Bhakti and Embodiment Read online

  In order to further elucidate the distinctive approaches of the three schools—Advaita Vedānta, Pātañjala Yoga, and the Gauḍīya Sampradāya—and the relative importance ascribed to the body and the person in their respective models of realization, I will present each school’s model in terms of a comparative framework that distinguishes four phases in the progression from bondage to the state of liberation or realization.

  Advaita Vedānta

  Bondage. The jīva, empirical self, deluded by ignorance (avidyā), becomes bound in saṃsāra through its infatuated absorption in the illusory world of māyā and its mistaken sense of personal identity based on attachment to the material psychophysical complex (śarīra).

  Path. The aspirant embarks on the path to liberation, mokṣa or mukti, which, as laid out by Śaṃkara, involves abandoning the accoutrements of worldly life—home, family, sexuality, food production, ritual practices, and social duties—and adopting the lifestyle of a lifelong saṃnyāsin (renunciant) whose sole focus is the attainment of jñāna, knowledge, and more specifically Brahma-vidyā, knowledge of Brahman. The renunciant adopts a regimen of practices that is designed to reconstitute the body of bondage as an ascetic body, including disciplines of celibacy, practices of begging and fasting, and meditation techniques, breathing exercises, and physical austerities aimed at disciplining the mind, senses, and bodily appetites and uprooting attachment to the psychophysical complex.

  Embodied Liberation. The renunciant attains an embodied state of liberation, jīvanmukti, which is represented as a state of unity in which he or she awakens to the universal Self, Ātman, that is identical with the undifferentiated unitary reality, Brahman. The liberated sage, established in the unitary vision of the all-pervasive Brahman, continues to maintain the material body and the associated vestiges of personal identity as leśāvidyā, the remnant of ignorance, until the time of death.

  Liberation beyond Death. At the time of death the liberated sage’s body and all other vestiges of personal identity cease and the impersonal, formless, distinctionless Brahman alone remains as the limitless totality of sat-cit-ānanda.77

  Pātañjala Yoga

  Bondage. The jīva, empirical self, becomes ensnared in the web of afflictions, kleśas, that perpetuate the bondage of saṃsāra—ignorance (avidyā), egoism (asmitā), attachment (rāga), aversion (dveṣa), and clinging to life (abhiniveśa)—and mistakenly identifies with the ever-changing material realm of prakṛti and the fluctuations of ordinary empirical awareness (citta-vṛtti).

  Path. The aspirant embarks on the path to liberation, kaivalya, which, as laid out in aṣṭāṅga-yoga, the eight-limbed Yoga of Patañjali, centers on the purification and transformation of the material psychophysical complex (śarīra) in order to attenuate the kleśas and the residual karmic impressions (saṃskāras) that are the root causes of bondage. The yogin engages in sustained practice of the eight-limbed program that is designed to reconstitute the body of bondage as a yogic body, a perfected material body (kāya-sampad) that manifests siddhis, psychophysical powers. This eight-limbed program entails a regimen of preparatory external practices—vows of abstinence (yama), psychophysical disciplines (niyama), bodily postures (āsana), and breathing exercises (prāṇāyāma)—and centers on a meditation technique through which the yogin withdraws the mind from external sense objects (pratyāhāra), focuses the attention inward (dhāraṇā), and experiences increasingly refined mental states (dhyāna), culminating in samādhi, an enstatic experience of absorption in the Self, puruṣa, pure consciousness.

  Embodied Liberation. The yogin attains an embodied state of liberation, which is represented as a dualistic state of isolation, kaivalya, in which he or she becomes permanently established in the Self, puruṣa, in eternal separation from prakṛti and from other puruṣas. The liberated yogin, having become established in the nonchanging puruṣa, remains eternally nonattached as the uninvolved witness of the ever-changing transformations of prakṛti while at the same time continuing to maintain a perfected material body until the time of death.

  Liberation beyond Death. At the time of death the perfected body ceases along with all remnants of atomistic personal identity, and in this bodiless state of liberation (videha-mukti) the puruṣa alone remains as pure luminous consciousness.78

  Gauḍīya Sampradāya

  Advaita Vedānta and Pātañjala Yoga thus both ascribe negative valences to embodiment and personhood as inextricable components of the bondage of saṃsāra. Although the human body is ascribed a provisional role as an instrument to be disciplined or transformed on the path to realization, this instrument is dispensed with once the goal is reached. In Gauḍīya constructions, in contrast, both the body and the person are ascribed critical roles not only on the path but also as part of the goal of realization.

