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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
emotional aspect, madhurya, is rendered accessible to his devotees.
In sum, Radha, as the embodiment of bhakti, devotional love, becomes the supreme model for religious realization. In the conceptualization and performance of the dance-theatre forms of the bhakti movement, the male actor-devotees were encouraged and privileged to glorify sakti through the enactment of female impersonation and yet, devotionally inspired women who by their very nature are sakti swarupa, were deprived from participation in the artistic genres that the movement itself ardently sought to develop and mature. Female impersonation in traditional Indian dance-theatre :
Bhakti philosophy, according to certain sects, propagated the perception of Krishna as the only Male principle and a passionate amorous relationship with him as the ideal experience of divine bliss. In this sense, the proper attitude of an ideal devotee would be to assume the identity of the gopi in relation to Krishna as we have observed in several forms of performance mentioned above. Bhakti theologians built upon an already prevailing notion that the human body, regardless of its sex, contains both the male and the female principles defined as purusa and prakriti respectively, perceived not as opposing forces but rather as complementing each other. It would be imperative for a seeker of divine bliss that a balanced unity between the two principles is achieved. In the scholarship published so far, discussions are centered mostly around the inale devotee's transformation of the self- "identifying with the female" - as an ideal practice towards arousing passionate devotion to God. Dimock explains the notion of "identification with the female” in its religious dimension:
If one has an over-abundance of purusa in his system, . . . he has, so to speak, to raise the concentration of his prakriti to equal that of his purusa; it seems that to gain the equilibrium within the self, equal halves are needed to make the whole. Thus: “having abandoned his male body, he becomes the prakritiswarupa. Know therefore the swarupa of Radha; it can be known within the heart. . . . When one is purified, kama [erotic desire] no longer remains"
(1966:160-61).
Bhakti theology also maintained that the senses of the body were to be controlled and directed in positive ways. The methods of achieving this control resorted not to means of denial but rather, to modes of transformation; most troubling temptations of passion and desire were to be channelized in order to heighten one's devotion for God, that is, transforming kama, human desire, into prema, the selfless love for God.
"Worship is pleasing to Krishna only if the worshiper, like the gopi, has no thought of self. In such a case, the worshipper gets his reward from Krishna's pleasure; the bhakta's joy increases as Krishna's pleasure grows. This selfless attitude of love is prema. ... The classical example of prema is that of the gopis and especially of Radha. The gopis were willing to sacrifice their position in society, their homes and families, their chastity, in the extremity of their love
for Krishna. The gopis longed for Krishna, but their desire was a desire to Some Issues on the Gender Politics in the Bhakti Genre of Indian...
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