Chapter Five: Avatāra Doctrine and Rama Worship
For a surrendered devotee, no work remains apart from serving Bhagavan. The devotee’s entire life is spent in his worship. For this purpose, Vaishnava scriptures divide the day into five periods, called the pañca-kāla:
- Approach (abhigamana): turning toward Bhagavan in mind, speech, and action through repetition, meditation, and worship.
- Preparation (upādāna): collecting flowers, water for offering, food offerings, and other materials for worship.
- Sacrifice or worship (ijyā): formally worshipping Bhagavan according to the rules of the Agama scriptures.
- Study (adhyāya): studying Vaishnava texts.
- Union (yoga): entering a particular devotional relationship with Bhagavan and dwelling continuously in that state.
Vaishnava worship has countless divisions and subdivisions. On this basis, Vaishnavas are grouped into five principal types: yati, ekāntin, vaikhānasa, karma-sātvata, and śikhin.1
This discussion, however, is moving beyond our immediate subject. The point is simply that from its beginning, the discipline of Rama-bhakti centred upon sacred propriety. Servitude was its principal disposition, and surrender its sole means.
In discussing the origin of Rama-bhakti, we observed that it first appears in seed form among the Alvar devotees. In theological terms, the Narayana of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa descended as Rama and Lakshmi as Sita.2 Tulsidas describes Sita as the source from whom innumerable Umas, Ramas, and Brahmanis arise, and as the primordial Power. Yet Sita is also understood as an avatāra of Mahalakshmi; the Sri Sampradaya accordingly worships Mahavishnu and Mahalakshmi together.
The Alvars remembered their chosen Lord under the names Narayana, Vishnu, Hari, Vasudeva, Rama, and others. Kulasekhara Alvar prayed: “Even if a husband rejects his faithful wife before everyone, she cannot abandon him. In the same way, however harshly you cast me away, I cannot even think of leaving your two feet for some other refuge. You may not so much as raise your eyes toward me, but, Rama, I depend upon you alone and upon your grace alone—”