Karma-Yoga and Bhakti-Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

Author:Swami Vivekananda
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, Inc.

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1 Referring to Vishnu and Rāma respectively.

HOW TO CULTIVATE BHAKTI

WITH REGARD to the method and the means of bhakti-yoga we read in the commentary of Bhagavān Rāmānuja on the Vedānta Sutras: “The attaining of bhakti comes through discrimination, controlling the passions, practice, sacrificial work, purity, strength, and suppression of excessive joy.” Viveka, or discrimination, is, according to Rāmānuja, discriminating, among other things, pure food from impure. According to him, food becomes impure for three reasons: (1) from the nature of the food itself, as with garlic and so forth, (2) from its coming from wicked and accursed persons, and (3) from physical impurities, such as dirt or hair and the like. Śruti says: “When the food is pure the sattva element gets purified and the memory becomes unwavering”; and Rāmānuja quotes this from the Chāndogya Upanishad.

The question of food has always been one of the most vital questions with the bhaktas. Apart from the extravagance into which some of the bhakti sects have run, there is a great truth underlying this question of food. We must remember that, according to the Sāmkhya philosophy, sattva, rajas, and tamas, which in the state of equilibrium form the undifferentiated prakriti, and in the disturbed condition form the visible universe, are both the substance and the qualities of prakriti. As such they are the materials out of which every human form has been manufactured. And the predominance of sattva material is what is absolutely necessary for spiritual development. The materials which we receive through food into our body structure go a great way to determine our mental constitution; therefore the food we eat has to be particularly taken care of. In this matter as in others, however, the fanaticism into which the disciples invariably fall is not to be laid at the door of the masters.

And this discrimination of food is, after all, of secondary importance. The very same passage quoted above is explained by Śankara in his Bhāshya on the Upanishad in a different way, by giving an entirely different meaning to the word āhāra, generally translated as “food.” According to him: “That which is gathered in is āhāra. The knowledge of the various sensations, such as sound and the rest, is gathered in for the enjoyment of the embodied self; the purification of this knowledge received through sense perception is called the purification of the food (āhāra). The purification of the food means the acquiring of the knowledge of sensations untouched by the defects of attachment, aversion, and delusion. Therefore such knowledge, or āhāra, being purified, the sattva material of its possessor—the internal organ—will become purified, and the sattva being purified, an unbroken memory of the Infinite One, who has been known in His real nature from the scriptures, will result.”

These two explanations are apparently conflicting; yet both are true and necessary. The manipulating and controlling of what may be called the finer body, that is to say, the mind, are no doubt higher functions than the controlling of the grosser body of flesh.

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