How can we know the authenticity of the teachings of saints like Sant Dnyaneshwar and Samartha Ramdas Swami?

From: Vivek Kulkarni

Are the teachings of Samartha Ramdas Swami (the Spiritual Guide of Shivaji maharaj) authentic? Is there any “parampara” system he comes in?

Did Sant Dnyaneshwar accept dvaita vad or advaita vad? The Varkaris in Maharashtra clearly worship Krishna, but I dont know about the philosophy.

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
any other questions? question this is a question that is asked differently and also by Vivek Kulkarni about a similar topic so the question is about how do we know the authenticity of the teachings of saints who are venerated within certain traditions for example, Gyaneshwar Maharaj or Samartha Ramdaswamy both of whom are considered to be very exalted saints within especially Maharashtra so rather than going into the specifics of any particular personality I will talk some broad principles based on which we can arrive at answers for these sort of questions the first point is that Bhakti is not the monopoly of any particular individual so wherever Bhakti manifests we need to respect that and in general if we look at the writings and the lives of saints who have manifested at various places in India, they have lived lives which are extraordinarily renounced from the world and extraordinarily dedicated to the service of the absolute truth or to attaining and sharing the attainment of the absolute truth with the world so their sheer spiritual advancement and their material detachment cannot be denied, that cannot be contested and we should never criticize anyone for that now regarding the specific orientation of their teachings some of them might be impersonalist which can also be Brahmavadi or Mayavadi or they can be personalist in terms of devotional in their teachings how can we know that? one way is we can look at the Sampradaya where they are coming in are the four Sampradayas now generally speaking the four Sampradayas have been distributed in different parts of the country and most of the Maharashtrian saints at least as we know about them historically are not directly connected through initiation with any of the four Sampradayas so that of course does not necessarily mean that they are not great devotees or great transcendentalists it just means that that is not the criteria that we can use for deciding about them.
A Bhakti Devi can manifest among people even without a connection with the Parampara if they have had a connection with the Parampara in a previous life and they are just waiting to complete that connection in this life complete that spiritual advancement and go back to Godhead in this life then they may be born in a very advanced stage in this life and move forward from there onwards in this life without explicitly meeting their Guru in this life but for us if we want to accept spiritual instruction from someone it is best to go and connect with somebody using Parampara we do not deny that there can be Bhakti among those who are not connected with Parampara also but Sampradaya Sampradaya is the broad word for Parampara Parampara can be one line within, Sampradaya can have many lines coming down through many Gurus who are all connected with one transcendental source ultimately which is Krishna so the meaning of the word Sampradaya is Samyak Rupena Pradayate Samyak means complete Pradayate means to give so to give in a complete form so Sampradaya enables us to get spiritual knowledge in a complete holistic form in a way which we can apply and which we can share if we are having some serious sickness in our own house our grandmother or some relative or some local villager might have some expertise in some traditional familial or local herbal cures and they can be used if I have some mild fever or cold or something like that but if I have some very serious disease then I may need to go to a proper doctor and especially if I want to learn medicine so that I can become a doctor then surely I need to go to a proper medical college to learn so just as medical knowledge can be available in various places at the same time for getting proper medical knowledge to cure ourselves of a serious disease as well as to ourselves learn medical science properly it’s best to go to a medical college similarly bhakti can manifest in various places sometimes bhakti can manifest in extraordinary ways in various places even when there is no connection with parampara in this life at the same time if we want to get knowledge of bhakti properly and develop ourselves in bhakti and maybe possibly even share the knowledge and practices of bhakti with others then we need to connect ourselves with a Sampradaya so therefore the saints who are not known to be in Sampradaya we can respect them but we don’t take them as our primary teachers in general there are many Sampradayas apart from the four Sampradayas that I mentioned and those Sampradayas it is difficult to ascertain their authenticity because they are not explicitly mentioned in scriptures so then we will one way is the connection with the parampara second way is we can look at their teachings so if we look at the teachings of say Gyaneshwar Maharaj at a practical level what he taught people and similarly Ramdas Swamy Maharaj what he