Concept

Bhakti

Overview

Bhakti (Sanskrit: भक्ति; Pali: bhatti) is a concept common in Indian religions which means attachment, fondness for, devotion to, trust, homage, worship, piety, faith, or love. In Indian religions, it may refer to loving devotion for a personal God (like Krishna or Devi), a formless ultimate reality (like Nirguna Brahman or the Sikh God) or an enlightened being (like a Buddha, a bodhisattva, or a guru). Bhakti is often a deeply emotional devotion based on a relationship between a devotee and the object of devotion. A devotee is a bhakta or bhakt.

One of the earliest appearances of the concept is found in the early Buddhist Theragatha (Verses of the Elders) through the term bhatti. Early texts such as the Shvetashvatara Upanishad and the Bhagavad Gita, describe bhakti as contemplating God as a form of yoga.

Bhakti ideas have inspired many popular texts and saint-poets in India. The Bhagavata Purana, for example, is a Krishna-related text associated with the Bhakti movement in Hinduism. Bhakti is also found in other religions practiced in India, and it has influenced interactions between Christianity and Hinduism in the modern era. Nirguni bhakti (devotion to the divine without attributes) is found in Sikhism, as well as Hinduism. Outside India, emotional devotion is found in some Southeast Asian and East Asian Buddhist traditions.

The bhakti movement, pioneered by the Tamil Alvars and Nayanars, developed around the gods Vishnu (Vaishnavism), Shiva (Shaivism) and Devi (Shaktism) in the second half of the 1st millennium CE.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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Other methods of deliverance from evil are in the excessive acts of penance performed by the Indians, to which a retreat within themselves is added. Now when the Indian thus internally collects himself, and retreats within his own thoughts, the moment of such pure concentration is called Brahma, the one and the clearly supersensuous state, which the understanding calls the highest possible existence. When this is so…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Bhakti is.
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The higher life which belongs to this sphere, this supreme enjoyment of truth, which as feeling is called "blessedness," and as conscious thought "contemplation," we may describe generically as the life known to religion. For religion is just this universal domain[184], in virtue of which the _one_ concrete totality of the World comes to each man in union with himself, as his essential substance, while it remains no…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1
States what Bhakti is.
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The circle of sacred objects cannot be determined, then, once for all. Its extent varies infinitely, according to the different religions. That is how Buddhism is a religion: in default of gods, it admits the existence of sacred things, namely, the four noble truths and the practices derived from them.[65]
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
States what Bhakti is.
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Bhakti

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