[INDOLOGY] bhakti
Shyam Ranganathan
shyamr at yorku.ca
Fri Nov 4 14:36:15 UTC 2016
B
Dear Patrick ,
When I was a grad student in Joseph O'Connell's class on Bhakti in the
90s, he started the class with a review of some portions of the Mantra
section of the Vedas, as a backdrop to later developments in Tamil
(āḻvārs etc.,) and further developments in Bhakti Vedanta---including
Gaudiya Vaishnavism.
A theme he emphasized is that the idea of bhakti, or binding oneself to
a deity, is pretty old in the Vedic tradition as the Mantras often
express sentiments of loyalty and fidelity to the deity that is invoked.
What serves to bring the continuity of this theme to the fore is to
follow the development of Yoga, which is pretty much the same as Bhakti,
as a philosophical movement.
The early mention of yoga of course is in the /Kaṭha //Upaniṣad/ where
Yama describes success in Yoga as taking one to Viṣṇu’s realm. Later,
this idea of approximating the Lord becomes central to Yoga in
Patañjali’s /Yoga Sūtra/as /Īśvara/ praṇidhāna. Ramanuja carries on this
theme by identifying bhakti as a kind of /jñāna/ but further a kind of
/upāsana/, which evokes images of meditation but also offerings to
sacrificial fires. This serves to highlight a continuity of a theme
stretching back to the early Vedas of the approximation of a deity via
Vedic themes of sacrifice.
What shifts from the early to the later period is that in the early
/mantra/ period worshiping a deity was motivated by desire for
outcomes—a practice that is consequentialist as consequentialism is the
view that right procedure is justified by a good outcome. What happens
by the time of the /Upaniṣad/s is that consequentialism starts to be
viewed with suspicion because, as Yama himself describes in the /Kaṭha
Upaniṣad/, those who are geared towards outcomes do not take control of
their life and this results in ruin. So what we see happening is a
switch to a radical procedural ethics, that treats practice as defined
by a regulative ideal, the Lord, and the worship or approximation of
this ideal as resulting in the good. It is superficially like
consequentialism but it is contrary. This radical proceeduralism is
Yoga, or Bhakti. The main difference is that Yoga or Bhakti is a causal
story of how the right brings about the good and is the opposite of
Virtue Ethics that claims that the good character brings about the right
action. Bhakti/Yoga rather claims that the right practice is defined by
the ideal of the right (the Lord) and perfecting this practice is the
good. Consequentialism in contrast is an account not of moral causation
but justification.
So while the ideas that the bhakti tradition rely upon are ancient, and
not implausibly described as Vedic, it is true that there is a radical
shift that characterizes the latter part of the Vedic tradition starting
with the /Upaniṣad/s. We see this transition from consequentialism to a
radical proceeduralism of bhakti as a theme of the /Gītā/ , for
instance. I think it also explains why Brahman as development comes to
occupy a central place in later Vedic thought.
If you are interested in this, I’ve written a bit about it:
Ranganathan, S. (forthcoming) 2017. /Vedas and Upani//ṣads/. In /Volume
1: The History of Evil in Antiquity (2000BCE-450CE)./ Edited by Tom
Angier. Of /History of Evil /edited by C. Taliaferro and C. Meister.
London: Routledge.
For a wider survey of this tradition, please see
Ranganathan, Shyam. 2017. 'Three Vedāntas: Three Accounts of Character,
Freedom and Responsibility.' In /The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of
Indian Ethics /edited by Shyam Ranganathan, 249-274. Of /Bloomsbury
Research Handbooks in Asian Philosophy, /edited by Chakravarthi
Ram-Prasad and Sor-hoon Tan. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
If you are interested in how Bhakti/Yoga is a different moral theory
from Consequentialism, Deontology and Virtue Ethics, please see:
Ranganathan, Shyam. 2017. 'Patañjali’s Yoga: Universal Ethics as the
Formal Cause of Autonomy.' In /The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of
Indian Ethics /edited by Shyam Ranganathan, 177-202 Of /Bloomsbury
Research Handbooks in Asian Philosophy, /edited by Chakravarthi
Ram-Prasad and Sor-hoon Tan. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
The latter two should be out in a couple of weeks.
Best wishes,
Shyam
Shyam Ranganathan
Department of Philosophy,
South Asian Studies, Department of Social Sciences
York University Toronto
On 04/11/2016 7:03 AM, Howard Resnick wrote:
> Nagaraj has stated the ‘insider’s point of view’ very well. I will add
> that the Bhagavad-gita often mentions bhakti, bhakti-yoga, bhakta etc,
> and the Gita is one of three standard members of the ‘Vedanta apparatus.’
