The Narada Bhakti Sutra · Part 3: The Means

Narada begins with great humility. The means, he tells us, were sung long ago by the masters, and he is only carrying their song forward. Then he sets down the first two means, which to this day are the test of every seeker. First, the giving up of sense-objects, the mind drawing back from the pleasures of the senses. Second, the giving up of company, letting go of whatever drags the mind downward. After this the third sutra is plainer still: let no crack open in your worship, let the current run on without stopping. And the fourth: even while you live in the middle of the world, never let the hearing and the singing of the Lord’s qualities slip from your hands.

Now Narada takes a turn that stands all of practice on its head. The true cause, he says, is grace. Bhakti comes, chiefly, through the grace of the great souls, or from a single trace of the Lord’s grace. Then he opens the glory of the company of great souls. That company is rare, it cannot be reached by one’s own strength, and once it is found it never goes to waste. And it too is found only by the grace of that same Lord. After this comes the line that shines brightest in the whole part: between that Lord and his devotee there is no difference at all. And so Narada says it twice, for emphasis: let that satsang be pursued, let that alone be pursued.

Just as Narada holds satsang in the highest honor, he tells you to give up bad company entirely. And he counts out the reasons too, in one long chain. Bad company wakes desire, then anger, then delusion, then the breaking of memory, then the ruin of the intellect, and at the end the ruin of everything. This is the full order of a fall. Then he draws a beautiful picture: the faults that at first seem small and in check, like ripples, become an ocean once they meet bad company. Even a small stir of the mind swells into a sea in the wrong company.

Now Narada asks a question twice, as if to shake the seeker awake: who crosses this maya, who crosses it? And he answers it himself. The one who crosses is the one who gives up his attachments, who serves a truly great soul, and who becomes free of possessiveness. Then he draws the full portrait of that one who crosses. He keeps to a solitary place, he tears up the bondage of the world by its roots, he passes beyond the three gunas, and he lets go even of his worry over gain and safekeeping. The craving for the fruit of action falls away, action itself is renounced, and then he rises above the pairs of opposites. Renouncing even the Vedas, he wins one single unbroken love, since the Vedas too were in the end only a means, and once the goal has come, why keep holding on to the means. And at the last, that same line again, twice over: he crosses, he crosses, and he carries all the worlds across with him.