[INDOLOGY] bhakti

Fri Nov 4 17:03:55 UTC 2016

One might add that with the Āḻvārs (Divyaprabandham) and the Śaiva Nāyaṉmārs, there is a strong emphasis on temple worship and of the actual presence of the deity in the temple. The importance of the temple is perhaps the distinguishing innovation of the bhakti worship in the Tamil area that subsequently spread north. The Tamil bhakti poets modeled their behavior after that of the earlier Sangam poets, who would go from the court of one king to another singing poems of praise and receiving gifts. Subsequently, Vishnu and Śiva were identified with kings (the Tamil word for temple is kōyil and means “king’s house”) and the bhakti poets would go from one temple to another singing the manifestation of Viṣṇu or Śiva there. The Divyaprabandham says again and again that Tirumāḷ (Viṣṇu) is equally in Vaikuṇṭha, in the particular temple the poet is visiting or singing about, and the heart of the devotee. Most of the major temples described 1500 years ago are still there, and in Sangam literature itself, almost 2000 years ago, we find some temples to Murugan (Paḻaṉi, Tiruccentūr) that are still extremely popular. We have bhakti poems in Sangam literature (the Paripāṭal, Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai) probably centuries earlier than the Aḻvārs and Nāyaṉmārs, as Palaniappan has pointed out (see his post). George

> On Nov 4, 2016, at 7:36 AM, Shyam Ranganathan <shyamr at yorku.ca> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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 Upaniṣads 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 Upaniṣads. 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 Upaniṣads. 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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