  Bondage. The jīva forgets its true identity as an aṃśa of Bhagavān and, turning away from Kṛṣṇa, mistakenly identifies with the material psychophysical complex and becomes enslaved by the binding influence of Kṛṣṇa’s māyā-śakti that governs the material realm of prakṛti.

  Path. The aspirant turns towards Kṛṣṇa and embarks on the path to realization, becoming a sādhaka who follows the twofold discipline of sādhana-bhakti. In vaidhī-bhakti the sādhaka engages in a regimen of external bodily practices with the sādhaka-rūpa that is designed to reconstitute the body of bondage as a body of devotion, transforming all aspects of the material psychophysical complex—mental faculties, sense organs, and organs of action—into instruments of devotion to Bhagavān. In rāgānugā-bhakti the sādhaka engages in an advanced regimen of internal meditative practices that is designed to catalyze the realization of a siddha-rūpa, a perfected devotional body that is an eternal, nonmaterial body of bliss.

  Embodied Realization. The sādhaka becomes a samprāpta-siddha, perfected bhakta, who has attained an embodied state of realization in which the jīva awakens to its svarūpa, unique essential nature, and siddha-rūpa, the unique form of its nonmaterial body, and reclaims its role as a participant in the unmanifest līlā in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman, Goloka-Vṛndāvana, in eternal relationship with Bhagavān. While inwardly the realized bhakta remains absorbed in savoring the exhilarating nectar of prema-rasa with the siddha-rūpa, outwardly he or she continues to perform external bodily practices with the sādhaka-rūpa, the transformed material body, which thrills with the bliss of devotion.

  Realization beyond Death. At the time of death the sādhaka-rūpa ceases, but the realized jīva maintains its nonmaterial personal and bodily identity in the form of its unique svarūpa and siddha-rūpa in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman and relishes the intoxicating streams of prema-rasa for all eternity in a relationship of inconceivable difference-in-nondifference, acintya-bhedābheda, with the supreme personal Godhead, Kṛṣṇa, pūrṇa Bhagavān.

  The exponents of the Gauḍīya Sampradāya, in grappling with the contending teachings of Advaita Vedānta and Pātañjala Yoga, thus engage in a theology of superordination through which they hierarchize and subordinate the competition. As discussed in Chapter 1, they begin with a threefold ranking of models of realization, from lowest to highest: (1) absolute unity without distinction (Advaita Vedānta); (2) absolute separation in eternal distinction (Pātañjala Yoga); and (3) inconceivable difference-in-nondifference (Gauḍīya Sampradāya). Then, as discussed in this chapter, within the latter category they further distinguish four different flavors of the bhakti-rasa of preman through which the bhakta can savor union-in-difference with the deity. This theology of superordination serves as a means through which the Gauḍīyas accommodate, domesticate, and subordinate the models of realization propounded by the exponents of Advaita Vedānta and Pātañjala Yoga and position their own ideal of acintya-bhedābheda, inconceivable difference-in-nondifference, as the pinnacle of realization. They thereby radically re-figure notions of embodiment, personhood, and materiality on both the divine and human planes, culminating in a vision of the highest state of reali
zation as an eternal relationship between two persons—the supreme personal Godhead, Kṛṣṇa, and the individual jīva with its unique svarūpa—each of whom possesses an eternal, nonmaterial body.

