What is the relationship between yoga and bhakti?

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Lecture Summary

Discover how ancient wisdom views yoga not just as physical exercise, but as a complete pathway of love and spiritual connection.

• True Meaning of Yoga: Originating from the root word yug (meaning to yoke or connect), yoga encompasses eight stages (ashtanga-yoga), of which physical postures (asana) are only a small part.
• Beyond Body and Mind: While modern yoga focuses heavily on health and stress relief, its most evolved forms go deeper to fulfill the heart’s innermost longing for love.
• The Essence of Bhakti: Bhakti is defined as the “yoga of love,” focusing on connecting our relationships at a spiritual dimension centered on the origin of all love.
• The Culmination of Yoga: Both the Patanjali Yoga-Sutra and the Bhagavad-gita identify the highest state of yoga as samadhi—a loving, trancelike absorption in the divine.
• Radiating Love: Practicing the yoga of love tunes our consciousness to receive and radiate warmth and joy to love-starved hearts around us.
• Practical Application: The text explicitly notes that the easiest way to practice this yoga of love is by chanting the mantra of love, the Hare Krishna maha-mantra.

Key Takeaways

• Recognize that physical asana is only one of the eight limbs of traditional yoga.
• Shift the practice toward its ultimate purpose: fulfilling the heart’s deep need for spiritual connection and love.
• Practice bhakti-yoga by chanting the Hare Krishna maha-mantra to tune your consciousness and radiate love to others.

Full Transcription

Answer:
Yoga, with its extraordinary health benefits, has achieved global acclaim today. The word ‘yoga’ comes from the root ‘yug’, which is similar to the English word ‘yoke’ and means to ‘connect’ or ‘link. The Patanjali Yoga-Sutra, which is the foundational guidebook for yoga, explains that yoga in its completeness comprises eight stages and so is called ashtanga-yoga (ashta – eight, anga – limbs). What is today popular as yoga is actually just one of the eight stages named asana. The ancient Indian wisdom-tradition that is the source of yoga explains that yoga has much more to offer than what we are currently receiving. In its most evolved form, yoga does much more than heal the body. Its potential goes far beyond even calming the mind. The highest yoga fulfills the need of our innermost being, our heart. More than treasures and pleasures, positions and possessions, our deepest longing is for love. All of us want to love and to be loved. In our times, love is a much talked, little understood word. Often love is misunderstood to be the physical relation between two people, but real love goes beyond the body, beyond the mind, to the real person, the spiritual being. True love enables us to connect with others at an eternal dimension by centering our relationship on the origin of all love.

This art of centering and connecting our love is what bhakti is all about. That’s why bhakti is often called the yoga of love. Bhakti is the universal wisdom that underlies and unifies all the great wisdom-traditions of the world. Bhakti efficaciously fulfills the ultimate purpose of yoga by devotionally connecting our hearts with the Supreme Lord, who is origin of all love and the pivot of all loving relationship. That’s why Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita after describing states explicitly that bhakti-yoga is the most complete of all yogas: “Of all yogis, the one with great faith who always abides in me, thinks of me within himself, and renders transcendental loving service to me is the most intimately united with me in yoga and is the highest of all.” The Patanjali Yoga-Sutra also states that the culmination of yoga is samadhi, complete, loving, trancelike absorption in the divine.

The yoga of love empowers us to tune our consciousness so that we can receive the love that is at the heart of the creation and then radiate that love to all whom we contact, thus enriching many, many love-starved hearts with warmth and joy. The easiest way to practice this yoga of love is by chanting the mantra of love, the Hare Krishna maha-mantra.