Bhakti: Play Acting with God

Bhakti is an insider’s term that is used to describe a process peculiar to Hinduism.

As we have seen, no insider’s term can simply be translated into English with
just one word, because an insider’s term usually describes concepts which don’t
have exact parallels in the English-speaking world. Nevertheless, let’s begin with
a common English translation of ‘bhakti’: it is most commonly translated into
English as ‘devotion.’

It would be more accurate to expand on this and define Bhakti as an attitude of

love, devotion awe and respect that one shows towards something larger than
oneself, something that is uplifting and personally transformative: a beautiful
ideal, a revered older person, or God. Your devotion to your car or your job, for
example, would not normally be described as bhakti—it is too mundane. Bhakti is
an attitude that one either has in oneself or one doesn’t; but if one doesn’t have it,
one can cultivate it. A person who has bhakti is called a bhakta, normally translated
into English as ‘a worshipper,” or ‘devotee’.

But how can one cultivate bhakti towards God if one doesn’t feel it, or feels it
imperfectly? In your reading on Puja by Chris Fuller you saw that puja can be
understood as an elaborate ‘play’ in which the bhakta takes on the role of a caring
guest and assigns God the role of an honored guest. In other words, puja is an
elaborate acting out of a metaphor—the host-guest relationship as a metaphor for
the human-divine relationship. In other words, what Hindus have done is to take
a very common human relationship and set it up as a role model for their
relationship with God. Now, religions do this all the time. Think, for example, of
Christians who talk about ‘God the Father’. They too are taking a human
relationship and applying it to God. The difference is that Hindus are not just
verbalizing the metaphor, they are acting it out, elaborately and concretely, with
the image serving as the focus of play acting.

So, one answer to the question “How can one cultivate bhakti?” is that one
cultivates it by acting out the human-divine relationship in as concrete a way as
one can; and as one acts it out, the emotion appropriate to that relationship arises
within oneself—much as the little girl who, while play acting with a doll, begins
to feel maternal and protective towards that doll, and will cry if someone were
to snatch away that doll and treat it roughly. This girl has learnt the emotion of
maternal care while play acting with a doll. Ultimately, the point of bhakti is not
the image or the ritual, it is the sentiment of devotion within one’s heart, and the
psychological transformation that such a noble and powerful sentiment can bring
about in a human personality.
But there are roles and roles—not all roles are equal. Some roles are very
powerful and compelling, others less so. Some roles generate strong emotions
while others leave us cold. The problem with the host-guest role (or metaphor) is
that it is not as ‘strong’ as some other human roles. It is not as strong because it is
a fairly formal relationship--there is normally a distance between an honored
guest and a good host, and one can also be a good host by going through all the
routine of hospitality while feeling nothing in one’s heart. Other human relations
are closer, more intimate, and thus more effective in creating strong bhakti. For
example, the relationship of mother to child, is much closer. And Hindus act out
this relationship also in an attempt at cultivating bhakti. One might expect that a
Hindu bhakta would assign himself the role of a child and God the role of
Mother or Father, and indeed many bhaktas do this; an even more powerful role,
however, might be to assign oneself the role of a father and God the role of a
small child; but even more powerful than this would be to take on the role of
mother and assign God the role of a child, and then to act out this role with the
image of a deity as a child—an image that is fed and put to bed, as one would a
child. And is gender a barrier to this role? Not at all; a male bhakta might act this
role out with himself as mother, and not father—because the bond between
mothers and children is so much stronger than that between fathers and
children. And this is precisely what is done with a particular Hindu God named
Krishna. One of the most common iconographic representations of Krishna is as
a small and naughty child of about two who is constantly getting his hands into a
pot of cream that is being saved for dinner—a child who needs to be constantly
watched over--and sometimes spanked!

But the most intimate human relationship, and one to which we come entirely
freely, can dissolve at any time, and that is the most passionate, is the
relationship between two lovers. This relationship is also acted out in cultivating
bhakti. So, another iconographic representation of Krishna is as an attractive
teenager; and with respect to this teenage Krishna the bhaktas take on the
relationship of his female lovers. Again, with its typically literal imagination
Hinduism does not leave this role as a mere metaphor; instead, this relationship
is also acted out in song, and even more concretely, in drama, with bhaktas—
including male bhaktas-- taking on the role Krishna’s flirtatious girlfriends.

So, bhakti can be understood as a very concrete way of making God--who is

nirguna--very accessible by assigning him-her-it very concrete human roles, and
then acting out those roles through ritual, music, dance and drama—acting them
out to every last detail, such as putting the God-as-child to bed, then waking him
and feeding him. Puja is one way of acting out this elaborate and concrete
metaphor in a daily ritual. It is a ritual that primarily enacts the role of host to
guest; however, Hindus realize that there are other roles that are even more
powerful—given who we are in our lives, and what our mental and
psychological makeups may be.