“O Lord, who are greatly praised, you become seated in the lotus of the heart absorbed in bhāva-yoga. Your devotees’ path to you is by hearing and seeing. In whatever form they contemplate (root bhū + vi) you in meditation (dhī), in that form (vapus) you manifest out of your graciousness.” In accordance with this statement [from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa], when the mantropāsanā-mayītva finds fruition in svārasikī, then even today he [Kṛṣṇa] at times manifests (root sphur) as if immediately in the hearts of sādhakas.47
Realizing the Siddha-Rūpa
In the culminating stage of realization in rāgānugā-bhakti, as represented by Jīva, the sādhaka goes beyond the role of a passive witness enjoying the continual play and display of Kṛṣṇa’s unmanifest līlā and enters into the līlā as an active participant and established resident of Vraja-dhāman. This final stage of realization is accomplished through the attainment of a siddha-rūpa, a perfected devotional body. Jīva’s analysis suggests that just as the aprakaṭa līlā has two aspects—the discrete līlā tableaux that are mentally constructed through mantropāsanā, and the continuous stream of svārasikī līlā that is a spontaneous expression of Kṛṣṇa’s blissful nature—the siddha-rūpa also has two aspects: the meditative body that is mentally constructed through meditation;48 and the eternal, nonmaterial body that is an aṃśa of the self-luminous effulgence (jyotir) of Kṛṣṇa.49 With respect to the first aspect, as mentioned earlier, the rāgānugā sādhaka constructs in meditation the siddha-rūpa as an “internal meditative body (antaś-cintita-deha) that is suitable for one’s intended devotional service (sevā) to Kṛṣṇa.”50 Under the guidance of the guru, the sādhaka visualizes a meditative body that best expresses the rasa, or devotional mode, that accords with his or her svarūpa, unique essential nature, and siddha-rūpa, eternal body. The process of visualization involves identifying with those parikaras, eternal associates of Kṛṣṇa in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman, who embody this particular flavor of prema-rasa—whether the attendants of Kṛṣṇa, who embody dāsya-rasa; Kṛṣṇa’s cowherd friends, who embody sakhya-rasa; Nanda and Yaśodā and other elders, who embody vātsalya-rasa; or Kṛṣṇa’s cowmaiden lovers, who embody mādhurya-rasa.51 The sādhaka then visualizes his or her meditative body in a series of līlā tableaux and through the agency of this body envisions directly engaging with Kṛṣṇa and his eternal associates in Vraja-dhāman: “I am personally (sākṣāt) a particular resident of Vraja,…I am personally (sākṣāt) attending Vrajendranandana, the son of Nanda the lord of Vraja.”52 The implication of Jīva’s analysis is that regular meditation involving visualization of the mentally constructed siddha-rūpa serves to catalyze the final stage of realization in which the jīva re-members (smaraṇa) its eternal siddha-rūpa and reclaims its distinctive role as an eternal protagonist in Kṛṣṇa’s aprakaṭa līlā in the transcendent Vraja-dhāman.
The meditative practices of smaraṇa and dhyāna delineated by Jīva provided the basis for the complex techniques of līlā-smaraṇa visualization, discussed in Chapter 2, that were developed by Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja and later Gauḍīya authorities as a means to realize the siddha-rūpa.53
Realizing Vraja-Dhāman: The Gauḍīya Re-visioning of Pāñcarātra
I would suggest that the critical component that distinguishes the Gauḍīya methods of meditation recommended by Jīva Gosvāmin from other types of meditation techniques advocated by yogic or tantric traditions is meditation on Kṛṣṇa in his transcendent dhāman. This distinctive emphasis is particularly evident in Jīva’s discussion of arcana, ritual worship, in the Bhakti Sandarbha, in which he connects meditation on Kṛṣṇa in his transcendent Vraja-dhāman, Goloka-Vṛndāvana, with a cluster of tantric ritual practices derived from Pāñcarātra traditions. He frames his discussion by invoking the Bhāgavata Purāṇa’s understanding of the relationship between Vedic and tantric traditions, mentioned earlier. He cites Bhāgavata Purāṇa 11.27.7, which suggests that there are three systems of worshiping Kṛṣṇa—Vedic, tantric, and mixed—and Bhāgavata Purāṇa 11.3.47, which asserts that the most expeditious means of severing the knot of bondage is to worship Kṛṣṇa through a mixed system that utilizes Vedic rituals along with tantric rituals. Following the lead of the Bhāgavata, Jīva suggests that the most effective system of worship is the mixed form that is based on the scriptural injunctions (vidhis) of the brahmanical canon of śruti and smṛti—in particular, the Vedas, Dharma-Śāstras, and Purāṇas—together with the tantric ritual procedures of the Āgamas, and more specifically the Pāñcarātra Saṃhitās.54 Jīva subsequently provides a significant re-visioning of Pāñcarātra ritual procedures for daily worship of the deity—including bhūta-śuddhi, nyāsa, and mānasa-pūjā, which are also alluded to in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa55—in which he strips away many of the tantric elements and reframes the procedures as part of a distinctively Gauḍīya sādhana-bhakti centered on Kṛṣṇa in his transcendent Vraja-dhāman, Goloka-Vṛndāvana.56
Before examining Jīva’s reimagining of these procedures, I would like to consider, first, the specific practices that constitute this ritual regimen in Pāñcarātra traditions and, second, the ways in which this regimen is reconfigured in the Haribhaktivilāsa, the authoritative Gauḍīya ritual compendium that is ascribed to Gopāla Bhaṭṭa Gosvāmin.
