Bhakti and Embodiment Read online

  Jīva is concerned to illumine more specifically the relationship between Kṛṣṇa and the gopīs, the cowmaidens of Vraja, portrayed in the rāsa-pāñcādhyāyī, chapters 29 to 33 of the tenth book of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, which celebrate in lavish detail Kṛṣṇa’s love-play with the gopīs, culminating in the rāsa-līlā, the circle dance of Kṛṣṇa with his cowmaiden lovers.9 Jīva argues that the gopīs are the eternal expressions of the hlādinī-śakti, the blissful aspect of the svarūpa-śakti. Among the gopīs, he identifies Rādhā with the anonymous gopī who is singled out for Kṛṣṇa’s special attention in Bhāgavata Purāṇa 10.30.24–44, and he invests her with the highest ontological status as Kṛṣṇa’s eternal consort who is the quintessential expression of the hlādinī-śakti and consummate embodiment of Kṛṣṇa’s bliss, from whom the other gopīs emanate as manifestations of that bliss. The unmanifest līlā of Kṛṣṇa with Rādhā and the gopīs is thus interpreted in terms of the inner dynamics of the Godhead as self-referral play within Bhagavān in which he revels eternally with the blissful impulses of his own nature.

  When Kṛṣṇa descends to earth at the end of Dvāpara Yuga, Rādhā and the gopīs and the other eternal associates are represented as descending with him to the terrestrial region of Vraja in North India, where he displays his manifest līlā. The līlā is thus understood as a process of self-disclosure through which Kṛṣṇa revels on the unmanifest plane in the rapturous delights of his own divine play and expresses himself on the manifest plane in a series of episodes that display different aspects of the divine nature.

  While the Gauḍīya discourse of divine embodiment centers on the svarūpa-śakti, the discourse of human embodiment centers on the jīva-śakti and the mechanisms of liberation from the binding influence of the māyā-śakti. The ultimate goal of human existence, as I will explore more fully in Chapter 2, is represented as the attainment of a state of realization in which the jīva is liberated from the bondage of the māyā-śakti and awakens to the reality of Kṛṣṇa as svayaṃ Bhagavān and to its true identity as an aṃśa of Bhagavān in the svarūpa-śakti. The jīva attains direct experiential realization of its eternal relationship with Bhagavān in acintya-bhedābheda, inconceivable difference-in-nondifference. Having cast off the last vestiges of bondage to material existence, the realized jīva reclaims its distinctive role in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman as a participant in the unmanifest līlā and enjoys the bliss of preman, all-consuming love for Kṛṣṇa, in the eternal embrace of the supreme Godhead.

  The Absolute Body of Bhagavān beyond the Formless Brahman

  One of the most striking claims of the Gauḍīya discourse of divine embodiment is its insistence that—contrary to the ontologies of competing philosophical schools that claim that the ultimate reality in its essential nature is formless—the highest aspect of the Godhead, Bhagavān, is not without form (nirākāra) but rather is endowed with an absolute body with distinctive bodily features that is at the same time nonmaterial (aprākṛta), unmanifest (avyakta), eternal (nitya), and self-luminous (svaprakāśa). This absolute body is designated by the term vigraha. The early Gauḍīya authorities emphasize that Bhagavān’s vigraha, like his svarūpa, essential nature, consists of being (sat), consciousness (cit), and bliss (ānanda). Thus in Bhagavān there is no distinction between body and essence, vigraha and svarūpa, for the body (deha) and the possessor of the body (dehin) are nondifferent.10 Indeed, in the Gauḍīya discourse of divine embodiment, the term svarūpa is used at times to refer to Bhagavān’s essential nature and at other times to refer to his essential form, which in the final analysis are considered identical.

