Knowledge Traditions and Devotion Traditions

“5Yet hazardous and slow is the path to the Unrevealed, difficult for physical creatures to tread. 6But they for whom I am the supreme goal, who do all work renouncing self for me and meditate on me with single-hearted devotion, 7these I will swiftly rescue from the fragment's cycle of birth and death, for their consciousness has entered into me.”

-Bhagavad Gita (Easwaran Translation), Chapter 12

After the weekend lectures with Bryant and our class on Wednesday, I’ve begun to appreciate the significance of the Bhagavad Gita within the context of Hindu religion. The Gita is first to introduce Bhakti yoga, which is essentially a pathway of devotion that leads to the Ultimate Reality, that being Krishna. Often, like in this quotation above, the way of knowledge (Jnana yoga) is presented along with the way of devotion (Bhakti yoga), and both are affirmed as pathways to Krishna. However, Krishna is beginning to emphasize the superiority of Bhakti yoga over Jnana yoga (Chapter 12.8-12), which seems arbitrary if one reads the Gita with no context. But it is important to remember that spiritual life, as it was during the writing of the Mahabharata, was essentially restricted to the Brahmin caste that studied and practiced Vedanta traditions. The Gita gives everyone, not just one caste, an opportunity to not only pursue a spiritual life, but to actually reach its goal: Krishna.

This transition from a focus on knowledge to a focus on love and devotion has, I think, an interesting parallel in western culture. Certain readings of Plato’s dialogues lead to a complex metaphysical system which also encourages the pursuit of an ultimate reality or truth: The Good. Later Platonist traditions even talked about experiencing unification with The Good or the Divine in a manner very similar to some of the language in the Gita. But, once again, the path towards the higher, more ultimate reality was a difficult one that required strict adherence to and abstinence from certain practices. Interestingly enough, a few hundred years after Platonism had become well established, a new tradition began to arise that preached a doctrine of love and devotion as the keys to supreme truth or ultimate reality. This religion was founded by the followers of Jesus Christ, who emphasized the importance of love and the idea that anyone could partake in communion with God. Though often not made explicit, in its early years Christianity borrowed many principles and ways of thinking from Platonism, in a similar way that the Gita references Vedanta traditions and practices.

So what is it about “knowledge traditions” that prepares the way for “devotion traditions?” Is it fair to make any causal links between the two, or are there too many factors in a society to make a hard-and-fast connection between these two kinds of traditions?