Narada Bhakti Sutras E-Book

Swami Vivekananda

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 50

Beschreibung

The Narada Bhakti Sutras are 84 aphorisms (short doctrines) on the love of God (bhakti) attributed to Narada, a sage from Hindu mythology, and considered a classic of bhakti literature. Swami Vivekananda wrote a free translation of these sutras and gave a lecture on them to a small group of students on the "Thousand Islands" in the St. Lawrence River in New York State. His disciple Edward Sturdy also translated the sutras with the help of Vivekananda and wrote a commentary on them that clearly bears his signature. The Narada Bhakti Sutras describe the still current way to love God, which exists in all religions.

Leseprobe

Contents

Introduction

Vivekananda: Narada Bhakti Sutras

Edward T. Sturdy: Narada Sutra or Inquiry into Love (Bhakti)

Vivekananda: Lecture on Narada Bhakti Sutras in Thousand Island Park

Introduction

Sutras are guides, aphorisms, short instructive sentences. The Narada Bhakti Sutras contains 84 such aphorisms about the love of God, the Bhakti-marga (path of love of God) or Bhakti-Yoga, which is one of the four yoga paths in India, along with Karma-Yoga (the yoga of action), Jnana-Yoga (the yoga of knowledge) and Raja-Yoga (the classical, royal yoga). They are considered a standard work, to which there are many translations from Sanskrit into English and commentaries.

Narada, to whom the Bhakti Sutras are attributed, is a sage from Indian mythology, known in the Hindu tradition as a traveling musician and storyteller. He delivers messages and enlightening wisdom to the sages and gods, traveling to distant worlds and realms. Often depicted with a vina and a khartal, he is considered a master of ancient musical instruments and glorifies Vishnu with his devotional songs. He is considered to be one of the sons created by the spirit of Brahma, the creator god, or, according to another tradition, the son of the sage Kashyapa. According to the Bhagavata Purana, he is descended from the mind of Hari (Vishnu). He appears in a number of Hindu texts, especially in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana as well as in narratives of the Puranas.1

A chronological classification for the origin of Narada’s sutras cannot be determined. The story of their origin is told by Swami Sivananda in the introduction to his translation: “One day Narada went to the Ashram [of Vyasa] in the course of his wanderings. Sri Vyasa welcomed the Rishi with due rites and said, ‘Man seeks freedom, etc. But without devotion it is dry. Devotion is the only way for attaining salvation. All the others have importance only in so far as they are auxiliary to it. I humbly ask you to explain to me the virtue of devotion.’”2

Narada then explained bhakti in the form of these 84 sutras.

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), the famous disciple of Ramakrishna who brought all four kinds of yoga and Vedanta, the teaching of non-duality, to the West, was in London in the fall of 1895, where he wanted to establish a Vedanta center. He was assisted by Edward Toronto Sturdy (1860-1957), a former theosophist who had spent some time in India and became his devoted disciple. Vivekananda, in turn, helped him with his study and translation of the Narada Bhakti Sutras from Sanskrit and also with a commentary on them that clearly bears Vivekananda’s signature. Sturdy published this work in 1896 under the title “Narada Sutra: An Inquiry into Love.” This book contains a general introduction and an article on Vivekananda in the appendix, which have not been included here.

In addition, a freer translation of the Narada Bhakti Sutras by Vivekananda has survived in his Complete Works, which I have included. However, some verses are missing.

In the summer of 1895, Vivekananda and a small group of students spent several weeks in Thousand Island Park, a village on Wellesley Island, one of the largest islands in the Thousand Island group on the St. Lawrence River in New York State, where he gave daily classes. His lecture on June 24 was on the Narada Bhakti Sutras. Like the other lectures, it was also transcribed.

The Narada Bhakti Sutras are still current. The same statements about the love to God are found in all religions, including Christianity. God is love – this is said everywhere. As love, God, whether personal or impersonal, can be understood and experienced by all.

Gabriele Ebert

1 s. https://www.vyasaonline.com/encyclopedia/narada/ (22.7.2023)

2 Swami Sivananda: Narada Bhakit Sutras, Uttarakhand, 2008, p. 7: https://gurudevsivananda.org/Narada_Bhakti_Sutras.pdf (22.7.2023)

Vivekananda: Narada Bhakti Sutras

(A free translation by Swami Vivekananda; Complete Works VI3)

Chapter I

1. Bhakti is intense love for God.

2. It is the nectar of love;

3. Getting which man becomes perfect, immortal, and satisfied for ever;

4. Getting which man desires no more, does not become jealous of anything, does not take pleasure in vanities:

5. Knowing which man becomes filled with spirituality, becomes calm, and finds pleasure only in God.

6. It cannot be used to fill any desire, itself being the check to all desires.

7. Sannyasa is giving up both the popular and the scriptural forms of worship.

8. The Bhakti-Sannyasin is the one whose whole soul goes unto God, and whatever militates against love to God, he rejects.

9. Giving up all other refuge, he takes refuge in God.

10. Scriptures are to be followed as long as one's life has not become firm;

11. Or else there is danger of doing evil in the name of liberty.

12. When love becomes established, even social forms are given up, except those which are necessary for the preservation of life.

13. There have been many definitions of love, but Narada gives these as the signs of love: When all thoughts, all words, and all deeds are given up unto the Lord, and the least forgetfulness of God makes one intensely miserable, then love has begun.

14. As the Gopis had it –

15. Because, although worshipping God as their lover, they never forgot his God-nature;

16. Otherwise they would have committed the sin of unchastity.

17. This is the highest form of love, because there is no desire of reciprocity, which desire is in all human love.

Chapter II

1. Bhakti is greater than Karma, greater than Jnana, greater than Yoga (Raja-Yoga), because Bhakti itself is its result, because Bhakti is both the means and the end (fruit).

2. As a man cannot satisfy his hunger by simple knowledge or sight of food, so a man cannot be satisfied by the knowledge or even the perception of God until love comes; therefore love is the highest.

Chapter III