Waves of Devotion

To advance in learning, there is a necessity for faith. Unfortunately, there is also a danger in faith. In this post I want to discuss that danger and how to safeguard against being victimized by it, but first it is important to briefly discuss what faith is and why it is so important.

Faith is not blind. It is trust by experience. When, by following the guidance of someone who is expert in a particular field of knowledge, one realizes some truth, one naturally gains trust in their authority. That naturally leads to faith, the acceptance of that person’s authority in certain areas of knowledge beyond what one can personally verify. For example, if one’s health improves by the prescriptions of an expert doctor, one will trust that doctor’s authority and follow the health protocol he or she recommends, although one is not a medical authority nor able to confirm the legitimacy of that doctor’s recommendations.

The necessity of faith as a precursor to knowledge should be obvious. To learn something means going beyond one’s present perception and comprehension, an endeavor obviously requiring preliminary faith. If that is not there, then the effort to understand those truths would be lacking, and one would remain in ignorance of them. Now to the perils of faith—especially in the fields of transformational knowledge, such as psychology and spirituality.

Unfortunately, a person doesn’t have to be perfect in a field of psychological or spiritual expertise to give someone a preliminary experience of transformation and thus generate trust in their authority. And, if such an authority is motivated by personal gain, he can easily manipulate rather than enlighten those who trust him or her. I think the dangers of acceding that type of authority to another is obvious, and the history of such exploitation is common and quite documented. We are thus left with a dilemma.

On one hand, without faith in an accomplished teacher we are generally limited to the authority of our own opinions. On the other hand, if we get the wrong teacher, we get cheated. In that regard, here are some guidelines I wrote in terms of finding a proper spiritual authority, while at the same time safeguarding oneself against being exploited.

1. Finding a conduit to spiritual knowledge begins with the sincere intention to want to be ruled by knowledge with the faith that God in the heart will respond to our honest entreaty by manifesting externally to us through a humble and learned guide.
2. A teacher is one who was the faithful student of his teacher. A bona fide teacher should therefore be connected to a recognized lineage of teachers.
3. The teacher’s legitimacy and one’s relationship with him or her must be tested over a reasonable period of time.
4. A teacher’s duty is to clear the doubts of their student and therefore must be open to and able to answer all doubts.
5. Whatever the teacher says must conform to the saintly people and sacred teachers in the tradition to which he or she belongs.
6. A bona fide teacher is non-envious and non-possessive. If the student finds someone legitimate who inspires them, the teacher blesses the student to develop that connection.

The vehicle of bhakti moves forward on the tracks of faith. It is therefore so important to take refuge in those who know and embody truth. The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam warns, however, that people today are so unlucky that even though they may have a strong desire for spiritual guidance, they can easily be misguided by people willing to exploit their faith for their own personal benefit. [1] Although we are doomed if as a result of this we become skeptical and faithless, still it is wise to be cautious of the perils of faith.

[1] See Bhag. 1.1.10 translation and commentary by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

In my years of teaching the path of bhakti, I have come up with a few hopefully quotable sayings that perhaps are worthy to share. Well, here they are:

Destiny is the language of God.

God as Viṣṇu, the all-pervading one, witnesses all our activities. He then manifests as kāla, or time, to move the world around us according to the ignorance He has observed in our past activities to teach us the relevant lessons required to rectify those misconceptions. One’s destiny or karma is thus one of the main ways God speaks to enlighten us. As we are generally ignorant of exactly what God is telling us by our karma, He provides a dictionary of archetype karmic experiences to decipher His karmic language called śāstra. Still, as that language may be foreign to us, He further provides for our edification a teacher who knows śāstra and is thus proficient in understanding destiny, the language of God.

Rationalization is intelligence in the service of the false ego.

More than anything else the false ego is the desire for superiority—more than even the desire for sensual stimulation, which is why even the wealthiest people with full opportunity for sense gratification often still vie for high political positions. One of the greatest affronts to this desire for superiority is the acknowledgement of having been wrong, something most of us resist by the mechanism of rationalization, where the intelligence is used in the service of the false ego by creatively making excuses even for the most blatant of our mistakes.

Krishna is God with His guard down.

Letting one’s guard down is an English idiom meaning to become less guarded about potential danger. In terms of personal relationships, to let one’s guard down has the sense of making oneself vulnerable by not hiding one’s intimate self. God, or anyone else in a position of superiority for that matter, naturally guards His full or intimate nature from those who are subordinate, whether that nature is as a friend or a lover, out of consideration for the dependent’s desire for a formal or reverent relationship. God’s fullest manifestation is Krishna, where He is akhila-rasāmṛta-mūrti, the full embodiment of all intimate loving relationships. For those who have a more intimate relationship with Him, He thus sheds the guard of majesty and manifests His original form of a cowherd boy where He can reveal His intimate side. In other words, Krishna is God with His guard down.

