Devotion Common to all Faiths

All religious traditions have one purpose, to elevate man by freeing him from his cares and worries. A human being has worries that are not shared by other creatures. But it must be noted that all religious systems proclaim that man can not only free himself from his cares, if he makes an effort, but that he can also attain the  enlightenment that is not within the reach of other creatures. They speak in one voice that he will be rid of his cares if he goes for refuge to the Great Power that rules all worldly activities.

Devotion or bhakti is a feature common to all religious schools- Advaita (non-dualism), Dvaita (dualism), Visistadvaita (qualified nondualism), Saiva Siddhanta, Christianity, Islam and so on. The Buddha did not speak of devotion but it seems his followers cannot regard their master without bhakti. They have deified the Buddha and created images of him that are bigger than those sculpted for any deity. In very recent times a number of jnanins have laid stress on inquiry into the Self as the sole means of liberation. But they are themselves worshipped as God by their followers. Bhakti is an inborn characteristic of man; it is indeed an organic part of him.

Devotion in the Advaita system implies adopting an attitude of nondifference between the worshipper and the worshipped; that is the devotee must look upon Isvara as not being different from himself. It might be asked: "The devotee who worships the omnipotent and omniscient Lord has only very limited strength and knowledge. How can the two of them be the same? “But the question also arises:  "Does God regard us as being different from himself? If there are objects, entities, different from God how did they originate? If they came into existence as entities separate from Him how can He hold sway over them? ".

If we think on these lines it will become clear that the one and only Paramatman exists in various forms: if the ocean stands for Isvara we have in contrast the pond, the well and the little quantity of water contained in a spoon and soon that stand for diverse living beings. The water in all is the same. There maybe differences in the strengths of the various entities. But if you go to the base, the ground or root, you will discover that they are the same. If we go to the root we will become one with the root. This is liberation according to Advaita. Merely to talk about non-dualistic liberation is nothing more than an Intellectual exercise and will serve no purpose. The truth of such liberation must become an inward reality. In other words the quest must culminate in actual experience and it can be had only with the grace of God. Great sages proclaim that it is only with the blessings of that Power which keeps us in

a constant whirl of action that the whirl will stop and that we will have the Advaitic urge to seek the ground. "Isvaranugrahadeva pumsam Advaitavasana.”

Even in the initial stages when we feel that Isvara and his devotee are separate, we must try to cultivate the awareness, albeit to a small degree, that the Paramatman who appears as Isvara is the same as the Paramatman that has become "us". If such be our approach, our love for the Lord will become more intense. After all, is there anything or anyone we love more than ourselves?

Isvara awards us the fruits of our actions. If we become more and more devoted to him, as recipients of his grace, we will get closer and closer to him. He will himself reveal to us who he is and there will be no need for us to inquire about him or into him. In response to our devotion he will deign to reveal his true nature to us. He declares so in the Gita: "Bhaktya mam abhijanati yavan yascasmi. . . .” (By devotion he comes to know who in truth I am. . . )

Countless are the attributes of Isvara that bespeak his surpassing beauty and auspicious qualities. Devotees find constant delight in contemplating them. But for the jnanin, the enlightened one, the ideal is the Godhead that has no attributes and it is in his Godhead that he is finally absorbed. Sagunopasana (worship of Isvara with attributes) is the first step towards this end. For it our religion has evolved the concept of "istadevata" ("the deity of one's choice", "the deity one likes").

What is special about sanatana dharma or Hinduism as it has come to be called? Alone among all religions it reveals the one and only Godhead in many different divine forms, with manifold aspects. The devotee worships the Lord in a form suited to his mental make-up and is thus helped to come closer to the Lord with his love and devotion. These different forms are not the creation of anyone's imagination. The Paramatman has revealed himself in these forms to great men and they have had close contact, so to speak, with the deities so revealed. They have also shown us how we too may come face to face with these divinities, given us the mantras to accomplish this and also prescribed the manner in which the divine forms, whose vision they have had, are to be adored.

