I listened to a very interesting but hilarious video in Tamil where the speaker [Brahmin] talks about the need of bhakti [devotion] to sail the ocean of birth [samsara sagaram].  But as dust covers the mirror our buddhi is covered by one scum called affection [paasam in Tamil].  To remove that scum which makes us slip down in the bathroom is the bleaching powder called the Name of God.  We should use it to sail through this Samsara Sagaram through bhakti viz., sailing in another Ocean  ‘de + Ocean ‘ viz., devotion in another ship called ‘worSHIP’.

But while sailing on the ocean of samsara we get trapped in three ships: RelationSHIP; friendSHIP after marriage in partnerSHIP.  But he fails to mention another important SHIP in bhakti viz., sat-sangh or fellowSHIP.  

At the end he shared humorously about three kinds of foods Uttamam [best one] madhyamam [middle] and adamam [worst]

Uttamam laddham chavi = ball [or laddu] shaped viz., idli; madhyamam chakkaram  =round shaped viz., dosa and adamam lavana vrusham [worst] is made out of salt viz. Uppuma [Uppa + maa, Uppu in Tamil means salt].  But worse than the adamam is ‘Adai’ which is the favourite tiffen of most of the Brahmins [we can call it dhal dosa]. All the audience listening enjoyed his oratory skill and the humour along with it.  But in such skill of oratory and humour most of us miss one important point about bhakti.

For me affection [pasam in Tamil viz., scum] is not ignorance but the very soul of human life.  And bhakti helps us to understand its value and serve others better but not to remove the ‘passam’ [affection]  bleached by the NAME of God.  it is a clever pun on words using three ships as ‘relationSHIP’, ‘friendSHIP’ and ‘partnerSHIP].  Such a view on bhakti alone led to the criticism that it failed to carryover social responsibility¹ and created some kind of stoic indifference and spiritual ecstasy  to live in another world in worshipping God to sail through the Ocean of birth which is famously stated as ‘Samsaram Sagaram dukham’ = The sorrowful ocean of birth and death viz., life on this earth.

However there are so many important references which clearly point out that serving fellow human beings is equal to serving God viz., narki seva Narayan ki seva. Thirumular highlights this kind of seva in his famous song in Thirumandiram: ‘One who serves God in temple is not serving humanity; but by serving fellow human beings one serves God.’²  ‘Those who cannot love [and serve] those whom he sees cannot love and serve God’ , says Muktiveda [Bible].  The highlight of Ramzan is to take care of poor and needy viz., showing one’s affection, care, concern and compassion of fellow human beings through charity.  Muslims fast for 30 days not only to humble themselves before God, but to feel the need of the poor and downtrodden.  That is why this festival is also called in Tamil as ‘Iihai Thirunal’ viz., ‘The Holy day of Charity’, by giving a lot in charity to the poor and needy.  We need not talk about Buddhism which is based on ‘compassion’ Sikhism which insists on giving free food for anyone visiting Gurudhwara that too 24 x 7.

As charity begins at home, we cannot serve others neglecting our family and relatives in the name of serving God.  Above all there is no point remaining as an ANGEL in the street and DEVIL in the house.  Charity begins at home.

Even the audience who listen to such discourses knows this very well.  But when they clap and laugh while a speaker talks using oratory skill with a pun of words added with humour, they also enjoy it as part of religious entertainment not literally following the advice.  After listening to such talk, they have to return back to their home to show their ‘Pasam’ viz., affection to their family members who receive food in the form of ‘Prasad[m]’, which many will take back to their home to share with their family members.

Interestingly at the end the speaker ends with a hilarious talk about food, particularly his hate for Uppuma [Suji Poha] by asking ‘who invented it’.  He also mentions that his throat got affected because of eating Uppuma in so many bhajan mutts.  That’s why he completely banned it in his Bhajan Mutt. Though he talked about removing the ‘avidya’ of affection, still he cannot give up his ‘pasam’ for food and hate for Uppuma.  I say this not to criticise him but to point out that while listening to such talk the audience also enjoys mostly the oratory skill and humour in such talk.  This is the ART OF SPEAKING. 

For example, in the early part of the talk criticising having ‘Pasam’ [affection] for children he said, ‘they even debate which one is greater, “son” or “daughter”. But both of them remain Yama.  Son is a permanent Yama whereas [married] daughter is a visiting Yama.’  Everyone enjoyed his joke and laughed.  In real life they all know, including the speaker that every parent wants to have if not both a son and daughter, at least a son to help them to cross the hell called ‘put’.  That’s why a son is called ‘Putra’ which means put+tharati =one who helps to cross.³  Of course, a son after his marriage with children, requires and many times demands the service of his parents, particularly mother as a ‘caretaker’ for his children.  Once they are grown up, then he happily sends them away to a ‘Care home’.  In many cases it is the daughter, even after her marriage, who has real concern for her parents and tries to help her best.  This being the case, all his hilarious talk about ‘pasam’ [affection] and other things are taken only as a part of entertainment but not seriously.    

