Krishna Vishwaroopam image
Bhakti
The Bhagavata is among the most important texts on bhakti, presenting a fully developed teaching on bhakti that originated with the Bhagavad Gita. Bhakti is presented as a path of yoga, or “union with the divine”. Many of the bhakti teachings in the Bhāgavata are presented as yogic activities—meditating on the lila of Krishna; hearing and singing about Vishnu/Krishna; remembering, serving, and worshiping him; dedicating all of one’s actions to him—all are among nine activities of Bhakti Yoga taught in the Bhagavata. While classical yoga attempts to shut down the mind and senses, the Bhakti Yoga in the Bhāgavata teaches that the focus of the mind is transformed by filling the mind with thoughts of Krishna.
There are many didactic philosophical passages, but the lengthy narrative stories are also a teaching; the book describes one of the activities that lead to liberation (moksha) as listening to and reflecting on the stories of Bhagavan. Even Kapila, the Samkhya philosopher, teaches his mother that in order to reach liberation, she must have bhakti, jnana (wisdom), and vairagya(dispassion), with bhakti being the most important (3.25.18)
The Bhāgavata also teaches that bhakti is more important than caste, stating that even a Chandala who has deep faith and devotion is dearer to God than abrahmin without faith (III.33.7) While not completely dismissing the caste system, it does reject the superiority of the brahmin based solely on birth. In the Bhagavata, devotees of Krishna include those from lower castes: Prahlad, considered the greatest of devotees, is the son of a demon king and of ‘low birth’; the gopis are uneducated wives of herdsman, yet are very close to Krishna. The Bhāgavata held out the possibility of salvation through devotion (bhakti) regardless of caste or social status. The Bhāgavata is also critical of the acquisition, protection, and enjoyment of wealth, going as far as implying that only the poor can be true followers of bhakti. In one passage, Krishna says to Rukmini, “We are poor and we are always the favourites of poor persons (X.60.14).
Sa- mkhya
Surendranath Dasgupta describes the theistic Samhkhya taught by Kapila in the Bhagavata as the dominant philosophy in the text. In the Bhagavata, Kapila is described as an avatar of Vishnu, born into the house of Kardama in order to share the knowledge of self-realization and liberation. Kapila’s Samkhya is taught by him to his mother Devahuti in Book Three, and by Krishna to Uddhava in Book Eleven. Samkhya in the Bhagavata is presented somewhat differently than in other classical Samkhya texts. It describes Brahman, or Bhagavan, as creating all beings within his Self in latent form—then, on its own initiative, bringing itself into Maya and falling ” under the influence of its own power”. This is in contrast to classical Samkhya, where the impulse for creation is “inherent in primal nature”, or prakriti.
The treatment of Samkhya in the Bhagavata is changed by the text’s emphasis on devotion.] In Chapter Eleven, Krishna describes the world as an illusion, and the individual as dreaming, even while in the waking state. He gives Samhkhya and Yoga as the way of overcoming the dream, with the goal of Samhkhya as Bhagavan himself in the aspect of Krishna.