Bhavam is called the good and genuine feelings of something that is experienced through practices of something good. I like the Bhavam of slokam, song or a lecture are few examples of this feeling.
The daily bhakthi that we display like pooja, listening to divine songs, several sevas or praying, work done in the name of God, going to temple, indulge in temple activities, thirtha yatras etc are all Bhavams of bhakthi, which is the basic step of realizing Vishnu. Helping poor or needy, constructing temples, promoting peace, propagating a religion are all activities that is assumed to be good deeds to attain God. These are good but only the basics of bhakthi, which will not help you to realize true nature of Vishnu.
The Yoga or Yogam is the eternal divine action, seeking and practice which will result in higher dimensional experiences of realization to experience the dharshan of Vishnu. The key for this is, first karma. The action that we do daily should be done sincerely and honestly. Like making a good tea even by tea vendor sincerely is treated a divine karma.
Next big thing is Gnanam or Divine knowledge, is the key for spiritual journey. This knowledge is blessed by many manifestations of God and Goddesses. It comes by the quest and practice. This is in built knowledge that must be harvested.
Now the karma and gnanam leads to appreciation of the nature, it’s creation and the God’s mind. The Bhakthi that arises out these two, will transform a seeker or yogi to ultimate experiences of realization of self and Maha Vishnu.
The daily ritualistic bhakthi is bhavam not ultimate bhakthi. The Bhakthi yoga arises from true nature of Maha Vishnu’s Conscience.
Bhakti (Sanskrit: भक्ति) literally means "attachment, participation, fondness for, homage, faith, love, devotion, worship, purity". It refers to devotion and love for Vishnu. In Shvetashvatara Upanishad, the term simply means participation, devotion and love for any endeavor, while in the Bhagavad Gita, it connotes one of the possible paths of spirituality and towards moksha, as in bhakti marga. Bhakti in Hindu religions is "emotional devotionalism", particularly to a personal god or to spiritual ideas. The concept includes a sense of deep affection, attachment, but not wish because "wish is selfish, affection is unselfish".
यस्य देवे परा भक्तिः यथा देवे तथा गुरौ ।
तस्यैते कथिता ह्यर्थाः प्रकाशन्ते महात्मनः ॥ २३ ॥
He who has highest Bhakti of Deva (God),
just like his Deva, so for his Guru (teacher),
To him who is high-minded,
these teachings will be illuminating.
— Shvetashvatara Upanishad 6.23
Bhagavata Gita states the following about bhakti yogi:
The yogi who, established in oneness, Honors Me as abiding in all beings,
In whatever way he otherwise acts, Dwells in Me.
He who sees equality in everything, In the image of his own Self, Arjuna,
Whether in pleasure or in pain, Is thought to be a supreme yogi.
Of all yogis, He who has merged his inner Self in Me,
Honors me, full of faith, Is thought to be the most devoted to Me.
Types of Bhakthi.
- Atma-Bhakti: devotion to the one's atma (Supreme Self)
- Ishvara-Bhakti: devotion to a formless being (God, Cosmic Lord)
- Ishta Devata-Bhakti: devotion to a personal God or goddess
- Guru-Bhakti: devotion to Guru
Bhavas
Five different bhāvas or "affective essences". In this sense, bhāvas are different attitudes that a devotee takes according to his individual temperament to express his devotion towards God in some form.
The different bhāvas are:śānta, placid love for God;
- dāsya, the attitude of a servant;
- sakhya, the attitude of a friend;
- vātsalya, the attitude of a mother towards her child;
- madhurya, the attitude of a woman towards her lover.
What are the 9 types of bhakti bhavam?
