Sādhana – Path to Liberation | Rāmānuja

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Sādhana – Path to Liberation | Rāmānuja

The speculative philosopher who enquires into the nature of Brahman as the supreme Reality or tattva becomes a mumukṣu or seeker after liberation (mukti) by moral and spiritual endeavour.

Liberation can be attained by the triple method of karma-yoga or self-purification, jñāna- yoga or self-realization and bhakti-yoga or the practice of the feeling of the presence of God as Love, as formulated in the Gītā.

Karma-yoga is the practice of niṣkāma-karma or duty for duty’s sake irrespective of the consequences. Nobody, not even a god or Īśvara, can be inactive.

Consciousness in all its levels is conative and even introversion which aims at cessation (nivṛtti) from activity is itself conative and a life of inaction (a-karma) is a psychological impossibility.

The metaphysic of morals based on this psychological principle turns out to be a philosophy of the ātman.

Though every animal follows an end, man alone has an idea of the end on account of his buddhi or reason and will.

But owing to his false identification with the body made of nature (prakṛti) and its guṇas, the desire (kāma) for the pleasures of the body arises in him, and when it is frustrated it leads to anger or krodha and mental confusion and finally to moral death.

Every empirical action is impelled by the subjective inclinations (kāma) and induced by the objective or utilitarian motives of gain (lābha).

It is determined by the three guṇas of sattva, rajas and tamas or serenity, restlessness and inertia. But every man has the moral freedom to subdue his guṇas and the karma influenced by them.

By his disciplined will or practical reason he can subdue his sensibility based on the body- feeling and free himself from the feelings of “I” and “mine” (ahaṁkāra and mamakāra) which are the twin perils of empirical life.

Then action (karma) is freed from all selfish inclinations of kāma and becomes niṣkāma- karma or duty for duties sake, and the moral man acquires self-­sovereignty.

He is no longer a thing of nature swayed by guṇas and ex­ternally determined, but a person with moral autonomy gained by soul power (ātma-śakti). He is then a person of steady wisdom (sthita-prajñā) who has gained not freedom from, but freedom in, action.

Karma-yoga or self-less action is only a stepping-stone to self-realization gained by jñāna-yoga. When the moral man seeks to know himself (the ātman) as different from the not-self (a-cit), he ascends from morality to spirituality.

There is a transition from niṣkāma-karma or what a man ought to do, to what he ought to be, and such a soul-culture (jñāna-niṣṭhā) demands self-renouncement (vairāgya) and ceaseless practice of contem­plation (abhyāsa).

The contemplative should free himself by yogic practice from the confusions of avidya by which he mistakes the ātman for the bodily feeling and the seductions of kāma by which he is drawn to sense objects. He seeks the state of complete detachment(kaivalya).

The state of kaivalya attained by jñāna-yoga may, however, lapse into the defects of subjectivism and quietism and these defects are over­come by bhakti-yoga.

Bhakti-yoga marks the consummation of moral and spiritual endeavour as attained in karma-yoga and jñāna-yoga.

The Viśiṣṭādvaita constructs a ladder, as it were, from ethics to religion and from religion to mystic union, and Rāmānuja refers to seven ancient sādhanas as aids to bhakti called viveka, vimoka, abhyāsa, kriyā, kalyāṇa, anavasāda and anuddharṣa.

The first is the purification of the body as the living temple of God and such cleanliness is next to godliness.

Vimoka is the inner detachment from the disturbing conditions like desire and anger. Abhyāsa is the ceaseless practice of the sense-presence of God as the Inner Self of all.

Kriyā is the social side of the contemplative life and it is the duty of service to all living beings from the sub-human and the human to the celestial beings or devas.

Kalyāṇa is the practice of virtue as the inner side of duty and dāna or benevolence and ahiṁsā are among the cardinal virtues.

Anavasāda and anuddharṣa go together as they connote freedom from despair and absence of exultation.

All these sādhanas aim at the physical, mental, moral, spiritual and religious development of man and are integral aids to devotion to God (bhakti).

They are different from the Greek idea of harmonizing the animal, the human, and the spiritual side of man and the sādhanas of Śankara which are really no sādhanas at all as Brahman is self-accomplished and not attained as something new.

