Posted on Mar.12.2007 @ 09:19AM EDT by stephen
Bhakti or Bhakti
Rust: Would you have us follow Buddha or worship Gods.
His teaching lasted for several decades and he perished at a very old age, somewhere in his eighties. Following his death, only a small group of followers continued in his footsteps. Calling themselves bhikkus , or "disciples," they wandered the countryside in yellow robes (in order to indicate their bhakti , or "devotion" to the master). For almost two hundred years, these followers of Buddha were a small, relatively inconsequential group among an infinite variety of Hindu sects. But when the great Mauryan emperor, Asoka, converted to Buddhism in the third century BCE, the young, inconsequential religion spread like wildfire throughout India and beyond.
A Hindu teaching:
There are six popular traditions which embrace bhakti as a process of worship to a particular deity: