Non-sectarian Radha Krishna Devotion

Srila Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur, my grand guru, is a shin­ing exam­ple to me as I read his writ­ings and see how he dealt with the spir­i­tual issues of his day. He remains rel­e­vant and an inspi­ra­tion to me and other pro­gres­sive thinkers. I just re-read the open­ing pages to his Sri Krishna Samhita, writ­ten in 1880, the year he was ini­ti­ated by Bipin Bihari Goswami and the year my gurudev, Srila Lalita Prasad Thakur was born to Bhak­tivin­ode and his wife Bha­ga­vati Devi.

In the pref­ace, he says, “If one con­sid­ers his­tory and time accord­ing to rea­son and argu­ment, there will be great ben­e­fit for India. By this, one can also hope to make grad­ual advance­ment on the path towards the ulti­mate goal of life. If rea­son and argu­ment is com­bined with ancient beliefs, then all the accu­mu­lated moss of mis­con­cep­tions will be destroyed, and in due course of time the odor of infamy will be erad­i­cated from the peo­ple of India; then their knowl­edge will regain its health.”

Bhak­tivin­ode was a British col­lege edu­cated, Deputy Mag­is­trate in the Indian civil ser­vice under British rule. He was impressed with the British and West­ern thought in gen­eral. Yet he was most enam­ored with Sri Chai­tanya and devo­tion to Radha Krishna after pre­vi­ously dis­miss­ing devo­tional prac­tices as sim­ple, emo­tional reli­gion for the com­mon, une­d­u­cated per­son. Many of Bhaktivinode’s peers had also rejected the devo­tional path which they viewed as back­wards. In this book, Bhak­tivin­ode appeals to think­ing per­sons to recon­sider the Sri­mad Bha­ga­vatam, which teaches devo­tion to Krishna, in light of what he has to say.

Con­sid­er­ing “his­tory and time accord­ing to rea­son and argu­ment” means using the tools of mod­ern schol­arly research to date his­tor­i­cal events and the writ­ing of var­i­ous scrip­tures. He does this in the intro­duc­tion com­ing up with much more recent dat­ing than that accepted by those tak­ing a more lit­er­al­is­tic, fun­da­men­tal­ist approach. This is part of the post-modern, schol­arly, text crit­i­cal approach I also use.

Bhak­tivin­ode thought this would be good for India and for per­sonal spir­i­tual advance­ment. He wanted to com­bine a schol­arly, crit­i­cal approach to faith like pro­gres­sive Chris­tians have been so suc­cess­ful at doing. This is the type of edu­ca­tion I received in sem­i­nary and which I now apply to Radha Krishna devo­tion. There was resis­tance to this approach in Bhaktivinode’s day, and there is still resis­tance today, even in the West among per­sons who claim to be Bhaktivinode’s fol­low­ers. Bhak­tivin­ode and many of his peers felt tra­di­tional devo­tion needed to be sub­jected to intel­lec­tual scrutiny in order to free it from “mis­con­cep­tions” and make it accept­able to mod­ern, West­ern edu­cated per­sons. I feel the same way.

“Every­one has the right to dis­cuss spir­i­tual top­ics. Yet peo­ple are divided into three cat­e­gories accord­ing to their qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Those who do not pos­sess inde­pen­dent power of dis­crim­i­na­tion are in the first cat­e­gory and are called neo­phytes, or those with soft faith. They have no alter­na­tive to faith. If they do not accept what­ever the com­pil­ers of the scrip­tures write as the order of the Lord, then they fall down. They are qual­i­fied only for under­stand­ing the gross mean­ings of the sci­ence of Krishna; they have no qual­i­fi­ca­tion for under­stand­ing the sub­tle mean­ings. Until they grad­u­ally advance by good asso­ci­a­tion and instruc­tion, they should try to advance under the shel­ter of faith.” (p 2)

Unfor­tu­nately, this is the level of most devo­tional teach­ing and prac­tice today. Most devo­tees accept a lit­er­al­is­tic read­ing of scrip­ture and do not see the human hand(s) involved in writ­ing them as part of a devel­op­ing spir­i­tual tra­di­tion in order to meet the needs of their times and cir­cum­stances. They can­not think in any other way or their frag­ile faith will be destroyed.

“Those who have not yet suc­ceeded in con­nect­ing faith with argu­ment are sec­ond grade per­sons, or madhyama-adhikaris.” (pp 2–3) These are the per­sons who have some faith and intel­lec­tual insight but are not able to inte­grate the two. This is like inte­grat­ing the right and left brains. Such per­sons are plagued by doubts and strug­gle greatly with their faith.