The Navaratnamalika, nine forms of bhakti bhavams are listed:
(1) śravaṇa (listening)
(2) kīrtana (praying)
(3) smaraṇa (remembering)
(4) pāda-sevana (service to the feet)
(5) archana (worshiping)
(6) namaskar or vandana (bowing to the divine)
7) dāsya (service to the divine)
(8) sākhyatva (friendship with the divine)
(9) ātma-nivedana (self-surrender to the divine)
1. SRAVANA
Sravana is hearing of Lord's Lilas. Sravana includes hearing of God's virtues, glories, sports and stories connected with His divine Name and Form. The devotee gets absorbed in the hearing of divine stories and his mind merges in the thought of Divinity, it cannot think of undivine things. The mind loses, as it were, its charm for the world. The devotee remembers God only, even in dreams.
2. KIRTANA
Kirtana is singing of Lord's glories. The devotee is thrilled with Divine Emotion. He loses himself in the love of God. He gets horripilation in the body due to extreme love for God. He weeps in the middle when thinking of the glory of God. His voice becomes choked, and he flies into a state of divine Bhava. The devotee is ever engaged in Japa of the Lord's Name and describing His glories to one and all. Wherever he goes he begins to sing the praise of God. He requests all to join his Kirtana. He sings and dances in ecstasy. He makes others also dance.
3. SMARANA
Smarana is remembrance of the Lord at all times. This is unbroken memory of the Name and Form of the Lord. The mind does not think of any object of the world, but is ever engrossed in thinking of the glorious Lord alone. The mind meditates on what is heard about the glories of God and His virtues, Names, etc., and forgets even the body and contents itself in the remembrance of God, just as Dhruva or Prahlada did. Even Japa is only remembrance of God and comes under this category of Bhakti. Remembrance also includes hearing of stories pertaining to God at all times, talking of God, teaching to others what pertains to God, meditation on the attributes of God, etc. Remembrance has no particular time. God is to be remembered at all times, without break, so long as one has got his consciousness intact. Right up from his getting up from sleep in the morning, until he is completely overpowered by sleep in the night, a person is to remember God. He has no other duty in this world except remembrance of God. Remembrance of God alone can destroy all worldly Samskaras. Remembrance of God alone can turn away the mind from sense-objects. Generally the mind runs extrovert. But remembrance of God makes it introvert and does not allow it to run to particular objects of the world. Remembrance of God is a very difficult method of Sadhana. It is not possible to remember God at all times. The mind will cheat the person. He will think that he is meditating on God, but actually he will be dreaming of some object of the world or something connected with name and fame. Remembrance is equal to concentration or meditation.
4. PADASEVANA
Padasevana is serving the Lord's feet. Service of the Lord's feet can be done through formal worship to Murtis or idols in temples or to a mental image of God.
5. ARCHANA
Archana is worship of the Lord. "Those who perform the worship of Vishnu in this world, attain the immortal and blissful state of Moksha." Thus says the Vishnu-Rahasya. Worship can be done either with external materials or merely through an internal Bhava or strong feeling. The latter one is an advanced form of worship which only men of purified intellect can do. The purpose of worship is to please the Lord, to purify the heart through surrender of the ego and love of God.
6. VANDANA
Vandana is prayer and prostration. Humble prostration touching the earth with the eight limbs of the body (Sashtanga-Namaskara), with faith and reverence, before a form of God, or prostration to all beings knowing them to be the forms of the One God, and getting absorbed in the Divine Love of the Lord is termed prostration to God. The Bhagavata says: "The sky, air, fire, water, earth, stars, planets, the cardinal points (directions), trees, rivers, seas and all living beings constitute the body of Sri Hari. The devotee should bow before everything in absolute devotion, thinking that he is bowing before God Himself." Lord Krishna says to Uddhava: "Giving no attention to those who laugh in ridicule, forgetting the body and insensible to shame, one should prostrate and bow down to all beings, even to the dog, the ass, the Chandala and the cow. All is Myself, and nothing is but Myself."
The ego or Ahankara is effaced out completely through devout prayer and prostration to God. The Divine Grace descends upon the devotee and man becomes God.
7. DASYA
Dasya-Bhakti is the love of God through servant-sentiment. To serve God and carry out His wishes, realising His virtues, nature, mystery and glory, considering oneself as a slave of God, the Supreme Master is Dasya-Bhakti.
