Devotion (Bhakti)

Bhakti is devotion — the loving, trusting, whole-hearted attachment of a person to God. More than an emotion, it is a complete orientation of the self: hearing about, remembering, serving, and surrendering to the Lord. In the great Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva traditions, bhakti is not a lower path for the simple but the highest relationship there is, because the goal itself is eternal loving communion with God. It transformed Hindu religious life from roughly the mid-first millennium onward.