Bhakti Yoga

Walk into almost any Hindu temple at the evening pūjā and you are inside bhakti: the bell, the lamp waved before the deity, the singing, the crowd pressing forward for a glimpse. Bhakti comes from the root bhaj, “to share in, to belong to, to love and worship.” It is the path of the heart: not escaping the world by knowledge or stilling it by meditation, but turning all one’s feeling towards God. For most Hindus, through most of history, this has simply been the religion.

Roots

The word appears near the end of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, in a verse that already joins love of God with love of the teacher:

The Bhagavad Gītā made devotion central. Its chapter 12 is titled Bhakti-yoga. Its best-loved verses — “a leaf, a flower, a fruit, a little water” (9.26) and “take refuge in me alone” (18.66) — are quoted on the Gītā page. Just before the last comes a verse that sums up the whole path:

Notice the last words: priyo ’si me, “you are dear to me.” In bhakti the love runs both ways. Chapter 12 then paints the devotee God loves — one who hates no being, is friendly and compassionate, free of “mine” and of ego, the same in pleasure and pain, and patient (12.13 onwards). Devotion, in the Gītā, is a character, not only a feeling.

What is bhakti?

Two short medieval texts, the Bhakti Sūtras attributed to the sages Nārada and Śāṇḍilya, try to define it. Nārada’s opens:

Śāṇḍilya’s similar definition calls it “supreme attachment to the Lord” (sā parānuraktir īśvare). Nārada adds that among true devotees there is no distinction of caste, learning, beauty, family or wealth. Both texts are hard to date; scholars generally place them well after the Gītā, and the Nārada Sūtra in particular is usually thought to be late.

Bhakti is not mere emotion. The traditions distinguish an early, practised devotion (sādhana-bhakti, devotion as a discipline) from the spontaneous, overflowing love it can become. You begin by doing; feeling follows.

Nine ways to love

The Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the great scripture of Krishna devotion, gives the classic list. It is spoken by the boy-devotee Prahlāda to his father, the demon-king Hiraṇyakaśipu, who has asked what he has learned at school:

This ninefold devotion is a practical map. Tap each to see what it looks like in life:

• 1श्रवणHearingListening to the stories and names of God — a discourse, a Purāṇa reading, a grandmother’s tale at bedtime.
• 2कीर्तनSingingSinging God’s names and glories, alone or together: bhajan, kīrtan, Tēvāram, Tiruppāvai.
• 3स्मरणRememberingKeeping God in mind through the day — often by repeating a name or mantra (japa).
• 4पादसेवनServing the feetHumble service to God — and, many teachers say, to God’s devotees and creatures.
• 5अर्चनWorshipRitual worship of the sacred image (pūjā), at home or in the temple.
• 6वन्दनBowingProstration and salutation — the body itself saying “not I, but you.”
• 7दास्यServanthoodLiving as God’s servant, as Hanuman served Rama.
• 8सख्यFriendshipLoving God as a friend, as Arjuna loved Krishna — and as Sundarar spoke to Shiva.
• 9निवेदनSelf-offeringĀtma-nivedana: giving oneself entirely. The Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition develops this as prapatti, surrender.

The verse names Vishnu, but Shaiva and Śākta devotees use the same ninefold scheme for Shiva, Murugan or the Goddess.

The moods of love

Gauḍīya view In 16th-century Bengal and Vrindavan, the followers of Chaitanya — above all Rūpa Gosvāmī in his Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu — treated devotion as the highest rasa, the relish of classical aesthetics, and mapped its moods (bhāvas). This is one school’s scheme, though its language has spread widely.

Outside the Gauḍīya school, devotees simply relate to God in the way that is natural to them. Many Tamil Hindus call Murugan by the intimate appā or the Goddess ammā without any theory at all.

The Tamil revolution

Bhakti as a movement first appears in the Tamil country. Between about the 6th and the 9th centuries, the twelve Āḻvārs of Vishnu and the sixty-three Nāyaṉmārs of Shiva walked from temple to temple singing in Tamil — not Sanskrit — to the god of each place. Their hymns are told on Tamil Sacred Literature. Two women stand out:

• Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār (perhaps 6th century), the earliest Shaiva poet, who gave up her beauty to become Shiva’s gaunt devotee in the cremation ground, and whom Shiva called “Mother.”
• Āṇṭāḷ, the only woman among the Āḻvārs, whose Tiruppāvai is sung every Mārkaḻi and who, in the tradition’s story, was united with Ranganātha at Srirangam.

Their message was radical: God is reached by love, and love is open to all. Potters, hunters, kings, a washerman and a minstrel from a caste kept outside the temple are among the saints. Tirumūlar put the heart of it in two words: அன்பே சிவம், aṉpē civam, “love itself is Shiva.”

