In this episode of Exploring Bhakti, we discuss the nine practices of Bhakti yoga, as taught by the child-saint Prahlada in the Bhagavata Puraṇa. These simple, natural expressions—hearing, chanting, remembering, praying, serving, and more—are limbs of the body of Bhakti and powerful tools for awakening divine love. Rooted in a personal relationship, these practices engage the whole self in devotion to the Supreme Person, Sri Krishna, and are accessible to everyone, regardless of background or qualification.
9 Daily Moments of Love
Today we’ll look closely at the living body of Bhakti, or the nine practices that draw us nearer to the heart of the Sweet Absolute.
It’s customary to use the word limb to refer to the practices of a yoga system and the word body to refer to the yoga system itself. I find it’s a charming way to refer to the yoga paths. And there’s a practical reason too.
The Sanskrit word for body is angi and for limb it’s anga. It’s a way of speaking about a whole and its parts. When we speak of a body, we’re referring to a whole, integrated system with parts that work together to facilitate the function of the whole. If you’re missing any parts, the whole won’t work.
For instance take the battery out of a car, a phone, or a computer and it’s not going to turn on. But even missing a single bolt can make a machine unfunctional.
It’s the same with the yoga systems. The whole of a yoga school has been uniquely designed to grant a specific spiritual aim to its practitioner.
I’d like to draw attention to that: The various yoga systems have different goals. There are four yoga path and they don’t all lead to the same destination or experience. Both destinations and experiences can be quite different!
I think it’s important that we become educated spiritual consumers/seekers and know these important details. Without knowledge how can we choose?
Of course, we can just dabble into a yoga philosophy but then we can’t expect to experience what a serious student/practitioner will.
The Four Yoga Paths and Their Goals
The ultimate goal of jnana, or the path of knowledge, is to merge the self into Brahman, the impersonal feature of the Absolute.
The goal of karma, or the path of virtuous works, is a birth in the upper planets where the standard of enjoyment is higher.
The aim of the path of physical and mental discipline, ashtanga, is to realize the self by clearing the citta. Depending on what the practitioner meditates on the final destination of the self is decided. Patanjali talks about Isvara, a person, and the impersonal. So the destination is impersonal or personal depending on the meditation one fixes on with the cleared citta.
And the ultimate destination of Bhakti, or the path of the heart, is a personal relationship with the Personal Sweet Absolute.
Further, we learn that the practices for one yoga are specific to that yoga in which a specific goal is aimed at.
In short, each yoga is a unique whole and has a different character, principles, history, practices, and goals.
One can’t interchange the practices of one yoga into another and expect to achieve the goal of any of the yogas.
The systems are specific and scientific. They are to be followed precisely – we can’t mix and match.
The Path of Mercy: The Unique Nature of Bhakti
In fact three of the yogas — the path of knowledge, the path of physical discipline, and the path of virtuous works — are extremely exacting. Success in these yogas relies completely on the qualifications of the practitioner.
And their goals are only reached by those with expertise, unwavering dedication, and exceptional purity.
For instance, if we practice ashtanga with the express purpose of stopping the movement in the citta, then we’ll have to rigidly follow the yama and niyamas, engage many, many hours in a day in asanas, pranayamas, and meditation.
And our lives will be lived in a conducive environment for the practice. It’s highly unlikely that if we’re living in the mode of rajas in a city that we’ll ever find enough sattva to still the citta. And all of this following will have to be exact to bring us to the end goal.
Because success in these yoga systems relies on the individual, their goals are rarely achieved.
Bhakti doesn’t consider the qualifications of the practitioner or even one’s purity. Bhakti is a path of mercy that embraces anyone and everyone at all times. We can honestly act in our best capacity, renewing determination and patience, however divine dispensation lifts us beyond where we can go on our own.
The Nine Practices of Bhakti Yoga
As we discuss about the Bhakti practices please note a couple of things. First, focus on how easy practices the practices are. Second, how they are tailored to focus the mind in meditation on our Divine Friend. And third, they’re aimed at achieving sacred union with the Sweet Absolute in love. And in this, they are very intuitive. What I mean to say is that we’ll recognize them as what we do to awaken even ordinary love.
Five-year-old child-saint Prahlada enumerates the nine limbs of Bhakti in the Bhagavata Purana.
That a child teaches the nine practices of Bhakti indicates that bhakti yoga is so easy that even a child can perform it. This aspect of Bhakti is noteworthy and encouraging because anyone can perform it.
