Christianity as Bhakti Marga

One of the striking things about the religious life of India is the clear recognition that life with God is alone of value and that no sacrifice can be too high for that exalted purpose. Hindu Bhaktas have again and again expressed their longing to attain the Divine. For instance, the Bhagavata-Purana puts into the mouth of the Lord the words:

“Not the position of Brahma, not the seat of Indra, not dominion over all the earth, not sway over the lower world, not the powers of Yoga, not freedom from births, nothing but me does the one, who has dedicated himself to me, desire.’ *

Unfortunately many men in India have been attracted too much by some of the bye-products of a life of communion with God, such as immense physical and psychical power. But the teaching given here shows us that there has also been the emphatic assertion of the supreme importance of God as compared with everything else.

The Ramayana of Tulst-Dé&s contains this prayer:

‘Glory to the supporter of the earth, peerless in his splendour; the uncreated, of whom there isno beginning: the fountain of wisdom; the immeasurable; the bestower of honour;

Whose holy fame is the theme of the Védas and Puranas; the all-wise, the all generous: the destroyer of ignorance; the many-named, the nameless; the emotionless universe itself, the universal spirit; the indweller of every heart.

Abide with us and protect us for ever,O Rama; dwell in-our heart, tearing asunder the bonds of the world and its miserable contentions and destroying our sensuality and conceit.

O holy Rama, all blessed and all merciful, fulfiller of every desire of the soul, bestow on us the boon of constant love and devotion.’ *

The Bhagavad-Gita places considerable emphasis on the performance of action without desire for results. Why must desire be annihilated? One reason is the dread of the tumult and storm likely to rage in any man whose desires are encouraged. He is apt to find himself torn between longings of various kinds. Likes and dislikes will contend for supremacy in his soul giving rise to doubt, hesitation, disappointment, bitterness and multitudinous evils. By training himself to subdue all his desires a man can avoid this unhappy strife. There is a further reason. Desires lead to actions and actions produce further births and deaths; the victim of desire is entangled in the restless wheel of births and deaths. Freedom from entanglement is the great goal before the mind of the seer who wrote the Gita. It is laid down with such impressive power as the paramount duty of man because it will ultimately mean freedom from the weary round of births and deaths. These two reasons must not be ignored, but there is another which should not be forgotten. It is the teaching that desire is right when it is directed towards the Supreme Lord. If Hindu seers were sometimes too sensitive to the evil consequences of desire, they were also quite aware of the supreme importance of desiring nothing but God. If they taught that no desires should he encouraged, it was because, along with other reasons, they realized that the encouragement of other desires would mean that the desire for God would become less. compelling. They knew that the only effective way of vitalizing and energizing their passion for God was to cut themselves off from the many alluring things which drew them away from Him. When the rains pour down, water flows all over earth cutting little channels for itself, but a river collects all these streams which spread over the earth to no purpose and steadily adding to their strength and momentum sweeps them into the ocean with all their accumulated energy, So should all our desires flow into God. Otherwise they will become scattered and cut for themselves little narrow channels which will be lost in the earth. This recognition that God is the supreme goal of all desire is a powerful impulse behind much of the religious thought and activity of India. With all eagerness and sincerity we should assimilate this great and dominating impulse of Indian life.;

The emphasis laid upon meditation in India shows. us this impulse in another form. The desire for meditation has sometimes been sneered at as an attempt to escape from life with all its obligations and demands; because of it some of the best minds in India have turned traitor and fled from the field instead of fighting a manly fight, grappling effectively and fearlessly with the difficulties of lite. It is true that they have carried the practice of meditation to extraordinary lengths and sometimes for selfish reasons. It is also true that they have sometimes sought, not communion with God but the attainment of delightiul peace. But these errors should not hide from us the value of right meditation as a means of communion with God.

