[Advaita-l] 'Bhakti' in SrIvidyopAsanA

[Satish Arigela]

From: V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>


>The 'saubhAgyabhAskaraH' of Sri BhaskararAya is a commentary on the
>LalitAsahasranAma which forms the central text for the srIvidyOpaasana.

The LS is undoubtedly a very important text, but it is a later day development in the shrIkula.

Just observe some of the names and it will be clear.

Also do know that not all traditions which perform sAdhana of shrIvidyA mantra-s use the LS.

Only in the South and in some pockets of the North is the text in use.

It is un-doubtedly a text which brings in some bhakti elements because of its later origin, but you get the wrong message from it.

>He seems to advocate the thought that bhakti, intense love for
>Ishwara, Brahman, is the means to Immortality/liberation.

This is merely praise of bhakti and an exaggeration of that. If intense love for Ishvara did the trick and if bhAskararAya believed it completely, he would not have bothered himself with mastering the hundreds of mantra-s and spend lot of time and effort mastering the various mantra prayoga-s. Give it some thought

The ground reality again is the same here... where we once in a while get cases of people supposedly with your intense/love kind of thing using the shrIkula mantra-s or even the LS[though rarely -In all these years I am aware of only two genuine cases] with out proper dIkSha and they come running to various mantrin-s and upAsaka-s hoping for a fix.