Passages from "Meditation and Spiritual Life" - 1051 6th-June-2021
Satwik Joglekar
Passages from "Meditation and Spiritual Life" – 1051
PART III SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
Chapter 34 – FOOTPRINTS OF THE SAND OF TIME – 12
Saints of Maharshatra – 01
The saints of Maharashtra belong to two schools: the Vārakaris or mild devotees who include the great saints Jnāneshvar, Nāmdev, Eknāth and Tukārām; and the Dhārakaris or heroic devotees who include Samartha Rāmdās and his followers. The first school was based on the cult of Viththala, the chief Deity of Pandharpur in Maharashtra. The first and the greatest of these saints was Jnānesvar (or Jnāndev) who lived in the thirteenth century A.D. He and his brother Nivrttināth were trained in the way of Nātha yogis but in his writings Jnānesvar mingles Nātha tradition with Vedanta and it is this synthetic approach that became popular in Maharashtra.
Jnānesvar was the second son of his parents, Viththalpant and Rakhumābāi. His father had, after his marriage, renounced the world and sought sannyāsa from Rāmānanda, the great sage who was the fountain-head of bhakti movement in North India. Without knowing that Viththalpant was a householder, Rāmānanda admitted him into the holy sannyāsa order. But later on when he came to know the truth, he asked his disciple to go back home and lead a householder’s life. Viththalpant obeyed his guru, and three sons and a daughter were born to him in due course. But breaking the vow of sannyāsa was considered a great sin by the local Brahmins who excommunicated the family. It is said that both Viththalpant and his wife committed suicide orphaning the children Nivrttināth, Jnāndev, Sopān and Muktābai. But the children by their holy lives impressed the Brahmins so much that they were admitted back into their caste.
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SWAMI YATISWARANANDA – Meditation and Spiritual Life – Ramakrishna Math, Bangalore India. Fourth Edition. 1998 p: 606
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