DEVOTION IN ŚAṄKARADEVA’S PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

Śaṅkaradeva, as an advocate of Neo Vaishnavism, assigned great importance to bhakti or devotion. Śaṅkaradeva had an immense urge to teach people that the part of devotion is the only road to purify the human mind and reform the society. Though he accepts all the paths that are recognized by the Gītā for liberation, yet outwardly Śaṅkaradeva’s path towards realization of Īśvara is devotion. Bhakti should not be limited by idol worship. Inner spiritual practice is an end in itself. It is both sādhanā as well as sādhya. In other words, in Śaṅkaradeva’s philosophy bhakti is considered both as means and end.Moreover, he emphasized on the concept of dāswabhāva as a co relation with bhakti. One can imazine himself as a bhakta. The bhakta through bhakti is trying to come out of his empirical level and tries to go to the transcendental level. So, he tries to show how through dāswabhāva the bhakta gets self transcendence. There is none but one whom we should worship. In Śaṅkaradeva’s philosophy Kṛṣṇa is regarded to be the only God and among nine forms of bhakti only Śravana and Kīrtana is accepted by him.It is also necessary to direct our mind set because one can never practice bhakti without the mind set of surrender. He believes that mind can be purified only by chanting the name of Krishna.Śaṅkaradeva’s intention was to bring a religion. Therefore, he regarded God as personal God.
This paper attempts to show that single-minded attention and utmost devotion is all what is needed for liberation in Śaṅkaradeva’s philosophy.