What is bhakti?

Vishishtadvaita (Ramanuja)

For Ramanuja, bhakti is the way to liberation: a loving, unbroken meditation on the Lord, who is loved for his own sake. On Gita 7.17 he says the wise devotee's love is for the Lord alone, not as a means to other ends. On 12.20 he says the holy and blissful way of the chapter's last verse is bhakti-yoga itself. On 6.47 he reads the loving devotee as standing above all yogis, as far above them as Mount Meru is above a handful of mustard seed, and sees that verse as opening the chapters on devotion.

Sources for this reading

• Sri Bhagavad-Gita with Sri Ramanujacharya's Visishtadvaita commentary, translated by A. Govindacharya (Madras, 1898) (commentary on 6.47 (pp. 219–221; the comparison with Mount Meru and the bhakta of Lectures VII–XII on p. 220, leaf n227), 7.17 (pp. 244–245, leaves n249–n250), 12.20 (p. 392, leaf n391: “Holy” and “Blissful” for dharmyam and amritam) and 18.65 (p. 562, leaf n550: devotion as an unbroken succession of memory joined to deep love); checked on the page images; summarised, not quoted)
• R. G. Bhandarkar, Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism and Minor Religious Systems (Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1913), § XV, Ramanuja: “Bhakti is reduced to the form of a continuous meditation on the Supreme Soul”, a meditation that “implies tacitly a feeling of love”. Bhandarkar died 1925: public domain. Quoted verbatim; checked on the page image (leaf n59). (p. 57 (leaf n59))
• Bhagavad Gita, 12.20

Advaita (Shankara)

Shankara honours devotion as a path that leads by stages to knowledge. On Gita 12.10 he says that one who does works for the Lord's sake gains first purity of mind, then steadiness, then knowledge, and then liberation. On 7.17 he says the Lord is exceedingly dear to the wise one because the Lord is the wise one's very Self, and everyone holds the Self dear. On 12.20 he takes the immortal dharma of the chapter's last verses to be the way of life of renunciants who know the Self, and calls the highest devotion the knowledge of the Supreme Reality. For him the highest devotion and the highest knowledge meet.

Sources for this reading

• The Bhagavad-Gita, with the commentary of Sri Sankaracharya, translated by A. Mahadeva Sastri (2nd ed., Mysore: G. T. A. Printing Works, 1901) (commentary on 7.17 (p. 194, leaf n221), 12.10 (p. 270, leaf n297) and 12.20 (p. 276, leaf n303); checked on the page images; summarised, not quoted)
• Bhagavad Gita, 7.17

The Bhagavad Gita (the text)

The Gita names four kinds of people who worship God: the one in distress, the seeker of knowledge, the seeker of wealth, and the wise one (7.16). It promises that whoever offers “leaf, flower, fruit, water” with devotion is accepted (9.26), and that those whose minds are fixed on God are lifted “from the ocean of this world of death” (12.6–7, Telang). These are the text's own claims; the schools above read them in different ways.

Sources for this reading

• Bhagavad Gita, 7.16
• Bhagavad Gita, 12.6
• The Bhagavadgîtâ with the Sanatsugâtîya and the Anugîtâ, translated by Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang (The Sacred Books of the East, vol. VIII, ed. F. Max Müller) (Bhagavad Gita 9.26 (SBE 8, p. 85, leaf n98), checked on the page image)

Poet-saints (the bhakti movement)

From the Tamil Alvars and Nayanars onward, poet-saints sang bhakti in the languages people spoke, not only in Sanskrit, and many, though not all, bhakti movements were open to women and men of every caste. In North India, in the last of the Hanuman Chalisa's forty verses, Tulsidas calls himself the servant of Hari and asks the Lord to dwell in his heart; the aarti Om Jai Jagdish Hare asks God, the ocean of compassion, for grace. Many of these songs are still sung today.

Sources for this reading

• Hanuman Chalisa, chaupai 40
• Om Jai Jagdish Hare, stanza 4
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, “bhakti” (bhakti arose in the poems that the Alvars and the Nayanars composed in Tamil to Vishnu and Shiva; the use of regional languages; “Many, but not all, bhakti movements were open to people of both genders and all castes”; many of the poems “continue to be recited and sung”). Read in the Wayback Machine copy (snapshot July 25, 2026). Cited, not copied.

Sources

• Bhagavad Gita, 12.13
• Bhagavad Gita, 12.14
• Bhagavad Gita, 9.27
• Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, new edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899), p. 743: the root bhaj, “to divide, distribute, allot or apportion to … share with … partake of … to serve, honour, revere, love, adore”, and bhakti, among its senses “attachment, devotion … faith or love or devotion (as a religious principle or means of salvation …)”. Monier-Williams died 1899: public domain. Read in the Motilal Banarsidass photographic reprint on archive.org, whose imprint (leaf n5) gives the first edition as Oxford University Press, 1899; checked on the page image (leaf n781). (p. 743 (leaf n781))
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, “bhakti” (devotional practices: reciting the name of the god or goddess, singing hymns, offerings of fruit and flowers in the home or temple). Read in the Wayback Machine copy (snapshot July 25, 2026). Cited, not copied.

More questions

• What does yoga mean in the Bhagavad Gita?
• Why do Hindus worship a murti, and is it right to call it an idol?
• What is a puja?
• Bhagavad Gita chapter 12: Bhakti Yoga
• All questions
• Stories for children