Book Review - Bhagavad Bhakti (True Devotion)

Bhagavad Bhakti contains the transcripts translated into English of all eight discourses in their entirety and sequential order, complete with all the scriptural quotations given by Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj.  As each discourse is complete within itself, Bhagavad Bhakti is compelling reading as a series and also as a collection of individual discourses.

Shree Maharajji delivered a series of discourses elaborating on a devotional couplet:

hari anurāg ho yā govind rādhe,

jaga virāga ho, ho mana se batā de

In the elaborate explanation of this couplet, Shree Maharajji clarifies the nature of attachment and detachment. He discusses the importance of 'desire' in a devotees journey towards God, clarifying that desire for God is in fact devotion, and this can flourish when one firmly decides that there is no true happiness in this world.   He further says, "We have to replace our desires for the world with desires for God.  It is that simple.  This is what is called true devotion or bhakti.  In this practice, desires remain.  You don't have to eliminate desires, and in any case you are incapable of eliminating desires even if you tired for millions of years."

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Detachment

jaga mahañ sukha dukha dou nahiṅ, asa ura dhari le jñān
sukha māne dukha milata hai, sukha na jagat mahañ mān

Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj explains the true meaning of the word ‘detachment' and attachment’.  Most often the word ‘attachment’ is associated with love.  But this is not the complete meaning of the word.  Attachment means absorption of the mind.  This absorption of the mind can either be through love or even through hate.  Thus, whether it is through feelings of love or feelings of hate, or in any other way, the absorption of the mind in all cases is referred to as attachment.  When there is neither attachment through love nor attachment through hate that state is referred to as detachment or Non-attachment.

Ved Vyas ji says:

kāmaṁ krodhaṁ bhayaṁ snehamaikyaṁ sauhṛidameva cha
nityaṁ harau vidadhato yānti tanmayatāṁ hi te

“Whether the mind is attached to God through lust, anger, fear, love or through any other emotion, the result is attainment of God.”

Saint Kabir said:

kabirā khaṛā bajāra meṅ, sabakī māṅge khaira
nā kāhū soṇ dostī, nā kāhū soṅ baira

Detachment is living in the hustle and bustle of the world without feelings of friendship or enmity towards anyone.

Once you detach your mind from the material world, only then you can think of attaching it to God. We have only one mind and there are two areas where it can be attached-either in this material world or in God. There is no third realm where it can get attached. If our mind is engrossed in the thoughts of this material world, how it can love God?

The mind is attached to the world, because it is the firm decision of the intellect that there is definitely happiness in the material world.  In order to detach it, our intellect should make a resolution in every possible way and accept the fact that there is neither true happiness nor sorrow in the world.  When you think that worldly objects are the source of happiness, then, in their absence, you will feel sad.  Accept this fact that there is no real happiness in the world.