śraddhā [faith, faith in goodness, respect, devotion]
Faith is a common idea for most of us. It’s at the center of all religious and spiritual practices because religious and spiritual practices invite us to think and act on the basis of things we cannot be sure of.
Faith is typically about knowledge, about we know and don’t know. But it also invites us to make assumptions about what knowledge is, and to assume that the having this knowledge is better than not having it.
Faith in our modern sense means setting aside rational scepticism or doubt about what we know until a later time when that knowledge can be tested scientifically. Faith in this sense means knowledge that is only meaningful if it can be verified by science.
We also often contrast scientific faith with religious faith. In religious settings faith means taking certain written or spoken words as ‘true’ based on a belief in the special ability or authority of those who speak or write them. Our belief is in the authority of the scripture or the preacher and therefore we take their words to be true.
In Bhakti, śraddhā refers to a completely different idea and experience of what is true.
Śraddhā, or faith, is the first of the nine stages of Bhakti explained by Rūpa Gosvāmi in Bhakti Rasāmṛta Sindhu. The stages are milestones on a path toward spiritual realisation and thereby spiritual realisation.
Śraddhā does refer to truth, like the modern idea of faith. Nor does it refer to a belief in the truth-telling capability of scriptures and religious authorities. On the path of Bhakti, śraddhā takes us to another place.
Instead of calling upon factual truth, empirical right and wrong, good and bad, and so forth, Bhakti draws upon feeling as its guiding star. It teaches us to attach to our own feelings as the most authentic expression of who we are, and to relate to others by attaching to the their feelings.
Bhakti teaches that the deepest and most authentic expression of our being–what some religions would call soul–is the pure, divine love that is our origin and our end. In Bhakti this is love is called svarūpa, our spiritual form. It is ‘who’ we are when we are being ourselves. It is ‘what’ we are when all the passing material qualities of our lives are stripped away. What we find when all our material coverings are cleared away is a kind of pure loving relation to the divine.
We need neither scientific nor religious faith to be convinced of this. We need only to feel, to feel, and to purify that feeling, condense that feeling. Our practice consists in developing the consciousness of that feeling so that we can increase it, focus it, and drop ways of living that only serve to dilute it.
Śraddhā is this consciousness. It is the awareness that the engine of our being is the energy of a love-giving soul and that by giving this love, we acknowledge the same nature in others.
Śraddhā says the loving giving energy in my heart seeks though love-receiving (and love-giving) energy of our heart.
Śraddhā says: we are ourselves through our relation, and that relation is one of love.
Śraddhā understands love to be an engagement. By living in the world we are acting in the world. By acting in the world we are putting our inner loving-energy at the service of others, large and small. Conversely, all other, by acting in the world, are setting their loving-energy into play.
Śraddhā is the realisation that we are together part of a fellowship, a fellowship of hearts, and that in fact all other souls also belong to this fellowship. Indeed, this fellowship encompasses the entire creation, and the creator herself.
Śraddhā is the behaviour guided by the realisation that the divine in me relates to the divine in you.
(See the other 8 stages of bhakti: sādhu-saṅga, bhajana-kriyā, anartha-nivṛtti, niṣṭhā, ruci, āsakti, bhāva, prema)