Let’s hear about the practices of Bhakti. Young Prahlada says that the nine practices of bhakti yoga are:
Hearing about
Chanting and
Remembering Radha and Krishna’s names, forms, qualities, abode, confidantes, and activities
Offering loving service
Respectfully worshiping
Offering prayers
Serving their desires in the world
Making friends with them
Surrendering everything to them
The core practices of Bhakti are hearing about, chanting, and remembering Radha and Krishna. As we do we begin offering loving service, respectfully worshiping, and offering prayers to them. We serve them and their desires in the world, making friends with him them and completely surrendering one’s very self to the Sweet Absolute and his counterpart, Sri Radha.
The Simplicity and Naturalness of Devotion
These activities will naturally awaken love for them. Even in our current relationships we find that when we fall in love, we like to hear about, speak about, and remember our significant other.
We want to offer service, present them gifts, and express our appreciation for them. We want to please them. We become intimate friends with our partner and share secrets, our views about various topics, and experiences.
In Bhakti, this natural human tendency toward connection and sharing is elevated. Rather than asking us to suppress these emotions and desires, Bhakti refines and spiritualizes them, inviting us to engage our capacity for love and friendship in relation to the Divine.
Our love becomes so unified we move from “you and me” to “us” – or an intimate sweet oneness of hearts in love.
By hearing about, speaking about, singing about, and other Bhakti activities we repose our feelings on the perfect object of love and in this way, divine love begins to be cultivated.
The Transformative Power of Hearing
Not only are these practices simple, easy, natural, straightforward, and common sense, they offer another important function that leads to spiritual progress. They fully engage our bodies and minds, and this spiritualizes them. Literally, the material vehicle we possess gradually becomes fully spiritualized. The mind becomes controlled and able to enter deep states of meditation.
The vrttis, or impressions, in the citta, are not only calmed but removed. The intelligence can act purely, and the false ego is supplanted by the true, serving ego.
We have ears to hear. They were given to us as a gift. We can use that gift in the service to the one who gave them. Hearing is so essential because it opens the heart to spiritual transformation. By hearing with sincerity, attention, and prayer, we will one day come face to face with our Divine Friend. Instead of hearing about the latest quizmo we could acquire, or the faults of our neighbors, friends, or family, or news around the world, or an opposing political party – or any number of things – we can spiritualize the sense of hearing by hearing about the Supreme Person.
This doesn’t mean shutting out the world—it means choosing to direct our attention toward stories and sounds that uplift and awaken the soul, rather than reinforce our material conditioning.
Spiritualizing the Senses
In other words, by carefully curating what we hear and see, and directing our senses spiritually, we are ending the implanting of material impressions on the consciousness. So in Bhakti, we automatically achieve the goal of ashtanga yoga.
Hearing is a broad category that encompasses many activities. Hearing means listening, reading, studying, researching, and deliberating about the Bhakti philosophy and the playful pastimes of the divine couple Radha and Krishna and their retinue of friends.
The more we hear about the Supreme, the more our hearts become purified and attuned with the Absolute. We come to find that the Supreme is an extraordinary person who is supremely loveable. He is Beauty and Truth personified. Although a genius and a master of all languages and all the arts, he is humble. He is peaceful, quick-witted, and skillful in all activities. He is full of all good qualities like shyness, humility, and compassion, and it is his nature to be controlled by love. He enchants the minds and hearts of those who know him.
The Enchanting Nature of the Divine
His flute playing enchants the most accomplished musicians in the higher spheres with enchanting, complex melodies they’ve never heard before.
He is an ocean of sublime pastimes which inundate the hearts of everyone in the spiritual world. Hearing details about his personality, qualities, and activities is enthralling and can capture our attention. When we become charmed, we want to chant and sing his names and speak about his qualities, activities, and forms.
Repeated hearing, reflecting, contemplating, and meditating naturally leads to remembrance of Radha Krishna. As our heart is purified through a mature practice, remembrance leads to trance, or samadhi, which is single-minded, unwavering, concentration on the Supreme.
As remembrance develops, so does affection. When affection arises, we naturally want to offer loving service.
Service, Worship, and Prayer
We can serve the form of the Lord in the temple or our home and respectfully worship those forms by offering water, incense, food, flowers, candles and make other beautiful offerings. The form we worship can be a picture, a painting, or a carved statue.
And as the heart softens, it’s natural that prayer – or a daily conversation – spontaneously flows. You can compose your own prayers or recite the prayers and songs of Bhakti saints and mystics.
Meditation on the maha-mantra is a prayer. More and more, we develop an inspiration and inclination to engage in a daily conversation with our Source. And as our conversation matures and becomes constant, we begin perceiving authentic communication from the Supreme guiding us toward him.
