Vaishnava Disciplines

After completing the Tāntrik sādhana Sri Ramakrishna followed the Brāhmani in the disciplines of Vaishnavism.

The Vaishnavas are worshippers of Vishnu, the “All-pervading”, the Supreme God, who is also known as Hari and Nārāyana.

Of Vishnu’s various Incarnations the two with the largest number of followers are Rāmā and Krishna.

Vaishnavism is exclusively a religion of bhakti. Bhakti is intense love of God, attachment to Him alone; it is of the nature of bliss and bestows upon the lover immortality and liberation.

God, according to Vaishnavism, cannot be realized through logic or reason; and, without bhakti, all penances, austerities, and rites are futile. Man cannot realize God by self-exertion alone. For the vision of God His grace is absolutely necessary, and this grace is felt by the pure of heart.

The mind is to be purified through bhakti. The pure mind then remains for ever immersed in the ecstasy of God-vision. It is the cultivation of this divine love that is the chief concern of the Vaishnava religion.

There are 3 kinds of formal devotion:

1. Tāmasic
2. Rājasic
3. Sāttvic

A person’s devotion is tāmasic if he is actuated by malevolence, arrogance, jealousy, or anger while showing devotion to God. He is influenced by tamas, the quality of inertia.

He is rājasic if he worships God from a desire for fame or wealth, or from any other worldly ambition. He is influenced by rajas, the quality of activity.

He is sāttvic if he:

• loves God without any thought of material gain
• performs his duties to please God alone
• maintains friendship to all created beings

He is influenced by sattva, the quality of harmony.

But the highest devotion transcends these 3 gunās, or qualities, being a spontaneous, uninterrupted inclination of the mind toward God, the Inner Soul of all beings.

It wells up in the heart of a true devotee as soon as he hears the name of God or mention of God’s attributes.

A devotee possessed of this love would not accept the happiness of heaven if it were offered him. His one desire is to love God under all conditions - in pleasure and pain, life and death, honour and dishonour, prosperity and adversity.

There are 2 stages of bhakti.

1. Vaidhi–Bhakti

This is love of God qualified by scriptural injunctions. For the devotees of this stage are prescribed regular and methodical worship, hymns, prayers, the repetition of God’s name, and the chanting of His glories.

2. Parā–Bhakti

In time, the lower Vaidhi–Bhakti matures into supreme devotion, known also as Prema, the most intense form of divine love.

Divine love is an end in itself.

It exists potentially in all human hearts, but in the case of bound creatures it is misdirected to earthly objects.

To develop the devotee’s love for God, Vaishnavism humanises God. God is to be regarded as the devotee’s Parent, Master, Friend, Child, Husband, or Sweetheart, each succeeding relationship representing an intensification of love.

These Bhāvās, or attitudes toward God, are known as Śānta, Dāsya, Sakhya, Vātsalya, and Madhur. The rishis of the Vedās, Hanumān, the cowherd boys of Vrindāvan, Rāmā’s mother Kausalya, and Rādhika, Krishna’s sweetheart, exhibited, respectively, the most perfect examples of these forms.

In the ascending scale the glories of God are gradually forgotten and the devotee realizes more and more the intimacy of divine communion.

Finally he regards himself as the mistress of his Beloved, and no artificial barrier remains to separate him from his Ideal.

No social or moral obligation can bind to the earth his soaring spirit. He experiences perfect union with the Godhead. Unlike the Vedantist, who strives to transcend all varieties of the subject-object relationship, a devotee of the Vaishnava path wishes to retain both his own individuality and the personality of God.

To him God is not an intangible Absolute, but the Purushottama, the Supreme Person.

While practising the discipline of the Madhur Bhāva, the male devotee often regards himself as a woman, in order to develop the most intense form of love for Sri Krishna, the only Purusha, or man, in the universe.

This assumption of the attitude of the opposite sex has a deep psychological significance. It is a matter of common experience that an idea may be cultivated to such an intense degree that every idea alien to it is driven from the mind. This peculiarity of the mind may he utilised for the subjugation of the lower desires and the development of the spiritual nature.

Now, the idea which is the basis of all desires and passions in a man is the conviction of his indissoluble association with a male body. If he can inoculate himself thoroughly with the idea that he is a woman, he can get rid of the desires peculiar to his male body.

Again, the idea that he is a woman may in turn be made to give way to another higher idea, namely, that he is neither man nor woman, but the Impersonal Spirit.

The Impersonal Spirit alone can enjoy real communion with the Impersonal God. Hence the highest realization of the Vaishnava draws close to the transcendental experience of the Vedantist.

A beautiful expression of the Vaishnava worship of God through love is to be found in the Vrindāvan episode of the Bhāgavata. The gopis, or milk-maids, of Vrindāvan regarded the 6-year-old Krishna as their Beloved. They sought no personal gain or happiness from this love. They surrendered to Krishna their bodies, minds, and souls.

Of all the gopis, Rādhika, or Rādhā, because of her intense love for Him, was the closest to Krishna.

She manifested Mahā–bhāva and was united with her Beloved. This union represents, through sensuous language, a supersensuous experience.

Sri Chaitanya, also known as Gaurānga, Gorā, or Nimāi, born in Bengāl in 1485 and regarded as an Incarnation of God, is a great prophet of the Vaishnava religion. Chaitanya declared the chanting of God’s name to be the most efficacious spiritual discipline for the Kali–Yuga.

Sri Ramakrishna, as the monkey Hanumān, had already worshipped God as his Master.

Through his devotion to Kāli he had worshipped God as his Mother. He was now to take up the other relationships prescribed by the Vaishnava scriptures.