THE ANCIENT ORIGINS OF BHAKTI AND THE DHARMA OF THE BUDDHA

Abstract

Bhakti, at a fundamental level, is so essentially a "human" experience, that it cannot be confined to a particular tradition. Since thisterm is a part of Sanskrit vocabulary and obviously originated and gained currency in certain Vedic religious outlooks and practices, it is often narrowly understood and defined as "Hindu devotion". Thus, expositions of bhakti of a Socrates or bhakti of a Plotinus would be treated as philosophically exotic and culturally hybrid speculations. Even within Indian religious and philosophical traditions bhakti remains narrowly understood both historically and philosophically. It is commonly believed that bhakti suddenly and explicitly appeared with the last couplet of the Svetasvatara Upanishad and for the first time enunciated rigorously in the Bhagavadgita. It is often narrowly understood as an expression of theism, merely as the bhakta's devotion for his or her bhagvan, a subject relationship, and thus absent in nastika (non- theistic, non-Vedic) religions like Buddhism and lainism.