Devotion or Bhakti

What is devotion or how to do it actually or what one should do to please his God or Guru? This question may arise in the minds of the aspiring devotees of nowadays. The best way is to read & follow the life stories of the great devotees of our country which has always been blessed with them in the past at various times. It is said that devotion is nothing else than pure love or in other words we can say that devotion is the first step towards pure love with your beloved Lord!! According to our sacred scriptures, devotion has nine forms like shravanam (listening to the glories of Lord), kirtanam (singing the glories of Lord), smaranam (remembering the glories of Lord), pada-sevanam (doing service to the holy lotus feet of the Lord), archanam (doing worship of Lord), vandanam (prostrating before Lord), dasya (having relationship of servant & master with the Lord), sakhya (having relationship of a friend with the Lord), vatsalya (having relationship of child & parent with the Lord) & atma-nivedanam (offering your soul into the feet of Lord). These are called as Nava-vidha Bhakti in our holy scriptures and out of these Shravanam which has been given the first place in the series has been regarded as the very basic requirement to proceed for devotion!!  Listening continuously about the glories of the Lord would subsequently bring an urge to sing His glories in the devotee which is the next step as Kirtanam and like this the rest follows one after another & at the last in Atma-nivedanam which includes all the forms of devotion in it!! In the end the devotee surrenders even his soul & himself into the holy lotus feet of his Lord which is called as Atma-nivedanam.  Further, it can also be mentioned here that there are various great examples of devotion which are done with different relationships with the Lord. For example like for Dasya it is Hanuman whom we can remember whose immense devotion for Lord Sri Ram is well known!! For Sakhya it is Arjuna & Sudama who had this relationship of friendship with Lord Sri Krishna!! At one place I had read that some people used to find fault with Arjuna as he is restless, very emotional and had shown manyatimes some proudness also which was removed by the mercy of Lord Sri Krishna. But the acharyas  say that Arjuna may have many negative qualities but he had one great or say extra-ordinary quality which used to cover his all other negative qualities that is he knew nothing except Lord Sri Krishna!! His devotion for his Lord was so much that when he used to sleep, Sri Krishna’s holy name would emanate & echo from each & every pores of his body, such was his devotion & love for the Lord!! For Vatsalya we can see Surdas who had loved his Lord as Baby Krishna & he has written so many divine songs which sings about the divine past times of Gopala Krishna!! These bhajans have been written by him thousand of years ago but they seem to be fresh and enchant our minds with the divine leelas & bhakti of our Lord!! when the devotee establishes different types of relationships with his Lord depending upon their devotion like dasya, sakhya & vatsalya there is another relationship which is said to be topmost and in which all the aforesaid bhavs are merged which is called as Madhurya bhav which means pure love with your beloved Lord!! The love between Radha & Krishna or the Gopis of Vrindavan are the best examples of Madhurya!! The Rasa-Leela is the highest reward of this bhav where the Jiva & the Brahma merge with each other and there is no difference between them!! Once in Dwarka Rukmini & Satyabhama asked Lord Krishna that you always praise your gopis of vrindavan as we are nothing in front of them, now you will have to prove it. The Lord smiled as usual and then afterwards suddenly fell ill and complained of severe headache. All became very restless & busy in trying to cure him by calling all doctors one by one but nothing happened. At last everybody became confused and requested Him to tell the medicine for his headache. He said that there is only one medicine that is dust of the feet of his devotee & which has to be rubbed onto His head!! Hearing this everybody scared out of fear for going to hell if their feet-dust is offered to Him. Sri Krishna asked Rukmini, Satyabhama etc. give their feet-dust to Him but they couldn’t give out of fear!! All devotees including Saint Narad etc. from everywhere said a firm NO to the request of Lord! Then the Lord asked Narad to visit Vrindavan to go to the Gopis. Accordingly, Narad asked the Gopis for their feet-dust to which all of them said immediately "take as much as you want Narad." The rishi enquired as are they not feared of going to hell?? The Gopis replied so what?? Getting our Lord well is our first priority & when our Lord is not well what we will do by going to heaven, for the betterment of our Lord we are willing to go anywhere, even the hell!! This is called pure love & pure devotion!! Jai Govinda!!