Position covers personality. 

As mentioned above, the fullest manifestation of any person is not the height of their position, however great that may be, which in fact covers their fullest being as a lover, parent, or friend. Therefore, for God to fully manifest Himself in His original form as Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, He does not overtly display Himself as the Supreme Controller, for position covers personality.

Happiness is a heart filled with devotion.

Years ago, while walking near the Yamuna, I met a simple gardener in Vrindavan. Unfortunately, his field of roses had been wiped out that year by the flooding of the Yamuna. He therefore started to share his woes with me, like how he lost almost 200,000 rupees, which was particularly difficult for him as he had four daughters and needed to provide money for their dowry.  As he was complaining, however, I noticed something a bit unusual considering what he was telling me. His eyes and many of his facial features were sparkling with a type of joy. I therefore inquired from him how, despite all his travails, he could be so happy. His answer was profound, almost mantra-like, and I have since quoted it numerous times: “Happiness is a heart filled with devotion!”

Thus spoke me!

Every morning Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura would step outside of his room, which was adjacent to the far wall of the temple room, and immediately take off his glasses before taking darshan of his Lordships from forty feet away, although he could hardly see without them.  A disciple who witnessed this made a humble inquiry as to why. Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta’s answer was instructive: “I am not here to see Krishna, but to be seen by Krishna,” expressing the essence of how one in devotion views the world.

We can’t imitate Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta’s elevated mood. We shouldn’t therefore blind ourselves before the deity. Rather we need to open our eyes to the beauty of the deity to redirect our desires from looking at beauty for selfish enjoyment to relishing beauty in a devotional mood as an offering of the best to Krishna. What Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta was therefore demonstrating, more than a particular action, was the general principle of adjusting our view of the world, even towards the deities, from seeing the world as an object for our enjoyment from the standpoint of the enjoyer and controller (the seer), to seeing ourselves as objects of God’s pleasure from the position of a humble servant (the seen). Let’s briefly unpack his message to understand its importance. First, I will introduce a basic philosophical principle and give a personal example in an attempt to put this issue in a clearer context.

When, by dint of one’s constitution, what one desires cannot be fulfilled in reality, one’s desire can only be fulfilled in Illusion. When thinking on how to illustrate this principle an example came to mind from when I went to high school. David Siegal was exceptionally squat and overweight. Somehow, he desperately wanted to make the high school basketball team. We watched as he practiced day and night, but obviously he couldn’t make the team and his aspirations failed.  Shortly afterwards, we would see him, even in the winter, carrying a basketball and wearing the uniform of the New York Knicks, the city’s professional basketball team. When approached, he would only talk in all seriousness about the great game he played the night before at Madison Square Garden. Sadly, he had gone mad in trying to fulfill his constitutionally unobtainable wishes. Similarly, we desperately want to be the enjoyer and controller, a position we cannot have by our constitution. That unattainable wish attracts the illusory potency of Krishna (maya) to fulfill our desire by covering us from the reality of God’s immanence, a view of God’s all-pervasive presence that would obliterate the false ego or our desire for and sense of superiority. Maya literally means “not this” or illusion. In other words, to satisfy our impossible wish for a sense of dominance and control, maya puts us in the illusion that Krishna’s energy is not His, but instead separate from Him and meant for our enjoyment.

Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta’s example was illustrating this exact same point. We are in reality “the seen”, the servant of God, but our false ego wants to be “the seer”, the center. Krishna fulfills this unreachable desire by putting us in the illusion that we are indeed primary, and that the world revolves around us to control and exploit. All devotional practices are meant to move us in consciousness from this deceptive centered self-identity by developing an attraction for Krishna, which puts God back in the center of the world and ourselves at the periphery in service as the seen. Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta was indicating something more—that not only can we engage in devotional service to accomplish this, but we can also make a direct conscious effort to make this shift. So, I tried something.

My sitting place in Govardhan directly faces the hill a hundred yards way. As usual, I see the world, including the sacred mount, rotating around this little speck of consciousness garbed in a man’s body with saffron robes. I closed my eyes and instead envisioned Giriraja as the seer and my seat somewhere on the periphery begging for service. I prayed: “I am not here to see You my Lord, but to be seen by You.” I then lamented my lack of devotion.

