A Leaf, A Flower, A Fruit And Some Water- Is That It!? Devotion and The Gita

Every passage of scripture possesses intrinsic instructive value and yet I’ve always found that there are certain sections or particular verses of scripture that resonate with me more powerfully than other verses or sections. Now and then I intend to dedicate some of my blog posts to certain scriptural passages, which I find particularly compelling and inspiring. I am going to get this process underway today by focusing on a particular verse of the Bhagavad Gita that captured my attention the first time I studied the text almost four to five years ago; I hope that my analysis of the verse here will serve some value in my readers’ lives by either enhancing your understanding of the text or by provoking in you greater interest in the subject matter.

The verse that I'm focusing on is verse number 26 from the ninth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita:

patram puspam phalam toyam 
yo me bhaktya prayacchati 


tad aham bhakty-upahrtam 
asnami prayatatmanah

‘If one offers me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, a fruit or some water, I will accept it’.

Theologically, this verse is deceptively simple. At first sight, it appears as if Krishna’s stipulation entails no more than the simple instruction to offer him four items, patram (a leaf), puspam (a flower), phalam (a fruit) and toyam (some water). Bhagavan promises to accept the offering of such items and that seems to be it with the verse. There is nothing extra that is going on, or so it seems. The salient word in this verse, however, is ‘bhakti’ which literally means ‘devotion’. Clearly then, to appreciate, to the fullest extent, the significance of this text we’ve got to say something about what it means to offer something in devotion.

Devotion in this context, it should be stressed, means more than piety or ordinary religiosity. In fact, Krishna attempts to clarify this point in the verse by referring to the word bhakti twice in the same text; he begins with the phrase bhaktya prayacchati, which literally means to 'offer in devotion', and then proceeds in the second sentence of the verse to use the phrase 'bhakti upahrtam', which again literally means ‘offered by the process of bhakti’. If we define 'bhakti upahrtam' in the context of this passage to mean ‘offered by the process of bhakti’ then the verse suddenly becomes tautologous: the verse would then read: ‘ I accept that which is offered by devotion from whoever offers by devotion’.

Viswanath Chakravarti Thakur, in his commentary on this verse, points out that the word bhaktya in this context should be taken to mean ‘a person endowed with genuine devotion’. If we adopt the Thakur’s suggestion, and understand the word bhaktya to be referring to a pure or real devotee then the verse acquires fresh meaning and a coherence that it previously lacked. This notion of a real devotee or of pure devotion is central to a proper and full understanding of this text and so I want to examine this issue in some detail.

So to recap very quickly, in the verse quoted above, Krishna promises that if a pure devotee offers him, with devotion, a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or some water, he will accept that offering of devotion. According to the Gita, Krishna is Bhagavan or the personal Absolute and part of his supremacy entails not requiring anything from anybody. In other words, this verse under inspection should not be interpreted as a qualification of Krishna’s self-sufficiency; if in this verse Krishna is requesting anything, it’s a request for love and devotion. Clearly, in terms of the objects of this world, there is nothing that we can offer him that he doesn’t already possess. Therefore, if there is anything that we can truly offer him (if offering means more than simply returning to God what was properly his in the first place) then we have to offer that which is central to our very being: our love and devotion.

In whom we choose to repose our love and devotion in is a decision that Bhagavan himself doesn’t interfere with. Therefore, in this beautiful verse, Krishna invites us to reconsider our objects of devotion in this world and by promising to accept our offerings of love, puts himself forward as the ideal object of devotion. In true egalitarian spirit, the verse also appears to indicate that the preeminent position of devotion renders utterly irrelevant the background or status of the devotee doing the offering. It may not seem like it, but this is an extraordinary affirmation of the potency of devotion; the idea that devotion supersedes everything else including birth, status, gender, caste and so on constitutes, in many ways, a radical departure from the more caste-conscious and gender specific mentality that prevails around India today and which finds religious expression in a number of ritually oriented literatures.

I’ve written a lot about the need for devotion but I haven’t really explained what genuine devotion is or who a genuine devotee is. I said earlier that the idea of devotion, as articulated in this context, transcends the more limited and less spiritual notion of piety or religiosity. Devotion or bhakti, in my tradition (Chaitanya Vaishnavism), is understood as constituting passionate attachment to the unmotivated and uninterrupted service of the Lord. This sentence is packed with meaning and there are a number of themes that we need to unpack.

By adopting the phrase ‘passionate attachment’, I am trying to articulate the idea that genuine devotion to Krishna properly entails adopting a course of conduct wherein one actively and physically serves God according to their capacity. Srila Prabhupada quite intentionally avoided translating the word bhakti as simply devotion; instead he opted for the expression ‘devotional service’. Prabhupada’s selection of words here was not arbitrary; he was revealing something quite profound about his understanding of what bhakti involves. Bhakti for Prabhupada and other Vaishnava teachers is not just about an emotive disposition towards Krishna; rather it involves actually engaging in his service by, for instance, reciting his name, serving his murti, remembering his divine activities (as they are narrated in the scriptures) and so on and so forth.

A proper devotee, then, engages in the service of Krishna by engaging in some form of devotional expression. Again, however, we can advance our understanding further by highlighting other prominent characteristics of pure devotion. Two characteristics of such devotion involve, in my view, the need for devotional service to be unmotivated and uninterrupted. The two terms appear to be self-explanatory but I still think its important to elucidate their exact relevance here.

More often than not, on the rare occasion that we do engage in some form of devotional expression, we do so with ulterior motives in mind. We’ll sit down with a rosary in our hands as we progress in our recitation of God’s name, we silently petition God, imploring him to assist us in myriad ways (for students, the most common is exam success). I don’t want to sound overly dismissive and unduly harsh but such devotional expression, as if it needed to be said, does not constitute proper devotional practice. Of course, we all experience problems and the fact that we even turn to God during such times is at least evidence of our belief and trust in God; in an age of growing disbelief, that is, in and of itself, commendable. But we must strive to improve the quality of our devotion by disentangling our devotional practice from any consideration bar attachment to the service of God. Unmotivated bhakti, therefore, means bhakti that is not performed with the view of achieving a certain material outcome.

 

Bhakti must also be uninterrupted. My decision to write about unmotivated bhakti first was purely intentional; in one sense, motivated bhakti can never be uninterrupted. The problem is, if we make our practice of devotion conditional on the attainment of a particular (material) goal then inevitably our practice will suffer in the long term; if we do attain our goal, we cease to practice our devotion with the same level of enthusiasm and fervor and if our devotional efforts appear unsuccessful, out of frustration we decide to retire our bhakti. Either way, our bhakti suffers.

Coming to think of it, uninterrupted bhakti can also mean something else. There are some traditions in Hinduism which view bhakti as a useful meditative exercise that can assist in the participant’s journey of self-discovery. According to these largely non-theistic traditions, upon self-realization, bhakti has no further utility in the life of the participant. This understanding of bhakti as a utility-enhancing tool that can be dispensed with as one chooses is anathema to the Vaishnava understanding of and emphasis on the enduring status of love and devotion in religious experience. This issue, of course, admits of a much greater degree of complexity and I intend to revisit this area in a future post.