Brahman the absolute of metaphysics is Bhāgavat or the God of religion and, according to Rāmānuja,

vedanā or knowledge of Brahman, dhyāna or upāsanā or meditation on Him and bhakti or devotion have the same meaning and they connote the inter-relation and unity of jñāna and bhakti.

Dhyāna is ceaseless contemplation up to death on Vāsudeva or Nārāyaṇa as the Inner Self or the self in the form “I am, Thou holy Divinity and Thou are myself,”

and it means that Brahman is the soul (śarīrin) of jīva in the same way in which jīva is of the body. The two are inseparable as soul and body, but not identical.

When bhakti deepens into perfect devotion and love (parā-bhakti and prema) the quest for God becomes an irrepressible thirst for Him. But the soul- hunger for God is not so intense as the God-hunger for the soul.

The Eternal One beyond, incarnates Himself as love in human form to satisfy His longing for union with the devotee (bhakta) whom He regards as His very self (mahātman). In the union that follows love is for love’s sake and bhakti is preferred to liberation (mukti) itself.

The building up of bhakti is a veritable Jacob’s ladder from earth to heaven (parama-pāda-sopāna) owing to its arduousness and it is well- nigh impossible to ascend it owing to its many pitfalls on the way.

The Gītā, as the essence of Upaniṣadic wisdom, in its infinite tenderness to erring humanity offers prapatti or self-surrender as the easiest and most natural means to liberation (mukti).

As the religion of universal redemption, it invites every man as the son of God, but laden with the sin of separation, to seek refuge at His feet and guarantees mukti to him.

The Ālvārs are the seekers and seers of God like the Upaniṣadic Ṛṣis and in their Tamil hymns which are equalized with the Vedānta owing to their divine wisdom,

they stress the superior value of prapatti on account of its appeal to God as redemptive love and its universal applicability to alljīvas regardless of their birth, worth and station in life.

In juristic religion, justice must be tempered by mercy, but in redemptive religion justice or retribution is dominated by redemption and even so-called punishment or daṇḍana has its roots in dayā or mercy.

In Śrī Vaiṣṇavism as the religion of the Viśiṣṭādvaita, Godhead is both Nārāyaṇa and Śrī in whom the impersonal qualities of law and love are eternally wedded together in a dual personality.

If law rules over love, karma is inescapable; and if love rules over law, caprice becomes inevit­able, but in the divine nature the two are harmonized and fused into one.

In the history of Śrī Vaiṣṇavism two conflicting sects have arisen called the Teṅkalai School founded by Pillailokācārya and the Vaḍakalai school led by Vedānta –Deśika:

The former insists on the unconditionality and spontaneity of the grace of God (nir-hetuka-kaṭākṣa) and the latter to sa-hetuka-kaṭākṣa, that is, the joint method of God’s mercy and the devotee’s merit called prapatti-yoga.

But both recognize the truth that God is Himself the endeavour and the end (upāya and upeya) and that karma is cancelled by mercy (kṛpā). The problem is not solved by the logical category of hetu or cause but is dissolved in the mystic experience of communion.

The Śrī Vaiṣṇava and Christian theories of redemption have affinities as ethical religions in their acceptance of sin as a violation of the Divine Law, in their faith that sin is forgivable and actually forgiven by the mercy of God and in the doctrines of justification by faith and justification by works.

But the Vaiṣṇavite theory has a universality of appeal which is missed in the Christian doctrines of the only Begotten Son of God, original sin and the Judgment Day.

In the former case retribution is followed by and transformed into redemption, but in the latter redemption is succeeded by the Judgment Day when wheat is separated from the chaff.

Sin in Śrī Vaiṣṇavism is separation from God and true atonement is atonement with the God of love and followed by the practice of service to all jīvas prompted by the immanence of divine love in their hearts.

The highest state of devotion is the līlā or sport of love in which the Lord as the lover plays the game of hide-and-seek with the beloved till the two become united forever.

The līlā of love consists of two stages, namely, the joy of union (saṁśleṣa) alternating with the sorrows of separa­tion (viśleṣa) leading to what is called the dreariness of the dark night of the soul. The līlā ends when jīva attains the eternal bliss of mukti.