Bhakti or devotion is common to all religions whatever the manner of worship they teach. It is not exclusive to our faith in which different deities are reverenced.

Man and Beast

Animals grow transversely. That is why they are called "tiryak" in Sanskrit.Man who grows upright ought to have, unlike beasts, a high ideal before him. He will then obtain more happiness than all other creatures. But what do we see in reality? Man experiences greater sorrow than all other creatures. Animals do not know so much desire, so much sorrow and so much humiliation, as do humans. More important, they are innocent of sin. It is we humans who keep sinning and suffering as a consequence.

It seems that God has not endowed us with the same advantages that he has endowed animals with. We are not fitted with weapons of defense. If a cow feels threatened it has horns to defend itself. The tiger has its claws. We have neither horns nor claws. Sheep have hair to protect them from the cold of winter, so too other animals. But man is not similarly equipped. So he cannot repulse an attack; nor can he run fast like the horse, which has no horns but is fleet-footed. Against all these handicaps, man has the advantage of being more intelligent than all other creatures.

In order to protect himself from the cold of winter, man removes the fur of animals and weaves it into rugs. When he wants to travel fast he yokes a horse to his cart. God has furnished man with this kind of skill; though he has neither claws nor horns to defend himself, a human being can forge weapons on his own. With the strength of his intelligence he remains the master of all other creatures and also rules over the entire world of inert matter.

All species of animals have their own habitats. Some types of bear that are native to the cold climes do not thrive in our country. The elephant is a denizen of the forests of India and some other countries of South-East Asia and Africa, but it does not flourish in a cold climate. But man inhabits the entire earth. He uses his brains to make any part of this planet fit for him to live.

But, even with his superior intelligence, man suffers. All hardships stem from the fact of birth. How can one save oneself from being born again? But, then, what is the cause of our birth? The wrongs committed by us are the cause of our birth and we have taken this body of flesh and blood to suffer punishment for the same. Suppose a certain number of whiplashes are to be administered according to the law. If the body perishes after ten lashes, we take another birth to suffer the remaining strokes. The sins we commit in satisfying our desires are the cause of our being born again and again. If there is no "doing", there will be no birth also. Anger is responsible for much of the evil we do and desire is at the root of it. It is of the utmost importance that we banish desire from our hearts. But it is not possible to remain without any action after having cultivated so many attachments. If the attachments were done away with we would cease to sin.

What is the cause of desire? Desire arises from the belief that there is something other than ourselves and our being attached to it. In truth it is the one Sivam that manifests itself as everything.

The cow sees its reflection in the mirror and charges it imagining it to be another cow. If a man sees his own image thus, does he think that there is another person in the mirror? He is not perturbed by his image because he knows that it is himself. Similarly, all that we see is one and the same thing. Desire springs from our belief in the existence of a second entity, and it causes anger, which, in turn, plunges us in sin. A new birth becomes inevitable now. If we are enlightened enough to perceive that all objects are one, there will be no ground for desire. There must be an object other than ourselves, a second entity, to be desired. No desire means no anger and no sin. In this state there will be neither any "doing" nor any birth. And, finally, there will be no sorrow.

How do we obtain such enlightenment or jnana? Our body is sustained by our mother's milk. It is Amba who nourishes us with the milk of jnana.She is indeed the personification of jnana. We will be rewarded with the light of wisdom if we firmly hold her lotus feet and dissolve ourselves in her. One who does so becomes God.

The first step in this process of enlightenment is to make a man truly a man, by ensuring that he does not live on an animal level. The second step is to raise him to the heights of divinity. All religions have this goal. They may represent different systems of thought and philosophy. But their concern ought to be that man is not condemned as he is today to a life of desire and anger. All religions speak in one voice that man must be rendered good and that he must be invested with the qualities of love, humility, serenity and the spirit of sacrifice.