Waves of Devotion

Dhanurdhara Swami September 26th, 2022

I want to explain through a visual example the concept of material bondage and how the process of bhakti frees one from it:

 

Before sharing that visual, it is necessary to first explain the goal of bhakti and the obstacle to attaining it.

 

The objective of bhakti is prīti or love, experiencing the energy of devotion that is shared between two people in a natural loving relationship, specifically, in this case, the soul’s relationship with God. In other words, just as any two people in a natural relationship have an inherent loving feeling towards each other, for example a mother and child or even a cow and its calf, similarly we have a spontaneous natural loving feeling towards God. The goal of the path of devotion is to awaken that feeling in us, which is the highest happiness and the goal of life.

 

The main obstacle to awakening such love is the false ego, the desire to be the enjoyer, accrue control for that purpose, and as a result to ultimately bask in the sense that, “I am superior to others.” Although this cloud of egoism is insignificant compared to the infinite power of God’s love, it can still cover us from an experience of our relationship with Krishna, just as a small umbrella can block one from the all-powerful rays of the sun.

 

The visual of our bondage is therefore the soul completely encircled by the cloud of ignorance preventing the all-powerful sun of Krishna’s love from touching our hearts.

 

Devoid of the warmth of God’s love that awakens our relationship with Him, which is our true purpose and existential happiness, we have remained dissatisfied in life since time immemorial until coming to what should have been an obvious point—that both the fulfillment of our selfish desires and the authority of our own opinions have been useless in achieving happiness, and we should therefore seek for something better. That acknowledgment of and search for an authority higher than our own faulty convictions is called humility, which creates a small opening in the cloud of the false ego that has engulfed our soul. God, seeing a clear pathway to our soul, answers our prayers by sending us sādhu-saṅga, a guide who can teach us how to further widen the path to our soul by removing the false ego, deepening our humility and helping us feel the rays of God’s love and our relationship with Him. Most importantly, by hearing from such souls about Sri Krishna we become attracted to Him and dedicated to fully serving Him, which is utter humility, the complete antithesis of the false ego and pure love itself.

 

We stand now in this world as unfortunate souls covered to one degree or another by the cloud of material consciousness and suffering from our disconnection from Krishna and therefore from our true selves as His devotee. We are now also fortunate souls, for we are humble seekers, those who have opened a clearing in those clouds of ignorance giving us the opportunity to experience God’s love. May we all continue to take shelter of the Vaiṣṇavas, mine the depths of our humility, and bask in the soothing light of Krishna’s love and our relationship with Him!

 

 

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