Religious
The Life of Bhakti
The whole religion of the sect is summed up in its teaching about the life of bhakti:
This is set forth as a whole-hearted attitude of love and devotion to Krishna, that engages all the powers of life in complete and selfless service to him alone.
The beauty and sufficiency of this way of life is proclaimed with almost endless repetition:
It is the glory and joy of life, the one true course, the only real wealth this world offers, the supreme end of all existence. Compared with bhakti, all other means of religious devotion are obsolete, ineffectual and void.
As we have noted, jñāna, karma, and yoga are given scant reverence, although recognised as honoured ways to God in days gone by.
The former command is karma according to the Vedas, dharma, yoga, jñāna. After finishing all these comes the greatest command; if on the strength of this command the devotee has faith, he leaves all karma and worships Kṛṣṇa... By faith in Krishna all work is done.
All methods of worship (sādhana) have worthless results. Without Krishna-bhakti they can never give strength.
There are no barriers set up round about this way of life. It is open to all, be he scholar or ignorant, Brāhman or low-caste. It is universal in scope, and should be practised by all, under whatever circumstances of time, place and conditions.
The end of the practice of bhakti is that state of pure, disinterested love in which all thought of self is swallowed up in complete bliss. This is the summum bonum of life.
The nature of bhakti which in so catholic a manner welcomes all sorts of men will naturally be as varied as human capacity, and as rich in emotional feeling as the powers of the human heart.
Thus we find different grades of bhakti corresponding to different types of religious feeling experienced among men.
Five different stages are set forth in the Caritamṛta and ascribed to Chaitanya. In their present form these well-known five stages have doubtless come from Chaitanya, but they were not original with him:
They are found among others in the oldest bhakti documents, such as the Nārada Sūtras and the Śāṇḍilya Sūtras, and were evidently fairly well defined forms of bhakti teaching.
Chaitanya received them as such, and gave them the currency that has attached them to his name. These five stages are described as follows:
The first is called Śānta, peaceful, and is the quiet stage, a calm fixing of the mind upon Krishna. A śānta votary's attachment is like an odourless flower.
The second stage is the dāsya, service, in which the relation of the disciple to his lord is that of a servant or slave.
Next is the sakhya, friendship, where the relation is the trustful comradeship of friend and friend.
In the fourth stage, vātsalya, fondness, the relationship takes on the tenderness of the parent's feeling for the child;
while the fifth stage, mādhurya, sweetness, is represented by the lover relation with its element of passion.
Each stage shares the quality of the preceding, but adds to the sum total a new emotion and achieves an increase of delight. Thus the fifth and supreme stage combines all the qualities of the other grades, and is of wondrous deliciousness.
Bhakti is thus conceived of as an experience capable of an ascending scale of feeling;
it is a relationship to Krishna of love and faith that gains in scope, intensity and power, as the devotee progresses in devotion.
Beginning with quiet meditation little stirred by emotion, the bhakta advances through the emotional realisation of the relation of servant, friend and parent,
until, with ever-deepening feeling, he is swept into a passionate ardour of the soul toward its lord that finds its most fitting symbol in the abandon of that passion which exists only between the sexes.
It is as the illustration or exemplification of this climactic fifth stage of devotion that Rādhā holds so important a place in the sect's thought. This accounts for her exaltation both in the songs and in the theology.
Chaitanya accepted her as the ideal of devotion:
In the abandon of her passionate love for Krishna he saw a compelling illustration of what should be the ardour of every devotee's bhakti.
"The supreme emotion" (Mahābhāva), says the Caritamṛta, is the quintessence of prema (love). The lady, Rādhā, is the embodiment of that supreme emotion.
Two schools arose in the sect over the interpretation of Rādhā. The question at issue was as to her relation to Krishna, whether it was that of mistress or wife.
Those who maintained the latter, the svakīya doctrine, included most of the Vrindāvan fathers.
But it is clear that the parakīyabādīs, those who held Rādhā to be the wife of another and mistress of Krishna, very soon gained the ascendency. This was doubtless due to the immoveable influence of the old myth about the gopīs.
It would seem, also, that the Sahajiyā cult was not without influence in this matter, that cult which for a hundred years and more had taught the doctrine of salvation through the worship and love of a woman other than one's own wife.
We have noted in the introductory chapter how extensively this Sahajiyā doctrine coloured the writings of Chaitanya writers in the following centuries.