The Pāñcarātra Ritual Regimen
The Jayākhya Saṃhitā, one of the “three gems” of the Pāñcarātra canon, provides one of the earliest and most extensive accounts in Hindu tantric literature of the initiated sādhaka’s daily ritual regimen for transforming the bhautika-śarīra, the material body, into a divya-deha, a divinized tantric body that is qualified to offer worship to the supreme Godhead, who is referred to as Nārāyaṇa or Viṣṇu.57 The daily ritual regimen, as represented in the Jayākhya Saṃhitā, includes four principal components: bhūta-śuddhi, nyāsa, mānasa-yāga or antar-yāga, and bāhya-yāga.58
Bhūta-śuddhi, purification of the bodily elements, involves an intricate process of visualization in which the sādhaka envisions the dissolution of the material body and its reconstitution as a purified and divinized body. The sādhaka, while engaging in prāṇāyāma, visualizes drawing into the body with a series of inward breaths each of the five gross elements (bhūtas) in sequential order—earth, water, fire, air, and space—and dissolving each in turn into its corresponding subtle element (tanmātra)—smell, taste, form, touch, and sound—after which the subtle element is expelled with an outward breath. The sādhaka then envisions burning up the material body in fire, immersing the ashes in the ocean of milk, and reconstituting a pure luminous body that is identified with Nārāyaṇa.
The next stage in the process of divinizing the body is accomplished through nyāsa, imposition of mantras, in which the sādhaka ritually establishes deities in various parts of the body by mentally repeating the mantra associated with each deity and touching the designated body part. Having established the deities associated with Nārāyaṇa—for example, his four principal śaktis, his avatāras Nṛsiṃha and Varāha, and the four vyūhas—throughout the body, the sādhaka completes the process of divinization by ritually placing the seven-syllable mantra of Nārāyaṇa on all parts of the body, from head to toe, and visualizing himself as fully divinized and identified with Nārāyaṇa: “I am Lord Viṣṇu, I am Nārāyaṇa.”
The sādhaka then proceeds to perform mānasa-yāga or antar-yāga, internalized mental worship, which involves an elaborate process of visualization that culminates in establishing Nārāyaṇa on a lotus-borne throne in the heart and making offerings to him mentally. The final phase in the ritual regimen is bāhya-yāga, external worship of the deity, in which the sādhaka constructs a maṇḍala and, after installing Nārāyaṇa’s presence in the maṇḍala along with his retinue, makes offerings to him externally in the form of flowers, incense, food, and so on.
The Haribhaktivilāsa: Reconfiguring the Pāñcarātra Ritual Structure
This fourfo
ld ritual regimen—bhūta-śuddhi, nyāsa, mānasa-yāga, and bāhya-yāga—is discussed in the fifth chapter (vilāsa) of the Haribhaktivilāsa, which delineates the Gauḍīya procedures for daily morning worship of Bhagavān that it claims are “for the most part in accordance with the injunctions (vidhis) of the Āgamas”59—although, as we shall see, the text re-orients the Viṣṇu-oriented worship of the Vaiṣṇava Āgamas by identifying Bhagavān, the supreme Godhead who is the object of worship, with Kṛṣṇa rather than Viṣṇu.60
The Haribhaktivilāsa includes a brief description of bhūta-śuddhi, the procedure through which the sādhaka attains a purified body and becomes worthy of offering worship to Kṛṣṇa.61 The text invokes the following passage from the Trailokyasammohana Tantra, which describes bhūta-śuddhi as a process of visualization involving the subtle physiology of the cakras in which the sādhaka visualizes drying up the body and consuming it in fire, after which he or she envisions purifying the ashes of the incinerated corpse with amṛta, the nectar of immortality, thereby transforming the material body into a divinized body.