Serving and worshipping the Murtis in temples, sweeping the temples, meditating on God, and mentally serving Him like a slave, serving the saints and the sages, serving the devotees of God, serving the poor and the sick people who are forms of God, is also included in Dasya-Bhakti.
8. SAKHYA
Sakhya-Bhava is cultivation of friend-sentiment with God. The inmates of the family of Nandagopa cultivated this Bhakti. Arjuna cultivated this kind of Bhakti. The Bhagavata says: "Oh, how wonderful is the fortune of the people of Vraja, of cowherd Nanda whose dear friend is the perfect, eternal Brahman of Absolute Bliss!".
To be always with the Lord, to treat Him as one's own relative or a friend, belonging to one's own family, to be in His company at all times, to love Him as one's own Self, is Sakhya-Bhava of Bhakti-Marga. The devotee of Sakhya-Bhava takes up with eagerness any work of the Lord leaving aside even the most important and urgent and pressing work, assuming an attitude of neglect towards personal work, and totally concerning himself with the love of the Lord. How do friends, real friends love in this world? What an amount of love they possess between one another? Such a love is developed towards God instead of towards man. Physical love is turned into spiritual love. There is a transformation of the mundane into the Eternal.
9. ATMA-NIVEDANA
Atma-Nivedana is self-surrender. In the Vishnu-Sahasranama it is said: "The heart of one who has taken refuge in Vasudeva, who is wholly devoted to Vasudeva, gets entirely purified, and he attains Brahman, the Eternal."The devotee offers everything to God, including his body, mind and soul. He keeps nothing for himself. He loses even his own self. He has no personal and independent existence. He has given his self for God. He has become part and parcel of God. God takes care of him and God treats him as Himself. Grief and sorrow, pleasure and pain, the devotee treats as gifts sent by God and does not attach himself to them. He considers himself as a puppet of God and an instrument in the hands of God. He does not feel egoistic, for he has no ego. His ego has gone over to God. It is not his duty to take care of his wife, children, etc., for he himself has no independent existence apart from God. God will take care of all. He knows how to lead the world in the right path. One need not think that he is born to lead the world. God is there who will look to everything which man cannot even dream of. He has no sensual craving, for he has no body as it is offered to God. He does not adore or love his body for it is God's business to see to it. He only feels the presence of God and nothing else. He is fearless, for God is helping him at all times. He has no enemy for he has given himself up to God who has no enemies or friends. He has no anxiety for he has attained everything by attaining the grace of God. He has not even the thought of salvation; rather he does not want salvation even; he merely wants God and nothing but God. He is satisfied with the love of God for by that there is nothing that is not attained. What is there to be attained, when God has sent His grace upon the devotee? The devotee does not want to become sugar but taste sugar. There is pleasure in tasting sugar, but not in becoming sugar itself. So the devotee feels that there is supreme joy more in loving God than becoming God. God shall take complete care of the devotee. "I am Thine," says the devotee.
Bhakti Yoga
In spiritual context, emotion can be raw or refined and is identified at its most fundamental base mood in Sanskrit as a bhāva, whereas the maturation or almost universal form of this bhāva or emotive mood is called rasa. Rasa and bhāva connectis with the ethical and spiritual dimensions of life through karma. Yet Rasa and bhāva also relate to the expression of devotion in devotional religious contexts. Rasikas and Bhaktas form types of spectators in the larger līlā (play) of devotion. The rasika, as the educated connoisseur of art that can feel the relish of a fine tuned rasa of a performance and the bhakta that can surrender in total emotional love and worship to the devata.
The emotion, or bhāva, the psychological experience, is the foundation of the artistic sentiment, the rasa, as the aesthetic experience. The human emotion of being amazed, astonished, or surprised can be dramatically enhanced into the aesthetic sentiment of wonder, the Adbhūta-rasa.
This is succinctly expressed in both Chapter 1 and Chapter 11 where Arjuna is experiencing physical reactions to his emotional grief and/or terror regarding the impending battle and the vision of Kṛṣna’s divine form. Both of these chapters immediately engage the reader in an emotional manner, allowing a psychological identification.