From the south the movement travelled north. Popular tradition A well-known passage in the Bhāgavata-māhātmya, attached to the Padma Purāṇa, has Bhakti herself say that she was born in the Drāviḍa land, grew up in Karnataka, lived on here and there in Maharashtra, and grew old and feeble in Gujarat, before being made young again in Vrindavan. Many historians tell a similar story in their own terms, and many date the Bhāgavata Purāṇa itself to South India around the 9th–10th century. Some historians, notably J. S. Hawley, question whether there was one “bhakti movement” travelling north at all; the single-wave idea owes much to the Bhāgavata-māhātmya and to 20th-century historians.

1. c. 6th–9th c.Āḻvārs and NāyaṉmārsTamil saints, including Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār and Āṇṭāḷ, sing devotion in the people’s language.
2. 11th–13th c.Ācāryas and VīraśaivasRamanuja and Madhva give bhakti a philosophy; in Karnataka, Basava and Akka Mahādevī sing to Shiva in Kannada.
3. 13th–17th c.MaharashtraJñāneśvar, Nāmdev, Tukārām and the Vārkarī pilgrims of Viṭhobā at Pandharpur.
4. 15th–16th c.The north and eastKabir, Mīrābāī, Sūrdās and Tulsidas in Hindi dialects; Chaitanya’s ecstatic kīrtan in Bengal.
5. 19th c.RamakrishnaThe Bengali saint who worshipped Kālī as Mother and found God through many paths.

With form or without

The northern saints divided over a deep question: should one love God with attributes and form, or God beyond all form? The Gītā raised it already: Arjuna asks which devotees are better, those who worship the personal Lord or those who meditate on the unmanifest (12.1). Krishna answers that both reach him, but adds:

The line is not sharp. Many saguṇa devotees know God is beyond every form, and many nirguṇa poets speak to God as a lover or a husband.

Surrender and grace

The furthest point of bhakti is to stop relying on one’s own devotion altogether. The Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition calls this prapatti, taking the Lord alone as the means; its charter is Gītā 18.66, and its two branches argue whether the soul makes even the smallest effort, like a baby monkey clinging to its mother, or none, like a kitten carried in its mother’s mouth. See Vishishtadvaita. Shaiva Siddhanta speaks in the same spirit of Shiva’s grace (aruḷ).

Bhakti opened doors, but it did not tear down every wall. The Gītā promises the highest goal to “those of sinful birth” and to women, vaiśyas and śūdras alike (9.32) — though commentators disagree whether the verse counts those three among the “sinful births” or names them as separate groups, and the phrasing itself reflects the hierarchy of its time. Saints from oppressed castes, such as Nantaṉār and Tiruppāṇāḻvār, were honoured in story but often barred from temples in life. Both truths belong to the history.

Bhajan and kīrtan today

Most bhakti today is sung. A bhajan is a simple devotional song, often in call and response; kīrtan is singing God’s names and glories, often with drums and cymbals, sometimes for hours. Chaitanya’s saṅkīrtana made public chanting a path in itself.

Community practice In Malaysia, many temples hold weekly bhajans, often on Friday evenings; Sai bhajan groups meet in homes and centres; ISKCON’s kīrtan and Ratha Yātrā processions are familiar in Kuala Lumpur and other towns; and Tamil Shaiva temples have their Tēvāram and Tiruppukaḻ singing. Styles vary widely — Tamil, Sanskrit, Hindi; harmonium or mridangam — and all of them count.

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Sources & further reading

• Bhagavad Gītā chapters 9, 12 and 18 — Winthrop Sargeant (trans.), The Bhagavad Gītā (SUNY Press, 1984; 2009).
• Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 6.23 — Patrick Olivelle (trans.), Upaniṣads (Oxford World’s Classics, 1996).
• Swami Prabhavananda (trans.), Narada’s Way of Divine Love: The Bhakti Sutras (Vedanta Press, 1971).
• Edwin F. Bryant (trans.), Krishna: The Beautiful Legend of God (Śrīmad Bhāgavata Purāṇa Book X) (Penguin Classics, 2003).
• John Stratton Hawley, A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement (Harvard University Press, 2015).
• Friedhelm Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti: The Early History of Kṛṣṇa Devotion in South India (Oxford University Press, 1983).
• Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Poems to Śiva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints (Princeton University Press, 1989); Archana Venkatesan, The Secret Garland: Āṇṭāḷ’s Tiruppāvai and Nācciyār Tirumoḻi (Oxford University Press, 2010).
• John Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India (Oxford University Press, 1988).
• Swami Vivekananda, Bhakti-Yoga, in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (Advaita Ashrama).