The Story of Narada and the Supremacy of Bhakti

Shrimad Bhagavata, Swami Tapasyananda (T) · Higher Ethics and Devotion Series · 12 pages

Selections from Swami Tapasyānanda's Shrimad Bhāgavata: The Holy Book of God, Vol. 1 of 4, Madras: Śrī Ramakrishna Math, 1980, with the Sanskrit and translation. Twelve pages with a contents page. It is the narrative counterpart to the Narada Bhakti Sutra held in batch 1 of this section, which gives Narada's aphorisms without the story behind them.

The sequence opens with Narada diagnosing the cause of Vyasa's unrest — a scene that works as a frame for everything after it, since the diagnosis is that Vyasa has composed a great deal and left out the one thing needful. From this the supremacy of bhakti is argued, and the argument is made to rest on Narada's own biography rather than on doctrine. His antecedents are given, then a section on the glory of karma blended with bhakti, and then the after-story: the divine vision he received and what followed it, ending with his transformation. Presenting the case this way — a teacher establishing his authority by recounting how he came by it, rather than by assertion — is what distinguishes this file from the sutra it accompanies. A reader wanting the doctrine in its compressed form will find it there; a reader wanting to know why Narada is the one who states it will find that here, and the two files are best read together.

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