  The Gauḍīyas assert the paradoxical notion that Bhagavān’s absolute body, in its svayaṃ-rūpa or svarūpa, essential form, is the two-armed form of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa, who is extolled in the tenth book of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa as descending to earth and carrying out his līlā in the form of a gopa, cowherd boy, in the area of Vraja in North India. It is the beautiful youthful form (kiśora-mūrti) of the cowherd Kṛṣṇa—with its distinctive blue-black color, body marks, dress, ornaments, and characteristic emblems such as the flute—that is celebrated by the Gauḍīyas as the absolute body, vigraha, that exists eternally in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman, Goloka-Vṛndāvana. Rūpa Gosvāmin gives the following description of Kṛṣṇa’s svayaṃ-rūpa:

  The sweet form (mūrti) of the enemy of Madhu [Kṛṣṇa] brings me intense joy. His neck has three lines like a conch, his clever eyes are charming like lotuses, his blue-black limbs are more resplendent than the tamāla tree,…his chest displays the Śrīvatsa mark, and his hands are marked with the discus, conch, and other emblems.… This lover has a beautiful body (aṅga) and is endowed with all auspicious marks, radiant, luminous, powerful, eternally young.11

  In the Laghubhāgavatāmṛta Rūpa invokes the canonical authority of the śāstras to establish that the two-armed youthful form of the cowherd Kṛṣṇa, which is unsurpassed in its beauty (lāvaṇya) and its sweetness (mādhurya), is the svayaṃ-rūpa, essential form, of the sat-cit-ānanda-vigraha, Bhagavān’s absolute body consisting of being, consciousness, and bliss. He maintains, moreover, that although the svayaṃ-rūpa is eternal (nitya), nonmaterial (aprākṛta), unmanifest (avyakta), and invisible (adṛśya), through his self-manifesting śakti (prakāśatva-śakti) Kṛṣṇa reveals his gopa form so that it can be directly “seen” (root dṛś) even today by realized bhaktas, just as it was previously “seen” (root dṛś) by Vyāsa, the acclaimed ṛṣi (seer) who recorded his cognitions of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa in the form of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa.12

  Jīva Gosvāmin provides an extended analysis of Bhagavān’s vigraha in the Bhagavat Sandarbha.13 He then provides a series of arguments in the Kṛṣṇa Sandarbha, building on Rūpa’s arguments in the Laghubhāgavatāmṛta, to establish that the essential form, svayaṃ-rūpa or svarūpa, of the vigraha in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman is the two-armed youthful form of a cowherd boy, which Kṛṣṇa manifests on the material plane when he descends to earth in Dvāpara Yuga and withdraws from manifestation when he returns to his transcendent dhāman after his sojourn on earth is completed. In order to establish the primacy of the gopa form, he considers three potential candidates for the svayaṃ-rūpa: (1) Kṛṣṇa’s appearance in the shape of a human being (narākāra or narākṛti) with two arms (dvi-bhuja), which is the principal form that he manifests as Gopāla Kṛṣṇa, the cowherd of Vraja; (2) Kṛṣṇa’s manifestation in the shape of a human being (narākāra or narākṛti) with four arms (catur-bhuja), which is the form that he displays at times in Mathurā and Dvārakā in his role as Vāsudeva, the Yādava prince who is the son of Vasudeva and Devakī; and (3) Kṛṣṇa’s manifestation before the warrior Arjuna in the cosmic form of viśva-rūpa with a thousand arms (sahasra-bhuja), as recounted in chapter 11 of the Bhagavad-Gītā. Jīva establishes an ontological hierarchy among these forms of Kṛṣṇa based on a series of successive dichotomies. First, he distinguishes between narākāra, Kṛṣṇa’s manifestations in the shape of a human being, and the viśva-rūpa and argues that the svayaṃ-rūpa is narākāra, not the thousand-armed viśva-rūpa, which is a secondary manifestation of this essential form. Second, among the narākāra manifestations, Jīva distinguishes between Kṛṣṇa’s two-armed, or dvi-bhuja, form, and his four-armed, or catur-bhuja, form and maintains that the svayaṃ-rūpa is Kṛṣṇa’s dvi-bhuja form, which occasionally manifests a secondary form that is catur-bhuja. Finally, among Kṛṣṇa’s dvi-bhuja manifestations, Jīva argues that the svayaṃ-rūpa in its most full and complete (pūrṇa) expression is the cowherd form of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa in Vraja, which is characterized by mādhurya, divine sweetness, and he maintains that the princely form of Vāsudeva through which Kṛṣṇa expresses his aiśvarya, divine majesty, in Mathurā and Dvārakā is a secondary manifestation of this essential form.14