A curious chronicle has been found recently, which further confirms our feeling that the parakīyabādīs fairly early swept the field:
This is an official Muhammadan court document, bearing the date of 1717. It describes a sort of formal trial, which was also a debate, for the purpose of deciding between these two parties.
Both doctrines were represented by their ablest champions from all parts of Bengal and Orissa, and Benares as well.
The Vaishnava scriptures were taken as the basis of discussion, including the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Chaitanya's teaching, Śrīdharasvāmī's famous commentary on the Bhāgavata, Sanātana's commentary on the tenth chapter of the Bhāgavata, and other less known works.
Great crowds attended, and the discussion continued over a period of months.
The parakīyabādīs finally gained the victory, and in consequence the svakīyabādī Gosvāmīs lost standing and surrendered their disciples throughout the country.
Just where Chaitanya stood in this controversy it is impossible to say.
Krishnadās Kavirāj, the author of the Caritamṛta, was a parakīyabādī, and he therefore puts this doctrine into the mouth of Chaitanya.
Considering Chaitanya's great admiration for the works of Jayadeva and Chaṇḍī Das, who preach this view, it would appear that he inclined toward it himself. At any rate, the teaching of the sect became wholly of this doctrine.
Thus illicit passion, the love of the mistress for her lover, became the universally accepted symbol of the soul's devotion to God.
"Of these [kinds of love] Rādhā's is the crowning ideal, whose glory is described in all the śāstras," says the Caritamṛta.
Here we have a very curious fact that sets the Rādhā-Krishna literature apart from all other Hindu writings in this respect:
That which this sect has chosen as its representation and symbol of the soul's thirst for God is in direct contravention of one of the most cherished ideals of the Hindu social order down through the centuries, namely, the chastity and fidelity of Indian womanhood.
The stories of Rādhā-Krishna stand alone in Hindu dramatic literature in this respect. In Sanskrit dramas a married woman is nowhere represented as faithless or as the object of other men's love.
Dr. Sen writes thus:
In the poetic literature of the Hindus, the fidelity of woman has always formed the loftiest theme and has naturally supplied the highest poetic inspiration.
But Vaishnava literature glories in Rādhā, who breaks the sacred ties of domestic life and walks in the unrestrained path of freedom from all social bondage.
How could a society so rigidly fastidious in point of woman's honour admire Rādhā and allow her such an elevated place in their literature? The answer is a very simple one.
Rādhā, as has already been said, is a religious symbol, a typification of the free worship offered by the human soul to God!
That something, which in the Hindu wife and mother is looked upon with the utmost abhorrence, should be chosen as the most fitting representation of religion, is, to say the least, a strange procedure.
The explanation turns upon the place of marriage in Hindu society:
Rarely, if ever, is it a romantic attachment, the result of love's free play, for matches are arranged by the elders and the young people concerned are only passive agents.
After marriage, whether love develops or not, the whole round of wifely duties and devotion are enjoined upon the woman by sacred law.
Therefore, says the Vaishnava apologist, the love of the wife can hardly serve as the symbol of unfettered devotion.
Whereas the Hindu woman who gives herself to romantic love outside the marriage relation risks her all: She gives everything that makes life worthwhile in the abandonment of her devotion.
Thus she becomes the most fitting symbol of the soul's search after God. Rādhā is the supreme example of this passionate love.
The Attainment of Bhakti
The cultivation of bhakti is a subject that receives considerable space in the Caritamṛta. From this point of view two general orders of bhakti are distinguished, vaidhī and Rāgānugā:
The first is called regular, and is developed in accordance with śāstric rules;
the latter is governed by no rules whatever, but follows the natural inclinations of the heart, as was true of the gopīs in their infatuation for Krishna.
Of the regular or vaidhī bhakti, many ways of cultivation are set forth:
64 is the traditional number. Of these, however, 5 chief modes are distinguished as of special and particular value. These five are:
1. the society of holy men,
2. kirtan of Krishna’s name,
3. listening to the reading of the Bhāgavata,
4. dwelling at Mathura and
5. reverential service of his image;
in short, fellowship, song, scripture, pilgrimage and image worship. Any one of these modes alone will produce bhakti, and Even a little of the five creates love for Krishna.
As a matter of fact, the charmed number is 9 rather than 5. This is recognised in the Caritamṛta, and in all manuals for popular use 9 forms of bhakti are specified.