If prayer is to be a means of holding fellowship with God, does it mean that we should never ask God for help and strength and guidance? The Fourth Gospel itself says, ‘If ye shall ask me anything in my name, that will I do.’ And again, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, If ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you in my name.’” In the prayer we are studying we find Jesus Himself asking the Father for certain things. ‘Glorify Thy Son.’* ‘And now O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.’ * In the Synoptic Gospels we find clear exhortations to pray for all that we need, especially in the parable of the importunate friend.® If a friend is asked in the course of the night to give bread, he may hesitate and refusee But if the man persists long enough in asking he,will get it at last. So, Jesus teaches us, we should persist in our prayer to God. He repeats the lesson in the parable of a widow who wrested justice from a judge by her importunity.* Jesus Himself prayed on different occasions.” Both from the seventeenth chapter of St. John and from the scattered references in the Synoptic Gospels about prayer we are led to the conclusion that there is a place—an important place—in prayer for petition. Each man should settle for himself the exact proportion which petition may occupy in his prayer. According to the intensity and strength of a man’s dominant desires will this be decided. There may be a stage when, in the full belief that God is a God of love and that it is our privilege to confide our troubles in Him, we may be led to place before Him all the personal needs we feel with their insistence and urgency. But later we shall probably be wholly unwilling to recite all the petty round of our duties and only wish to concentrate our thoughts on the full realization of the presence and power of God. ‘The things for which we ask in prayer wiil as surely reflect our love for God and our confidence in Him as our value-judgements of the things for which we ask. It is because we attach importance, sometimes inordinate importance, to certain things that we take them to God in prayer. If our love tor God deepens, prayer will become a constant opportunity to receive His spirit flowing into us and to realize that all things work together for good to them that love God, without our stopping at every point to articulate our desire for this or for that.

Whatever our practice may be during normal times, is it possible to refrain from petition when we are face to face with a crisis? If, for instance, some loved one is passing through an agony of pain is it possible to refrain from begging God to relieve it? An attempt to refrain from petition on such an occasion might mean one of two things. Either our belief in the love and readiness of God to help would be impaired—how can God be love if He cannot or will not help us in such distress >—or we would have adopted a stoic indifference which accepts calmly whatever comes. Both these results will be wrong. Even Jesus prayed intensely during His hour of trial and suffering. We are told that that on the eve of the crucifixion He went to the Garden of Gethsamene and prayed most earnestly. His prayer in the midst of such agony was characteristic: ‘Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.’ He did not selfishly beg that He might. escape the crisis but with the utmost love He surrendered Himself into the Father’s hands and prayed for deliverance if that was according to the Father’s will. But He did not allow His prayer in this crisis to be obsessed with this one desire for deliverance. He was not so absorbed in His own agony that He had no thought for anything else. In the seventeenth chapter of John too the tremendous crisis is awaiting Him and yet He prays with a calmness and detachment and assurance which are inspiring. He not merely prays for Himself but prays far more for others. And this leads us to our next point.

This prayer of Jesus in John xvii. shows the urgency with which Jesus prays for others. In prayer we recollect our oneness with God and remain in the joy of that wonderful power and presence. Our seers in India, as already pointed out, have realized the truth of this and have practised it with fine zeal and full devction. But they have not to the same extent used prayer as an opportunity for lifting others into that exalted experience. A Sanskrit writer even goes to the length of asking: How will it help a hungry man if you eat rice pudding? How will it help another man if you pray for him? This reflects the general trend of religious thought in India. The privilege of interceding for others has not been realized or used in any large way in our country. But if, as we have already seen, our love of God is real only in so far as it becomes actual in our love of man, prayer too, that highest of all religious experience, must be as much for others as for ourselves. Selfishness in prayer is the worst form of selfishness. With a great tragedy before him, Jesus: sets aside His personal needs and beseeches His Father in this prayer for His disciples.

This prayer on behalf of others emphasizes the need for their oneness in God. ‘Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me.’ In His own personal experience oneness with God was a profound fact. He lived in the consciousness of it all through His life. It inspired and filled Him with energy and joy. And so He asks with deep love that this same experience may become possible for others. The refrain of His prayer on their behalf is that they might become one with Him just as He is one with the Father. That same profound.union which exists between Him and God is to bind the disciples together one with another and with Him. In the same way our prayer must be not merely an abiding in God for ourselves but a beseeching Him to give to others that same great experience. If we love God and know that our highest life consists in being one with Him and if we love man really, we should count it not a task but a joy to pray that others too may share in that wonderful life and become one with the Divine.

But this becoming one with Divine does not mean the annihilation of personality. Even such a master of the spiritual life as Eckhart interprets the doctrine of oneness in such a way that intercession becomes

impossible. He says: ‘Praying for aught save God alone is idolatry and unrighteousness. They pray aright who pray in spirit and in truth. When praying for someone, for Henry or Conrad, I pray at my weakest. When praying for no one I pray at my strongest, and when I want nothing and make no request I am praying my best, for in God is no Henry nor no Conrad. To pray to God for aught save God, is wrong and faithless, and, as it were, an imperfection.’ *

But the example of Jesus shows us that this idea is wrong and that praying to God for God necessarily implies prayer for others too. Intercession is as essential a part of prayer as communion or petition. To pray for others is as great a joy as to live in the constant awareness of our intimate dependence and humble relation to Him who is the source of all light, life and love.