Re: About the Bhaktas and Bhakti
From the Bhakti List Archives
• January 22, 2000
Dear Sampathkumaran, Thank you for your kind response. Before anything else, perhaps, a clarification. I get the impression, by your use of quotation marks, that my note might have sounded polemical. Should this impression be correct, my apologies. I do not want to be either sarcastic or aggressive. But I do want to have a discussion -- not to prove any point, but to understand. Understand what? you might ask. In the form of questions, here are some answers. 1. Could we, that is, ordinary human beings that the most of us are, experience (or achieve the state of) bhakti? Why is it that the more one searches for it, the more distant and unreachable it becomes? (The analogy with finding 'the true love' does not work here because one does not know what 'true love' is, where to find it, and it uniquely varies from person to person. Our traditions (a) teach us about Bhakti, tell us that (b) with the help of a teacher, and (c) in the company of the dAsas, any person could find or achieve bhakti.) 2. While a profoundly deep emotion appears to accompany Bhakti, the latter is *not identical* to the former. Why do I say this? In their *search* for Bhakti, and before they find it, most Bhaktas constantly lament -- with deep anguish -- that 'the karunAmayi' does not appear to show 'karuna' to them. Surely, during this phase, their emotions for the Lord (if this is what Bhakti is) is not (a) any less (quantitatively speaking) or (b) inauthentic or fake (c) or any different. If it was an emotional deficiency, why do these teachers not state this very obvious and simple truth about their own emotions (that both you and I seem to know)? The imagery of love is used to describe an emotional state (mostly of those who are searching for bhakti), but bhakti itself does not appear to fall together with a particular emotion. 3. Here is yet another formulation of the above problem. One of the impedements to Bhakti, the enlightened seem to say, are our *emotional* attachments and entanglements in the world. They *do not* say that we are merely attached to the wrong objects and people, and that shifting the locus (or the focus) of these attachments is what bhakti is. However, they do say that bhakti shifts these emotional bonds from the worldly things onto the Lord. Does it not follow from this Bhakti cannot be an *emotion* but is accompanied by one? 4. My questions might sound arid and, in the pejorative sense of the word, 'merely academic'. If they do, my apologies for the tone. My concern, however, is neither. What amazes me (cognitively speaking) and drives me to despair and beyond (existentially speaking) is the singular absence of an issue of overriding importance. You see, our traditions tell us what it is to be in a state of ignorance (where most of us find ourselves in), how one is when one is searching, and what it is like when one has found it. (Call the 'it', the truth, bhakti, enlightenment, or whatever else you feel like.) What they do not tell us is also what all of us need to know: *how* did those who were successful make the transition from one state to the other? What helped them? Why do *none* of them speak about these, once they reach whatever they reached? Why do they merely tell us that the truth is staring us in our face, what that truth is, but not how they came to realise it? I mean, all of us 'know' -- in some sense -- what they say. 'Knowing' this does not help us; even 'believing' in this truth does not bring us closer to whatever they were close to or united with. They too knew this truth while they were searching, and it was not adequate for them either. At some stage or another, they made the transition from a state of utter anguish to that of total 'bliss'. What enabled them? Did they simply wake up one day with a profound realisation, did a miracle occur, or is it something like the lottery? If none of these, why are *all* of them so quiet on this utterly, utterly crucial issue? The more one reads, the more one thinks, the more one feels abandoned -- by whom or by what, one does not know. My hope in posting to the group was (and is) to find out how others think. It is my hope too to understand whatever it is I do not. Yours Balu
- Next message: K K: "Re: About the Bhaktas and Bhakti"
- Previous message: sampath kumar: "Re: About the Bhaktas and Bhakti"
- Maybe in reply to: Balu: "About the Bhaktas and Bhakti"
- Next in thread: K K: "Re: About the Bhaktas and Bhakti"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]