Animals, Personhood, Wonder, and Bhakti-Yoga
摘要
This chapter focuses on selected passages in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, complementing the previous chapter’s focus on the nature of divinity as it relates to ways of approaching animal ethics. Here the attention is on the process of bhakti-yoga as “fashioning a devotional body” from an ascribed, to an inscribed, to a re-membered body (Holdrege Bhakti and Embodiment: Fashioning Divine Bodies and Devotional Bodies in Kṛṣṇa Bhakti. London: Routledge, 2015) relating with the divine body constituted of saccidānanda—atemporality, consciousness, and bliss. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa offers visions of divine-human-animal interactions along with specific guidelines for the practicing bhakti-yogin to conscientiously develop the qualities (or virtues) from which cultures of care can unfold and thrive, providing the basis for developing and sustaining “anticipatory communities” able to expand a bhakti-centered “universe of feelings” that is inclusive of all beings—human and nonhuman.