“My limbs become weak, my mouth dries up, My body trembles, and my hair stands on end” (I.29).
And Saṃjaya tells Dhritarāshthra:
“Then Arjuna, filled with wonder, His hair standing on end, His head bowed to the god and with hands joint together, Spoke” (XI.14).
Both bhāva and rasa evolving to create a palpable embodied experience of art and spirit.
Kṛṣṇa reveals to Arjuna his divine form. Arjuna describes this sight:
Vishnu [Kṛṣṇa], since I have seen you ablaze with many colours, touching the sky, flames in your huge eyes, your mouth gaping, my self trembles and I find neither courage nor calm...When I have seen your faces with many fearsome tusks, so much like the fires at the end of time, I do not know the way, and I find no refuge. And all these sons of Dhritarāshthra, alongside the gatherings of kings . . . together with our chief warriors, too, all in a rush, they enter your terrible mouths, gaping with tusks. Some appear with heads crushed, clinging between your teeth. The heroes of the mortal world enter your flaming mouths . . . As moths that fly to their full will rush to death in the blazing fire, so, too, worlds rush to death in your mouths. (11.24–11.29).
As a result of witnessing this terrifying vision of Kṛṣṇa’s totality, and in effect the destruction of the world that will result from the war, Arjuna’s emotional response is the unspoiled blend of Adbhūta-rasa with Vismaya.
Ecstatic expression of love for god as the lover, child, or parent of the devotee is seen through the Tamil Veda of the 12 Alvars, the Naalayira Divya Prabhandham. As well as the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and the Gītagovinda. The latter portray Kṛṣṇa as a handsome youth in the company of Rādhā and other gopīs (milkmaids).
What happens in the mind-body and emotions of the devotee in the vision of the divine? While yoga teaches us to go beyond the body and the mind, I will ask if the devotee experiences devotional sentiment in an embodied way. A way through the body, senses and emotions in which the reciprocity of devotional worship is akin to the process of an acculturated spectator observing a compelling performance or work of art. Where a devotee in cultivating a relationship with the divine, in order to connect, merge or be close with the iṣṭa devatā does so as a rasika bhakta.
Rasa is a relationship between the innermost essence of the soul and the joy one receives from aesthetic experience can be, it is said
Desireless, firm, immortal, self-existent, contented with the essence, lacking nothing, Free from the fear of Death is he who knoweth that Soul courageous, youthful, undecaying.
Atharvaveda in 10.8.44.
Śṛṅgāra rasa, the erotic rasa, which is savored as the distilled essence of the sthāyibhāva of rati, love, is the most celebrated of all the rasa. Krishna Leela is of this type but this is eternal love.
Ramanujan notions of bhakti states:
“All devotional poetry plays on the tension between saguṇa and nirguṇa, the lord as person and lord as principle. If he were entirely a person, he would not be divine, and if he were entirely a principle, a godhead, one could not make poems about him. The former attitude makes dvaita or dualism possible, and the latter makes for Advaita or monism…it is not either/or, but both/and; myth, bhakti, and poetry would be impossible without the presence of both attitudes.”
The nature of true devotion is highly emotional and causes horripilation, tears, loss of control, and frenzy. Bhāgavata Purāṇa (11.14: 23-24)
Basic Expressions, Qualities, and Characteristics of a Bhakta
Manmanā bhāva madbhakto
Madyājī māṁ namaskuru
Mām evaiṣyasi satyaṁ te
Pratijāne priyo ‘si me
Fix your mind on Me, worshiping Me, Sacrificing to Me, bowing down to Me; In this way you shall come truly to Me, I promise, for you are dear to Me.
Chapter 18, verse 65 of the Bhagavad Gita
Bhakthi bhavam is the basis for the emotional expereicnes called Rasa. This Rasa when connected with Maha Vishnu turns into Bkathi Yoga. Those expressions, acts that comes out of this Yoga is the true nature of Bhakthi.
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