Month: December 2024

Bhāva and rasa

Of all the ideas that guide us in devotional practice, bhāva and rasa are the most subtle, profound, and intimate. They describe the two purest functions of the heart: the way our heart relates to the world in its purest form (bhāva) and the flavour of the soul’s pure and natural love for the Divine (rasa).

The best English translation of ‘bhāva’ is perhaps ‘mood’. And yet there is an important difference between our everyday mood and our spiritual mood (bhāva).

In material consciousness, our mood refers to our general emotional state of mind, temperament, or attitude. Our material mood influences the temporary emotions we experience, which are shaped by the temporary conditions of the material world, our thoughts, or our bodies. Thus we speak of being in a ‘good’ mood (cheerful, excited, calm) and being in a ‘bad’ mood (grumpy, gloomy, anxious), all of which are based on our relation with our bodies and our minds.

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What is mercy?

kṛpa [compassion, mercy, grace, or kindness] 

Mercy is widely understood as a key element for success in spiritual practice. It is said that the spiritual path we are on can only lead to its ultimate goal with the ‘help’ of mercy—be it Ishvarakṛpa, Daivakṛpa, Gurukṛpa, and so on. It seems that our spiritual ambitions can only be fulfilled through the compassion and grace of external powers.

This leads us to ask: How do I receive mercy? What are the requirements? Are there specific conditions? Should I offer gifts to the deities? Should I make special efforts to please the guru?

This transactional way of thinking—‘I can get mercy if I give that—confuses us, if only because the material gifts we might give would only bring material satisfaction to whoever receives them. Spiritual contentment is unattainable by material means. 

Mercy is not a trade-off. Mercy is not even a thing that could be traded for something else, something that the ‘worthy’ will receive and the ‘unworthy’ will not, be it from God or guru. 

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We pray

In Bhakti-sādhana, the practice of cultivating an inner life of devotion, we commonly say that devotional service consists of nine different activities: hearing, chanting, remembering, serving, worshiping, obeying, maintaining friendship, surrendering, and praying.

But why do we pray? Who do we pray to? What do we pray for?

To pray is most often understood as addressing a request to some supernatural being—a request that cannot be satisfied by mundane means. Either the request is beyond our material reach, or directly impossible. Our expectation in praying is that the request will be granted by some agency beyond our knowledge, beyond our experience, beyond our control.

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