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If the Gosvamins of the Bengal school are unhappy with the exclusion of bhakti from the classical formula of

the four human aims (purusartha), so is Madhusudana. He 157 makes this quite plain from the outset, declaring in the first stanza, as we have just seen, that bhakti is the paramapurusartha. In section V of his commentary, he writes of bhakti: "Those who know its essence and those who have experienced it declare it to be the highest goal of life, beyond which there is nothing greater."3 This to be sure is the teaching of the Bhagavata-purana, and the Krsnaite Vaisnavas would Nevertheless, it is a radical have no difficulty with it. assertion for an Advaitin. The orthodox followers of Sankara hold that moksa is the one supreme goal and that bhakti is a preliminary to it.4 Madhusudana, on the other hand, appears to be saying that what Advaita normally considers to be the means is actually the final end, a rather significant change to say the least. It is necessary, therefore, to try and determine exactly what he means by this assertion. Madhusudana's approach to including bhakti among the purusarthas is, we discover, quite different from that of the Gosvamins. In sections VI and VII of the Bhakti-rasayana, he shifts abruptly from the argument, which he has just presented in section V, that bhakti is the paramapurusartha to a discussion designed to prove that bliss (sukha or ananda) is the highest aim. He does not wish to expand the four-fold formula, as the Gosvamins did. Instead, he seeks to by-pass

158 it by showing that the classically recognized purusarthas are so only figuratively, i.e., insofar as they are the means to bliss. "The bliss arising from them," says Madhusudana, "is the goal of life."5 The details of the argument, which becomes rather complex as a logician of the Nyaya school is the ostensible interlocutor, can be gleaned from the translation which follows. What is important for our present purpose is its result, which Madhusudana also states in the form: "Bliss unmixed with any suffering is the highest goal of life."6 The phrase "unmixed with any suffering" refers us back to the first stanza, where Madhusudana has already described bhakti as "the experience of incomparable bliss, untouched by any suffering."7 The final conclusion is not Madhusudana gives it at the beginning of sec. hard to draw. VII: "Since it is nothing more than bliss unmixed with suffering, the yoga of devotion to the Blessed Lord is also the paramapurusartha."8 He uses the adverb "also" (api) here because he has just, at the end of section VI, concluded an elaborate argument to show that moksa is the paramapurusartha "for the very reason that it is supreme bliss," a view he acknowledges as the standard doctrine of the Vedantins.9 Because of the logical difficulties involved in asserting that devotion and liberation are both the highest aim, we must understand him as intending that

159 they are both forms in which the actual highest goal of life, pure bliss, can be experienced by human beings. As section VII indicates, the "perfect meditation" or enstasis (samadhi) sought by the yogins is another way in which this bliss can be attained. 10 The paramapurusartha, then, is 11 bliss alone. At least at this point in the text, Madhusudana's assertions that devotion is "the" highest goal of life mean that, of this highest ananda, devotion is one possible form. The fact that both moksa and bhakti are supreme bliss draws our attention again to the question of the relation between them. I must defer its consideration once more, however, until we have a better understanding of Madhusudana's thinking on the nature of devotion itself.