Bhakti yoga, the path of devotion

Every evening at Rishikesh, when the lamps of the Ganga aarti are raised and hundreds of voices sing together, you are watching bhakti yoga. No posture, no breath count: only attention, sound and love turned in one direction. For many people in India this is the first yoga, and often the last one too.

The word

Bhakti comes from the root bhaj, to share, to belong to, to worship. A bhakta is one who takes part in the divine, as one shares a meal. Bhakti yoga is therefore not sentimentality. It is a discipline of the heart: you train what you love, as hatha yoga trains the body.

Bhakti in the Bhagavad Gita

The Gita mentions devotion throughout, and its twelfth chapter, the Bhakti Yoga, is one of the shortest (20 verses). Arjuna asks who knows yoga best, those who worship the formless or those devoted to a personal God. Kṛṣṇa answers:

मय्येव मन आधत्स्व मयि बुद्धिं निवेशय । निवसिष्यसि मय्येव अत ऊर्ध्वं न संशयः ॥

mayy eva mana ādhatsva mayi buddhiṃ niveśaya | nivasiṣyasi mayy eva ata ūrdhvaṃ na saṃśayaḥ ||

Place your mind in me alone, let your understanding enter me: then you will dwell in me, there is no doubt.

What follows is a gentle ladder for people who find this hard (12.9-12.11): if you cannot keep the mind on the divine, practise returning to it (abhyāsa); if you cannot practise, do your work for the divine; if even that is too much, give up the fruits of all your actions. Nobody is left out.

The chapter ends with a portrait of the devotee, the verses most often learnt by heart:

अद्वेष्टा सर्वभूतानां मैत्रः करुण एव च । निर्ममो निरहंकारः समदुःखसुखः क्षमी ॥

adveṣṭā sarva-bhūtānāṃ maitraḥ karuṇa eva ca | nirmamo nirahaṃkāraḥ sama-duḥkha-sukhaḥ kṣamī ||

Without hatred for any being, friendly and compassionate, free of 'mine' and of ego, the same in sorrow and joy, patient…

Bhakti, in other words, is measured by how one treats others. The Gita's simplest verse on it has made offerings humble ever since:

पत्रं पुष्पं फलं तोयं यो मे भक्त्या प्रयच्छति । तदहं भक्त्युपहृतमश्नामि प्रयतात्मनः ॥

patraṃ puṣpaṃ phalaṃ toyaṃ yo me bhaktyā prayacchati | tad ahaṃ bhakty-upahṛtam aśnāmi prayatātmanaḥ ||

A leaf, a flower, a fruit, water: whoever offers it to me with devotion, that offering of love from a pure heart I accept.

The three yogas of the Gita, action, devotion and knowledge, are compared on karma yoga and jñāna yoga, and in the Bhagavad Gita.

The Nārada Bhakti Sūtra

A short treatise of 84 aphorisms, traditionally attributed to the sage Nārada, gives bhakti its own "yoga sutra". It opens like Patañjali's:

अथातो भक्तिं व्याख्यास्यामः । सा त्वस्मिन् परप्रेमरूपा ।

athāto bhaktiṃ vyākhyāsyāmaḥ | sā tv asmin para-prema-rūpā |

Now, therefore, we shall explain devotion. It has the nature of supreme love for him.

The text then gathers the opinions of earlier masters (sutras 16-18): for Parāśara's son it is love of worship, for Garga love of sacred stories, for Śāṇḍilya what does not contradict delight in the Self. Nārada gives his own definition, one of the most beautiful in the literature:

नारदस्तु तदर्पिताखिलाचारता तद्विस्मरणे परमव्याकुलतेति ।

nāradas tu tad-arpitākhilācāratā tad-vismaraṇe parama-vyākulateti |

But for Nārada, it is offering all one's conduct to him, and feeling the deepest distress at forgetting him.

Sutra 25 claims bhakti is "greater even than karma, jñāna and yoga", because it is its own fruit. Among its means, sutra 37 names "listening to and singing the qualities of the Lord, even in the midst of the world".

The nine forms of devotion

In the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the child Prahlāda, asked by his father what he has learnt at school, answers with a list that every bhakti tradition still uses:

श्रवणं कीर्तनं विष्णोः स्मरणं पादसेवनम् । अर्चनं वन्दनं दास्यं सख्यमात्मनिवेदनम् ॥

śravaṇaṃ kīrtanaṃ viṣṇoḥ smaraṇaṃ pāda-sevanam | arcanaṃ vandanaṃ dāsyaṃ sakhyam ātma-nivedanam ||

Listening about Viṣṇu, singing, remembering, serving his feet, worship, bowing, servitude, friendship and the offering of oneself.

Saints and lineages

Bhakti became a movement that crossed castes and languages. The Tamil poet-saints, the Āḻvārs devoted to Viṣṇu and the Nāyaṉmārs devoted to Śiva, sang in Tamil from roughly the sixth century. Later currents carried it across India in the vernacular languages: Rāmānuja's Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition, Caitanya's chanting of the names in Bengal, the songs of Mīrābāī, Kabīr, Tulsīdās and the Marathi poets. Their common message: the divine is reached by love, open to all.

What bhakti practice looks like at home

1. A place. A small shelf with an image or a symbol that speaks to you, a lamp, a flower. Simplicity is traditional.
2. Morning. Light the lamp, bow, offer water or a flower, as in Gita 9.26. Two minutes are enough.
3. A name. Choose one divine name or mantra and repeat it 108 times. See mantras and Om namaḥ śivāya.
4. Song. Join a kīrtan or sing one bhajan; the Ganga aarti in Rishikesh is a public one.
5. Reading. Read a few verses of chapter 12 of the Gita each evening.
6. Action. Offer one task of the day, done as well as you can, without waiting for thanks.

Who it suits

Bhakti yoga suits people moved by music, prayer, stories and relationships more than by technique. It needs no flexibility, no special body and no age. The Gita's verse 9.26 says the offering can be as small as water: what counts is the heart that gives it. To compare with the other paths, see the paths of yoga.

Questions people ask

Sources

1. Bhagavadgītā, critical edition (Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute), Sanskrit text (GRETIL) checked October 17, 2026
2. Nārada Bhakti Sūtra, Sanskrit text (sanskritdocuments.org) checked October 17, 2026
3. Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Sanskrit text (GRETIL, University of Göttingen) checked October 17, 2026

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