  This ontological hierarchy is thus used to establish that the two-armed form of Gopāla Kṛ
ṣṇa that is the object of worship of the Gauḍīyas is the supreme (para) form of the Godhead. This hierarchy serves as a critical component of the theology of superordination by relegating to its lower rungs not only the formless Brahman of Advaita Vedānta and the formless puruṣas of Pātañjala Yoga but also the four-armed forms of Viṣṇu, such as Vāsudeva and Nārāyaṇa, that are worshiped by rival Vaiṣṇava movements. Invoking the canonical authority of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Jīva points out that although Brahmā the creator had seen Kṛṣṇa’s four-armed aiśvarya form as Vāsudeva many times, it is Kṛṣṇa’s svayaṃ-rūpa as the two-armed narākāra form of a youthful gopa that Brahmā chooses to glorify in all its particularity:

  Even though he [Brahmā] had seen (root dṛś) the catur-bhuja form many times, for the purpose of praise he focuses specifically on the [dvi-bhuja] narākāra: “Brahmā declared: I offer praise to you, O praiseworthy one, the son of a cowherd, whose body (vapus) is dark like a rain-cloud, whose garments are dazzling like lightning, whose face is resplendent with guñjā berry earrings and a crest of peacock feathers, who wears a garland of forest flowers and has soft feet, and whose beauty is adorned with a flute, horn, staff, morsel of food, and other emblems.”15

  Having established the supreme (para) status of the two-armed gopa form as Kṛṣṇa’s svayaṃ-rūpa, essential form, Jīva advances another critical component of his argument: although the form in which Kṛṣṇa appears during his sojourn on earth has a human shape, narākāra, it is not an ordinary material human body (prākṛta-mānuṣa) composed of flesh (māṃsa) and material elements (bhūta-maya)16 but is rather an eternal (nitya or sanātana), nonmaterial (aprākṛta) absolute body consisting of sat-cit-ānanda, being, consciousness, and bliss.17 Among the arguments that he uses to establish the eternality (nityatva, avasthāyitva, or avyabhicāritva) of the narākāra,18 Jīva argues that Kṛṣṇa, who is unborn (aja) in his essential nature as svayaṃ Bhagavān,19 was not born on earth as the son of Vasudeva and Devakī through the material process of procreation like an ordinary child, but rather his vigraha first entered into the mind of Vasudeva and thereafter was deposited by Vasudeva in the mind of Devakī.

  His [Kṛṣṇa’s] appearance (prādur-bhāva) in Vasudeva…did not involve entering his semen as in the ordinary material process (prākṛtavat) [of procreation]. Rather, it involved his [Kṛṣṇa’s] vigraha consisting of sat-cit-ānanda entering (āveśa) into his [Vasudeva’s] mind (manas). This is declared [in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa]: “Thereafter, just as the eastern quarter bears the bliss-bestowing moon, Devakī conceived in her mind the imperishable Lord, the Self of all, who had been deposited there by Vasudeva.…”20

  According to Jīva, when Kṛṣṇa descends from his transcendent Vraja-dhāman to earth in Dvāpara Yuga, he manifests his eternal vigraha on the material plane for the duration of his earthly sojourn, after which he withdraws the manifestation of his vigraha from the earth. Jīva insists that, unlike ordinary mortals, Kṛṣṇa does not assume a temporary material body and then cast it off at the end of his sojourn. Rather he “appears” (root bhū + prādur, root bhū + āvir, or root as + āvir) on earth, making his imperishable absolute body visible (root dṛś) on the material plane for a period of time, and then he “disappears” (root dhā + antar), concealing his vigraha.21

