devotee and sincere. Thus, he was soon able to leverage the program to break his habit.

I don’t remember exactly how, but as he kept visiting the temple, we soon became friends. That was more than thirty-five years ago. We often discussed the recovery literature he was reading. I was impressed by how much they paralleled my understanding of Krishna consciousness and yoga psychology. In our discussions, I was even able to analyze how the recovery process worked based on the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. I will share that analysis here, but more importantly was an insight I got from that exploration about the path of bhakti. Our analysis begins with the first three steps.

1. Admit that we are powerless over alcohol — that our lives have become unmanageable.
2. Believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.
3. Decide to turn our will and lives over to the care of God, as we understand them.

Analysis of why the twelve-step program is so effective:

The root cause of addiction is the deep hole of pain in the heart for affection and positive affirmation that one mistakenly tries to fill with an alcohol or drug induced high. Feeling a fleeting euphoria that deadens one’s pain, one becomes addicted to a relief that, in the long run, only increases the selfishness and lack of affection that is at the root of one’s despair and consequent addiction. By admitting that addiction has made one helpless (the first step) and by seeking God’s help (the second and third step), one has embraced the humble position. Humility allows one to shed the feelings of pride that cover the soul from the feelings of love and connection with God. Pride filters feelings of love, just like the feelings of entitlement in a spoiled child prevents him from feeling the parent’s affection no matter how much they give him out of love. Anyway, these initial spiritual feelings invoked by the humble position, which begin to assuage the need in one’s heart for mercy or kindness, give one the courage and inspiration to continue the humble work of recovery outlined in the remaining steps.[2]

The important insight that I gleaned from the twelve-step program that I think has profound application to those on the path of bhakti is how weakness, even moral or character weakness, can lead to strength. Obviously, our moral failings do not serve our Krishna consciousness. However, we are all, even the very sincere, plagued with imperfections. If we use our imperfections, however, even our moral weaknesses, to reflect on our helplessness and humbly increase our dependence on God, then even such weaknesses can be transformed into the greatest strength, the power of humility to invoke grace.

Let me finish with an oft-recited verse that touches this same point; if we can use the weakness in our character to depend on God, then our weakness has found its strength. Sounds a lot like the twelve-step program.

“Having awakened faith in the narrations of My glories, being disgusted with all material activities, knowing that all sense gratification leads to misery, but still being unable to renounce all sense enjoyment, My devotee should remain happy and worship Me with great faith and conviction. Even though he is sometimes engaged in sense enjoyment, My devotee knows that all sense gratification leads to a miserable result, and he sincerely repents such activities.” (Bhag. 11.20.27-28) [emphasis mine]

[1] In future journal entries, besides finding the strength in moral weakness, which I will discuss in this entry, I will also discuss transforming the weakness of our bad karma, the qualities we have that seemingly lack fortune, and the things that happen to us that are radically different than what we want.

[2] I am not an expert on the twelve-step program. Those who are in recovery, please forgive me if in my analysis I say something that is not completely accurate.

I don’t know if it was the effect of sitting quietly in a peaceful holy place or just the result of a spiritually inspiring time of life, which counter-intuitively often means a time when things are not particularly going your way, but my japa here at Surya Kuṇḍa, my place of pilgrimage today, was deeper than usual. There was a type of yearning where there seemed to be not much of a filter between my heart and Krishna. I thought about what had just transpired, a call for Krishna so much richer than usual, and thought about why. I had a realization:

Pure bhakti is done from the platform of the soul unfettered by the various external identities that bind one to the body and ego, like caste, ethnicity, gender, and so on. To the extent that your spiritual practices are mired by such material designation is the extent to which you have placed a filter between your soul and the energy of God. What does that mean? If our chanting is careless and inattentive and diverted to thoughts based on our material identities, to that extent our chanting will be somewhat anchored by those designations and will not spontaneously flow from the heart. If somehow or other, however, we ground ourselves in the soul, our temporary designations will recede. Our heart then will flow to the holy name without obstruction.