Shlomo was one of my favorites. I met him 1982. He was an older Jewish man from Israel. He wasn’t a hippy, or one of the throngs of young cool Israelis who rushed to India after finishing the pressure cooker of their compulsory military service from eighteen to twenty years of age, or any of the kind of typical alternative Western pilgrim that would occasionally trek to India at the time. When I first met him, I just couldn’t place him in India. He was a simple, squat, balding, over-weight Jewish family man who was suffering, like most people, on the daily grind of work and family. It seems in that anxiety, and a thirst for some adventure, he got a sudden itch to follow some of his younger compatriots to India. According to him, he had no idea what Vrindavan was, or why he particularly came there on his pilgrimage. As he recalled, he was just mysteriously directed to Vrindavan and to our temple where something inexplicable happened.  When he got to the altar of Śrī Śrī Rādhā Śyāmasundara and gazed upon Their beautiful forms, he became overwhelmed with an intense joy. He broke down in uncontrollable tears and surrendered right then and there to Their lotus feet and never wavered in that conviction for nearly forty years. Strange? Not really, if you understand the way of faith.

Faith is trust by experience. We move and commit ourselves where we experience some happiness, but faith is not a trust in just some temporary stimulation or ego boost, but true sublimity in relation to God. Those on a legitimate spiritual path often come by an experience of divinity so profound, so transcendent, so undeniable that the maturity of that experience becomes their goal for the rest of their life. I don’t remember all the details, but at least for some time he stayed in our temple and had the fortune to serve in the deity kitchen under its head cook, Śrī Vibhu Caitanya, who was universally recognized in our community as its greatest saint. I was sometimes amused by the letters Shlomo got from his family. While some of us were getting letters from parents imploring their children not to commit ourselves to Krishna consciousness, his letters were from a new angle we hadn’t seen before. This time it was a parent that was being warned by their children. I remember one from his daughters: “Daddy, Daddy don’t join the cults!” But Shlomo was neither deterred in his faith, nor irresponsible to his family responsibilities.

After his short time in India was up, he went back and took care of his family, but remained unflinchingly dedicated to his spiritual path, eventually retiring to serve in the temple there. One learned friend shared his realization with me that our taste in Krishna consciousness, what activities in devotional life we have a passion for, are our doors to spiritual world. Shlomo was a grandfatherly presence to the younger devotees, especially the young girls that came, as he had daughters himself whom he cared for when they were younger. He liked to do that, but mostly his passion was prasādam. He loved to cook for the devotees. I remember when visiting Israel, he passionately shared with me his deep appreciation for Gauranga potatoes, a buttered, sour cream and sauteed potato prasādam. Yes, he was anything but an archetypical yogi. He just loved Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī and to distribute and taste the prasādam from the deities.

Last week in Vrndavan, when I was walking from my room in the Russian Building, I saw my friend Shlomo, now in his eighties and initiated as Vibhisana das, sitting on the stoop in front of the simple guesthouse, which has been his residence for many years. He loves to sit there in the winter chanting and basking in the sun and his fortune. He goes to the temple every morning without fail on crutches, which is fifty meters down from his door. It takes forever, but he tells me how he relishes every step. He needs a chair when he gets there, so he sits in the back in one provided for him. Although he can’t see the deities over to the packed temple crowd standing in front of him, he can see the video screen on the wall. When Śrī Rādhā’s form comes into view, he cries out of joy for the whole ārati and then slowly shuffles off to his room. He loves Vrindavan, and by Krishna’s blessing he will meet his vow to never leave there for the rest of his life.

I sat next to him for a short while, as I often do when passing him, to feel his affection and show my own. That day he looked up at me and with deep gratitude said, “I could never imagine such an old age!” Imagine such an old age? He lives in the simplest of rooms and in a rundown guesthouse, can barely walk, but is the happiest man in the world. In his final years he has the blessings of Śrī Vrindavan with the association of the devotees, but most importantly he has Śrī Rādhā in his heart. He sometimes gently pounds his heart and talks about Śrī Rādhā’s mercy in utter disbelief that he has earned a drop: “I wake of up in the morning, and I am still here. And look where I am!”

When you talk to Vibhisana, he seems to be filled with gratitude for every breath in the land of Śrī Rādhā. I remember him years ago expressing to me the suffering he had experienced in life before Krishna consciousness, but whatever that difficulty was, rather than making him bitter, had simply increased his feelings of appreciation for the peace and joy that Śrī Rādhā has offered this humble soul.

Shlomo can’t touch his toes or even sit with his legs crossed. He never could, nor does he seem to possess, any other feature of the classic or modern fit yogi, but somehow by Śrī Rādhā’s grace he has become the greatest yogi, for he lives focused in a heart welling with gratitude for the unfathomable mercy of his spiritual master and Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī. And that is the tale of Shlomo, the greatest yogi!

“And of all yogis, he who always abides in Me with great faith, worshiping Me in transcendental loving service, is most intimately united with Me in yoga and is the highest of all.” (Bg. 6.47)