  3 Bhāgavata Purāṇa as Text-Avatāra

  From Purāṇa-Veda to Embodiment of Bhagavān

  Among the mesocosmic forms of Kṛṣṇa—the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, nāman, Vraja-dhāman, and mūrti—I will explore in this chapter the transcendent status and authority ascribed to the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the consummate scripture of Kṛṣṇa bhakti, which is not only celebrated for its authoritative account of Kṛṣṇa’s descent to earth as an avatāra but is also revered as an avatāra in its own right: an avatāra of Kṛṣṇa in the form of a grantha, literary work or text. This grantha is composed of śabdas, words, and in its extant form is arranged in 16,256 verses (ślokas) and organized in twelve books (skandhas) subdivided into chapters (adhyāyas). This grantha, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, invests its teachings with the canonical authority of śāstra, scripture, and secures for itself a place within the brahmanical Sanskritic canon by assimilating itself to two categories of śāstras: Purāṇa, one of the principal categories of smṛti texts; and Veda, the paradigmatic canonical category that is synonymous with śruti. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa deploys a variety of strategies, first, to establish its canonical status as “Purāṇa-Veda,” a status that it shares with other Purāṇas; and, second, to claim for itself the transcendent authority of “Kārṣṇa-Veda,” the Veda that is identical with Kṛṣṇa and that is the culminating scripture of the entire brahmanical canon. The transcendent authority of the Bhāgavata as a mesocosmic embodiment of Bhagavān (bhagavad-rūpa) and a manifest form of Kṛṣṇa made of speech (vāṅ-mayī mūrtiḥ pratyakṣā) is elaborated in the Bhāgavata Māhātmya, which forms part of the Padma Purāṇa.1 The arguments of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and other Purāṇic texts are appropriated and extended by the early Gauḍīya authorities as part of their discourse of embodiment, culminating in representations of the Bhāgavata as a grantha-avatāra, an avatāra of Kṛṣṇa in the form of a text (grantha), that is “identical with Kṛṣṇa” (Kṛṣṇa-tulya) and is his “representative embodiment” (pratinidhi-rūpa) on earth in Kali Yuga.2

  As discussed in Chapter 2, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, which is generally held to have originated in South India between the ninth and tenth centuries ce,3 gives expression to a new type of Kṛṣṇa bhakti that is rooted in the devotional traditions of the Āḻvārs: viraha-bhakti, which Friedhelm Hardy characterizes more specifically as an “aesthetic-erotic-ecstatic mysticism of separation.”4 The Bhāgavata is at the same time concerned with domesticating and legitimating its innovative devotional teachings by incorporating them within a Sanskritic framework that accords with the norms of brahmanical orthodoxy. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa’s concern to “scripturalize” its bhakti teachings by establishing its own canonical authority as a śāstra within the brahmanical Sanskritic canon derives in part from the nature of the brahmanical tradition, which is an elite “textual community”5 that self-consciously defines itself in relationship to a canon of authoritative śāstras.

  In this chapter I will begin with a brief analysis of the brahmanical canon, which is founded on the category of Veda and includes two classes of śāstras: śruti, “that which was heard,” and smṛti, “that which was remembered.” I will then turn to an examination of the various strategies deployed by the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and other Purāṇas to establish the transcendent authority of the Veda and the special authority of the Purāṇas as an extended “Vedic” canon. I will be concerned more specifically with the arguments that the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and the Bhāgavata Māhātmya of the Padma Purāṇa use to establish the preeminent status of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa within the brahmanical canon of śāstras. Finally, I will analyze the ways in which the early Gauḍīya authorities appropriate and extend the arguments of Purāṇic texts in order to establish the transcendent authority of the Śrīmad Bhāgavata as the “sovereign (cakravartin) of all śāstras” that is distinguished from all other scriptures by its special status as an embodiment of Bhagavān.

  Śruti and Smṛti: The Brahmanical Canon of Śāstra s

  The brahmanical canon of śāstras is founded on the category of Veda, which means “knowledge.” The Veda functions in Hindu traditions as an authoritative category that is ascribed the status of transcendent knowledge and has both textual and supratextual dimensions. As a textual phenomenon, the Veda is revered in many Hindu traditions as the paradigmatic scripture, which has historically provided a legitimating source of authority for later sacred texts and teachings up to the contemporary period.

  Veda, Śruti, and Smṛti

  The term Veda is used in its narrow sense to designate the four Saṃhitās (c 1500–800 BCE)—Ṛg-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Sāma-Veda, and Atharva-Veda—which are collections of verses (ṛcs), sacrificial formulae (yajuses), chants (sāmans), and incantations and imprecations (atharvāṅgirases or atharvans), respectively. The versified portions of the four Saṃhitās are termed mantras.6 The term is subsequently extended to include not only the Saṃhitās but also three other categories of texts: the Brāhmaṇas (c 900–650 BCE), sacrificial manuals attached to the Saṃhitās that are concerned with correct performance of the Vedic yajñas, sacrificial rituals; the Āraṇyakas, “forest books” that reflect on the inner meaning of the sacrificial rituals; and the Upaniṣads (c 800 BCE–200 CE), the latest portions of the Vedas that contain metaphysical speculations about the nature of ultimate reality.

