Sankaradeva’s Religion: Where Knowledge and Devotion Goes Hand in Hand

The primary impression in the popular mind of the word “devotee” is a highly sentimental one. It is no doubt of someone who has surrendered all his powers of intellect—discriminative etc.—at the feet of his Lord and has given primacy to the feelings of his heart. If not of total surrender, the picture is one of a definite subordination of the intellect.

It is pretty interesting to observe how the Eka Sarana religion of Sankaradeva demolishes this stereotype. It may be argued that every religion of love and devotion has some knowledge component built into it but, perhaps in no other religion is the entire apparatus of devotion designed to sharpen discrimination and foster an understanding of the nature of entities as in the Eka Sarana faith of Sankaradeva. This is without doubt because of its base in the Bhagavata which has a conception of pure devotion that demands not the subordination of one’s intellect but, rather, the purification of it. The bhakti that is recommended here is not blind faith but a kind of Vedantic bhakti that is not only rooted in a solid understanding of the tattvas, the ontological categories, but also one that continually reaffirms and reinforces this knowledge by incorporating chunks of this philosophy into the literature of devotion.

Due to this plan of the Bhagavatic authors, the various songs and prayers, verses and translations[H1]  which form the huge corpus of the literature of Sankaradeva’s religion, all incorporate passages that are philosophical in character and which surely call for application of mind on the part of the devotee and the utilization of his intellectual powers—thinking hard, reasoning, etc. Bhakti here becomes also a (congenial) atmosphere for reflection and pondering on knotty problems. For beginners, it provides new knowledge.

The epistemic ideal of the religion of Sankaradeva is the supremely conscious personality—Krsna, who is the supreme object of all knowledge. Therefore understanding his nature and also the nature of the entities subservient to him must necessarily be an integral part of the experience of devotion.

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 [H1]the various means through which bhakti is operationalized have knowledge elements fed into them.