  Jīva maintains that, although the svayaṃ-rūpa of the vigraha, the two-armed narākāra form of the gopa of Vṛndāvana, is no longer visible to those whose vision is bound by materiality (prākṛta-dṛṣṭi), Kṛṣṇa’s absolute body can be “seen” (root dṛś) by those sages who are endowed with special divine vision (divya-dṛṣṭi) that is invested with the śakti of Bhagavān. Indeed, one of the key strategies that Jīva deploys to establish the eternality of the narākāra is to invoke the canonical authority of the śāstras, which he argues preserve the record of the sages’ direct experiences (vidvad-anubhava-śabda-siddha) of Kṛṣṇa’s essential form as the gopa of Vṛndāvana. He claims that sages throughout the ages have attained by means of meditation (dhyāna) direct visionary experience (sākṣāt-kāra) of the eternal absolute body of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa in his transcendent Vraja-dhāman, Goloka-Vṛndāvana, and they have recorded their experiences in the śāstras as authoritative testimonies for future generations.22

  Among the śāstras that Jīva frequently cites is the Gopālatāpanī Upaniṣad, one of the post-Vedic Vaiṣṇava Upaniṣads, which the Gauḍīyas invest with the transcendent authority of śruti as the record of that which was “heard” (root śru) and “seen” (root dṛś) by the ancient ṛṣịs (seers) through direct experiential realization of the supreme Godhead, Gopāla Kṛṣṇa. He invokes in particular the following verse from the Gopālatāpanī Upaniṣad in order to provide a scriptural basis for his claim that the essential form of the eternal vigraha consisting of sat-cit-ānanda is the two-armed form of the cowherd of Vṛndāvana:

  I, along with the Maruts, constantly seek to please with a most excellent hymn of praise the one and only Govinda, whose…vigraha consists of sat-cit-ānanda and who is seated beneath a devadāru tree in Vṛndāvana.23

  Jīva is concerned above all to ground his arguments in the canonical authority of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the sovereign of all śāstras, which, as I will discuss in Chapter 3, he reveres as the eternal (nitya) and uncreated (apauruṣeya) record of the cognitions of Vyāsa, the acclaimed ṛṣi of ṛṣis. He maintains that Vyāsa, while immersed in samādhi in the depths of meditation, “saw” (root dṛś) the absolute body of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa in his transcendent Vraja-dhāman beyond the material realm of prakṛti and then recorded his cognitions in the form of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the śruti pertaining to Kṛṣṇa.24 He invokes a passage from the Padma Purāṇa in which Vyāsa describes his cognition of Gopāla Kṛṣṇa’s eternal vigraha:

  I was thrilled with intense rapture upon seeing (root dṛś) Gopāla, adorned with all his ornaments, rejoicing in the embrace of the [cowherd] women, playing on his flute. Then svayaṃ Bhagavān, as he roamed about Vṛndāvana, said to me: “That which is seen by you is my eternal (sanātana) divine form (divya rūpa), my vigraha consisting of sat-cit-ānanda, which is undivided (niṣkala), nonactive (niṣkriya), and tranquil (śānta). There is nothing greater than this perfect (pūrṇa) lotus-eyed form of mine. The Vedas declare this to be the cause of all causes.”25

  Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, building on the arguments of Rūpa and Jīva, includes in the Caitanya Caritāmṛta a number of extended reflections on the svayaṃ-rūpa of Kṛṣṇa as the youthful cowherd boy whose body consists of sat-cit-ānanda.