The sage should purify his sinful body (deha) with the air in the navel, and he should burn up the body (kalevara) with the fire in the heart. He should contemplate (root cint) the full moon, pure and filled with the nectar of immortality (amṛta), resting on the great thousand-petaled lotus situated in the forehead. The sage should purify the remaining ashes with the flowing streams [of amṛta] from that [moon] and with these [mantras] made of varṇa-sounds. In this way he should cause the body (vapus) composed of the five gross elements (pañca-bhūtātmaka) to become divine.62
After a brief discussion of prāṇāyāma, the Haribhaktivilāsa provides an extended exposition of nyāsa.63 Among the various forms of nyāsa that are described in the text, of particular interest for our purpose is the Keśavādi-nyāsa, as it is this nyāsa that is explicitly mentioned by Jīva in the Bhakti Sandarbha, as we shall see. The Keśavādi-nyāsa involves ritually placing on the various parts of the body the varṇa-sounds of Sanskrit together with the names of the fifty-one mūrtis of Bhagavān, beginning with Keśava, and the names of his fifty-one śaktis, beginning with Kīrti. The fifty-one mūrtis include, in addition to Kṛṣṇa, the four vyūhas, the twelve mūrtis who are the presiding deities of the twelve months,64 avatāras such as Varāha and Nṛsiṃha, and a variety of other manifestations of Bhagavān. The fifty-one śaktis include Lakṣmī, Sarasvatī, Durgā, Kālī, Umā, and a variety of other female powers, although it is interesting to note that Rādhā is not explicitly mentioned in the list.65 The section on Keśavādi-nyāsa concludes with the assertion that the sādhaka who performs this nyāsa attains an imperishable body (dehinaḥ acyutatva) comparable to that of Acyuta, the supreme Godhead himself.66 The discussion of nyāsas culminates in two nyāsas that serve as a means of suffusing the sādhaka’s entire psychophysical complex with Kṛṣṇa’s presence embodied in the pulsating sounds of his mūla-mantra, the eighteen-syllable mantra: akṣara-nyāsa, which involves ritually placing each of the eighteen syllables of the mantra on all parts of the body; and pada-nyāsa, which involves placing the five parts (padas) of the eighteen-syllable mantra throughout the entire body.67
The Haribhaktivilāsa reconfigures the ritual structure of the Pāñcarātra regimen of daily worship by interjecting an extended account of meditation (dhyāna) on Kṛṣṇa in his transcendent dhāman immediately prior to its discussion of mānasa-yāga. The account consists primarily of a lengthy passage from the Kramadīpikā followed by a passage from the Gautamīya Tantra.68 In contrast to earlier verses in which the Haribhaktivilāsa recommends meditation (dhyāna) on Bhagavān in his four-armed form as Viṣṇu, bearer of the discus, conch, club, and lotus, seated in the lotus of the heart,69 the Kramadīpikā passage recommends meditating (root smṛ or root cint) on Bhagavān’s two-armed form as Gopāla Kṛṣṇa, bearer of the flute, seated on an eight-petaled lotus on his yoga-pīṭha in Vṛndāvana. The meditation involves a progressive series of visualizations that serve as a means of mentally constructing the domains of a maṇḍala: Kṛṣṇa’s transcendent abode in Vṛndāvana, his divine body stationed in the center of Vṛndāvana, his intimate associates who surround him in the inner circle, and his divine retinue in the outer circles of the maṇḍala. The meditation begins with an elaborate visualization of Vṛndāvana in which the sādhaka engages the transcendent forms, sounds, fragrances, textures, and tastes of this paradisiacal realm. The meditation then shifts to the center of the maṇḍala where Kṛṣṇa is enthroned on his yoga-pīṭha, and the sādhaka embarks on a second visualization that explores in lavish detail every part of Kṛṣṇa’s magnificent divine body (deha), from the crest of peacock feathers on the top of his head to the auspicious marks on the soles of his lotus-feet. In the next phase of the meditation, the sādhaka’s vision expands outward from the center of the maṇḍala and visualizes in turn the cows, gopas, and gopīs who encircle Kṛṣṇa. In the final phase of the meditation, the process of visualization moves beyond the inner circle of Kṛṣṇa’s intimate companions in Vṛndāvana to the various gods, sages, yogins, and celestial beings who form the divine retinue in the outer circles of the maṇḍala outside of Vṛndāvana.70
