Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c10.s3.8

c10.s3.8

All this is in accord with the general trend of traditional piety and morality, but the theistic system brings in peculiar modifications. Morality, in this system, is recognised only as a means, and not as an end in itself. It is, therefore, not imperative nor indispensable, at least in a stage in which one attains the spirit of true devotion, necessarily involving a moral attitude; what is indispensable is divine grace, which no amount of morality or immorality can supersede. It is maintained that the fully emancipated cannot but be moral; even at a lower stage, one may dispense with morality if one is blessed with divine grace, which instantaneously brings salvation. If sin is a stain and morality is a process of cleansing, the attainment of divine grace (Prasāda) by self-surrender (Prapatti) is a much quicker process and does not necessarily presuppose moral training or purification. It should be noted in this connexion that sin being regarded as the effect of divine Māyā, human responsibility is reduced to the minimum; it is merely a fetter or an obscuration which the motiveless divine grace alone can remove in order to manifest itself in its blissful omnipotence; human sinfulness, therefore, is hardly an ethical problem. It follows that religious deeds *per se* are more important and more potent than moral acts. This point will become clear if we consider, for instance, one of the fundamental dogmas of the Bengal school, namely, the power of the blessed name¹. A profession of faith by a mere mention of the divine name is enough to efface all sins, somewhat in the manner of Christian death-bed absolution, even though the person affected is indifferent to morality. It is true that mere mechanical performance of ritual and observance of outward forms of morality, though acknowledged as necessary at a certain stage and up to a limit, are never taken to possess the highest efficacy, exclusive stress being laid on inward realisation of the deity in the individual consciousness; but it is also clear that the idea of divine grace ousts, if it does not negate, the moral idea or the categorically imperative necessity of morality. In a religious system, which believes in an all-exclusive and essentially emotional devotion to the absolute power of a personal god, it cannot be otherwise. Moral earnestness, like intellectual conviction, can never have its proper place in a religious attitude of emotional excess. The moral results of the devotional attitude are taken for granted, but morality is not the primary interest. It is believed that by his ecstatic devotion a man can rise above all activity and all moral obligation. All ethics becomes lost in religious rapture, and no act, except devotional act, counts.