Devotion

Devotion is where belief becomes behavior: the prayers at set hours, the fasts, the beads, the songs, the kitchen service, the hill climbed alone. This section gathers the devotional practices of the traditions this site covers; twenty Christian and forty from the wider world; each described in its own terms: how it is practiced, and what it means to the people who practice it.

A word about the word. Devotion is a Christian term, and for the practices of other traditions it is used here by analogy: a disciplined, repeated turning toward the sacred. The analogy is a shelf, not a claim; ṣalāh is not a Muslim form of the rosary, and sāmāyika is not Jain Evensong. Each entry stands on its own ground, and where a practice is contested, or closed to outsiders, the entry says so plainly.

The section stands beside Prayers & Creeds: there, the words the traditions pray and confess; here, what their hands and hours do with them.

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Non-Christian

Jain

Jain Sāmāyika; The Meditation of Equanimity For forty-eight minutes; one muhūrta; the Jain layperson sits in renunciation: no harm, no business, no distinction between friend and stranger. Devotion

Jain Pratikramaṇa; The Rite of Repentance Morning and evening, and climactically once a year, the Jain turns back over the day's harms; in thought, word, and deed; and asks forgiveness of every living being. Devotion

Jain Recitation of the Ṇamokāra Mantra Jainism's supreme prayer bows to no god: it salutes the five supreme ones; the conquerors, the liberated, the teachers, the preceptors, and all monks. Devotion