Most of the modern gurus and religious orators pay attention about commodification of their skill to promote their image as another business.  Of course there are exceptions to this common rule.  But in this age of social media, particularly Youtube channels where anyone can make such videos to earn extra income.  And while we listen to them, we too enjoy the humour in it rather than probing the truth in such talks.  About this writing about Guru English Aravamudan says:

…Gurus are fashionable because they are selling previously marginalized postcolonialism as an exotic commodity, but in a world where almost everything is commodified to a lesser or greater degree, the commodity can never be understood in its purely reductive sense as a potential use-value and its delirious surplus.  Rather, the commodity becomes a vehicle that carries contingent values along with commercial ones, and multiple valuing audiences derive different cultural and critical relationships in addition to participating in the commercial aspects made available or inaccessible depending on the price tag.  Disciples are increasingly prone to guru hopping, a practice that suggests market-oriented practices and the benefits of modularity and interchangeability.— Srinivas Aravamudan, Guru English: South Asian Religion in a Cosmopolitan Language, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006, p. 268

Notes

1.      Regarding the failure of social responsibility particularly in bringing ‘social justice’ now a slogan of several [or all] political parties in India, particularly in Tamil Nadu, various scholars have written extensively about it.  It would be a separate topic to discuss and read all that information.  But I am not going to share them here.  However I collected so much information from various books for my own personal needs and I am happy to share them in another post under ‘Bhakti and Social Responsibility’. However I would like to quote from Rambachan which almost echoes other scholarly view:

The bhakti movements, however, failed to effect widespread changes in the beliefs and institutions of orthodox Hinduism.  Many reasons explain this failure.  Equality was an ideal of the religious and not the secular sphere.  While criticizing certain social practices, the movements offered no alternative program of social and economic reorganization, never, in fact, building the organizations to carry out positive social programs….Most of the sects fostered an otherworldly attitude toward life.  Heimsath sees this as a result of their emphasis on mysticism:

But it was not the primacy of spiritual concerns alone that caused the bhakti movements to fail in the transformation of social life; religious movements have been known to overturn social structures.  Most bhakti sects, like other Hindu religious movements, leaned towards mysticism, as a method of spiritual revelation, and this often encouraged a drawing away from worldly concerns.  Individual salvation, not the salvation of society or the group, was the reason for and the result of the religious quest through mysticism. (C.H.Heimsath, Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964], p.37]— Anantanand Rambachan, The Limits of Scripture:Vivekananda’s Reinterpretation of the Vedas, Sri Satguru Publications A Division of Indian Books Centre, Delhi., 1995, p.12

Interestingly it is important to note that this is what happened in Christendom also. About this Bishop New Begin says:

Those who seek for a secular reinterpretation of the gospel are apt to regard pietism as one of the enemies. But the rise of pietism was surely a tremendously important element in the process by which the way was prepared for the idea of a secular society. Pietism broke with the conception of the corpus Christianum.  It made a distinction between membership in the ‘sacral’ society of Christendom and a living personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  If thereby laid the foundations both for the modern missionary movement, and for the development of all kinds of Christian social action.  At its best, it nurtured men and women in whom a deep personal religion issued in an active involvement in all kinds of public responsibility. At present pietism is often identified with a kind of religion which limits Christian obedience to a very narrow range of personal and domestic relationships, and is blind to the ethical issues raised by the new possibilities of human central over great areas of experience which were previously outside the reach such control.— Bishop New Begin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, ###

2.. படமாடக் கோயில் பரமற்கு ஒன்று ஈயில்

நடமாடக்கோயில் நம்பர்க்கு அங்கு ஆகா

நடமாடக்கோயில் நம்பர்க்கு ஒன்று ஈயின்

படமாடக் கோயில் பரமற்கு அது ஆமே.—பாடல், 1857, ப. 1082

ஓவியம் போன்று அமைந்த மாடங்களையுடைய கோயில்களில் உள்ள இறைவனுக்கு ஏதேனும் படையல் செய்தால், நடமாடும் கோயிலாக விளங்கும் சிவனடியார்க்கு வந்து சேரா.  ஆனால் நடமாடும் கோயிலாய் விளங்கும் சிவனடியார்க்கு ஏதேனும் ஒன்றைத் தந்தால், அது மாடக் கோயிலில் உள்ள இறைவனுக்கு மன நிறைவை அளிக்கும்.—ப. 1

3..        The belief that a son saves or rescues (trati) his father is expressed in etymologies, often far-fetched, of putra, the Sanskrit term for son.  In this context the son rescues the father not from death but from evil worlds in which he may end up after death.  It is already hinted at in the transmission (sampratti) passage of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (1.5.17): “Whatever wrong has been done by him, his son frees him from all that.  Therefore, he is called putra (‘son’).”  Later literature takes the term putra to be a compound word made of put and traa (“to rescue”).  Put is said to be the name of a hell, although the term does not occur outside this context.  A son (putra) receives his name, therefore, because he saves his father from the Put hell.⁵²—082 Patrick Olivelle, The Asrama system  The History and Hermeneutics of a Religious Institution , New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993,

p.46

52…Yaska in Nirukta, (2.11) gives two possible etymologies: putrah puru traayate niparanaad vaa  pun narakam tatas traayata iti vaa—”a son is so called because he rescues often by offering oblations to the manes, or because he rescues from the hell called Put.”—ibid., p.46