Naomi
04-16-2008, 11:52 AM
This is an excerpt from the book "Paths to God" by Ram Dass who is also the author of "Be Here Now" which is a very good book I read when I was young
We come now, in our journey through all the many and varied routes to Brahman, to the path of bhakti yoga, or devotion--- which means we're going to be talking, among other things, about the ins and outs of gurus. We'll talk about the method of the guru: how it works, what you do and what the guru does or doesn't do. And we'll talk a lot about my guru, Maharajji -- because, although you may not believe it, he is the man behind the scenes here. All this is really his trip; I'm just the windup robot.
Bhakti, by its nature, is not a practice that we can sit down and figure out intellectually. Devotion has to do with the heart, and there is something a little absurd in thinking about heart trips. Devotion is something experienced in a realm that is not necessarily conceptual, and so it doesn't lend itself very easily to words. Hafez, the poet, said, "O thou who are trying to learn the marvel of love from the copy book of reason, I'm very much afraid that you will never really see the point." He's telling us that to the extent that we try to think our way through the issue of devotion, we're not going to get very far, because devotion isn't thought about, it's felt. And to feel it we have to experience it directly: though doing japa, through singing kirtan, through ritual and mantra and prayer, through remembering --- through all of the practices of merging in love, and letting love happen to each of us. That's the only way we will come to know about bhakti practices.
So if you want to know about bhakti yoga and you arn't already doing devotional practices, you might want to take this as an opportunity to start exploring them. Do it, and see what it feels like. There are some suggestions in the syllabus for setting up a puja table and working with japa, for example; you can start with that, or find some practice of your own that feels right to you. Begin nurturing the quality of devotion within yourself. the devotion can be directed toward some form of God that draws you toward itself (which is what in India is called the Ishta Dev). It can be directed toward a guru. It can be directed toward Gaia, or toward the void, or toward your pussycat. It can be directed toward whatever form of God it is that opens your heart. Set aside a little time every day and spend a few minutes doing some devotional practice in relation to that being. Sing. Pray. Offer a candle flame or some food. Begin opening your heart, cultivating feelings of love and appreciation.
The Gita is rooted in devotion. Although it mostly concerns itself with service to god and with the higher Wisdom, all of that is set within a framework of devotion. At one point, Krishna says to Arjuna, It is because of your love that I am allowing you to hear and see all this. the vision that Krishna bestows on Arjuna, the vision of the cosmic form of the universe, is the vision that comes when the third eye opens and we "see without looking." It is incredible grace to be given that vision, and the awesome and awful nature of that vision was bestowed on Arjuna, Krishna tells him, only because of his love, because of his devotion and the purity of his relationship to Krishna.
Tracing the sequence laid out in the Gita, we start with what we call lower knowledge, which leads to a certain kind of faith: the lower mind's faith in the possibility that there might be something the higher mind knows, even though the lower mind doesn't. That's quite a leap of faith for the lower mind! That faith leads us to do practices through which we start to open bit, which allows us to have some visions or some direct immediate experiences, which in turn lead us to deeper practices, which ultimately bring us to the higher wisdom, the wisdom of Brahman. But that entire sequence, which involves jnana yoga and karma yoga and purification and the rest of it, takes place within a context of devotion, which is the prerequisite for all the rest of it.
[...]
Often times it may seem that there is a tremendous struggle going on between the jnanis and the bhaktis, between what we might call the head trippers and the heart trippers, between the people who say, "Don't but into all those emotional trips," and the people who says "It's OK --- drown in the ocean of love." In the contrast, devotion can look pretty sloppy and mushy, while the intellect looks so clean and tight. But one of the sages in India, when he was asked to compare jnana and bhakti yoga said, "Jnana yoga is like a lamp; bhakti yoga is like a gem. The gem only glows by reflected light, while the lamp is its own illumination. But a lamp constantly requires attention --- more oil, a new wick--- while the gem goes on glowing without any effort on its part."
The main objection jnanis usually raise about bhakti is that it is dualistic: there's the gem, and there's the light source. That's the crux of their opposition to devotion --- that devotion is, by its very nature, a dualistic practice. To be a bhakti, you have to be devoted to something, say the jnanis, and since eventually you're going to have to give up subject-object distinctions, wouldn't it be better not to get sucked more deeply into them in the first place? That's a general outline of the way the argument runs.
The criticism of bhakti hinges on thinking that the vehicle for getting to the top of the mountain has to look like the mountaintop itself. A bhakti like me, on the other hand would frame the question a different way; I would ask "I can I afford to use dualism to get to non-dualism?" It's certainly true that dualism can be a trap, and that we can get hooked on the object of our devotion. Jnana can also be a trap, as we have see; we can get hooked on our need to know. All methods are traps. We just have to choose our traps wisely, and hope they'll self destruct after they've served their purpose. A dualistic method, if it's used with wisdom, can be a first-rate vehicle into non dualism. As the method works, you go beyond the method, and the whole thing falls away.
