Essay name: Bhakti-rasayana by Madhusudana Sarasvati
Author:
Lance Edward Nelson
Affiliation: McMaster University / Religious Studies
This is a study and English translation of the Bhakti-rasayana by Madhusudana Sarasvati (16th century)鈥攐ne of the greatest and most vigorous exponents of Advaita after Shankara-Acharya who was also a great devotee of Krishna. The Bhaktirasayana attempts to merge non-dualist metaphysics with the ecstatic devotion of the Bhagavata Purana, by asserting that Bhakti is the highest goal of life and by arguinng that Bhakti embodies God within the devotee's mind.
Page 365 of: Bhakti-rasayana by Madhusudana Sarasvati
365 (of 553)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
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353
Madhusudana enunciates the principle that those teachers who
advocate viewpoints inconsonant with the highest truth of
Advaita are not necessarily ignorant. They are only, he
says, seeking to capture the minds of those whose awareness
is not sufficiently developed to comprehend non-duality,
hoping thereby to prevent the latter from embracing
68 heterodox doctrines. Was the BR part of a similar
stratagem? If so, the theory that Madhus奴dana was seriously
attempting to modify the exclusivistic stance of Advaita
Against this
would be subject to serious question.
understanding, it could be argued that his sympathy for
devotional spirituality was indeed so great that his
concession to orthodoxy in the GAD was just that, a
concession designed to make his presentation of the value of
bhakti in the path of knowledge more acceptable to his
conservative fellow samny膩sins. It would, however, be more
difficult to find support for this alternate hypothesis.
The loss for the devotionalist of the notion of
bhakti as an independent path and supreme goal of life is
mitigated in the GAD only by the fact that the continuance
and blissful development of bhakti is allowed as an
experiential enhancement of the state of j墨vanmukti.
however, is really no compensation at all, since there is
also in this text a renewed emphasis on Advaita's
conservative social teaching. The bhaktas, unless as male
This,