  Hear…a discussion of the svarūpa of Kṛṣṇa: the truth of knowledge of the non-dual is the son of Vrajendra [Kṛṣṇa] in Vraja. He is the beginning of all things, the container of all things, the crown of youth [kiśora]; his body [deha] is cit and ānanda, the refuge of all, the Lord of all.26

  As I will discuss in a later section, one of Kṛṣṇadāsa’s principal concerns is to establish that although the vigraha of Bhagavān remains one, he has the capacity to assume limitless (ananta) divine forms on the various planes of existence.27

  The Gauḍīya Challenge to Advaita Vedānta and Pātañjala Yoga

  In the course of the six Sandarbhas, Jīva Gosvāmin provides a systematic philosophical exposition of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Vedānta in which he seeks to elucidate not only the nature of the ultimate reality (sambandha) but also the goal of human existence (prayojana) and the means to the goal (abhideya).28 In the process he constructs an encompassing hierarchical taxonomy that provides a ranked assessment of the contending ontologies, paths, and goals promulgated by rival philosophical schools. In particular, by allotting the highest place in the Gauḍīya ontological hierarchy to Bhagavān, the transcosmic personal Godhead, and relegating Brahman and Paramātman to subordinate positions as partial aspects of Bhagavān, Jīva engages in a polemic that is aimed both implicitly and explicitly at challenging the ontologies, paths, and goals advoc
ated by the exponents of Advaita Vedānta and Pātañjala Yoga. In the Caitanya Caritāmṛta Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja recasts this polemic in the form of explicit debates in which Caitanya is portrayed as disputing and refuting exponents of Advaita Vedānta, Sāṃkhya, Pātañjala Yoga, and other philosophical schools.

  The philosophers and Mīmāṃsikas and followers of the Māyāvāda [Advaitins], and Sāṃkhyas and Pātañjalas, and followers of smṛti and the purāṇas and āgamas—all were vastly learned in their own śāstras. Prabhu [Caitanya] examined them critically and faulted the opinions of all of them. Everywhere Prabhu established the Vaiṣṇava doctrines, and no one was able to fault the doctrines of Prabhu. Being defeated one after the other, they accepted Prabhu’s opinions.29

  Among the contending philosophical schools, the early Gauḍīya authorities are above all concerned to position themselves in relation to their archrivals, the Advaitins, and in this context they display contrasting attitudes towards the divergent forms of Advaita Vedānta that they encounter in classical Advaitin texts and in the Indian landscape. On the one hand, they reject the radically nondualist form of classical Advaita Vedānta expounded by Śaṃkara (c. 788–820 CE), which fosters a monistic ontology along with the theory of māyā (illusion) and champions jñāna—and more specifically Brahma-vidyā, knowledge of Brahman—as a distinct path, the jñāna-mārga, that is the only efficacious path to realization. On the other hand, they were directly influenced by certain bhakti-inflected forms of Advaita Vedānta that began to circulate from the fourteenth century CE on. These bhakti-oriented Advaitins include Śrīdhara Svāmin (c. fourteenth to fifteenth century CE), the author of Bhāvārthadīpikā, the acclaimed commentary on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, who promulgates in his commentary a theistic nondualism that provides, as Daniel Sheridan has emphasized, “a good illustration of the inclusivity and accommodation of the later Advaitins with respect to theistic bhakti.”30 Śrīdhara’s bhakti-inflected Advaita appears to have influenced certain Advaitins of the Purī order, one of the ten orders of saṃnyāsins (renunciants) established by Śaṃkara, which is associated with the Śṛṅgerī Maṭha in South India. Among the most prominent of the Vaiṣṇava-oriented Advaitins of the Purī order who exerted a decisive influence on Caitanya and his followers are Viṣṇu Purī (c. fifteenth century CE), the compiler of the Bhaktiratnāvalī, an anthology of Sanskrit verses from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa that was translated into Bengali, and Mādhavendra Purī (c. 1420–1490 CE), the celebrated parama-guru, supreme guru, of Caitanya and of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava movement inspired by him.31