taught people was that to chant the holy name of Ram or Krishna and to devote themselves to the lord Gyaneshwar is considered to be a Marathi rendition of Bhagavad Gita it is not exactly a translation it is a rendition the same essential message presented in a vernacular language and similarly Ramdas Maharaj Manajeshlok and Das Bodh are also in vernacular language presenting the essential spiritual message of the Vedic literature these were written especially if you look at 500 years ago and often what we have although it is written in the language that was popular at that time the version of Marathi that was there at that time it is often difficult to understand the exact import of the words that were used although the words may seem similar to us the meanings of words change over time and that’s why though we may think that we understand those words they may have some entirely different meanings if we look at English language Prabhupada often uses the word cult now 30, 40, 50 maybe about half a century ago the word cult had no negative connotation of it the group of people who have a certain commonality based on which they are living and functioning together but the word cult has an extreme negative connotation now so this is the evolution of language that happens in all languages that’s why in general when we have to understand the works of these saints we have to understand them through the medium of scholars and when we go to these Marathi scholars who are scholars in the Marathi language that was spoken say 400 or 800 years ago and then they give it to us most of these scholars unfortunately tend to be impersonalists and that’s why we may find some or several parts of the teachings of these saints having strongly impersonalist sometimes even Mayavadi connotations but if you look at the practical level they have all encouraged chanting of the holy names they also said that apart from the holy name there is no other shelter for us so from the time of Ramanujacharya onwards and especially during the time of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu that was the time when Bhakti had its peak there was a devotional renaissance all over India and it happened through various saints in various parts of the world but because Advaita was predominant at that time because of Shankaracharya’s influence so to counter the devotional renaissance what happened was the Advaitins also incorporated Bhakti as an integral element within their tradition and when they integrated Bhakti they had the idea that we practice Bhakti and ultimately one can attain Mukti so some of the saints who seem to be talking about Bhakti they may be seeing Bhakti as a tool to Mukti and some others among the saints may be seeing Bhakti as not a tool to Mukti but Bhakti as an eternal reality in the absolute world also so which was the specific orientation of particular saints is extremely difficult to know unless one does a exhaustive study of their works and also understand the subtle nuances of the words that they used as they were used in their times which is quite a complex thing to do so in general there are Bhakti teachings in their writings and we recognize and value them for those Bhakti teachings we also value them for their extraordinary lives of detachment and devotion to the absolute truth and we understand that Srila Prabhupada through the parampara which ultimately comes from Lord Krishna has given us the same message of Bhakti in a way that is accessible for us clearly and practically there is no ambiguity in Srila Prabhupada’s teachings and Srila Prabhupada’s purports also guide us about how we can practice these Bhakti principles in today’s society so therefore we understand that the Lord has a plan and throughout century after century he sends his representatives to give the ultimate message of the Vedic scriptures in an accessible way so as far as our own practices are concerned it’s best to be connected with Srila Prabhupada and if we have some acquaintances, friends who are connected with any of these saints we can tell them, ultimately what they are telling us is also to practice Bhakti and if you want to practice Bhakti today, in today’s society Krishna Consciousness offers as a culture association and so many other practical support systems by which we can practice Bhakti so in this way, without hurting anyone and recognizing that these saints they might be exalted, they are exalted spiritually and they may either be saints who are actually practicing Bhakti for ultimately continuing Bhakti eternally or for ultimately achieving Mukti and it’s very difficult for us to know so without making any critical statements, we can encourage people also to practice Bhakti and to, if they are very strongly connected with this tradition, with these particular saints and whatever lineages are coming down from them then we can encourage them to practice Bhakti strictly by following regulative principles and by diligently chanting of the holy names and if they have some nominal affiliations with these sort of things then we can tell them that how it is easy for us to practice Bhakti in the modern times within the Krishna Consciousness movement because we have we have Krishna Consciousness presented in a way that is compatible and catered for our modern times