Why dont the Vedas talk only about bhakti – how are they the authority for bhakti?

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Question In the Vedas So many different things are given Worship of this Deva Performance of that ritual Conducting of this particular Sacrifice and all those things And Simply Bhakti could have been given in that And we when we practice Bhakti we quote Vedas, Vedas as authority But The Vedas themselves talk very little about Bhakti And we say that the Vedas are like An unabridged dictionary But then in the unabridged dictionary What is What we Are practicing Is very briefly mentioned So why is that? Why couldn’t the Vedas just focus on Bhakti? Answer There are three different issues Which We need to understand First is Our desire Second is What is our ultimate goal? And third is How the Vedas Accommodate both First is our desire In general People are going to have Many different desires So No one can Actually legislate desire So desires Are going to come in different ways And of course if the desires are Immoral or destructive to society Then those desires need to be curbed Either by individual discipline Or by social punishment But in general You cannot just reject desires So because people have a wide variety Of desires And the Vedas want to ensure That whatever desires People have they stay within The house of dharma So how can they stay within the house of dharma? By By the Vedas Providing them Ways in which they can Dharmically fulfill their desires And that is the Karma Kanda section So Because the majority of the people Will have material desires And they will be interested in God Primarily as As their protector and their provider Not primarily As the object of love Object that their goal of life So understanding this The Vedas accommodate this And they provide Provide for people to live Dharmically while Pursuing their material desires So this is The Vedas are Kalpataru Kalpataru is desire fulfilling Normally when we talk about A desire fulfilling tree Our focus is on That it can fulfill all desires But then if you imagine There is a desire fulfilling tree Which is supposed to have ready made fruits For whoever is going to come there Then it would have Most of the fruits there would be The kind of fruit that people want Otherwise it could not be called As a desire fulfilling tree So similarly Because most human beings have material desires The Vedas offer us rituals For fulfilling those rituals and ceremonies And practices For fulfilling those desires And because most people have material desires So the vast majority of the Vedas Is Karmakand Now few people have spiritual desires So I talked about the first part Our desires How the Vedas fulfill it is By having majority of Karmakand But what is our ultimate good? To look for the eternal Beyond the temporary And to move towards the eternal We need We need to have Some spiritual inclination Which is not so common Which requires Purification, which requires Endeavor, which requires Mercy So which requires Intelligence So even at the time of 5000 years ago Krishna has said Manushyanaam sahasreshu Kashchiditi siddhi That among the many who Endeavor, that among thousands Only few endeavor for transcendence And among those who endeavor for transcendence, few come to know me This again reflects That our desire only So the Vedas have few Small section about the ultimate goal of life Because few people are interested In the ultimate goal of life Now coming to our Third giving the example Of unabridged dictionary There are two different points, the point of the unabridged Dictionary is given to Talk about the inclusiveness of the Vedas And usually the example is contrasted with the Pocket dictionary, where things Are given very much in brief And that example is used usually for Say the Abrahamic religions Where there is talk about you should love God And certain commandments are given, certain rules are given But not much in detail is Talked about So Now Actually speaking This unabridged dictionary example Sometimes we as devotees may use it to say Our scriptures contain everything And we become proud of that But it’s not necessarily a matter of Becoming proud Because if a Untrained person A person who is not, say If you are considering English dictionary A person who is not very good at English And that person looks at unabridged dictionary And finds for one word 500 meanings A person gets confused which meaning applies where And actually an unabridged dictionary Is not very easy to use So for That’s why we need A That’s why We can get lost In the unabridged dictionary not knowing Ok this is the word and this is the meaning But which of these meanings will apply over here That’s why we see Krishna says that He says that Once we are lost He is talking about the intelligence being lost In the forest of delusion And this is not talking about the delusional sense gratification In terms of sinful sense gratification He is talking about Or irreligious sense gratification He is talking about religious sense gratification Within the Vedas That is the forest of delusion So The primary purpose of using the Unabridged dictionary example is To again talk about the inclusiveness of the Vedas Talk about how they are To illustrate with another example A more contemporary example Of how they are a Kalpataru Of how they accommodate Our desires Now If one knows English language One knows how words are used Then that person can find the right meaning Within the various meanings Given in the unabridged dictionary So similarly We can find the right meaning When we Turn towards Krishna And we Sorry When we are guided by Krishna Krishna’s devotees And we also become expert At that time we can understand This is the right meaning So just as the other meanings Of a particular English word are not invalid They are not incorrect But they are invalid In this context So like that When we say for the practice of Bhakti We are quoting the Vedas as Pramana Now That is not wrong Definitely There is Bhakti within the Vedas But it is in the conclusive section It is the conclusion of Bhakti And Krishna had also said The ultimate goal of the Vedas Is to No The ultimate purpose of the Vedas is to guide us towards Krishna So Vedas are Definitely a Pramana But rather than them just being A monochrome Teaching in the Vedas Monochrome means one color It is not that everything in the Vedas is one color It is there are multiple levels There are three modes There are teachings for people within the various modes And there are teachings for those who Go on to go to transcendence So it is our Acharyas who guide us To understand which section of the Vedas is relevant now That’s why Vedanta Acharyas Vishnu Vedanta Acharyas Like Ramanuja Madhav And Pandey Vidyamukshana They have actually analysed the Vedanta And shown how the Vedanta Which is a summary of the Upanishads How that Vedanta And the Upanishads and ultimately the Vedas They talk about Bhakti So we accept the authority of the Vedas But we understand that that authority Speaks at different levels To different people And we don’t deny that it speaks to different people We say That yes there are many things in the Vedas But this is its ultimate conclusion And this is what we focus on So in that way There is There is Accommodation So that people at various levels Can get Opportunity to enter into the House of the Vedas To stay under the shelter of Dharma But along with accommodation There is also progression There is something which is at this level Something at this level And then our Acharyas are giving us the culmination Culmination is actually the highest So we accept the authority Of the Vedas in the sense that They provide accommodation for a wide variety of people But at the same time We focus on the culmination So it’s like saying that if That yes there are 25 meanings For this word but we In this context, this meaning applies So it’s not wrong to say that This meaning applies over here because we are not rejecting The other 24 meanings But we are saying they are not relevant So like that when we want to practice Bhakti And when we know that Bhakti is what is going to give us the eternal result Then naturally we focus on those sections Of the Vedic body of knowledge Let’s focus on Bhakti And thus we integrate The principle of accommodation With the principle of progression Otherwise we just accommodate everything And everybody will stay where they are We will not get integrated So in one sense To extend the example The books that Shri Prabhupada has given us Are again like a pocket dictionary It is a pocket dictionary That focuses on the highest principles And that way It makes things clear for us to move towards Krishna