The item as to pilgrimage has been dropped in the process of expansion.
Far and away ahead of all other forms of attaining bhakti is the kirtan and its accompaniments. No other means can so lift the heart into the full experience of ecstatic feeling as the chanting of the holy name:
In the Kālī yuga the singing of the name is the great means; in Kālī yuga the sacrifice of nāma kirtan is equivalent to worshipping Krishna... Through sankirtan the sin of the world is destroyed, the heart is purified, and practice of all kinds of bhakti is initiated...
If the name is taken while eating or lying down or anywhere - without restriction of time, place or rule - all success is achieved.
But the heights of bhakti are to be reached in more mystic ways not open to the mass:
For those passionate souls who soon pass beyond rule and form there is an inner bg-sky way, an esoteric teaching. They are followers of the second order of bhakti, the rāgānugā, in which passionate desire for mystic union with the loved object is the distinguishing mark.
The ordinary means of arousing bhakti are not discarded necessarily, but they are looked upon as external only.
The practices are two, external and internal; listening and praising are done with the body as external practice; within the mind having conceived the ideal person, Krishna is served day and night in Braj.
This appears to be a somewhat cryptic passage, but its meaning is clear. It commends a concentrated imaginative process as more effective in realising the bliss of bhakti than any outward means.
The inspiration and guide - "the ideal person" - of this more secret form of bhakti is the gopī of the Vrindāvan legend.
The bhakta by meditation seeks to make the whole Vrindāvan līlā live before him. He visualizes in his mind's eye the amorous sport that Krishna carried on with the milkmaids.
But more than this, he imaginatively enters into it, and by playing the part of one of the enamoured maids, he experiences in his own mind the passionate feelings that are so glowingly pictured in the literature;
feelings, indeed, for which the analogy, it is frankly admitted, is lust (kāma).In this manner he brings himself into a state of ardent feeling for Krishna.
The emphasis upon this doctrine in the Caritamṛta, and, therefore, in all succeeding works upon bhakti, is very marked. It is the rāja tattva, the royal doctrine.
The following are sample passages:
Krishna’s sport with Rādhā’s extremely deep, and is never found in the attitudes of dāsya (service), vatsalya (fondness), etc. It is within the right of the sakhīs only, and from them this sport spreads.
Without the sakhīs this sport is never nourished; they enjoy their own sport by spreading it. No one has any access to this sport except the sakhīs and those who follow Krishna in the attitude of the sakhīs.
They attain to the privilege of service to Rādhā-Krishna in the grove. There is no other way to this end!
Therefore, accepting the attitude of the gopīs, they think on the sport of Rādhā-Krishna day and night. By meditating on Krishna in the realised body they only serve him; through the Sakhī attitude, they gain the feet of Rādhā-Krishna.
The son of Braj's lord is never gained by worshipping in the knowledge of his glory, but only by the way of the gopis.
Only in the form of a gopī is the pleasure of rāsa gained.
Underlying this emphasis upon the gopīs, and explaining it, is the idea that Krishna is the sole male in the universe, and only as his worshippers conceive of themselves as female can they rise to the full experience of passionate devotion.
This explains why prominent Vaishnavas are considered to be incarnations of the gopīs. It is a curious doctrine, produced by the exaltation of the Gopī myth into sacred scripture!
This passionate bhakti, using the sensuous images of this highly erotic story to stimulate its fervour, passed into further emotional phases common to all mysticism.
There is a blessed stage which transcends the sphere of all these virtuous acts and is not limited by the scriptures:
This is called the rāgānugā, or that faith which follows its own course –
the stage in which the recollection of the very name of God calls forth tears, the whole body trembles like a leaf, the material loses its grossness, and the body becomes spirit.
The reciting of the name creates strange emotions in the soul – they know no bonds and are not limited by the śāstras... It is a State where consciousness and unconsciousness meet...
One who is in this blessed condition gives up all religious rites prescribed by the Vedas.
The Emotions of Bhakti.
It is hardly necessary, for the purposes of this study, to attempt an exposition of the elaborate analysis of love's emotions found in the teachings of the Bengal Vaishnavas.
It is a labyrinth of involved and intricate classification.
Surely the delight of the Hindu mind in minute analysis is here illustrated to perfection; for these theologians represented not only the philosophy mind of India; they also combined with it an abounding delight in bhakti, which led them to dwell upon its minutest emotions with infinite relish.
