Did Ajamila by caring for his son develop bhakti?
So Chakravarti Patakoshan Swami is commenting that just by caring for his son whom he addresses as Narayan Ajaman developed Bhakti yeah the word Bhakti is used differently in different contexts at one level Bhakti can refer to Parabhakti at other level Bhakti can refer you to just favorable disposition towards Krishna positive disposition towards Krishna that can also refer to Bhakti intuition to serve Krishna for whatever reason that can also be called as Bhakti so here we will see that clearly that Ajaman had not developed pure devotion if he had developed pure devotion then he would not he would just have been liberated and Vishnu Das would have taken him back to God but what they did was they gave him a second chance and in that second chance he redeemed himself so one thing is from the whole story if you see its clear he has not developed pure devotion so what he has developed is is a positive attraction towards Vishnu and as a Brahmana in general Brahmanical culture had that attraction towards Vishnu so we could say that even from his life just by calling Narayan, by serving Narayan addressing the name Narayan he whatever he had done whatever he had learned earlier in his life whatever he had done also slightly earlier Ajaman is defined more as a Brahmana than as a Bhakta when we look at his qualities as we come forward the qualities stress more about his his Brahmanical qualities but it is not that he is ignorant about them that is not his focus in his character that is described it is not the primary quality that is described but it is not that he was not like Shukracharya who was against Vishnu in any way he was not siding with the demons as a Brahmana of the demons he was a Sushir Sampanna a good Brahmana and as a part of the Brahmanical culture there is an understanding of Bhakti also so that was revived by his utterance of the name of Narayan so it is the we cannot really talk about where it was in the analytical scale which say Rupa Goswami gives which level was he at among the nine sages unless the Acharyas give specifically a commentary if the Acharyas give this analytical framework later and Bhagavatam gives this particular study earlier so usually what is explained by Bhaktivinoda Thakur also that and we will see that later in Chakravarti Bhaat's commentary also that this is not Namaprad it is Namabhas what he chants was not Shuddhanam it is not a Pradhanam it is Namabhas and Namabhas because he did not call out to his son just to be saved for his sins just involuntary calling out off to his son and that son's name was Narayan and he remembered Narayan also so it was not motivated as a counter to sinful activity it was just an instinctive call for help under a desperate situation and because there was no offensive intent so it was not a Pradhanam and certainly he did not have a pure heart so it was not Shuddhanam so it became Namabhas and later on by the sadhana that he did then he came from the stela of Namabhas which had saved him at that time to the stela of Shuddhanam where he became purified and ultimately liberated.