Bhakti uses form to exhaust form.

Zen uses formlessness to exhaust formlessness.

One dances around the flame.

The other blows it out.

Both end in warmth.

True bhakti is not about God.

True Zen is not about emptiness.

Both are about the annihilation of the small self that wants certainty, reward, permanence, and spiritual merit badges.

Zen watches all this and laughs softly, not cruelly. Zen has no objection to love. Zen objects only to clinging. Zen says, “Why aim devotion outward when the one you adore is already drinking your tea?”

Bhakti, in its most tender form, is devotion as oxygen. Singing names until the singer dissolves into song