Page 160 - Wisdom Unfurled

have seen above we can describe these two, devotion and constant remembrance as twin attributes of the real lover of God, as one can not be really divorced from the other though it appears that constant remembrance arises first after goal clarity emerges and a loving attachment blossoms towards the dearest object of life. We will see briefly how devotion has been defined and treated in the scriptures for the sake of continuing the thread with the message of the Master on the subject.
Devotion is a very vast subject, a great ocean unfathomable and it has been dealt with extensively in the Vedas, Ithihasas and Puranas of the Hindu religion. The stream of devotion has been flowing without a break in this country maintained by the birth of ever so many saintly souls who have breathed literally love and devotion of the highest order as exemplified in the lives of the well-known azhwars of south India (devotees of Lord Vishnu), the first three of the twelve believed to have been born immediately after the dawn of Kali at the behest of the Lord for spreading love and devotion among the masses as the only sure and easy means for liberation in the dreadful Kali age. So is the case with the nayanmars (devotees of Lord Siva also of south India) and so many other poet saints of the dasa cult born in different strata of society with diverse backgrounds in the last millennium. It is seen that even the saints who have had the non-dual experience of the Impersonal Reality would like to assume duality if only for the sake of expressing their love and devotion to the Supreme Reality and even the praise of the Impersonal has been given a warm and rich emotional content (The Bhagavat Gita S.Radhakrishnan p 59).
For instance the great advaitic acharya Sankara is said to have composed hymns of great beauty, rich in meaning and imagery in praise of gods and goddesses with the very popular Baja Govindam hymn also attributed to him. Sankara himself is said to have established the six-fold schools of religious worship and recognizes the value of devotion as a preparation for gradual release (ibid., Radhakrishnan). The devotional hymns with rich poetic imagery, cadence and rhythm composed in the various languages of the masses by these exalted lovers and servants of God in His praise brought the esoteric truths of the Vedas and the puranas to the common man. Devotion and divinity have been kept alive in the hearts and minds of the ordinary masses essentially through such inspirational outpourings and the rich tradition of ritualistic worship in the temples. The seed of devotion has been laid in the hearts of men through the hearing and singing of the various hymns in praise of the Lord from childhood and this seems to continue even to this day at least in some households. The other major religions such as Christianity and Islam also give prime importance to a life of devotion and dedication to the Lord and in one sense we can not imagine religion without