The general basis of the analysis is found in the Hindu system of rhetoric and poetics far antedating the time of Chaitanya:
But credit must be given to the thinkers of the Chaitanya school for the way in which they worked out their psychology of love. Among all bhakti sects they stand pre-eminent as specialists in this field.
The 5 stages of bhakti already described are accompanied by corresponding emotions, known as the 5 permanent emotions. These are basic.
But love has shades of feeling far more numerous than these, of which 10 at least are experienced in passing through the 5 stages.
From another point of view 4 main divisions are set up, and these are sub-divided into 2, 13, 8 and 33 classes of feeling respectively.
Still another phase of the analysis has to do with the development of tender relations between Krishna and Rādhā, its divisions defining steps in the process,
such as the dawn of love, the sending of messages, the secret stealing forth for the meeting of love, the meeting itself, the final separation, the spirit union, etc.
This is made familiar by the lyrics of the sect, which are classified under these heads, each head having many sub-divisions.
Suffice it to say of this subject that as many as 360 emotions of love are defined and illustrated by the theologians of the sect, huge works being devoted to this labour of love.
The Use of Images.
One of the modes of cultivating bhakti, it will be noted, is the reverential service of Krishna's image.
As the rather extraordinary assertion has been made that Chaitanya rejected idolatry, it may not be amiss to devote a few words to this point:
The influence of images upon Chaitanya was enormous. Rarely did any image fail to stir his feelings, and, as far as one can see, the reason was that each image to him was God.
Here is a typical picture of a Purī experience:
With great eagerness he went to Jagannātha’s house... The eyes of the Master were thirsty like a pair of bees, and they drank in the lotus-like face of Krishna with greatest eagerness.
The eyes of the god surpassed the blooming lotus; his cheeks glittered like transparent sapphire stone. His lips were sweeter than the bloom of the bāndhuli flower.
A slight smile was like a ripple of nectar on his face. The sweetness of the beauty of his face increased moment by moment, and it was drunk like bees by the million eyes of the faithful. Their thirst increased as they drank; their eyes could not tum from the lotus· like face.
Thus did the Master together with his devotees gaze at the blessed face till midday.
Perspiration, trembling, weeping, went on continuously, but the Master bad to restrain himself in order to have a clearer view.
Bhog (serving of food, screened from view) and darśan (sight) followed each other. The Master sang kirtan at the serving of food and forgot everything in the delight of gazing.
In addition to his own contagious example, he explicitly taught the place and value of images in worship.
Krishna has now manifested himself in the form of wood and water, and creatures are saved by sight and ablution...
Śrī Puruṣottama (Jagannāth) is present as deity in the form of wood, and Bhāgīrathī is present as Deity in the form of water. Do thou, Sārvabhauma, worship the wood god, and thou, Vācaspati, serve the water god.
To the young disciple, Raghunātha, he sent a Śālagrāma, a dark-coloured stone used by Vaishnavas as an emblem of Krishna, which he had used for years himself, bathing it, feeding it, and bedewing it with tears, exactly as though it were an image:
"It is the body of Krishna," Chaitanya said, "serve it with zeal."
The philosophical explanation of this worship is put into Chaitanya's mouth thus:
It is a sin to acknowledge difference in gods. God is the same [varying] according to the meditation of the devotee. The one form [of God] is made into different images.
But his practice was not guided by philosophical considerations:
Chaitanya fully shared the viewpoint of his time, and believed in the reality and blessedness of the god's presence in the image before him. He needed no defence or explanation.
The practice was necessary to his life of bhakti, and the stimulus which it gave to his emotions was sufficient proof, if any were needed, of its truth.
As a matter of history, it seems clear that Chaitanya's influence had much to do with changing the character of the worship at Purī in this respect.
To his influence is credited the introduction of the elaborate service of the image of Jagannāth, such as bathing and feeding, and it was at his instigation that King Pratāpa Rudra ordered the songs of Jayadeva to be sung before the image daily .
The bearing of this intense image-worship upon the spiritual quality of Chaitanya's bhakti will be considered in the final chapter.
However, it may very properly be observed here that this great dependence upon an outward object in worship, whether conceived as symbol or as deity itself, is a very serious qualification of the catholicity of Chaitanya's bhakti teaching.
It clearly reveals the fact that the religion of the name, with its worship of praise, was not all-sufficient even for the master-singer himself.