> Best,
> Howard
>
>> On Nov 4, 2016, at 2:43 AM, Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi at gmail.com
>> <mailto:nagarajpaturi at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Patrick,
>>
>> I went to the website you directed us to.
>>
>> It is an ISKCON activity.
>>
>> It is well known that ISKCON is based on Goudiya Vaishnava Vedanta
>> which is one of the Bhakti (centred) schools of Vedanta.
>>
>> What they are saying here is that GEV is based on their philosophy.
>> Their philosophy is a school of Vedanta and Vedanta is Vedic. So GEV
>> is based on Vedic Bhakti Vedanta is not wrong. The word Bhakti Yoga
>> is used here in that sense. So I don't see anything wrong in the word
>> Vedic here.
>>
>> The word 'Vedic' is not always used in the sense of ' as in Vedas'.
>> The word is quite often used in the sense of 'belonging to the
>> lineage of the cultural/textual complex of which the Vedas are (of
>> course, vital) part. From the insider's point of view , Vaidika is
>> Veda- aviruddha, Veda-anuroopa, Veda-anusaari etc. not necessarily
>> Vedochcharita/Vedas'ruta.
>>
>> It probably would be an interesting study to survey how far the pull
>> for such cults among people is based on their claims to be Vedic.
>>
>> For something which is already 'Hindu' , the claim of Vedic, I
>> guess, does not add any new value.
>>
>> For that matter , it is intriguing to see that pamphlets are
>> distributed in India, (at least here in the Telugu region) claiming
>> that Jesus is in the Vedas. 'Mohammed in the Vedas' is also one of
>> the internet-popular themes. It is interesting to study the motives
>> behind such claims.
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 7:39 AM, patrick mccartney
>> <psdmccartney at gmail.com <mailto:psdmccartney at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Friends,
>>
>> Is this the first mention of the term 'bhakti' ?
>>
>> yasya deve parā *bhaktir* yathā deve tathā gurau /
>> tasyaite kathitā hy arthāḥ prakāśante mahātmanaḥ prakāśante
>> mahātmanaḥ // SvetUp_6.23 //
>>
>>
>> I ask this question as I'm trying to understand the following
>> statement:
>>
>> /GEV is based on the sacred Vedic principles of bhakti-yoga. /
>> http://www.ecovillage.org.in/our-projects#_VEC
>> <http://www.ecovillage.org.in/our-projects#_VEC>
>>
>> While 'bhakti' is mentioned at least in the above upanishad, I
>> thought 'bhakti yoga' was quite clearly a post-vedic development,
>> and that the bhakti movement developed from the 6th century CE.
>> To the devotee this statement might seem unproblematic, but to
>> the scholar it appears to conceptually and temporally conflate
>> disparate things.
>>
>> As I am certainly not an expert on bhakti I would appreciate
>> clarification.
>>
>> I am interested in how organisations operationalise the 'vedic'
>> sign in their marketing and promotional material to generate
>> 'authenticity' and legitimacy.
>>
>>
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Patrick McCartney, PhD
>> Fellow
>> School of Culture, History & Language
>> College of the Asia-Pacific
>> The Australian National University
>> Canberra, Australia, 0200
>>
>>
>> Skype - psdmccartney
>> Phone + Whatsapp: +61 414 954 748
>> Twitter - @psdmccartney
>>
>>
>> academia <https://anu-au.academia.edu/patrickmccartney>
>>
>> *
>>
>>
>> Linkedin
>> <https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=241756978&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile>
>>
>> Edanz
>> <https://www.edanzediting.com/expert/anthropology/patrick-mccartney>
>>
>> #yogabodyANU2016 symposium
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X80KxW2bb0w><http://chl.anu.edu.au/news-events/events/658/yoga-and-body-past-and-present-symposium?#tab>
>>
>> Ep1 - Imagining Sanskrit Land <https://youtu.be/jMi7tkPBbJ4>
>>
>> Ep 2 - Total-am <https://youtu.be/7tAp8m9RHPU>
>>
>> Ep 3 - Jalam ≠ Chillum <https://youtu.be/cLZeuCT_mwQ>
>>
>> Ep 4 - It's Time to get Married
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B3un7aHEAc>
>>
>> A Day in our Ashram
>> <https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ek+din+hamaare+ashram+mein>
>>
>> Stop animation short film of Shakuntala
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVqBD_2P4Pg>
>>
>> Forced to Clean Human Waste <http://youtu.be/y3XfjbwqC_g>
>>
>> One of my favourite song
>> <http://trinityroots.bandcamp.com/track/all-we-be>s
>>
>> The Philosophy of Cycling
>> <http://elibrary.com.ng/UploadFiles/file0_2221.pdf>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Nagaraj Paturi
>> Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.
>> Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies
>> FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of Liberal Education,
>> (Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )
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