In a natural and profound way, we develop a deep friendship with the Supreme sitting in our hearts alongside our true self, the soul. As love thickens, we want to constantly be with our Beloved and so we find ways to serve his desires in the world because we feel close to him when we act on his behalf.
The Culmination of Bhakti: Surrender and Love
Gradually, love reaches a fever pitch, and we run to the Beloved in full self-surrender begging to be accepted and embraced.
If we were to summarize the entire scope of Bhakti practice, or sadhana, its essence leads to this: always remember Radha and Krishna and never forget them.
Each of these practices fosters remembrance of the Supreme Person and, by the very nature of the activity, initiates the development of love and nurtures that love to maturity. By sincerely performing these activities, one engages in direct, favorable service to Sri Krishna and Sri Radha, which pleases them and garners their attention.
A Personal Relationship with the Supreme
Now, what do all these practices have in common? They engage us in a personal relationship with a person. We might be accustomed to indistinct, vague, and unclear concepts about a “higher power” or “spirit,” or the “absolute” or “cosmic oneness.” However, we don’t get any personal information from these terms.
Rather, they conjure an image of something who has power over us and controls us. Does such an image inspire affection in you? It doesn’t do that for me. Also how easy is it to love something abstract? I remember reading a book where the author was talking about loving dark matter. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the idea was so ludicrous, even as the author went on and on about it, that I finally put the book down.
The Sweet Personality of the Absolute
I’ll reframe my opinion if someone can tell me how to love dark matter. And, of course, I mean love as in loving exchanges, not as in love like, “I love cake.” I know how one can love dark matter if you mean appreciate it (which is also a bit of a stretch as it is so far removed from us—if it even exists). But appreciation is only a small fraction of love.
I wonder what a relationship with a “higher power” would look like? Would a relationship be based on duty? Inspired by fear? Be desperate? Would love be invoked? What’s your experience? I’d like to hear your experience in the comments below.
A person—someone with charm, sharp intelligence, a sweet personality, and good character traits—can draw out and engage our heart. When we engage with a person a reciprocal relationship is possible. And it’s when we know the Absolute as a person – and have specifics about his name, forms, qualities, personality, psychology, and activities – then we can begin to entertain a love affair with him.
These nine practices of Bhakti launch us into this ultimate affair of the pure heart.
The Power of a Single Practice
And how difficult is it to chant and speak words of appreciation? How difficult is it to sing and dance? How inconvenient is it to think of someone you care for? What do we lose – what do we gain! – in offering some loving service?
It’s said that bhakti is so powerful you don’t have to engage in all of the practices. We can engage in just ONE of these limbs of Bhakti to achieve the goal of Bhakti! The mercy just doesn’t end.
You can engage in one or all these practices. Either way, because these activities bring us into UNMEDIATED, direct contact with the omnipotent Supreme Person, they are unsurpassed means of cleansing the heart, awakening divine love, and pleasing him. While this is true, please take special note that the first two processes of hearing and chanting are the most essential. All the other practices spring from these two and are supported and nourished by them.
Chanting: The Heart of Bhakti
And of these two — chanting is the best! If we only chant the maha-mantra, all perfection will be ours. I’ll be going into detail about mantra meditation, which is the core practice in Bhakti, in the next episode.
My spiritual master, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami often said, “Just chant,” to indicate that absolutely all spiritual results are to be found in the holy names.
Chanting the maha-mantra – Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare – engages both hearing and chanting, and its soulful repetition is known as the most powerful of Bhakti’s practices.
All the Bhakti texts and seers describe the mantra meditation of the holy names as the most potent means of achieving Bhakti, because Krishna, being absolute, is identical to his names. The name Krishna is a direct name of the Supreme. When we chant the holy names, we are in direct contact with Krishna, the supreme purifier and lover.
The Joy of Living Bhakti
I’ll go into more details about this meditation and the nature of the Names in an upcoming episode.
So we’ve discussed the essence of the limbs of Bhakti, which invite us to deepen our intimacy with the Divine.
Whether we begin with just one practice or engage in several, each limb brings us closer to the warmth, joy, and sweetness of real relationship with the Divine. Through hearing, chanting, serving, and surrendering, the heart becomes softened, and the soul remembers its true nature: to love and be loved by the Supreme Person. These practices are deeply transformational—no matter your background or experience.
Did any of them stand out for you? Might you try incorporating one of these into your life? Thank you for joining me for this episode of Exploring Bhakti.
In the next episode, we begin a 3-part study of sacred sound and mantras and their potency to award liberation.
Until then, may your practice draw you closer to the Sweet Absolute.
Svasty astu visvasya: May there be good fortune throughout the universe and for you.