I will return in a bit to offer some thoughts on this....
We come now, in our journey through all the many and varied routes to Brahman, to the path of bhakti yoga, or devotion--- which means we're going to be talking, among other things, about the ins and outs of gurus. We'll talk about the method of the guru: how it works, what you do and what the guru does or doesn't do. And we'll talk a lot about my guru, Maharajji -- because, although you may not believe it, he is the man behind the scenes here. All this is really his trip; I'm just the windup robot.
Bhakti, by its nature, is not a practice that we can sit down and figure out intellectually. Devotion has to do with the heart, and there is something a little absurd in thinking about heart trips. Devotion is something experienced in a realm that is not necessarily conceptual, and so it doesn't lend itself very easily to words. Hafez, the poet, said, "O thou who are trying to learn the marvel of love from the copy book of reason, I'm very much afraid that you will never really see the point." He's telling us that to the extent that we try to think our way through the issue of devotion, we're not going to get very far, because devotion isn't thought about, it's felt. And to feel it we have to experience it directly: though doing japa, through singing kirtan, through ritual and mantra and prayer, through remembering --- through all of the practices of merging in love, and letting love happen to each of us. That's the only way we will come to know about bhakti practices.
So if you want to know about bhakti yoga and you arn't already doing devotional practices, you might want to take this as an opportunity to start exploring them. Do it, and see what it feels like. There are some suggestions in the syllabus for setting up a puja table and working with japa, for example; you can start with that, or find some practice of your own that feels right to you. Begin nurturing the quality of devotion within yourself. the devotion can be directed toward some form of God that draws you toward itself (which is what in India is called the Ishta Dev). It can be directed toward a guru. It can be directed toward Gaia, or toward the void, or toward your pussycat. It can be directed toward whatever form of God it is that opens your heart. Set aside a little time every day and spend a few minutes doing some devotional practice in relation to that being. Sing. Pray. Offer a candle flame or some food. Begin opening your heart, cultivating feelings of love and appreciation.
The Gita is rooted in devotion. Although it mostly concerns itself with service to god and with the higher Wisdom, all of that is set within a framework of devotion. At one point, Krishna says to Arjuna, It is because of your love that I am allowing you to hear and see all this. the vision that Krishna bestows on Arjuna, the vision of the cosmic form of the universe, is the vision that comes when the third eye opens and we "see without looking." It is incredible grace to be given that vision, and the awesome and awful nature of that vision was bestowed on Arjuna, Krishna tells him, only because of his love, because of his devotion and the purity of his relationship to Krishna.
Tracing the sequence laid out in the Gita, we start with what we call lower knowledge, which leads to a certain kind of faith: the lower mind's faith in the possibility that there might be something the higher mind knows, even though the lower mind doesn't. That's quite a leap of faith for the lower mind! That faith leads us to do practices through which we start to open bit, which allows us to have some visions or some direct immediate experiences, which in turn lead us to deeper practices, which ultimately bring us to the higher wisdom, the wisdom of Brahman. But that entire sequence, which involves jnana yoga and karma yoga and purification and the rest of it, takes place within a context of devotion, which is the prerequisite for all the rest of it.
[...]
Often times it may seem that there is a tremendous struggle going on between the jnanis and the bhaktis, between what we might call the head trippers and the heart trippers, between the people who say, "Don't but into all those emotional trips," and the people who says "It's OK --- drown in the ocean of love." In the contrast, devotion can look pretty sloppy and mushy, while the intellect looks so clean and tight. But one of the sages in India, when he was asked to compare jnana and bhakti yoga said, "Jnana yoga is like a lamp; bhakti yoga is like a gem. The gem only glows by reflected light, while the lamp is its own illumination. But a lamp constantly requires attention --- more oil, a new wick--- while the gem goes on glowing without any effort on its part."
The main objection jnanis usually raise about bhakti is that it is dualistic: there's the gem, and there's the light source. That's the crux of their opposition to devotion --- that devotion is, by its very nature, a dualistic practice. To be a bhakti, you have to be devoted to something, say the jnanis, and since eventually you're going to have to give up subject-object distinctions, wouldn't it be better not to get sucked more deeply into them in the first place? That's a general outline of the way the argument runs.
The criticism of bhakti hinges on thinking that the vehicle for getting to the top of the mountain has to look like the mountaintop itself. A bhakti like me, on the other hand would frame the question a different way; I would ask "I can I afford to use dualism to get to non-dualism?" It's certainly true that dualism can be a trap, and that we can get hooked on the object of our devotion. Jnana can also be a trap, as we have see; we can get hooked on our need to know. All methods are traps. We just have to choose our traps wisely, and hope they'll self destruct after they've served their purpose. A dualistic method, if it's used with wisdom, can be a first-rate vehicle into non dualism. As the method works, you go beyond the method, and the whole thing falls away.
I will return in a bit to offer some thoughts on this....