By reconfiguring the Pāñcarātra ritual structure to include an extended meditation on Kṛṣṇa in his dhāman, the Haribhaktivilāsa appears to suggest that this meditation is an essential prerequisite for the mānasa-yāga, or mānasa-pūjā,that immediately follows. The sādhaka constructs in meditation a maṇḍala with Kṛṣṇa enthroned on his yoga-pīṭha in the center of Vṛndāvana surrounded by his eternal associates and divine retinue, and this mentally constructed maṇḍala then provides the basis for the mental offerings of the mānasa-pūjā. “After meditating (root dhyā) on Bhagavān in this way and after invoking him, one should effortlessly perform pūjā to him mentally (mānasa) with all upacāras (offerings).”71 The text then delineates the procedure for establishing Kṛṣṇa’s seat (pīṭha) within the sādhaka’s own body (sva-deha), after which the sādhaka is instructed to perform an antaḥ-pūjā, internalized pūjā, in which he or she mentally offers to Bhagavān seated within the heart the sixteen upacāras that form part of the standard pūjā repertoire, including food, cloth, sandalwood paste, flowers, incense, and oil-lamps.72
The Haribhaktivilāsa concludes its discussion of the ritual regimen of daily morning worship of Bhagavān with extensive regulations concerning the performance of the bāhya-yāga, which it terms bahiḥ-pūjā and reframes as external worship that is focused not on Bhagavān’s aniconic form as a maṇḍala or yantra but rather on his embodiment in an iconic image, mūrti or arcā, or in the aniconic śālagrāma stone.73
Jīva Gosvāmin’s Re-visioning: From Tantric Sādhana to Sādhana-Bhakti
I would like to turn now to an analysis of Jīva’s re-visioning of the Pāñcarātra ritual regimen for daily worship of the deity in the Bhakti Sandarbha, which appears to be based on the Haribhaktivilāsa’s formulation of this regimen. Although he does not explicitly cite the Haribhaktivilāsa, Jīva was clearly familiar with the work,74 and in his discussion of the procedures for ritual worship (arcana) he cites passages from the Āgamas that are also cited in the Haribhaktivilāsa.75 In any case, his comments concerning the Pāñcarātra ritual regimen address a version of the regimen that is comparable to the one delineated in the Haribhaktivilāsa—although, as we shall see, he reimagines the ritual procedures for daily worship in ways that significantly alter their overall purpose. I would argue that Jīva’s reformulations of the three components of daily ritual worship that precede the bahiḥ-pūjā, external worship of the deity—bhūta-śuddhi, nyāsa, and mānasa-pūjā—are primarily aimed at re-orienting the entire worship regime from a Pāñcarātra form of tantric sādhana designed to construct a divinized tantric body that is identified with the deity to a Gauḍīya form of sādhana-bhakti designed to fashion a perfected devotional body that is like (tulya) the divine body of Kṛ
ṣṇa but is at the same time ontologically distinct from it. Jīva reinscribes this ritual regimen as an integral part of sādhana-bhakti in which the ultimate goal is not to become identified with Kṛṣṇa in undifferentiated unity (sāyujya) but rather to realize a relationship of inconceivable difference-in-nondifference, acintya-bhedābheda, in which some distinction between the subject (āśraya) and the divine object (viṣaya) is maintained so that the jīva may relish for all eternity the intoxicating bliss of prema-rasa, enraptured devotion to the supreme Godhead.
At the outset Jīva provides a devotional framework for his discussion of the ritual regimen by stating that his concern will be to present the procedures that “pure bhaktas” are to follow in daily worship: “I will now explain, to the best of my ability, bhūta-śuddhi and other practices pertaining to pure bhaktas.”76 He recasts the entire purpose of bhūta-śuddhi, purification of the material body, by explicitly asserting that the true bhakta does not seek to divinize the body by identifying it with the body of Kṛṣṇa, for such a practice would be tantamount to ahaṅgrahopāsanā, worship of oneself as identical with the Lord. In contrast to the Haribhaktivilāsa, he eschews the language of divinization and any mention of the subtle physiology and reframes bhūta-śuddhi as a distinctively Gauḍīya practice in which the bhakta contemplates (bhāvanā) the body not in the form of Kṛṣṇa himself but rather in the form of an eternally perfect associate, parikara or pārṣada, who resides with Kṛṣṇa in his transcendent Vraja-dhāman and who embodies a particular rasa, devotional mode. In this way the practice of bhūta-śuddhi serves as a method through which an advanced practitioner of rāgānugā-bhakti can realize the particular rasa that accords with his or her svarūpa, unique inherent nature.
Bhakti and Embodiment Page 49