Waves of Devotion

Dhanurdhara Swami October 21st, 2024

Śrī Krishna was extremely pleased with Śrī Nārada for inadvertently causing Him to experience the taste of separation from His own devotees. He offered Śrī Nārada any benediction he wanted. To those who are uninformed about the nature of bhakti, his choice will seem surprising.

 

[Nārada said:] “Śrī Kṛṣṇacandra, please grant that no one will ever feel he has enough of Your mercy, Your devotional service, or pure love for You, the reservoir of ecstasy.” (Brhad-bhagavatamrta 1.7.135)

 

Here rests the essence of bhakti, never to be satiated. Why is that so? Again, I will resort to analogy to try to help make this very subtle point clear. Bhakti, or eagerness to serve God, is like the thirst for water. When one is thirsty three things happen. First, one is eager for water. Next, one feels a lack of water and is naturally humbled. Lastly, for the thirsty the taste of water is intensified. Similarly, in bhakti these same three things occur—one is eager or thirsty for bhakti, one feels a lack of bhakti and is humbled, and finally one’s taste for bhakti increases. In other words, what Śrī Nārada understood is that to feel satiated in bhakti means that the thirst, humility, and taste in bhakti will level off and eventually diminish.

 

To further understand Śrī Nārada’s request that the devotees never feel satiated in devotion, it is also helpful to understand the substantial difference in our analogy between the thirst for water and the eagerness for bhakti. When one quenches one’s thirst, the eagerness for water, one’s sense of being bereft of it and one’s taste for water all naturally decrease. But bhakti is itself the eagerness for God, and when one fills oneself with bhakti, the result is different than thirst being quenched. Rather than one’s eagerness or thirst for bhakti being slaked or diminished, one’s thirst for bhakti, one’s humble sense of lacking it, and one’s taste for bhakti naturally increase. Śrī Nārada was thus in fact asking for the blessing that as one advances on the path of bhakti, that the intrinsic insatiable nature of bhakti never has any limits.

 

The essence of Śrī Nārada’s inquiry highlighting the insatiable nature of bhakti also helps resolve one of the tradition’s quandaries: why are prema (heightened devotion) and utter humility considered practically synonymous? Can you imagine at the height of bhakti how deeply and infinitely one thirsts for Śrī Krishna, and thus how deficient in bhakti and utterly humble one feels? And in the same regard, note that Śrī Radha, Who possesses the height of devotion, is also the epitome of humility.

 

It also offers insight as to why Śrī Caitanya stressed in the third verse of the Śikṣāṣṭakam that a humble person can chant always. Who can chant always? One who can chant with devotion. And who has such a taste for devotion? The humble who are thirsty for God.

 

“One who thinks himself lower than the grass, who is more tolerant than a tree, and who does not expect personal honor yet is always prepared to give all respect to others can very easily always chant the holy name of the Lord.”

 

So, in this auspicious month of Kartik, which infuses devotion into our hearts, let us pray to Śrī Radha that indeed we are flooded with devotion, but in the spirit of Śrī Nārada let us pray we still will never have enough of it!

 

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