This concept of beginning our spiritual practice from a place beyond material identification is the basis of all meditative items of devotional service. For example, before worshipping the deity bhūta-śuddhi is performed, which literally means to purify the elements of our physical and mental body. At the minimum it entails that we at least intellectually rise above, if not actually transcend, the bodily concept of life, by meditating on the following prayer from the Padyāvalī:

“I am not a brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, vaiśya or śūdra. I am not a brahmacārī, gṛhastha, vānaprastha or sannyāsī. What am I? I am the eternal servant of the servant of the servant of Śrī Krishna, the master of the gopīs.” (Padyāvalī 63)

In a similar way, one should begin japa meditation with a firm resolve to resist the lethargy and distraction that mires us in the material thoughts that reinforce the bodily concept of life. Serious sādhakas, therefore, usually begin their practices with a few minutes of selected prayer to inspire full concentration on the meaning of the mantra and to help their meditation touch their heart.

I felt especially empowered today to chant in this way. What struck me most, and what I wanted to share, is that it felt free from designations. Of course, still it is our responsibility to act in this world through those many designations—from gender, family, institutional, and varṇāśrama roles—to perform our duties properly. Chanting, however, should be done from the platform of the soul by petitioning the mood of humility and service that attempt to reflect our eternal nature. Now to bead bags and bhakti.

Traditionally, no matter what ashram or gender one belonged to, bead bags were always white in color, which indicated purity or beyond the material body (paramahaṁsa). In other words, when we sit down to chant, we don’t chant as a sannyāsī in varṇāśrama with a saffron bead bag to fortify the conception of a renunciate, or a woman with a designer bead bag matching her sari to fortify the “I am fashionable” conception. Again, the same point is that chanting should be done strictly from the platform of the soul.

Of course, dress is external and not the main point. The greatest paramahaṁsa can have any colored bead bag they want. The greatest fool can imitate the dress of a paramahaṁsa. I am just explaining this tradition to fortify my original realization—we should always chant the names of our beloved Lord without attachment and with freedom from material designation.

To understand what ultimate happiness is in the Krishna-bhakti tradition, you first have to understand the concept of rasa.

Rasa, in its broadest meaning, is the flavor of a specific all-consuming emotional experience that forms the subject of a drama. For example, in tragedy all we can think of is our loss; In an intense romance all we can think about is our lover. The originator of classic Indian aesthetics, Bharata Muni, propounded that such heightened emotional experiences should all fall within one of eight categories: rati (romance), hāsya (humor), śoka (tragedy), krodha (anger), utsāha (chivalry), bhaya (horror), jugupsā (disgust), and vismaya (awe).

In the Nāṭya Śāstra, Bharata Muni’s seminal scripture of dramatic theory, he outlines how to expertly compose a classical drama so that a qualified audience can experience the rasa that a particular drama is portraying. But, according to Bharata Muni, it was more than just entertainment. There was a spiritual purpose behind it, similar to the Greek concept of catharsis. A proper drama could lift one beyond the mundane to experience the essence of one’s own consciousness or soul and inspire one to reflect on the spiritual.

Several aestheticians after Bharata Muni continued to develop this relationship between drama and religious experience, most prominently Abhinavagupta, a Kashmiri Śaivite. Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī of the Krishna-bhakti tradition brought the rasa theory even further. He found that the stories of Krishna as described in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam were perfectly composed according to Bharata Muni’s rasa theory, the only difference being that a new rasa, bhakti-rasa, the overwhelming experience of loving devotion in relationship to the Divine, was being described. This brings up an interesting question. If the Nāṭya Śāstra is the apparent origin of the rasa theory, how could the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, which predates the Nāṭya Śāstra by at least a thousand years, be perfectly composed according to Bharata Muni’s rasa theory? What Śrī Rupa’s discovery implies is that the ultimate reality is bhakti-rasa, and thus the apparently original rasa theory of Bharata is inspired by and has its source in the eternal realm, a view that is supported by oft quoted, “truly, the Lord is rasa” (raso vai saḥ) of the Taittirīya Upaniṣad (2.7.1), a treatise that also substantially predates the Nāṭya Śāstra.

This statement, that God is the one who enjoys the ultimate rasa, also means that we can share that rapture with God, for in all loving relationships, in this case between the soul and God, the joy of loving exchange is a shared one. In other words, according to Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and confirmed by the Taittirīya Upaniṣad, the ultimate happiness is the flavor or rasa of sharing a relationship with God. In the case of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, this is exemplified through Krishna’s pastimes.

