[Advaita-l] Fwd: Devotional aspects of Goswami Tulsidas

[V Subrahmanian]

A lengthy post on this topic is available here with images:
https://groups.google.com/g/advaitin/c/Zm08WqY24xs

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Aug 8, 2022 at 1:01 PM
Subject: Devotional aspects of Goswami Tulsidas
To: Advaitin <advaitin at googlegroups.com>


FB post by Sri Divyasanu Pandeyji.

Goswami Sri Tulsidas Ji was a smarta Brahmana who without any
discrimination among Ganesha, Shiva, Devi, Vishnu and Surya, worshipped
Panchayatana and, his ishta was Sri Sitaramamurthy. This is evident from
his works.

He had no such insistence that "Vishnu is the only supreme (and others like
Ganapati, Shiva etc are not)" - as is often seen in Vaishnava sects of
Srivaishnava, Madhva, Ramanandi, Gaudiya etc. In light of the following
points, one should ask the vaishnava Acharyas of the Madhva, Srivaishnava
and other sects to decide whether Tulsidas ji was a smarta brahmana, just
like Adi Shankara, Appaydeekshita, Shyamashastri and Tyagaraja-

1- Shri Tulsidas ji Maharaj starts his works with offering prayers to
Ganesha and not with the praise of Vishvaksena. In his Vinayapatrika, he
has praised even Bhairava, but there is no separate stuti for Vishwaksena.

2- Sri Tulsidas ji has praised bhagavaan Shiva in many places with
adjectives like parabrahmaswaroopa, nirguna, nirvikalpa, nirakara,
pranavamoola, tureeya, goteeta, Ishvara etc. He has described Rama, his
ishtadeva, as Shiva's servant in vinayapatrika [दूसनरिपुसेवक... song 9], as
well as, devadeva, i.e., the god of all gods [song 9]. Madhvas, who
consider Shiva (Rudra) even below Vayudeva, and shrivaishnavas who who
consider Shiva to be Paramavaishnava, cannot agree to this description.

He has often referred to Shiva as Rudra which is same as the smarta
tradition of Adi Shankara and different from the opinion of shrivaishnavas
with respect to Rudra. He has described Shiva in Vinayapatrika as
sachchidananda, sarvajnya, yajnyesha, achyuta, vibhu, and what more to
state, even brahman (the supreme) which is not in accordance with the
Vaishnava opinion.

3- Sri Tulsidas ji has praised Shiva, in the 11th song as
विष्णुविधिवन्द्याचरणारविन्दम् which means that the feet of Shiva ji are
worshipped by Vishnu and Brahmaji. This is a different opinion from
Vaishnavacharyas.

4- Shri Tulsidasji Maharaj has worshipped Devi as Mahamoolamaya. He has
praised her as Vishwamoola [Vinayapatrika/song 15]. He has said all this,
not for Lakshmi, but for the Trishuladharini Mother of Ganesha and
Kartikeya. In Gita, bhagavaan has stated about his trigunatmika maaya with
respect to his incarnations as per अजोऽपि सन्नव्ययात्मा etc (bhagavadgeeta
4/6) and the same has been described by Adishankara in his bhashya as
vivartaroopa Mayashabalita Parabrahma. She is the same trigunatmika
prakriti, worshipped by tulasidasa. She is the Haimavati Uma of
kenOpanishat.

See the full post here:  https://groups.google.com/g/advaitin/c/Zm08WqY24xs