ABSTRACT
This is a book about interpreting religious devotion. Devotion is a category of expression in many of the world’s religious traditions. The term generally conveys a person’s profound emotional and mental commitment to a sacred being, which is expressed in conscientious and purposeful activities. In my first book on religious devotion, The Embodiment of Bhakti, I argued that, given bhakti’s emphasis on motivated action, we should understand the term more properly as “participation.” 1 As a relationship between the human and the divine that is imagined by humankind, bhakti (devotion) is a primary site for the intersection of wonder and self-expression, which stimulates an exquisitely participatory impetus, especially in the arts and letters.