“And those who are expert in con­nect­ing these two are per­fect in all respects. They are able to attain per­fec­tion by uti­liz­ing mate­r­ial resources in their inde­pen­dent endeav­ors. They are called top­most per­sons, or uttama-adhikaris.” (p 3)

When one is able to become a whole, inte­grated per­son, uti­liz­ing faith and rea­son, right and left brain, body, mind, spirit, one becomes per­fect. One is then able to see things rightly. It is pos­si­ble to thor­oughly exam­ine and ana­lyze one’s faith, remove out dated beliefs and prac­tices, and then put it back together again in a man­ner that is even more per­fect. This is what Bhak­tivin­ode and I have done and are call­ing for oth­ers to attempt.

“But the rules and reg­u­la­tions received through dis­ci­plic suc­ces­sion regard­ing the goal and the method of achiev­ing it are changed in due course of time accord­ing to the men­tal­ity and locale of the peo­ple. A rule that is fol­lowed by one soci­ety is not nec­es­sar­ily accepted in another soci­ety. That is why one com­mu­nity is dif­fer­ent from another…Amongst uttama-adhikaris…there is no trace of sec­tar­i­an­ism.” (p 4)

Bhak­tivin­ode saw devo­tion as a pro­gres­sive, process that needed to be adapted to time and cir­cum­stances. He did not have a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all men­tal­ity. Truth is not sta­tic. It is dynamic. There is not one truth, but many truths. There is not one way, but many ways. He was a non-sectarian, uni­ver­sal­ist who saw things plu­ral­is­ti­cally. There­fore, I have founded the Uni­ver­sal­ist Church of Radha Krishna to carry on these teach­ings of Bhak­tivin­ode in the West.

He con­tin­ues, “it should be under­stood that both asslike and swan­like peo­ple are found amongst the kanistha-adhikaris and madhyama-adhikaris. I do not expect that asslike peo­ple will accept this book with respect. If neo­phytes and madhyama-adhikaris become com­pletely indif­fer­ent in regard to the con­tra­dic­tions found in var­i­ous prac­tices and try to advance fur­ther, then they become swan­like per­sons. Then they are our respectable and dear friends…But swan­like Vaish­navas are non­sec­tar­ian and, there­fore, rare.” (p 6)

My writ­ings and prac­tices have also met with dis­re­spect from the asslike devo­tees who can­not under­stand my mes­sage and reject it because it is dif­fer­ent from what they are used to. If we could set aside our sec­tar­ian dif­fer­ences and focus on the com­mon ground which unites us, we could all be friends and spir­i­tu­ally advance together. I have not found many of such per­sons to work with and do not expect to have large num­bers of fol­low­ers, which is not even desir­able. Instead, I wel­come a few sin­cere souls to study with me.

“The reli­gious prin­ci­ples taught by Mohammed and Jesus Christ are sim­i­lar to the reli­gious prin­ci­ples taught by Vaish­nava sects.” (p This is why I have been attracted to Sufism and Chris­tian­ity and incor­po­rate many Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples into the teach­ings and prac­tices of the Uni­ver­sal­ist Church of Radha Krishna.

“This is a sci­en­tific con­sid­er­a­tion of truths regard­ing reli­gious prin­ci­ples. Those who con­sider their own reli­gious prin­ci­ples as real dharma and oth­ers reli­gious prin­ci­ples as irre­li­gion or sub­re­li­gion are unable to ascer­tain the truth due to being influ­enced by prej­u­dice. Actu­ally reli­gious prin­ci­ples fol­lowed by peo­ple in gen­eral are dif­fer­ent only due to the dif­fer­ent qual­i­fi­ca­tions of the prac­ti­tion­ers, but the con­sti­tu­tional reli­gious prin­ci­ples of all liv­ing enti­ties are one. It is not proper for swan­like per­sons to reject the reli­gious prin­ci­ples that peo­ple in gen­eral fol­low accord­ing to their sit­u­a­tion. There­fore, with due respect to the reli­gious prin­ci­ples fol­lowed by peo­ple in gen­eral, we will now dis­cuss the liv­ing enti­ties’ con­sti­tu­tional reli
gious prin­ci­ples. Satvata-dharma, or non­sec­tar­ian Vaishnava-dharma, is the liv­ing enti­ties con­sti­tu­tional, or eter­nal, reli­gious prin­ci­ples.” (Ibid.)

Love is the answer. All who love God, cre­ation and all beings are my sis­ters and broth­ers. I have worked ecu­meni­cally with per­sons from many Chris­t­ian tra­di­tions as well as with per­sons of many other faiths. We have all grown and ben­e­fited by our inter­ac­tions. It is unfor­tu­nate that most devo­tees of Radha Krishna seem to be of a sec­tar­ian nature and unwill­ing to work coop­er­a­tively for the good of all. We need to learn to see our­selves as part of God-dess’ fam­ily as broth­ers and sis­ters in the human fam­ily and as part of cre­ation. This will solve all of our prob­lems through mutual coop­er­a­tion. I hope you will be part of the solution.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 17th, 2006 at 11:54 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.