​What differentiates bhakti-yoga from other forms of yoga?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
What differentiates bhakti yoga from other types of yoga? See broadly, there are four different kinds of yoga.
There is karma yoga, there is jnana yoga, there is ashtanga yoga or dhyana yoga it is called and there is bhakti yoga. So karma yoga focuses more on action. Work in this world.
Do your duty, but do your duty in a selfless way. Which is very good. But in this, there may not be clear awareness of higher reality.
There the focus is on acting in this world in a less selfish, in a more selfless way. But there is not much higher awareness. That is karma yoga.
Then there is jnana yoga. So in jnana yoga, the head is involved. Okay, analyze.
This is like this, this is like this, this is like this. We analyze a lot and by that we try to come to an understanding of what is reality and what is not reality. What is material, what is spiritual.
Now, it is very helpful in discerning what is what. But at the same time, it is too much in the head. And usually for serious practice of jnana yoga, people have to move away from materialistic society.
Because the idea is that this world is a place of illusion. This world is a place of entanglement. Here we go away from spiritual reality.
So that is the idea of jnana yoga. Ashtanga yoga is also similar. There are some differences, but the focus there is on not just intellection, but also meditation.
Try to go within and see what is the inner reality. What does bhakti yoga do? Bhakti yoga actually incorporates the positives of all of these. So bhakti yoga involves action.
It is not just that we chant mantras, not just that we get cultivated bhakti, but we see this world also as an arena of service. This world is also an arena which our object of devotion is manifest over and we can serve even in this world. So to put it succinctly, in the path of karma, the idea is if we just do things better in life, we will become happy.
So karma yoga, it romanticizes the world. Romanticize means, oh this world is a nice place. You just have to do some things better and we will all be happy.
If you consider pendulum, jnana yoga goes to the other extreme. It demonizes the world. No, this world is all illusion.
It is all misery. Just leave this world. So the pendulum has gone from romanticizing to demonizing.
Bhakti yoga brings the pendulum to the middle balance. It utilizes the world that I have certain abilities. They are gifts from a power of beyond mine.
There is world, this also is running by order bigger than mine. So what I have to do is become harmonious with the higher power. So when we do that, then we are practicing bhakti yoga.
So bhakti yoga, because it utilizes, so we don’t reject things. You know, rejection is difficult. Whereas indiscriminate adoption of things is dangerous.
So between the difficulty in rejecting and the dangerousness in accepting is the balanced approach of utilizing. So in bhakti yoga, we can use our head also. We can study the philosophy.
We can work in this world also. We have our careers. We have our relationships.
We have our life. But we infuse bhakti in it. That means we do it all in a mood of loving service.
So when we do it in a mood of loving service, then we move closer to spiritual consciousness by that. The bhakti vision of life can be summarized as, you know, what we have is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.
So whatever we have, we have certain talents. We have certain abilities. We accept them.
We don’t deny them. We don’t reject them. But then they are meant for being used positively in a mood of service.
So in that sense, the bhakti yoga vision is holistic. It incorporates the various aspects of our being. And that helps us to channelize our energies.
So bhakti yoga is balanced and it is holistic. Balanced because it doesn’t avoid the extremes of romanticizing and demonizing. And it’s holistic because all our parts of our being, our emotions, our intelligence, our body, our talents, all of them we can use in a mood of service.
Does it answer your question? Thank you. Any other questions?