  The Vedic texts—Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas, and Upaniṣads—are traditionally understood to have been directly cognized—“seen” and “heard”—by inspired ṛṣis, seers, at the beginning of each cycle of creation and thus are designated as śruti, “that which was heard.” The formal schools of Vedic exegesis, Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta, maintain that the śruti, or Vedic, texts are eternal (nitya), infinite (ananta), and uncreated (apauruṣeya)—not derived from any personal agent, whether human or divine—whereas the Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, and Pātañjala Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy view the Vedic texts as the work of God.7 All other śāstras are relegated to a secondary status as smṛti, for they are held to have been composed by personal authors and are therefore designated as “that which was remembered” rather than “that which was heard.” The primary criterion for distinguishing between śruti and smṛti texts has thus generally been characterized by both Indian and Western scholars as an ontological distinction between “revelation” and “tradition.”8

  While the domain of śruti is in principle circumscribed,9 smṛti is a dynamic, open-ended category, which includes the Dharma-Śāstras (c first to eighth centuries CE), brahmanical legal codes; the Itihāsas, or epics, the Mahābhārata (c 200 BCE–100 CE) and the Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki (c 200 BCE–200 CE); and the Purāṇas (c 300–1000 CE and after), popular bhakti texts comprising cosmogonic myths, genealogies, and narratives about gods, kings, and sages. Smṛti also includes a variety of other texts that have been incorporated within this ever-expanding category in accordance with the needs of different periods and groups.10

  Vedacizing Strategies

  In the brahmanical canon the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and other Purāṇas are thus classified as smṛti texts, even though, as we shall see, the Purāṇas seek to identify themselves with śruti by claiming the status of the “fifth Veda.” In attempting to assimilate themselves to the Veda, the Purāṇas exemplify a well-documented phenomenon in Indian history whereby any Hindu text or teaching seeking to legitimate its authority had to do so with reference to the Veda. As J. C. Heesterman emphasizes:

  The crux of the matter is that the Vedas hold the key to ultimate legitimation. Therefore, even if the Vedas are in no way related to the ways of human life and society, one is still forced to come to terms with them.11

  The legitimating function of the Veda within Hindu traditions derives from its role as a transcendent
source of authority. The core śruti texts, the Vedic mantras, are represented in the cosmogonic and cosmological speculations of Vedic and post-Vedic texts as eternal, transcendent knowledge that exists perpetually as the source and plan of the universe. The Vedic ṛṣis are portrayed as having stationed their awareness on the transcendent level where they “saw” and “heard” the primordial vibrations of pure knowledge reverberating forth as the fundamental rhythms of creation. They subsequently “recorded” on the gross level of speech that which they cognized on the subtle level, and in this way the mantras assumed a concrete form on earth as recited texts.12 The Vedic mantras are thus granted the status of transcendent knowledge. Any subsequent śāstric text or discourse can participate in that status only by assimilating itself to the Vedic mantras through a variety of strategies, including (1) claiming to form part of śruti, the original cognitions of the ṛṣis, in the case of the Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas, and Upaniṣads; (2) claiming the status of the “fifth Veda,” in the case of the Itihāsas and Purāṇas;13 (3) establishing a genealogy that directly links the text’s teachings to the Veda or to some form of divine revelation, in the case of the Manu-Smṛti, the most celebrated of the Dharma-Śāstras; (4) claiming that the text’s teachings derive from lost Vedic texts, a claim that could potentially apply to all smṛti texts;14 or (5) otherwise conforming to the model of the Veda.15 Through such strategies the term Veda is extended beyond the circumscribed boundaries of the Vedic mantras and, through a process of “vedacization,” comes to include within its purview not only an expanded array of śruti texts but also potentially all smṛti texts and teachings that are promulgated by brahmanical authorities.16