Month: December 2023

sevā [service, servitude, hommage, devotion]

The word sevā is often translated with the word service. Sevā is indeed service, but in the Bhakti tradition, it is much more. 

In everyday experience, service is a common idea. In its most simple form it refers to a transaction: this for that. I do something for your benefit in exchange for something you do or provide for my benefit. There is an action and there is a reward, either material or immaterial. This action is commonly called a service. 

In material form the benefit we gain from a service might take the form of money or some other object of value, perhaps even another service. The reward can also take an immaterial form as some kind of recognition or honour, perhaps a moral reward, or some other kind of intangible satisfaction. 

Sometimes service refers to action done under material constraints of power. We render service not because we choose, but because we are subject to the power of an other. 

In the Bhakti tradition sevā is the highest form of religious practice. It is the most elevated express of devotion, the purest relation to the divine. 

In stark contrast to service done in the mundane, everyday mood, sevā in religious practice is action done without the expectation of reward, payment or compensation. It is action take without ego, self-less action. It is action as gift, as generosity, as love.