Rasa theory, as applied to bhakti, has one other very significant point about ultimate happiness. As mentioned before, the purpose of drama is to recreate an overwhelming emotion so that the qualified audience is able to experience it. As the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is a perfectly composed drama about the pastimes of Krishna, it thus has the dramatic power to make you experience bhakti as originally manifest in the ultimate reality. Hearing the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam from a qualified speaker can thus engender in a sincere listener bhakti-rasa, the ultimate happiness. In the third introductory text of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam the author thus implores the reader:

“O expert and thoughtful men, relish Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the mature fruit of the desire tree of Vedic literatures. It emanated from the lips of Śrī Śukadeva Gosvāmī. Therefore this fruit has become even more tasteful, although its nectarean juice [rasam] was already relishable for all, including liberated souls.”

I bought a book in the airport: 50 Philosophy Classics from the 50 Classic Series by Tom Butler-Bowdon. My idea was to skim through the summaries of the fifty classics to see if I could recognize a truth that was conceptualized and expressed in an especially inspiring way. As a writer, I am always looking for fresh material.

I liked that each classic had an “in a nutshell” summary that enabled me to judge which ones I thought would be worth reading and which ones I thought would not. For example, “Nicomachean Ethics” by Aristotle seemed interesting: “Happiness comes from what we have rationally decided is good for us over the longer term. Happiness is not pleasure, but a by-product of a meaningful life.” I found the idea of materialism expressed in “The Ego Trick” by Julian Baggini quite unappealing: “The brain and body provide us with a strong and continuous sense of self, which gives us freedom to create who we are.”

My search was not exactly what I expected. Summarizing and clearly expressing deep philosophical conceptions is a daunting task for any author. 50 Philosophy Classics was, therefore, not easy reading. What I did get while briefly going through the book was more faith in my own tradition. The Vedas teach that truth is manifest and recorded simultaneously with the manifestation of the creation and preserved through bona-fide lineages of teachers. To be connected to that gives one a sound metaphysical standard to gauge the validity of all philosophical speculations. I will try to demonstrate that by analyzing just one of the classics in the book, The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

The title of the book and Taleb’s philosophical message come from a particular historical phenomenon that he read about. Until a black swan was sighted by early explorers in Western Australia, people not only assumed that swans were white, but they were, in fact, even defined in that way. From this event Taleb developed an entire theory of events and causality. He postulated that things that happen against all expectations, which he named “black swans”, had a much more extreme and important impact on history and one’s life. These include, for example, anything from the unexpected spread of great ideas and powerful religions to dynamic historical events that no one foresaw, like the rise of Hitler or the spread of the Internet, and so on. Accepting this fact of randomness as it applies to the world and one’s life rather than a strictly causal or linear perspective, he concluded, is the first step in succeeding in the world. Here is how 50 Classics sums up “in a nutshell” the import of The Black Swan:

“We want to make the world an orderly place, but the frequency of truly unexpected events should tell us that we really don’t know what causes things.”

Taleb therefore concludes, “black swan logic ‘makes what you don’t know far more relevant that what you do know’, because it is the unexpected that shapes our lives.”

Now a brief analysis of The Black Swan from the perspective of Vedic teachings, starting with the part of Taleb’s teaching that I found reasonably congruent with what you would find in the Vedas.

Taleb saw an obvious weakness in human psychology. We impose order and control beyond our capacity to do so. Living in that way makes one more fearful and frustrated. In other words, to see the world too much as linear and predictable according to the way we want it is a recipe for disaster. As we are not the controller, what happens in our lives and the world around us is highly unpredictable. I think Taleb got this right. Unless we temper our hope for a world that is stable around our control and desires, we will always live in uncertainty and disappointment and be sorely unprepared for the unpredictable.

While I think Taleb’s insight is important, Vedic perspective gives much more depth. While certainly the world is beyond our control, he is wrong when he says that the world moves haphazardly and without meaning. The Vedic perspective teaches us that unexpected events, while far beyond our control, do not happen randomly. They are the result of the law of karma. They come to teach us important lessons essential to elevating us to a higher level of realization and satisfaction, which can be ascertain by the sacred texts under the guidance of one who understands and realizes them.

The frustration in writing Monday Morning Greetings is that the subjects I sometimes pick deserve elucidation far beyond the words I have limited myself to. However, I hope you get the gist of the point about the conviction I felt. “Veda” means knowledge. Connection to Vedic knowledge therefore gives a tool of understanding to put into context all philosophical speculations, and certainly The Black Swan — not the movie.

“When God is digging a ditch to throw us in, he is actually making a well to quench our thirst.” — Rumi

“We think in the future it will only get better, but actually it gets worse.” — Tamal Krishna Goswami