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Nārada Bhakti Sūtra (Nārada’s Aphorisms on Devotion)

Narada

Eighty-four aphorisms defining devotion (bhakti) as supreme love for God, immortal in nature. After quoting the definitions of Pārāśarya (worship), Garga (sacred stories) and Śāṇḍilya (delight in the Self), it gives Nārada’s own: to consecrate every act to God and to feel extreme anguish at forgetting Him, like the gopīs of Vraja. It holds that bhakti is superior to action, knowledge and yoga because it is its own fruit; teaches its means —renunciation, ceaseless worship, hearing and singing the divine qualities and, above all, the grace of great souls—; declares it ineffable, “like taste for a mute”; distinguishes secondary from supreme devotion and lists eleven forms of attachment to God.