Ethical Issues of Divine Love in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism

Abstract

The extreme form of aesthetico-erotic emotionalism of prema-bhakti or prīti, divine love of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism has serious ethical implications. This paper touching upon the following perspectives has argued that, in the ultimate analysis, the issue of sexual immorality involved in the erotic imageries etc. of the nitya-līlā—the play of divine amour can only be settled by referring to its underlying metaphysical and theological postulations. The ethical issues of divine love being examined are with reference to (1) sexual immorality as a Medieval syndrome; (2) Kāma in Caturvarga-Trivarga discourse; (3) religious language, symbolic and nonsymbolic discourse; (4) amorality or supra-morality of divine amour; (5) Prema is the sublimation of desire and attachment etc.; and (6) divine amour, body and embodiment-theology. That is, the ethical implications of the divine amour do not lie in sex itself or in its being a constitutive element of religious language but in its larger religio-metaphysical context. In terms of the formal theory of language, the sensuous elements of divine amour involved in the concept of parakīyā-rasa are the self-expressions of the creative freedom of the Divine. But the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas are caught in the dilemma of their insistence on the nonsymbolic connotations of the concept of parakīyā-rasa—the extra-marital nature of Rādhā or Gopīs of the nitya-līlā and their fixation with the medieval sexual morality. Their metaphysical justifications do not satisfy the contemporary scholars who are still under the tight grip of the syndrome of Victorian era or the moorings of medieval sexual ethics.