365bet娱乐

156
these paths as independent, equally valid ways to the
highest spiritual attainment.
At first, this seems to be a flagrant contradiction
of the orthodox Advaita doctrine, discussed at length in
chapter two, that liberation comes through knowledge alone.
The fact is, however, that the BR nowhere describes bhakti
as a discipline which aims specifically at liberation, nor
does it truly accept the latter in its classical role as
paramapuru峁Ｄ乺tha. One of the central teachings of the BR,
enunciated repeatedly from the first stanza onward, is that
love for God, bhakti, is itself the highest goal of life.
So, while the teaching is indeed that bhakti is an
independent path to the final goal, the goal, at least for
the devotee, is not mok峁�a but rather bhakti. Following the
BP, the BR teaches that devotion is both the means and, in
its higher stages, the supreme end. How exactly the
relation between bhakti and moksa is to be understood is a
basic question that we shall have to consider in due order.
Before it can be discussed, however, we must examine
Madhus奴dana's teaching on several other important matters,
beginning with his concept of the highest goal of life.
5.3 The Highest Goal of Life
If the Gosv膩mins of the Bengal school are unhappy
with the exclusion of bhakti from the classical formula of